Continuity of care as central theme in perinatal care: A systematic review.

Problem: The global shortage of nurses is straining perinatal care, disrupting continuity of care and negatively affecting patient outcomes.

Background: Continuity of care is essential in perinatal care, where the complexity of maternal and infant needs requires coordinated care across the antenatal, intrapartum, and postpartum periods.

Aim: To provide an overview of the current literature on continuity of care in the interprofessional perinatal care from the perspective of nursing.

Association between diet quality and all-cause mortality in a large Dutch cohort.

Food-based dietary guidelines are helpful for governments and health agencies to encourage healthy eating at the population level. In order to assess adherence to such guidelines, index scores have been developed, the version in the Netherlands being the Dutch Healthy Diet-index (2015) (DHD2015-index), which reflect adherence to the 2015 Dutch dietary guidelines. Because a higher diet quality, i.

Assessment of the Dutch Healthy Diet index 2015 in the Lifelines cohort study at baseline.

Background: Dietary indices are useful measures to investigate associations between dietary intake and disease development. The Dutch Healthy Diet index 2015 (DHD2015-index), a measure of diet quality, assesses adherence to the 2015 Dutch dietary guidelines. We assessed the DHD2015-index in the Lifelines cohort study, and compared calculations from basic and detailed dietary intake data.

The impact of running on gastrointestinal symptoms in patients with irritable bowel syndrome.

Introduction: Physical activity has been suggested to alleviate gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS); however, evidence is scarce. Running has become increasingly popular and may be beneficial for patients with IBS. To obtain more insight in the potential application of running as therapy, we aimed to explore the impact of running and its intensity on GI symptoms in patients with IBS.

Efficacy and utility of a tool for both measurement of vitamin B6, B12, D, folate and iron status and assessment of diet quality in athletes.

NutriProfiel® is a tool to measure micronutrient status and to assess diet quality. It consists of measurement of micronutrient status in blood and a short food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) ('Eetscore-FFQ'). Based on the results, individuals receive a dietary advice.

Factors associated with lower limb tendinopathy in a large cohort of runners: a survey with a particular focus on nutrition.

Objectives: Lower limb tendinopathy (LLT) is highly prevalent in runners. Treatment can be challenging, and knowledge of risk factors may be valuable to develop preventive or treatment interventions for LLT. The aims of this study were (1) to assess the prevalence of three common LLTs (Achilles tendinopathy (AT), patellar tendinopathy and plantar fasciopathy) in a large cohort of Dutch and Belgian runners and (2) to investigate its association with potential risk factors, with a particular focus on nutritional factors in the habitual diet.

[Making meaning of mental distress; discourse analysis of service-users' narratives].

Background: Processes of meaning-making are central to personal recovery in mental distress. Scientific inquiry of meaning-making is scarce within psychiatry, while it has the potential to better attune care to the lived-experience and views of service-users.

Aim: To gain insight into how service-users make meaning of mental distress; how this meaning is shaped by mental health discourses, and how these discourses influence the search for identity and recovery.

Effect of a low carbohydrate, high fat diet versus a high carbohydrate diet on exercise efficiency and economy in recreational male athletes.

Background: Exercise efficiency and economy are key determinants of endurance exercise performance. In this cross-over intervention trial, we investigated the effect of adherence to a low carbohydrate, high fat (LCHF) diet versus a high carbohydrate (HC) diet on gross efficiency (GE) and (OC) during exercise, both after 2 days and after 14 days of adherence.

Methods: Fourteen recreational male athletes followed a two-week LCHF diet (<10 energy % carbohydrate) and a two-week HC diet (>50 energy % carbohydrate), in random order, with a wash-out period of three weeks in between.

The continuing formation of relational caring professionals.

Learning to work as a relational caring professional in healthcare and social welfare, is foremost a process of transformative learning, of Building, of professional subjectification. In this article we contribute to the design of such a process of formation by presenting a structured map of five domains of formational goals. It is mainly informed by many years of care-ethical research and training of professionals in healthcare and social work.

Dietary Intake in the Lifelines Cohort Study: Baseline Results from the Flower Food Frequency Questionnaire among 59,982 Participants.

The role of nutrition in health and disease is well established. However, more research on this topic is needed to fill gaps in our current knowledge. The Lifelines cohort study, a large Dutch prospective cohort study, was established as a resource for international researchers, aiming to obtain insight into the aetiology of healthy ageing.

Recovering Context in Psychiatry: What Contextual Analysis of Service Users' Narratives Can Teach About Recovery Support.

Enhancement of recovery-oriented care in psychiatry requires insight into the personal meaning and context of recovery. The Psychiatry Story Bank is a narrative project, designed to meet this need, by collecting, sharing and studying the narratives of service-users in psychiatry. Our study was aimed at expanding insight into personal recovery through contextual analysis of these first-person narratives.

Pitfalls in interpreting red blood cell parameters in elite high-altitude and sea-level athletes: A unique case series.

