Publications by authors named "Heather Duncan"

Background: Paediatric critical care (PCC) is a high-pressure working environment. Staff experience high levels of burnout, symptoms of post-traumatic stress, and moral distress.

Aim: To understand challenges to workplace well-being in PCC to help inform the development of staff interventions to improve and maintain well-being.

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Objectives: Renal replacement therapy (RRT) options are limited for small babies because of lack of available technology. We investigated the precision of ultrafiltration, biochemical clearances, clinical efficacy, outcomes, and safety profile for a novel non-Conformité Européenne-marked hemodialysis device for babies under 8 kg, the Newcastle Infant Dialysis Ultrafiltration System (NIDUS), compared with the current options of peritoneal dialysis (PD) or continuous venovenous hemofiltration (CVVH).

Design: Nonblinded cluster-randomized cross-sectional stepped-wedge design with four periods, three sequences, and two clusters per sequence.

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Background: Patients with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) wait roughly 4 years for a kidney transplant. A potential way to reduce wait times is using hepatitis C virus (HCV)-viremic kidneys.

Objective: As preparation for developing a shared decision-making tool to assist patients with ESKD with the decision to accept an HCV-viremic kidney transplant, our initial goal was to assess the feasibility of using The Gambler II, a health utility assessment tool, in an ambulatory dialysis clinic setting.

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Aims And Objectives: To explore what wellbeing means to medical and nursing staff working in a large paediatric intensive care (PIC).

Design: Exploratory qualitative design using an appreciative inquiry framework.

Setting: PIC unit; primary, secondary and tertiary.

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Importance: Persons experiencing homelessness (PEH) are at higher risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe illness due to COVID-19 because of a limited ability to physically distance and a higher burden of underlying health conditions.

Objective: To describe and assess a hotel-based protective housing intervention to reduce incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection among PEH in Chicago, Illinois, with increased risk of severe illness due to COVID-19.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This retrospective cohort study analyzed PEH who were provided protective housing in individual hotel rooms in downtown Chicago during the COVID-19 pandemic from April 2 through September 3, 2020.

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While use of (hepatitis C virus) HCV-viremic kidneys may result in net benefit for the average end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) patient awaiting transplantation, patients may have different values for ESKD-related health states. Thus, the best decision for any individual may be different depending on the balance of these factors. Our objective was to explore the feasibility of sampling health utilities from hemodialysis patients in order to perform patient-specific decision analyses considering various transplantation strategies.

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We describe the critical care course of children with a novel hyperinflammatory syndrome associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporally associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), with focus on trajectory before and after immunomodulation. Overall, 10 patients who met the U.K.

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Lupus nephritis (LN) is an autoimmune disease with substantial morbidity/mortality and limited efficacy of available therapies. Memory T (Tm) lymphocytes infiltrate LN kidneys, contributing to organ damage. Analysis of LN, diabetic nephropathy, and healthy donor kidney biopsies revealed high infiltration of active CD8 Tm cells expressing high voltage-dependent Kv1.

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The national implementation groups of early warning systems in the UK and Ireland have identified a need to understand implementation, adoption and maintenance of these complex interventions. The literature on how to implement, scale, spread and sustain these systems is sparse. We describe a successful adoption and maintenance over 10 years of a paediatric early warning system as a sociotechnical intervention using the Nonadoption, Abandonment, Challenges to the Scale-Up, Spread, and Sustainability Framework for Health and Care Technologies.

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To assist in the early warning of deterioration in hospitalised children we studied the feasibility of collecting continuous wireless physiological data using Lifetouch (ECG-derived heart and respiratory rate) and WristOx2 (pulse-oximetry and derived pulse rate) sensors. We compared our bedside paediatric early warning (PEW) score and a machine learning automated approach: a Real-time Adaptive Predictive Indicator of Deterioration (RAPID) to identify children experiencing significant clinical deterioration. 982 patients contributed 7,073,486 min during 1,263 monitoring sessions.

