Characteristics and Work Life Quality of Nursing Home Care Aides in Canada.

This cross-sectional study describes care aides’ characteristics and quality of work life in Western Canadian nursing homes.

Mycobacterial RNA polymerase requires a U-tract at intrinsic terminators and is aided by NusG at suboptimal terminators.

Intrinsic terminators, which encode GC-rich RNA hairpins followed immediately by a 7-to-9-nucleotide (nt) U-rich "U-tract," play principal roles of punctuating and regulating transcription in most bacteria. However, canonical intrinsic terminators with strong U-tracts are underrepresented in some bacterial lineages, notably mycobacteria, leading to proposals that their RNA polymerases stop at noncanonical intrinsic terminators encoding various RNA structures lacking U-tracts. We generated recombinant forms of mycobacterial RNA polymerase and its major elongation factors NusA and NusG to characterize mycobacterial intrinsic termination.

Toward Continuous Primary Care in the United States: Differences in Patient Satisfaction Between First and Return Visits to Primary Care Physicians/Analysis of DrScore--The National e-Survey Data.

Background: As stated by Donabedian, the father of quality assurance, satisfaction is an integral component of quality in medical care. Patient satisfaction is an important predictor of health-related behaviors, use of medical services, and health outcomes. Impressive literature exists in examining various aspects of patient satisfaction, however, no study thus far has examined differences in patient satisfaction between first and return visits to primary care physicians.

Enhancing the effectiveness of community stroke risk screening: a randomized controlled trial.

Stroke risk factors are routinely assessed in community screening programs; however, the rate of patient follow-up for health care once risk factors are identified is known to be low. This study was conducted to test the effectiveness of a brief behavioral telephonic intervention in an ongoing community stroke prevention screening program on health care seeking for stroke risk. A total of 227 participants with 2 or more stroke risk factors were randomly allocated to either an attention control arm or a behavioral intervention arm.

Medicaid payment mechanisms: impact on medication adherence and health care service utilization in type 2 diabetes enrollees.

The purpose of this retrospective cohort study was to examine the impact of the type of health plan (capitated vs. fee for service [FFS]) on outcomes (medication adherence and health care service utilization) in type 2 diabetes Medicaid enrollees. Subjects were 8581 Medicaid enrollees with type 2 diabetes who newly started oral pharmacotherapy and were followed for 6 months before and 12 months after the index antidiabetic medication to collect data on medication adherence and health care service utilization.

Psoriasis and its treatment with adalimumab.

Importance Of The Field: Psoriasis is an immune-mediated skin condition affecting 2 - 3% of world's population. It affects patients' health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and results in a significant financial burden. Adalimumab is the first fully human monoclonal antibody approved in the US and European countries for the treatment of psoriasis along with other immunomediated diseases.

Outcomes associated with pharmacologic treatments in Parkinson's disease: a review of recent literature.

Parkinson's disease (PD) affects nearly 1 million Americans with a mean onset age of 60 years. Its progressive, neurodegenerative nature, causing motor complications and affecting mood, has a considerable impact on a patient's health-related quality of life. Pharmacologic therapies are the most widely utilized treatment.