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The acceptability of an electronic HH monitoring system (EHHMS) was evaluated among hospital staff members.
Design:
An electronic HH monitoring system was implemented in June 2020 at a large, academic medical center. An interdisciplinary team developed a cross-sectional survey to gather staff perceptions of the EHHMS.
Setting:
The survey was conducted at a public, tertiary acute care hospital.
Participants:
The survey included current employees and staff. 1,273 participants responded. The mean age was 44.9 years (SD = 13.5). Most of the samples were female (71%) and non-Hispanic white (83%).
Methods:
A survey was conducted between June and July 2021. Responses were analyzed using Stata statistical software. Multiple logistic regression models were constructed to examine factors associated with negative perceptions of the EHHMS and its radiofrequency identification (RFID) badge. Supporting qualitative analyses were performed using Atlas.ti version 9.
Results:
Three-quarters (75%) of respondents reported neutral to negative perceptions of the EHHMS and its associated badge. Respondents reported limited influence on HH practices. Age, campus location, length of employment, job role, and opinion on data sharing were associated with negative perceptions of the EHHMS and RFID badge. Position in a direct patient care role was associated with negative perceptions of the RFID badge.
Conclusions:
Perceptions of the EHHMS aligned with previous research. Identified associations provide opportunities for targeted education, outreach, and intervention to increase acceptability and uptake. Lack of acceptance is explained by poorly perceived ease of use and usefulness, as well as challenges in implementation.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of the care provided by family members and close friends to older people living in long-term care (LTC) homes. Our implementation science team helped three Ontario LTC homes to implement an intervention to allow family members to enter the homes during pandemic lockdowns.
Objective
We used a variety of methods to support the implementation, and this paper reports results from an Ontario-wide survey intended to help us understand the nature of the care provided by family caregivers.
Methods
We administered a survey of essential caregivers in Ontario, and a single open-ended question yielded a substantial qualitative data set that we analysed with a coding and theming procedure that yielded 13 themes.
Findings
The 13 themes reveal deficiencies in Ontario’s LTC sector, attempts to cope with the deficiencies, and efforts to influence change and improvement.
Discussion
Our findings indicate that essential caregivers find it necessary to take on vital roles in order to shore up two significant gaps in the current system: they provide psychosocial and emotional (and sometimes even basic) care to residents, and they play a monitoring and advocacy role to compensate for the failings of the current regulatory compliance regime.
Several hypotheses may explain the association between substance use, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and depression. However, few studies have utilized a large multisite dataset to understand this complex relationship. Our study assessed the relationship between alcohol and cannabis use trajectories and PTSD and depression symptoms across 3 months in recently trauma-exposed civilians.
Methods
In total, 1618 (1037 female) participants provided self-report data on past 30-day alcohol and cannabis use and PTSD and depression symptoms during their emergency department (baseline) visit. We reassessed participant's substance use and clinical symptoms 2, 8, and 12 weeks posttrauma. Latent class mixture modeling determined alcohol and cannabis use trajectories in the sample. Changes in PTSD and depression symptoms were assessed across alcohol and cannabis use trajectories via a mixed-model repeated-measures analysis of variance.
Results
Three trajectory classes (low, high, increasing use) provided the best model fit for alcohol and cannabis use. The low alcohol use class exhibited lower PTSD symptoms at baseline than the high use class; the low cannabis use class exhibited lower PTSD and depression symptoms at baseline than the high and increasing use classes; these symptoms greatly increased at week 8 and declined at week 12. Participants who already use alcohol and cannabis exhibited greater PTSD and depression symptoms at baseline that increased at week 8 with a decrease in symptoms at week 12.
Conclusions
Our findings suggest that alcohol and cannabis use trajectories are associated with the intensity of posttrauma psychopathology. These findings could potentially inform the timing of therapeutic strategies.
