Publications by authors named "Janet Curran"

Objective: The objective of this review is to identify international and Nova Scotian standards of care, CPGs, and policies informing equitable health care.

Introduction: The lack of attention given to intersectional health care needs of diverse populations perpetuates health inequities among under-served groups, creating an urgent need for health care reform globally.

Inclusion Criteria: This scoping review will include standards of care, CPGs, and policies focusing on equity-related health indicators.

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Objective: To better understand critically ill children's lived experiences with family presence in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).

Study Design: This qualitative, interpretive phenomenological study is grounded in a Childhood Ethics ontology. We recruited children (aged 6-17 years) admitted to one of four participating Canadian PICUs between November 2021-July 2022 using maximum variation sampling.

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Background: Health literacy assessment is key to better meeting family needs and developing informed strategies to promote positive health outcomes for children. The objective of this study was to describe the health literacy of caregivers who use Canadian pediatric emergency departments and relate it to demographic and visit-specific variables.

Methods: This study utilized a descriptive, cross-sectional survey design with medical record review.

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Background: Precursor-level safety events (PSEs) pose greater patient risk than no-harm events but are not as severe as serious safety events. Despite their potential for harm, the underlying determinants associated with PSEs are poorly understood. This study aimed to use a behavior change framework to understand the underlying determinants of PSEs and whether associated action items aligned with the behavior.

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While the cancer advocacy community has been pivotal in progressing oncology care, supporting young adults with advanced cancer transitioning to palliative care continues to be a complex challenge. Palliative care services may not be offered by healthcare providers or engaged by young people themselves. This is in the face of the recognized value that palliative care can provide young people and their families.

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The healthcare system in Canada is overwhelmed and requires reform. Good discharge communication is a cornerstone of patient safety and quality care. In the Emergency Department (ED), good discharge communications means that patients leave with a clear understanding of their health condition, and the steps they need to take to continue their recovery at home.

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Article Synopsis
  • Caregivers with low health literacy tend to overestimate their children’s illness severity, leading to increased use of emergency departments (EDs) for non-urgent issues.
  • A study of 2,005 caregivers across ten Canadian pediatric EDs found that 43.7% had low health literacy, and this was linked to non-urgent ED visits, especially among those with children under 2 years.
  • The findings highlight a significant demographic variation in ED usage, with Quebec caregivers utilizing pediatric EDs less for non-urgent matters compared to those in other provinces like Alberta and Nova Scotia.
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Background: Co-design with consumers and healthcare professionals is widely used in applied health research. While this approach appears to be ethically the right thing to do, a rigorous evaluation of its process and impact is frequently missing. Evaluation of research co-design is important to identify areas of improvement in the methods and processes, as well as to determine whether research co-design leads to better outcomes.

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Background: For many young people, the transition from child to adult mental health services is a vulnerable time associated with treatment disengagement and illness progression. Providing service information and options to youth, appealing to them, and tailoring to their needs during this period could help overcome systematic barriers to a successful transition. We know little about how SMS text message-based interventions might be leveraged to support the motivational, informational, and behavioral needs of youth during this time.

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Introduction: School-based immunization programs offer an accessible route to routine vaccines for students. During the COVID-19 pandemic, school closures to comply with public health measures had a drastic effect on school-based immunization program delivery and associated vaccine uptake. We sought to integrate findings from a mixed methods study to co-develop evidence-based and theory-informed recommendations with a diverse group of stakeholders (i.

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Existing barriers to care were exacerbated by the development and implementation of necessary public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Children with complex care needs and their families represent a small portion of the paediatric population, and yet they require disproportionately high access to services. Little is known about the impact of COVID-19 public health measures on this population.

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Background: Discharge communication is essential to convey information regarding the care provided and follow-up plans after a visit to a hospital emergency department (ED), but it can be lacking for visits for pediatric mental health crises. Our objective was to co-design and conduct usability testing of new discharge communication interventions to improve pediatric mental health discharge communication.

Methods: The study was conducted in two phases using experience-based co-design (EBCD).

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Background: School-based immunization programs (SBIP) support access to routine vaccines for adolescents. Across Canada, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent public health measures affected SBIP and vaccine uptake. The objectives of this study were to explore 1.

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Background: Various studies have demonstrated gender disparities in workplace settings and the need for further intervention. This study identifies and examines evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on interventions examining gender equity in workplace or volunteer settings. An additional aim was to determine whether interventions considered intersection of gender and other variables, including PROGRESS-Plus equity variables (e.

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Purpose: Pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) worldwide restricted family presence in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to explore the experiences and impact of restricted family presence policies on Canadian PICU clinicians.

Methods: We conducted a qualitative study that followed an interpretive phenomenological design.

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Objectives: To identify, chart and analyse the literature on recent initiatives to improve long-term care (LTC) coverage, financial protection and financial sustainability for persons aged 60 and older.

Design: Rapid scoping review.

Data Sources: Four databases and four sources of grey literature were searched for reports published between 2017 and 2022.

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Context: PICUs across Canada restricted family presence (RFP) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic from allowing two or more family members to often only one family member at the bedside. The objective of this study was to describe the experiences and impact of RFP on families of critically ill children to inform future policy and practice.

Hypothesis: RFP policies negatively impacted families of PICU patients and caused moral distress.

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Introduction: Parental presence at the bedside during a stressful pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) admission may improve child comfort, reduce parental anxiety, and enable family engagement. We performed this study to identify factors that parents perceive impact their capability, opportunity, and motivation to be at the bedside in PICU.

Methods: We conducted a qualitative descriptive study using semi-structured interviews based on the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF).

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Background: In Canada, approximately 15 000 people undergo coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) each year. However, 9.5% of these patients are urgently readmitted to hospital within 30 days of surgery.

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Background: People who use alcohol and/or drugs (PWUAD) are at higher risk of infectious disease, experiencing stigma, and recurrent hospitalization. Further, they have a higher likelihood of death once hospitalized when compared to people who do not use drugs and/or alcohol. The use of harm reduction strategies within acute care settings has shown promise in alleviating some of the harms experienced by PWUAD.

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Background: Medication prescribing is essential for the treatment, curing, maintenance, and/or prevention of an illness and disease, however, medication errors remain common. Common errors including prescribing and administration, pose significant risk to patients. Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) is one intervention used to enhance the safety and quality of prescribing by decreasing medication errors and reducing harm.

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Background: Learning health systems strive to continuously integrate data and evidence into practice to improve patient outcomes and ensure value-based healthcare. While the LHS concept is gaining traction, the operationalization of LHSs is underexplored.

Objective: To identify and synthesize the existing evidence on the implementation and evaluation of advancing learning health systems across international health care settings.

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Background: Audit and feedback (A&F) is a widely used implementation strategy to influence health professionals' behavior that is often tested in implementation trials. This study examines how A&F trials describe sustainability, spread, and scale.

Methods: This is a theory-informed, descriptive, secondary analysis of an update of the Cochrane systematic review of A&F trials, including all trials published since 2011.

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The long-term economic viability of modern health care systems is uncertain, in part due to costs of health care at the end of life and increasing health care utilization associated with an increasing population prevalence of multiple chronic diseases. Control of health care spending and sustaining delivery of health care services will require strategic investments in prevention to reduce the risk of disease and its complications over an individual's life course. Behavior change interventions aimed at reducing a range of harmful and risky health-related behaviors including smoking, physical inactivity, excess alcohol consumption, and excess weight, are one approach that has proven effective at reducing risk and preventing chronic disease.

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