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Objectives: To describe implementation and early evaluation of using quantitative electroencephalography for electrographic seizure detection by PICU clinician staff.

Design: Prospective observational study of electrographic seizure detection by PICU clinicians in patients monitored with quantitative electroencephalography. Quantitative electroencephalography program implementation included a continuous education and training package.

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Purpose: Glioblastoma (GBM) is a fatal primary malignant brain tumor. GBM stem cells (GSC) contribute to resistance to the DNA-damaging chemotherapy, temozolomide. The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) displays genomic alterations enabling DNA repair mechanisms in half of GBMs.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study aimed to see if a faecal immunochemical test (FIT) for faecal haemoglobin (f-Hb) can be safely used in primary care to rule out serious bowel diseases like colorectal cancer (CRC) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
  • The research involved 5422 patients who submitted FIT samples, revealing a positivity rate of 21.9%, with 20.5% of those completing a colonoscopy having significant bowel disease.
  • The findings suggest that f-Hb testing, alongside clinical evaluation, is an effective way to assess patients' risk for serious bowel diseases in a primary care setting.
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Our ability to manage acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is limited by our incomplete understanding of the epigenetic disruption central to leukemogenesis, including improper histone methylation. Here we examine 16 histone H3 genes in 434 primary AML samples and identify Q69H, A26P, R2Q, R8H and K27M/I mutations (1.6%), with higher incidence in secondary AML (9%).

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Article Synopsis
  • There's been a lot of new research on tiny structures called extracellular vesicles (EVs) that cells release, which help us understand how cells work and what goes wrong in diseases.
  • Scientists have had a hard time studying these EVs because they come in different types and can be tough to separate and analyze properly.
  • The International Society for Extracellular Vesicles updated their guidelines, called MISEV2018, to help researchers share clear information about how to study EVs and ensure their findings are accurate and reliable.
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A cardiac arrest is a life-threatening event, often fatal. Whilst clinicians classify some of the cardiac arrests as potentially predictable, the majority are difficult to identify even in a post-incident analysis. Changes in some patients' physiology when analysed in detail can however be predictive of acute deterioration leading to cardiac or respiratory arrests.

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Most existing, expert monitoring systems do not provide the real time continuous analysis of the monitored physiological data that is necessary to detect transient or combined vital sign indicators nor do they provide long term storage of the data for retrospective analyses. In this paper we examine the feasibility of implementing a long term data storage system which has the ability to incorporate real-time data analytics, the system design, report the main technical issues encountered, the solutions implemented and the statistics of the data recorded. McLaren Electronic Systems expertise used to continually monitor and analyse the data from F1 racing cars in real time was utilised to implement a similar real-time data recording platform system adapted with real time analytics to suit the requirements of the intensive care environment.

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The "learn by doing" approach to training is common in the public health field and is a core component of service-learning programs. Trainee satisfaction, learning, and application of learning have been studied. What is less understood is the perspective of the agencies that host trainees.

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Objective: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) created the Public Health Associate Program (PHAP) to establish a continuous source of public health professionals who can deliver frontline services at the federal, state, tribal, local, and territorial levels. The article describes preliminary evaluation findings for PHAP.

Design: The evaluation's primary purposes are to assess the quality and effectiveness of PHAP, determine its value and impact, and provide information to continuously improve the program.

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Background: It is unknown whether targeted temperature management (TTM) improves survival after pediatric out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). The aim of this study was to assess the evolution, safety and efficacy of TTM (32-34 °C) compared to standard temperature management (STM) (<38 °C).

Methods: Retrospective, single center cohort study.

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Objectives: To understand staff's experiences of acute life threatening events (ALTEs) in a pediatric hospital setting. These data will inform an intervention to equip nurses with clinical and emotional skills for dealing with ALTEs.

Method: A mixed design was used in the broader research program; this paper focuses on phenomenon-focused interviews analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

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Federal public health advisors provide guidance and assistance to health departments to improve public health program work. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) prepares them with specialized training in administering public health programs. This article describes the evolving training and is based on internal CDC documents and interviews.

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