The use of communities of practice (CoP) to support the application of knowledge in improved geriatric care practice is not widely understood. This case study’s aim was to gain a deeper understanding of the knowledge-to-action (KTA) processes of a CoP focused on environmental design, to improve how persons with dementia find their way around in long-term care (LTC) homes. Qualitative data were collected (key informant interviews, observations, and document review), and analysed using emergent coding. CoP members contributed extensive knowledge to the KTA process characterized by the following themes: team dynamics, employing a structured process, technology use, varied forms of knowledge, and a clear initiative. The study’s CoP effectively synthesized and translated knowledge into practical tools to inform changes in practice, programs, and policy on dementia care. More research is needed on how to involve patients and caregivers in the KTA processes, and to ensure that practical application of knowledge has financial and policy support
Adherence to preventative inhaled therapies in people with cystic fibrosis (CF) is low, resulting in potentially avoidable health losses and the need for costly rescue therapies.
Objectives
To estimate the cost-effectiveness of the CFHealthHub (CFHH) intervention to support adherence to inhaled medications.
Methods
A state transition model was developed to assess the cost-effectiveness of the CFHH intervention versus usual care from the perspective of the UK National Health Service and Personal Social Services over a lifetime horizon. Costs and health outcomes were discounted at a rate of 3.5 percent per annum. Costs were valued at 2021/22 prices. The model structure includes health states defined by survival status, level of lung function, and transplant history. Treatment effects were modeled by changing the probabilities of transitioning between lung function states and reducing exacerbation rates. Model parameters were informed by the CFHH trial, CF Registry data, routine cost databases, literature, and expert opinion. Deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were undertaken to assess uncertainty.
Results
The CFHH intervention is expected to generate additional health gains and cost savings compared with usual care. Assuming that it is delivered for 10 years, the CFHH intervention is expected to generate 0.17 additional quality-adjusted life years and cost savings of GBP 1,600 (EUR 1,662) per patient.
Conclusions
The CFHH intervention is expected to dominate usual care, irrespective of the duration over which the intervention is delivered. The modeled benefits and cost savings are smaller than initially expected and are sensitive to relative treatment effects on lung function.
This first full study of Erasmus Darwin's gardening, horticulture and agriculture shows he was as keen a nature enthusiast as his grandson Charles, and demonstrates the ways in which his landscape experiences transformed his understanding of nature.
Financial inclusion depends on providing adjusted services for citizens with disclosed vulnerabilities. At the same time, the financial industry needs to adhere to a strict regulatory framework, which is often in conflict with the desire for inclusive, adaptive, and privacy-preserving services. In this article we study how this tension impacts the deployment of privacy-sensitive technologies aimed at financial inclusion. We conduct a qualitative study with banking experts to understand their perspectives on service development for financial inclusion. We build and demonstrate a prototype solution based on open source decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials software and report on feedback from the banking experts on this system. The technology is promising thanks to its selective disclosure of vulnerabilities to the full control of the individual. This supports GDPR requirements, but at the same time, there is a clear tension between introducing these technologies and fulfilling other regulatory requirements, particularly with respect to “Know Your Customer.” We consider the policy implications stemming from these tensions and provide guidelines for the further design of related technologies.
