Publications by authors named "Helen White"

Background: Within healthcare settings, practice-based healthcare professionals are expected to teach, supervise, assess and/or support learners in their respective disciplines. Ongoing development opportunities focusing specifically on teaching skills and support of students are varied and there are no mandatory requirements for practice-based healthcare professionals to develop formal teaching qualifications, despite their direct involvement with learners.

Objective: To explore the experience of participants in a pilot scheme to recognise teaching excellence in healthcare.

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  • The GCIG Endometrial Cancer Consensus Conference was held in Incheon, South Korea, aimed at creating consensus statements to improve future clinical trials in endometrial cancer.
  • Representatives from 33 member groups developed 18 statements across four key topics, focusing on treatment strategies and trial methodologies, including consideration for low-resource settings.
  • For the first time, the conference included patient advocates and early-career investigators, resulting in a high consensus rate on the statements, reinforcing progress in global clinical research for endometrial cancer.
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Introduction: The recent change in Chilean legislation towards abortion enabled midwives to include the care of women having an induced abortion within their scope of practice. However, midwives' identity could be strained by induced abortion care provision as it is contrary to midwives' traditional role. Considering this, the aim of the study was to elucidate how Chilean midwives understand and provide abortion care.

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Background: Chilean midwives have been identified as essential for successfully implementing an abortion law, a practice which could potentially be understood as contradicting their central mission. Nevertheless, to date, there has been no investigation into how Chilean midwives have incorporated induced abortion care provision into their professional identity.

Objective: To elucidate how Chilean midwives understand and provide abortion care and how they have (re)defined their professional identity to include induced abortion care.

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Cancer cachexia (CC) syndrome, a feature of cancer-associated muscle wasting, is particularly pronounced in older patients, and is characterised by decreased energy intake and upregulated skeletal muscle catabolic pathways. To address CC, appetite stimulants, anabolic drugs, cytokine mediators, essential amino acid supplementation, nutritional counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy, and enteral nutrition have been utilised. However, pharmacological treatments that have also shown promising results, such as megestrol acetate, anamorelin, thalidomide, and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, have been associated with gastrointestinal and cardiovascular complications.

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  • Patient decision aids (PtDA) are tools that enhance shared decision-making between patients and healthcare professionals, aiming to improve the quality of decisions, particularly for those at increased genetic cancer risks.
  • The workshop involved patients discussing their health decision-making priorities alongside psychological and behavioral theories to help shape a PtDA that resonates with their needs.
  • Feedback revealed that decision-making is highly personal and context-dependent, indicating a flexible approach to the PtDA's design is necessary for better patient care and support.
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Introduction: Bolus track and test bolus are the most commonly used contrast timing protocols to undertake computed tomography pulmonary angiography (CTPA). The aim of this study was to compare test bolus and bolus track contrast enhancement protocols in terms of enhancement of the pulmonary vessels and aorta, radiation dose and suboptimal scan rate to determine the optimal technique for CTPA.

Methods: A total of 200 CTPA examinations (100 using each protocol) performed between January and February 2021 were assessed retrospectively.

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Objective: The increasing prevalence of liver disease in the UK means there is a pressing need to expand the hepatology workforce. This survey aims to evaluate current hepatology training provision, and trainee attitudes towards future careers in hepatology.

Method: An electronic survey was distributed to higher specialty gastroenterology and hepatology trainees in the UK between March and May 2022.

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Introduction: Following recommendations of the Francis report (2013), healthcare professional groups have formalised restorative supervision within practice in order to maintain emotional well-being among staff and provide quality of care for patients. There is a scarcity of research available on how professional supervision is utilised as a restorative device within current practice for sonographers.

Methodology: An online cross-sectional, descriptive survey was used to gain qualitative details and nominal data on sonographer experiences of professional supervision.

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Several studies have reported that chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) patients expressing e14a2 BCR::ABL1 have a faster molecular response to therapy compared to patients expressing e13a2. To explore the reason for this difference we undertook a detailed technical comparison of the commonly used Europe Against Cancer (EAC) BCR::ABL1 reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) assay in European Treatment and Outcome Study (EUTOS) reference laboratories (n = 10). We found the amplification ratio of the e13a2 amplicon was 38% greater than e14a2 (p = 0.