Standard routine hematological measurements are commonly used to investigate differences in blood parameters between high-altitude athletes (HAA) and sea-level athletes (SLA), and to monitor the effect of high-altitude training. In this way, red blood cell (RBC) parameters are usually expressed as relative parameters (concentration) rather than absolute parameters (total amount). In this unique case series of elite HAA and SLA, we describe how different ways of parameter expression can affect the interpretation of blood tests.

Cultivating quality awareness in corona times.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a tragedy for those who have been hard hit worldwide. At the same time, it is also a test of concepts and practices of what good care is and requires, and how quality of care can be accounted for. In this paper, we present our Care-Ethical Model of Quality Enquiry (CEMQUE) and apply it to the case of residential care for older people in the Netherlands during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Relationship between intake and plasma concentrations of vitamin B12 and folate in 873 adults with a physically active lifestyle: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Vitamin B12 and folate function as co-factors in pathways used during physical activity. Physical activity may therefore increase vitamin requirements, leading to a risk of deficient plasma concentrations. We aimed to investigate the relationship between intake and plasma concentrations of vitamin B12 and folate in physically active adults, as well as identify other determinants of vitamin B12 and folate plasma concentrations.

Impact of risk-dependent interventions on low haemoglobin deferral rates in whole blood donors.

Background: Blood donors with a relatively low haemoglobin (Hb) level at their previous donation attempt have an increased risk of Hb deferral at the subsequent donation attempt. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the interventions prolongation of donation interval and/or a dietary advice decrease the Hb deferral rate.

Methods: 11 897 whole blood donors with Hb levels from below to 0·2 mmol/l above the cut-off level for donation received either no intervention, a prolongation of the donation interval to six or twelve months, a dietary advice, or both.

Lifestyle behaviours, ethnicity and menstruation have little added value in prediction models for low haemoglobin deferral in whole blood donors.

Objective: To investigate the added value of questionnaire-based predictors to existing prediction models for low haemoglobin (Hb) deferral in whole blood donors.

Background: Prediction models for Hb deferral risk can be applied in the invitation process of donors for a blood donation. Existing prediction models are based on routinely collected data.

Professional Medical Discourse and the Emergence of Practical Wisdom in Everyday Practices: Analysis of a Keyhole Case.

Recent publications have argued that practical wisdom is increasingly important for medical practices, particularly in complex contexts, to stay focused on giving good care in a moral sense to each individual patient. Our empirical investigation into an ordinary medical practice was aimed at exploring whether the practice would reveal practical wisdom, or, instead, adherence to conventional frames such as guidelines, routines and the dominant professional discourse. We performed a thematic analysis both of the medical files of a complex patient and her daughter's diary.

In search of good care: the methodology of phenomenological, theory-oriented 'N=N case studies' in empirically grounded ethics of care.

This paper proposes a new perspective on the methodology of qualitative inquiry in (care) ethics, especially the interaction between empirical work and theory development, and introduces standards to evaluate the quality of this inquiry and its findings. The kind of qualitative inquiry the authors are proposing brings to light what participants in practices of care and welfare do and refrain from doing, and what they undergo, in order to offer 'stepping stones', political-ethical insights that originate in the practice studied and enable practitioners to deal with newly emerging moral issues. As the authors' aim is to study real-life complexity of inevitably morally imprinted care processes, their empirical material typically consists of extensive and comprehensive descriptions of exemplary cases.

The multiple faces of practical wisdom in complex clinical practices: An empirical exploration.

Rationale, Aims, And Objectives: In recent publications, attention has been drawn to the importance of practical wisdom in order to ensure good, individually attuned care in complex clinical practices. However, what remains insufficiently elucidated is how practical wisdom emerges in the workplace. This study aims to describe manifestations of practical wisdom in medical practices within a general hospital.

Relational caring and contact after treatment. An evaluation study on criminal recidivism.

Background: Criminal recidivism within two years after discharge from secure Forensic Psychiatric Hospitals (FPHs) is high, that is, over 36% for short-term judicial measures. It is assumed that relational care during treatment and continued voluntary contact and informal care after discharge, are factors that contribute to the reduction of criminal recidivism.

Objective: To examine whether the provision of relational care and continued contact after treatment can be effective in reducing criminal recidivism two years after discharge (prevalence and time to re-offense) in patients who received treatment according to article 37 of the Dutch Penal Law (i.

Practical wisdom in complex medical practices: a critical proposal.

In recent times, daily, ordinary medical practices have incontrovertibly been developing under the condition of complexity. Complexity jeopardizes the moral core of practicing medicine: helping people, with their illnesses and suffering, in a medically competent way. Practical wisdom (a modification of the Aristotelian phronèsis) has been proposed as part of the solution to navigate complexity, aiming at the provision of morally good care.

Reticulocyte hemoglobin content in a large sample of the general Dutch population and its relation to conventional iron status parameters.

Background: No full consensus exists on which iron status parameters to use for iron status assessment. In this study, we assessed the usefulness of measurement of the hemoglobin content of reticulocytes (CHr) in the general population.

Methods: The following iron status parameters were assessed in 1024 adults: CHr, reticulocytes, hemoglobin (Hb), ferritin, serum iron, transferrin, transferrin saturation and mean corpuscular volume (MCV).