Background: Electronic hand hygiene monitoring systems (EHHMSs) are being increasingly utilized to improve hand hygiene outcomes. Following the implementation of an EHHMS at a large, academic medical center, an interdisciplinary team developed a web-based survey to gather information on employee’s perceptions and behaviors surrounding the EHHMS. Methods: In total, 1,273 complete responses were collected. Responses were analyzed using Stata version 16 statistical software with 2-tailed tests and .05 significance level. Multivariate logistic regression models were constructed to examine factors associated with negative perceptions of the EHHMS and of wearing the EHHMS radiofrequency identification (RFID) badge. Supporting qualitative analysis was performed using Atlas.ti version 9 software. Results: The general sentiment toward the monitoring system was neutral (38%) to negative (37%). The same was true for respondents’ sentiments toward wearing the RFID badge. Of respondents who interact with the system, 48% feel that the system does not capture hand hygiene data accurately. The EHHMS had limited influence on employee’s hand hygiene habits: 27% significant influence and 54% little-to-no influence. Respondents of younger age, those employed as a registered nurse, scientist, physician, or master’s level clinician, and those working at the satellite hospital were significantly more likely to have negative perceptions of the EHHMS. Negative perceptions were also significantly more likely among respondents familiar with the institution’s hand hygiene policy and those who had a negative opinion of seeing the hand hygiene data of others. Negative perceptions of the EHHMS RFID badge were significantly more likely among respondents of younger age, those employed as a registered nurse, scientist, physician, or master’s level clinician, those working at the satellite hospital, and those with a negative perception of seeing the hand hygiene data of others. Employment in a role providing direct patient care and those employed at the institution for >1 year were also significantly more likely to have a negative perception. Conclusions: Negative and neutral opinions dominate perceptions of the EHHMS considered in this analysis. Respondents expressed concerns with accuracy of the EHHMS data collection. The system’s limited influence is likely a result of limited familiarity, limited performance feedback, and employee frustration and concerns. These findings provide opportunities for improvement in future implementation of EHHMS. Based on these results, implementation of EHHMS would be best be supported by coordinated backing from administration and leadership, advanced planning and education, and frequent, effective communication. Additional research and evaluation are required to optimize implementation of electronic hand hygiene monitoring systems, with the goal of improving hand hygiene outcomes.
COVID-19 has disproportionally impacted older adults, and has highlighted many issues, including extreme deficiencies in Canadian long-term care homes and gaps in home and community care services for older adults. In recent years, there has been a push towards better patient and family engagement in health system research, and with the onset of the pandemic, engaging older adults in research and policy planning is more important than ever. In this article, we describe the Seniors Helping as Research Partners (SHARP) approach to engagement with older adults as an example of how partnerships that engage older adults in the development of research aims and processes can help to ensure that future research meets the needs of older adults. SHARP members highlighted a number of areas for future COVID-19 research such as improvements to long-term care, enhancing access to home and community care, and a focus on aging and social isolation.
To investigate associations of egg intake with blood pressure (BP) and the role of dietary variables and other macro- and micro-nutrients in the association.
Design:
We used cross-sectional data for the USA as part of the INTERnational study on MAcro/micronutrients and blood Pressure (INTERMAP). INTERMAP was surveyed between 1996 and 1999, including four 24-h dietary recalls, two 24-h urine collections and eight measurements of systolic BP and diastolic BP (SBP, DBP). Average egg intake (g/d) was calculated. Multivariable linear regression models were used to estimate the association between egg intake (per each 50 g/d or per quintile) and BP. The roles of dietary variables and other macro- and micro-nutrients in this association were also investigated.
Setting:
In the USA.
Participants:
In total, 2195 US INTERMAP men and women aged 40–59 years.
Results:
Participants were 50 % female, 54 % non-Hispanic White and 16 % non-Hispanic Black. Mean egg intake (sd) in men and women was 30·4(29·8) and 21·6(20·5) g/d, respectively. Adjusting for demographics, socio-economics, lifestyle and urinary Na:K excretion ratios, we found non-linear associations with BP in non-obese women (P-quadratic terms: 0·004 for SBP and 0·035 for DBP).The associations remained after adjusting for dietary variables, macro/micro nutrients or minerals. Dietary cholesterol was highly correlated with egg intake and may factor in the association. No association was found in obese women and in obese or non-obese men.
Conclusion:
Egg intake was non-linearly associated with SBP and DBP in non-obese women, but not in obese women or men. Underlying mechanisms require additional study regarding the role of obesity and sex.
Substantial progress has been made in the standardization of nomenclature for paediatric and congenital cardiac care. In 1936, Maude Abbott published her Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease, which was the first formal attempt to classify congenital heart disease. The International Paediatric and Congenital Cardiac Code (IPCCC) is now utilized worldwide and has most recently become the paediatric and congenital cardiac component of the Eleventh Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). The most recent publication of the IPCCC was in 2017. This manuscript provides an updated 2021 version of the IPCCC.
