Experiences with home monitoring technology in older adults with traumatic brain injury: a qualitative study.

Background: Home monitoring systems utilising artificial intelligence hold promise for digitally enhanced healthcare in older adults. Their real-world use will depend on acceptability to the end user i.e.

Patient and Public Involvement in Technology-Related Dementia Research: Scoping Review.

Background: Technology-related research on people with dementia and their carers often aims to enable people to remain living at home for longer and prevent unnecessary hospital admissions. To develop person-centered, effective, and ethical research, patient and public involvement (PPI) is necessary, although it may be perceived as more difficult with this cohort. With recent and rapid expansions in health and care-related technology, this review explored how and with what impact collaborations between researchers and stakeholders such as people with dementia and their carers have taken place.

The human "feel" of touch contributes to its perceived pleasantness.

This study explored whether a human-like feel of touch biases perceived pleasantness and whether such a bias depends on top-down cognitive and/or bottom-up sensory processes. In 2 experiments, 11 materials were stroked across the forearm at different velocities (bottom-up) and participants rated tactile pleasantness and humanness. Additionally, in Experiment 1, participants identified the materials (top-down), whereas in Experiment 2, they rated each material with respect to its somatosensory properties (bottom-up).

How do they measure up? Differences in stakeholder perceptions of quality measures used in English community nursing.

Objectives: To establish how quality indicators used in English community nursing are selected and applied, and their perceived usefulness to service users, commissioners and service providers.

Methods: A qualitative multi-site case study was conducted with five commissioning organizations and their service providers. Participants included commissioners, provider organization managers, nurses and service users.

Identifying Parkinson's disease and parkinsonism cases using routinely collected healthcare data: A systematic review.

Background: Population-based, prospective studies can provide important insights into Parkinson's disease (PD) and other parkinsonian disorders. Participant follow-up in such studies is often achieved through linkage to routinely collected healthcare datasets. We systematically reviewed the published literature on the accuracy of these datasets for this purpose.

Gli3 controls the onset of cortical neurogenesis by regulating the radial glial cell cycle through expression.

The cerebral cortex contains an enormous number of neurons, allowing it to perform highly complex neural tasks. Understanding how these neurons develop at the correct time and place and in accurate numbers constitutes a major challenge. Here, we demonstrate a novel role for Gli3, a key regulator of cortical development, in cortical neurogenesis.

Accuracy of routinely-collected healthcare data for identifying motor neurone disease cases: A systematic review.

Background: Motor neurone disease (MND) is a rare neurodegenerative condition, with poorly understood aetiology. Large, population-based, prospective cohorts will enable powerful studies of the determinants of MND, provided identification of disease cases is sufficiently accurate. Follow-up in many such studies relies on linkage to routinely-collected health datasets.

Community nursing quality indicators for end-of-life care in England: identification, preparation, and coordination.

High-quality community nursing is essential to ensure that end-of-life care can be provided in community settings in line with patient preferences. This article examines the quality priorities commissioners sought to incentivise in end-of-life care, by reviewing a survey of Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) indicators for community nursing conducted in England in 2014-2015. Findings from the survey suggest that end-of-life care was not given a high priority with the CQUIN indicators for community nursing.

How commissioning affects community nursing.

Community nurses have direct experience of how changes in the local health economy affect the quality of care patients receive, so it is important that they engage with commissioning to influence decisions made about the quality and direction of their service. This article seeks to demystify commissioning priorities by drawing on findings from a survey of Commissioning for Quality and Innovation indicators for community nursing conducted in England, 2014-15. The article focuses specifically on organisational goals, highlighting the impact of the Francis report and other NHS priorities on quality assessment in community nursing.

Medication decision making and patient outcomes in GP, nurse and pharmacist prescriber consultations.

Unlabelled: Aim The aims of this study were twofold: (a) to explore whether specific components of shared decision making were present in consultations involving nurse prescribers (NPs), pharmacist prescribers (PPs) and general practitioners (GPs) and (b) to relate these to self-reported patient outcomes including satisfaction, adherence and patient perceptions of practitioner empathy.

Background: There are a range of ways for defining and measuring the process of concordance, or shared decision making as it relates to decisions about medicines. As a result, demonstrating a convincing link between shared decision making and patient benefit is challenging.

Solicitations in GP, nurse and pharmacist prescriber consultations: an observational study.

