Training providers to implement heart failure shared medical appointments: A qualitative evaluation.

Shared medical appointments (SMA) help patients learn skills to self-manage chronic medical conditions. While this model of care delivery is thought to improve access to care with an efficient use of healthcare providers' time, many healthcare teams struggle to implement this healthcare model. Guidance and training resources on the implementation of SMAs is expected to improve adoption, implementation and sustainability of SMAs.

Healthcare providers experiences with shared medical appointments for heart failure.

Shared medical appointments (SMAs) offer a means for providing knowledge and skills needed for chronic disease management to patients. However, SMAs require a time and attention investment from health care providers, who must understand the goals and potential benefits of SMAs from the perspective of patients and providers. To better understand how to gain provider engagement and inform future SMA implementation, qualitative inquiry of provider experience based on a knowledge-attitude-practice model was explored.

Leveraging Partnerships to Reduce Insulin Needlestick Injuries: Nurse-Led System-Wide Quality Improvement Project.

Background: Percutaneous injuries from needlesticks are a major occupational hazard for nurses.

Local Problem: Reducing subcutaneous insulin-related needlestick injuries was part of a nurse-led comprehensive sharps injury-reduction program at an integrated, not-for-profit health system.

Methods: The incident rate of needlestick injuries was compared between 1 year before and 1 year after introducing this quality improvement project.

Development of a Culturally Valid Instrument Examining HPV Knowledge and Beliefs of Lakota Women on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Introduction: The aim of this article is to describe the modification of an instrument to secure cultural validity using cognitive interviewing to adequately examine and address health issues in a diverse population.

Method: Cultural experts ( = 8) on the Lakota reservation were identified to provide input on cultural items of an instrument. Two rounds of cognitive interviewing ensued with each expert.

Educating Students About Opioid Use Disorder and Treatments in the Community Using an Educational Video.

Background: A treatment gap exists for people in the community with opioid use disorders (OUDs). Stigma and lack of knowledge of how to access community resources contribute to this gap. One valuable resource that may help fill this gap is nursing students.

Group medical visits after heart failure hospitalization: Study protocol for a randomized-controlled trial.

A primary goal of this research project is to better understand how shared medical appointments (SMAs) can improve the health status and decrease hospitalization and death for patients recently discharged with heart failure (HF) by providing education, disease state monitoring, medication titration, and social support to patients and their caregivers. We propose a 3-site randomized-controlled efficacy trial with mixed methods to test a SMA intervention, versus usual care. Patients within 12 weeks of a HF hospitalization will be randomized to receive either HF-SMA (intervention arm) with optional co-participation with their caregivers, versus usual care (control arm).

Heart Failure Transitions of Care: A Pharmacist-Led Post-Discharge Pilot Experience.

Objective: To perform a pilot evaluation of a pharmacist-led, multidisciplinary transitional care clinic for heart failure (HF) patients.

Background: Transitions of care in HF should include: medication reconciliation, multidisciplinary care, early post-discharge follow-up, and prompt intervention on HF signs and symptoms. We hypothesized that combining these elements with optimization of medications would impact outcomes.

Nurse practitioner-led multidisciplinary teams to improve chronic illness care: the unique strengths of nurse practitioners applied to shared medical appointments/group visits.

Purpose: To describe the roles of nurse practitioners (NPs) in a novel model of healthcare delivery for patients with chronic disease: shared medical appointments (SMAs)/group visits based on the chronic care model (CCM). To map the specific skills of NPs to the six elements of the CCM: self-management, decision support, delivery system design, clinical information systems, community resources, and organizational support.

Data Sources: Case studies of three disease-specific multidisciplinary SMAs (diabetes, heart failure, and hypertension) in which NPs played a leadership role.

Measurement of estrogen receptor status by immunocytochemistry in paraffin wax sections.

The estrogen receptor (ER) status and, to a lesser extent, progesterone receptor status have been recommended by recently published guidelines as important for routine prognostic and predictive evaluation of breast cancer. Although the clinical utility of ER status has been largely validated using biochemical ligand-binding assays such as the dextran-coated, charcoal ligand-binding assay, there has been the need to develop the ER immunocytochemical assay as a more accurate and practical alternative. In particular, ER status as determined on paraffin sections by immunocytochemical assay has been shown to be superior to the ligand-binding assay for predicting response to adjuvant endocrine therapy in breast cancer.