Optimizing nurse practitioner productivity within the Veterans Health Administration.

Background: Nurse practitioners (NPs) provide high-quality, comprehensive health care at Veterans Health Administration (VHA) medical centers in various practice settings. Accurately determining the productivity of NPs is essential to understanding their overall contribution to veteran care. There is a lack of understanding of the contributors to the variability among VHA medical centers regarding their processes for capturing these data.

Momentary precipitants connecting stress and smoking lapse during a quit attempt.

Objective: Most attempts at smoking cessation are unsuccessful, and stress is frequently characterized both as a momentary precipitant of smoking lapse and a predictor of subsequent changes in other key precipitants of lapse. The current study examined longitudinal associations among stress, multiple precipitants of lapse, and lapse among smokers attempting to quit.

Method: Ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) were gathered from a multiethnic, gender-balanced sample of 370 adults enrolled in a smoking cessation program.

Brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy For Chronic Pain: Results From a Clinical Demonstration Project in Primary Care Behavioral Health.

Objectives: Although cognitive behavioral therapy is an effective intervention for chronic pain, it is a lengthy treatment typically applied only in specialty care settings. The aim of this project was to collect preliminary effectiveness data for Brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Chronic Pain (Brief CBT-CP), an abbreviated, modular form of treatment designed for use in primary care.

Methods: A clinical demonstration project was conducted in which Brief CBT-CP was delivered to primary care patients by 22 integrated care providers practicing in the Primary Care Behavioral Health model of Veterans Health Administration primary care clinics.

Anhedonia and smoking cessation among Spanish-speaking Mexican-Americans.

Objective: Smoking cessation is associated with improved health and reduced risk of disease. Understanding specific factors that are associated with smoking cessation is important both for identifying those who may have the greatest difficulty quitting smoking and tailoring smoking cessation interventions accordingly. Low positive affect/anhedonia, a key transdiagnostic symptom of several psychiatric disorders, is associated with lower levels of smoking cessation in the general population, but to date, few studies have examined factors influencing smoking cessation among Spanish-speaking Mexican-American smokers.

The use of ambulatory assessment in smoking cessation.

Ambulatory assessment of smoking behavior has greatly advanced our knowledge of the smoking cessation process. The current article first provides a brief overview of ecological momentary assessment for smoking cessation and highlights some of the primary advantages and scientific advancements made from this data collection method. Next, a discussion of how certain data collection tools (i.

Comparing college smokers' and dual users' expectancies towards cigarette smoking.

Background: As no agreed upon definition exists for dual use (i.e., individuals who concurrently use more than one form of tobacco), this population remains largely unstudied in the substance use literature, despite increases in smokeless tobacco use among young adults.