The International Society for Nomenclature of Paediatric and Congenital Heart Disease (ISNPCHD), in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), developed the paediatric and congenital cardiac nomenclature that is now within the eleventh version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). This unification of IPCCC and ICD-11 is the IPCCC ICD-11 Nomenclature and is the first time that the clinical nomenclature for paediatric and congenital cardiac care and the administrative nomenclature for paediatric and congenital cardiac care are harmonized. The resultant congenital cardiac component of ICD-11 was increased from 29 congenital cardiac codes in ICD-9 and 73 congenital cardiac codes in ICD-10 to 318 codes submitted by ISNPCHD through 2018 for incorporation into ICD-11. After these 318 terms were incorporated into ICD-11 in 2018, the WHO ICD-11 team added an additional 49 terms, some of which are acceptable legacy terms from ICD-10, while others provide greater granularity than the ISNPCHD thought was originally acceptable. Thus, the total number of paediatric and congenital cardiac terms in ICD-11 is 367. In this manuscript, we describe and review the terminology, hierarchy, and definitions of the IPCCC ICD-11 Nomenclature. This article, therefore, presents a global system of nomenclature for paediatric and congenital cardiac care that unifies clinical and administrative nomenclature.
The members of ISNPCHD realize that the nomenclature published in this manuscript will continue to evolve. The version of the IPCCC that was published in 2017 has evolved and changed, and it is now replaced by this 2021 version. In the future, ISNPCHD will again publish updated versions of IPCCC, as IPCCC continues to evolve.
Enrichment of the heavy rare earth elements (HREE) in carbonatites is rare as carbonatite petrogenesis favours the light (L)REE. We describe HREE enrichment in fenitized phonolite breccia, focusing on small satellite occurrences 1–2 km from the Songwe Hill carbonatite, Malawi. Within the breccia groundmass, a HREE-bearing mineral assemblage comprises xenotime, zircon, anatase/rutile and minor huttonite/thorite, as well as fluorite and apatite.
A genetic link between HREE mineralization and carbonatite emplacement is indicated by the presence of Sr-bearing carbonate veins, carbonatite xenoliths and extensive fenitization. We propose that the HREE are retained in hydrothermal fluids which are residually derived from a carbonatite after precipitation of LREE minerals. Brecciation provides a focusing conduit for such fluids, enabling HREE transport and xenotime precipitation in the fenite. Continued fluid–rock interaction leads to dissolution of HREE-bearing minerals and further precipitation of xenotime and huttonite/thorite.
At a maximum Y content of 3100 µg g−1, HREE concentrations in the presented example are not sufficient to constitute ore, but the similar composition and texture of these rocks to other cases of carbonatite-related HREE enrichment suggests that all form via a common mechanism linked to fenitization. Precipitation of HREE minerals only occurs where a pre-existing structure provides a focusing conduit for fenitizing fluids, reducing fluid – country-rock interaction. Enrichment of HREE and Th in fenite breccia serves as an indicator of fluid expulsion from a carbonatite, and may indicate the presence of LREE mineralization within the source carbonatite body at depth.
This article explores innovative praxis in Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) in four preservice teacher education programmes in Canada. ESE is finding its way into teacher education in a variety of innovative and interdisciplinary ways, as both part of mainstream programmes and in their co-curricular margins. Using a case study approach, each case builds on unique connections to Indigenous education, art education, cultural learning or educational gardening, which supports a variety of differing aspects in relation to ESE. These cases share a common theme of building relationships at the heart of ESE teaching and learning in the mainstream and the margins of the academy. Brought together through a Canadian network of faculty, researchers, policy-makers and community educators that was formed in 2016, these cases demonstrate a deep commitment and imaginative capacity for embedding ESE in Canada’s teacher education systems.
