Publications by authors named "Emanuela Forcella"
Background: Innovation is important to improve patient care, but few studies have explored the factors that initiate change in healthcare organizations.
Methods: As part of the European project EPICE on evidence-based perinatal care, we carried out semi-structured interviews (N = 44) with medical and nursing staff from 11 randomly selected neonatal intensive care units in 6 countries. The interviews focused on the most recent clinical or organizational change in the unit relevant to the care of very preterm infants.
Objectives: To explore differences in approaches to supporting lactation and breastfeeding for very preterm infants in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) in 3 European regions.
Design: Qualitative cross-sectional study carried out by means of face-to-face semistructured interviews. Verbatim transcripts were coded using a theoretical framework derived from the literature and supplemented by data-driven concepts and codes.
Objective: To explore the experiences of patients affected by phenylketonuria, a genetic metabolic disease currently screened during the neonatal period, in whom treatment was begun shortly after birth. Dietary treatment of the metabolic abnormality can prevent effects on the central nervous system through infancy, adolescence, and adulthood, but the associated challenges for personal and social life, such as everyday problems of adherence to a strict regimen, have been inadequately studied.
Method: A qualitative study was performed using semistructured interviews involving 20 patients aged between 8 and 23 years and referred to a pediatric hospital for phenylketonuria.
The results presented in this paper are part of the largest survey on unconventional medicine conducted so far (more than 140 000 people). Families with high socio-economical levels had the highest probability of choosing unconventional medicine. The use is strongly related to geographic area probably due to different availability of structures able to provide these therapies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: Vitamin K acupuncture point injection, a menstrual pain treatment derived from traditional Chinese medicine, has been a standard treatment in some hospitals in China since the 1980s.
Objectives: To investigate the effects of vitamin K acupuncture point injection on menstrual pain in young women aged 14 to 25 from different countries and cultural backgrounds who have had unmitigated severe primary dysmenorrhea for 6 months or more.
Design: Prospective, observational, clinical pilot study
Settings: One site in China (a hospital outpatient clinic in Shanghai) and 2 sites in Italy (a hospital clinic in Milan and a private gynecology practice in Verona).
Complementary and alternative medicine in the scientific literature.
J Altern Complement Med
February 2005
Objective: To analyze the frequency and typology of scientific papers on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) published in the period 1997-2002.
Methods: We performed a systematic literature search of MEDLINE in order to identify all articles dealing with CAM, in the human setting, published from January 1, 1997 to December 31, 2002. Our attention was focused on randomized controlled trials conducted on CAM and on the impact factor (IF) of the journals in which CAM articles were published.
Objective: To investigate the prevalence of use of unconventional therapies in Italy, the main health problems associated with and the motivations for use of these therapies.
Methods: Questions about the use of unconventional therapies were inserted in a nation-wide survey conducted by face-to-face interviews with all members of sampled families by the National Institute of Statistics during four quarters of the years 1999-2000. Data presented here are based on the results of the first two quarters of the survey (September and December 1999) during which a representative sample of 30,000 Italian families (70,898 individuals) was interviewed.