Publications by authors named "Adena Cohen-Bearak"
Background: Measuring patient well-being during clinical care may enhance patient-centered communication and treatment planning. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) piloted the use of the Well-Being Signs (WBS), a self-report measure of psychosocial well-being, in clinical care.
Objective: To understand early WBS implementation and health care team member experiences with its use before developing detailed support materials and finalizing the measure.
Article Synopsis
- - The Department of Veterans Affairs is changing to a new electronic health record system, and they looked at how the staff and doctors felt about this change to make improvements for the future.
- - They used surveys and interviews to gather information from 68 team members before and after the new system was put in place, and many reported struggles and stress during the transition.
- - Based on what they learned, they found that better training and support, along with fixing known problems, could help make these transitions easier for everyone involved.
Purpose: While the value of art therapy is well-established and arts are increasingly leveraged to promote health and wellbeing more broadly, little is known about the impacts of non-clinical arts programs. In this preliminary investigation, we sought to fill this gap by exploring diverse stakeholders' perspectives on the impacts of non-clinical arts programming on Veterans receiving care at the Veterans Health Administration (VA).
Design: Semi-structured qualitative interviews with Veterans, VA staff, and community partners.
Background: Healthcare systems that previously used either a single legacy electronic health record (EHR) system or a "best-of-breed" combination of products from multiple vendors are increasingly adopting integrated, single-vendor EHR systems. Though healthcare leaders are beginning to recognize the dramatic collateral consequences of these transitions, their impact on the EHR workforce - internal actors most closely involved in governing and supporting the EHR - is poorly understood.
Objective: Identify perceived impacts of adopting single-vendor, integrated EHR systems on the institutional EHR workforce.
Background: Electronic health record (EHR) transitions are common and complex organizational changes, yet limited published literature is available to guide health systems that are changing from one EHR to another. Clinicians and staff end users at sites that have undergone EHR transitions may have critical insights that could inform future transitions.
Objective: To assess end user perspectives on organizational practices that support successful EHR transitions.
Background: There is increasing recognition of the need to focus on the health and well-being of healthcare employees given high rates of burnout and turnover. Employee wellness programs are effective at addressing these issues; however, participation in these programs is often a challenge and requires large scale organizational transformation. The Veterans Health Administration (VA) has begun to roll out their own employee wellness program-Employee Whole Health (EWH)-focused on the holistic needs of all employees.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Aligning expectations during the informed consent process before a child's surgery is an important element of good communication that benefits both surgical staff and families. We developed and evaluated a 2-hour pilot interprofessional workshop to improve the communication and relational skills of pediatric surgeons and nurse practitioners.
Methods: Focus groups with families identified key challenges in the process of informed consent.
Context: In the pediatric intensive care setting, an accurate measure of the dying and death experience holds promise for illuminating how critical care nurses, physicians, and allied psychosocial staff can better manage end-of-life care for the benefit of children and their families, as well as the caregivers.
Objectives: The aim was to assess the reliability and validity of a clinician measure of the quality of dying and death (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit-Quality of Dying and Death 20 [PICU-QODD-20]) in the pediatric intensive care setting.
Methods: In a retrospective cohort study, five types of clinicians (primary nurse, bedside nurse, attending physician, and the psychosocial clinician and critical care fellow most involved in the case) were asked to complete a survey for each of the 94 children who died over a 12 month period in the pediatric intensive care units of two children's hospitals in the northeast U.
Objectives: The death of a child in the pediatric intensive care unit is perhaps one of the most devastating and challenging experiences a parent can ever endure. This article examines how parents of children dying in the pediatric intensive care unit understood their role and discusses implications for clinical care and policy.
Design: Retrospective, qualitative study.
Introduction: As school-based efforts increase to address the epidemic of childhood obesity, a priority for health professionals and educators will be to identify effective tools appropriate for use in schools to help guide health promotion programs and policies. This article describes the results of a qualitative research study examining school staff and community members' experiences working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's School Health Index, a self-assessment and planning tool that addresses nutrition and physical activity.
Methods: In-depth interviews were carried out with faculty, staff, and community collaborators in nine public schools that were using the School Health Index to develop nutrition and physical activity initiatives for students.