Background: Increasingly, virtual simulations are being integrated into higher education. A successful experience goes far beyond simply offering learners access to a virtual simulation; it requires a facilitator who understands the learners' needs and course objectives, choses the right virtual simulation for the learner, creates a welcoming space that promotes learning, and evaluates the experience.
Methods: Facilitators from three different healthcare programs and six educational institutions and students from two different healthcare programs were included in this exploratory qualitative research study.
Background: As we experience a shortage of healthcare providers in Canada, it has become increasingly challenging for healthcare educators to secure quality clinical placements. We evaluated the impact of virtual simulations created for the virtual work-integrated learning (Virtu-WIL) program, a pan-Canadian project designed to develop, test, and offer virtual simulations to enrich healthcare clinical education in Canada. Evaluation was important since the virtual simulations are freely available through creative commons licensing, to the global healthcare community.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: A comfortable treatment position in radiotherapy may promote patient stability and improve outcomes such as accuracy. The aim of this study was to identify, prioritise and determine the feasibility of delivery of intervention components as part of a radiotherapy comfort intervention package.
Methods: Prior research, consisting of a systematic review and qualitative interviews with patient and therapeutic radiographers, was triangulated and 15 intervention components developed.
Purpose: Patients undergoing radiotherapy are positioned to restrict motion, ensuring treatment accuracy. Immobilisation can be uncomfortable which may impact treatment accuracy. Therapeutic radiographers (TR) are responsible for managing patient comfort, yet there is little evidence to guide practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: For diving, marine predators, accelerometer and magnetometer data provides critical information on sub-surface foraging behaviours that cannot be identified from location or time-depth data. By measuring head movement and body orientation, accelerometers and magnetometers can help identify broad shifts in foraging movements, fine-scale habitat use and energy expenditure of terrestrial and marine species. Here, we use accelerometer and magnetometer data from tagged Australian sea lions and provide a new method to identify key benthic foraging areas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: There is little research regarding the experiences of patient comfort and how it is best managed in radiotherapy. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of patient and therapeutic radiographer views of comfort during radiotherapy.
Methods: This qualitative study involved semi-structured interviews, with cancer patients (n = 25) and therapeutic radiographers (n = 25), conducted between January-July 2019.
Background: The rapid change brought on by COVID-19 meant that many educators adopted virtual simulation quickly, often without having a strong background in the pedagogical principles of virtual simulation. To address this resource gap, a team of 21 Ontario virtual simulation-experienced educators created the freely available, online, interprofessional Virtual Simulation Educator's Toolkit. The Toolkit provides the theory, practical strategies and resources needed to teach effectively with virtual simulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: A good working climate increases the chances of adequate care. The employees of Emergency in Hospitals are particularly exposed to work-related stress. Support from management is very important in order to avoid stressful situations and conflicts that are not conducive to good work organization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVirtual simulation has been widely used to temporarily replace face-to-face clinical practicum experiences in nursing education in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. While more traditional clinical settings were prioritized and made available only to senior students, the use of virtual simulation provided an opportunity to safely pivot from the usual placement to a comparable practical learning modality to maintain clinical competence during unprecedented public health restrictions and mitigation strategies. Like many others across the globe, nursing students in a Canadian university continued their nursing education predominantly using virtual simulation for an entire academic year to avoid catastrophic delays in entering the workforce and to ultimately protect the health service delivery needs throughout the oncoming waves of the pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Intensive hospital work environments can affect staff, patient, and organizational outcomes.
Purpose: (1) To assess quantitatively the relationship between critical care registered nurses' perceptions of their workplace, their absenteeism, and their turnover intent; and (2) to analyze nurses' recommendations for improvements for critical patient care.
Methods: Following STROBE guidelines, a cross-sectional survey sampled registered nurses (n = 302), across the Canadian province of Alberta, in October 2018.
Background: Moral distress is recognized as an international problem that contributes to decreased work productivity, job dissatisfaction and intent to leave for adult Critical Care nurses.
Aim: To explore Critical Care nurses moral distress levels using the Moral Distress Scale Revised (MDS-R) and its relationship with intention to stay. The study reported in this paper was part of a larger study that also investigated Critical Care nurses' work environment in Canada and the Midlands region of the UK.
A major patient safety challenge is recognition and response to deteriorating patients since early warning signs are often not detected in a timely manner. Nursing students typically learn the skills for early identification through clinical placement, but clinical placements are not guaranteed to provide exposure to deteriorating patients. Nursing students require practice with emergency scenarios to develop their competency and confidence to act in this area.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Artificial intelligence (AI) has started to be increasingly adopted in medical imaging and radiotherapy clinical practice, however research, education and partnerships have not really caught up yet to facilitate a safe and effective transition. The aim of the document is to provide baseline guidance for radiographers working in the field of AI in education, research, clinical practice and stakeholder partnerships. The guideline is intended for use by the multi-professional clinical imaging and radiotherapy teams, including all staff, volunteers, students and learners.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhilos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci
August 2021
Management of gases during diving is not well understood across marine mammal species. Prior to diving, phocid (true) seals generally exhale, a behaviour thought to assist with the prevention of decompression sickness. Otariid seals (fur seals and sea lions) have a greater reliance on their lung oxygen stores, and inhale prior to diving.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Auscultation of heart and lung sounds is a foundational competency for Registered Nurses (RNs). Precise and timely assessments are important for the early detection and recognition of the deteriorating patient. Studies have shown that improved teaching methods that incorporate emerging technologies and address different learning styles are needed to improve competency in auscultation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Med Imaging Radiat Sci
December 2020
Radiotherapy for cancer is an effective treatment but requires precise delivery. Patients are required to remain still in the same position during procedure which may be uncomfortable. This combined with high anxiety experienced by patients, and feelings of isolation, have indicated a need for comfort interventions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSouthern right whales (Eubalaena australis) migrate between Austral-winter calving and socialising grounds to offshore mid- to high latitude Austral-summer feeding grounds. In Australasia, winter calving grounds used by southern right whales extend from Western Australia across southern Australia to the New Zealand sub-Antarctic Islands. During the Austral-summer these whales are thought to migrate away from coastal waters to feed, but the location of these feeding grounds is only inferred from historical whaling data.
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