Background: The opening solicitation is a key element of the primary care consultation as it enables patients to express their ideas, concerns and expectations that can lead to improved patient outcomes. However, in practice, this may not always occur. With nurses and pharmacists now able to prescribe, this research explored the opening solicitation in a multi-professional context.

A comparison of GP, pharmacist and nurse prescriber responses to patients' emotional cues and concerns in primary care consultations.

Objective: Recognising patients' cues and concerns is an important part of patient centred care. With nurses and pharmacists now able to prescribe in the UK, this study compared the frequency, nature, and professionals' responses to patient cues and concerns in consultations with GPs, nurse prescribers and pharmacist prescribers.

Methods: Audio-recording and analysis of primary care consultations in England between patients and nurse prescribers, pharmacist prescribers and GPs.

Made to measure? Assessing feasibility of quality indicators for district nursing.

Unlabelled: Scant empirical information exists regarding the quality of district nursing (DN) services. This article reports the testing of 31 quality indicators (QI) in practice.

Method: Twelve DN teams provided patient notes for audit.

World War II, post-war reconstruction and British women chemists.

This paper draws on evidence from a range of sources to consider the extent to which World War II served as a turning point in the employment opportunities open to women chemists in Britain. It argues that wartime conditions expanded women's access to some areas of employment, but that these opportunities represented, in many ways, an expansion of existing openings rather than wholly new ones, and not all of them proved permanent. Instead, women chemists benefited more permanently from increased state expenditure on higher education and on research and development after the war.

Developing quality indicators for community services: the case of district nursing.

Background: Quality indicators exist for the acute and primary care sectors in the National Health Service (NHS), but until recently little attention has been given to measuring the quality of community services. The innovative project described in this paper attempted to address that gap.

Objectives: To produce a framework for developing quality indicators for Bristol Community Health services.

Using qualitative methods for attribute development for discrete choice experiments: issues and recommendations.

Attribute generation for discrete choice experiments (DCEs) is often poorly reported, and it is unclear whether this element of research is conducted rigorously. This paper explores issues associated with developing attributes for DCEs and contrasts different qualitative approaches. The paper draws on eight studies, four developed attributes for measures, and four developed attributes for more ad hoc policy questions.

Monitoring Change in Families Receiving Primary Mental Health Specialist Services: A Pragmatic Evaluation Within an Existing Service for the Under-Fives.

Background:   Specialist CAMHS-based services for pre-school age children are being introduced in the UK using different models of care. The clinical value of these new services requires assessment.

Method:   Over 20 months a Primary Mental Health Specialist (Under 5s) service operating in South West UK was evaluated on a variety of themes including effectiveness.

Effect of chlorate, molybdate, and shikimic acid on Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium in aerobic and anaerobic cultures.

Experiments were conducted to determine factors that affect sensitivity of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium to sodium chlorate (5mM). In our first experiment, cultures grown without chlorate grew more rapidly than those with chlorate. An extended lag before logarithmic growth was observed in anaerobic but not aerobic cultures containing chlorate.

Incidence and ecology of Campylobacter jejuni and coli in animals.

Since its initial emergence in the 1970s, Campylobacter has become one of the most common causative agents of bacterial foodborne illness. Campylobacter species readily colonize the gastrointestinal tracts of domestic, feral and wild animals and while they rarely cause clinical disease in food animals, they can produce severe acute gastroenteritis in humans. Prevalence of Campylobacter in food animals can exceed 80% thus challenging processors to employ post-harvest pathogen reduction strategies.

Is there a place for ontological hermeneutics in mental-health nursing research? A review of a hermeneutic study.

A lot of research carried out within the context of mental-health nursing using qualitative data collection tools claims that it is hermeneutical, with usually just a short section describing the hermeneutical methodology as though it is a very broad philosophical approach. Criticisms of the latter approach more often than not concentrate on the level of the data collection tools without getting to grips with the underlying hermeneutical philosophy. This paper examines the difference between methodological and ontological hermeneutics and then gives an example of a piece of research using the latter approach.

Time-resolved detection of the CF3 photofragment using chirped QCL radiation.

This paper demonstrates how a quantum cascade laser (QCL) in its intrapulse mode can provide a simple method for probing the products of a photolysis event. The system studied is the 266 nm photodissociation of CF3I with the CF3 fragments subsequently detected using radiation at approximately 1253 cm(-1) generated by a pulsed QCL. The tuning range provided by the frequency down-chirp of the QCL operated in its intrapulse mode allows a approximately 1 cm(-1) segment of the CF3 nu3 band to be measured following each photolysis laser pulse.