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Article Synopsis
  • Standardized monitoring of BCR::ABL1 mRNA levels is crucial for managing chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients, as established by the European Treatment and Outcome Study for CML (EUTOS) from 2016 to 2021.
  • The study tested secondary, lyophilized BCR::ABL1 reference panels to help local laboratories validate their tests and convert results to the International Scale, leading to significant improvements in the validation of conversion factors (CFs).
  • The findings showed that most participating laboratories could effectively monitor molecular response in samples, highlighting that secondary reference panels provide a reliable method for quality assurance in CML testing.
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Introduction: Policy implementation can be affected by what individuals believe to be right and wrong. When implementing abortion policies, providers' moral beliefs can be relevant in the success of the implementation process. Considering that midwives and nurses are direct providers of abortion care, exploring their experiences related to abortion policy implementation could provide helpful information to prevent policy failure.

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Significance: We know the prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI)-related vision impairment and ocular injury symptoms. Lacking is an understanding of health care utilization to treat these symptoms. Utilization knowledge is important to structuring access to treatment, identifying clinical training needs, and providing evidence of the effectiveness of treatment.

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Background: The diagnosis of preterm labour is challenging. False-positive diagnoses are common and result in unnecessary, potentially harmful treatments (e.g.

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Background & Aims: Bronchiectasis is a heterogeneous, chronic respiratory condition, in which the role of nutrition remains unclear and nutritional guidance is lacking. Few studies have explored the role of nutrition in disease management, and little is known about nutritional requirements during periods of stability or metabolic stress. The aim of this study was to characterise nutritional status and intakes in a cohort of patients and identify potential associations with body composition and functional capacity.

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Background: Timely interventions in women presenting with preterm labour can substantially improve health outcomes for preterm babies. However, establishing such a diagnosis is very challenging, as signs and symptoms of preterm labour are common and can be nonspecific. We aimed to develop and externally validate a risk prediction model using concentration of vaginal fluid fetal fibronectin (quantitative fFN), in combination with clinical risk factors, for the prediction of spontaneous preterm birth and assessed its cost-effectiveness.

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Objective: to assess the effect of implementation of the extended placement option available to midwifery students during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design: Online survey open from 2nd June 2020 to 15th July 2020.

Setting: United Kingdom.

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Purpose: Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is a complex disease process causing abdominal pain, diarrhoea and weight loss. The long-term nutritional implications however are not well documented. The aim of this study was to evaluate nutritional status in patients with CP over an extended time period and assess frequency and duration of CP related hospitalisation.

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Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide and, despite new targeted therapies and immunotherapies, many patients with advanced-stage- or high-risk cancers still die, owing to metastatic disease. Adoptive T-cell therapy, involving the autologous or allogeneic transplant of tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes or genetically modified T cells expressing novel T-cell receptors or chimeric antigen receptors, has shown promise in the treatment of cancer patients, leading to durable responses and, in some cases, cure. Technological advances in genomics, computational biology, immunology and cell manufacturing have brought the aspiration of individualised therapies for cancer patients closer to reality.

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Purpose: Approximately 1-2% of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients harbor atypical BCR-ABL1 transcripts that cannot be monitored by real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) using standard methodologies. Within the European Treatment and Outcome Study (EUTOS) for CML we established and validated robust RT-qPCR methods for these patients.

Methods: BCR-ABL1 transcripts were amplified and sequenced to characterize the underlying fusion.

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Spectroscopic techniques including X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and attenuated total reflectance - Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) are used to examine oil residues persisting on shorelines in Prince William Sound that originate from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and oil released as a consequence of the 1964 Great Alaska earthquake. When coupled to classification models, ATR-FTIR and XRF spectral data can be used to distinguish between the two sources of oil with 92% and 86% success rates for the two techniques respectively. Models indicate that the ATR-FTIR data used to determine oil source includes the CO stretch, the twisting-scissoring of the CH group, and the CC stretch.

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Insects, due to their small size, have limited energy storage space, but they also have high metabolic rate, so their hemolymph sugars are incredibly dynamic and play a number of important physiological functional roles in maintaining energetic homeostasis. In contrast to vertebrates, trehalose is generally the primary sugar found in insect hemolymph, which is followed by glucose and fructose. Many analytical chemistry methods exist to measure sugars, yet a direct comparison of methods that can measure all three simultaneously, and trehalose in particular, from low sample volumes, are sparse.

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