Erasmus Darwin spoke of protecting animals and plants against disease in Zoonomia (1794/96) and Phytologia in a manner reminiscent of his analyses of human health, tending to emphasise inherent propensities to illness and disequilibrium within organisms above external putrefaction or miasmas. While remaining a strong advocate of traditional methods associated with neo-humoural medicine, such as bleeding and purging, as with his human patients, he was usually measured and careful in recommending these and his success as a physician probably arose in part from his preparedness to let ailments take their course and provide prescriptions designed to bolster the animal system, such as greater provision of fresh vegetables and fresh air. His understanding of animal physiology and development was closely informed by medical practice, and his recommendations for improving farming using natural philosophy encouraged greater attention to the problems of animal and plant diseases, competitive provision and promotion of new treatments in the medical marketplace, which paralleled those available for humans, and more critical assessments of these. As we have seen, larger farms and farming methods encouraged by the agricultural revolution inadvertently, perhaps, fostered increases in plant diseases, at least to begin with. However, outbreaks of illness among farm animals were one of the factors behind the decline in small farmers and the increase in larger farms and great estates during the eighteenth century, which (it was claimed) coped more efficiently with such problems. Diseases were linked to small-scale farming and the grazing of cattle on open and common land, allowing them to wander unimpeded and mingle with the livestock of other farmers. In addition to increasing the efficiency of farming, enclosure and improvement were therefore also associated with improving livestock health.
Analogies between human and animal illnesses and the authority medical practitioners already had as experts encouraged farmers to consult them concerning their stock, as did the fact that some diseases, such as cowpox, were well known from ‘time-immemorial’ as spreading from animals to human. These practises were reinforced by the use of animal versions of human medicines, such as James’s Fever Powder, which was advertised and used ‘very extensively’ between 1750 and 1800. It was devised by the Staffordshire physician Robert James (1703–1776), a friend of Samuel Johnson and author of a Medicinal Dictionary and other works, including a study of canine madness, who took a keen interest in animal health (Figure 51).
In September 1780 two pampered pussies exchanged letters which were hand delivered to their respective residences. The Persian cat Snow Grimalkin, who lived in Cathedral Close, Lichfield, explained to his fellow feline, Miss Po Felina of the Bishop’s Palace, that he had spied her in her ‘stately’ abode washing her ‘beautiful round face’ and ‘elegantly brinded ears’ with her ‘velvet paws’ while swishing her ‘meandering tail’ with ‘graceful sinuosity’. The ‘treacherous’ Cupid had, however, hidden himself behind her ‘tabby beauties’, leading Snow Grimalkin to long for more sights of his beautiful amour, watching ‘day and night’ from his balcony and serenading her with songs echoing through the ‘winding lanes and dirty alleys’ of Lichfield, hoping that the still ‘starlight evenings’ might induce her to ‘take the air’ on the palace leads. However, despite these efforts, Po Felina sat ‘wrapped in fur’, ‘purring with contented insensibility’ and sleeping ‘with untroubled dreams’; nevertheless, Snow Grimalkin hoped that the offering of numerous mice ‘for your food or your amusement’ and ‘an enormous Norway rat’ that covered his ‘paws with its gore’ might just be the present to secure the object of his attentions. Unfortunately, while Po Felina admired the ‘spotless ermine’ and ‘tyger strength’ of Snow’s ‘commanding form’ and ‘wit and endowments’, she was too wary of his ‘fierceness’ to return his affections.
While, of course, the exchange of letters between Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward on behalf of their cats was meant to be playful and witty, in the Augustan tradition of mock-heroic and humorous writing, with each pet assuming something of the character of their owners, it also demonstrates the importance of pets in the Georgian household and the extent to which, as we shall see in this chapter, Darwin was a close observer of animal behaviour and a strong believer in animal agency and intelligence. As portrayed by Darwin, with his blood-stained paws and smooth white fur, Snow Grimalkin combined bestial behaviours that were vestiges of a natural state with the advantages of birth, breeding and beauty. This was a miniature tiger who was ‘rough and hardy, bold and free’, whose ‘nervous paw’ could take ‘My Lady’s lapdog by the neck’ or ‘with furious hiss assault the hen and snatch a chicken from the pen’, rather than a cosseted cat.