Outside the Military "Bubble": Life After Service for UK Ex-armed Forces Personnel.

Military personnel who have seen active service can be affected by their experiences. Much of the literature on the mental and physical health battles faced by men and women who leave the Armed Forces is dominated by research in the United States (US) (1), and is particularly focused on exposure to deployment, combat conditions, and effects on mental health. Research in the United Kingdom (UK) tends to focus on depression or alcohol misuse and the impact these issues have on currently serving personnel.

Teaching evidence-based synthesis: an examination of the development and delivery of two innovative methodologies used at the University of Portsmouth.

Evidence based practice (EBP) is a process that involves making conscientious decisions that take into account the best available information, clinical expertise, and values and experiences of the patient. EBP helps empower health care professionals to establish service provisions that are clinically excellent, cost-effective, and culturally sensitive to the wishes of their patients. With a need for rapid integration of new evidence into EBP, systematic reviews and meta-analyses have become important tools for health care professionals.

Peer support and reminiscence therapy for people with dementia and their family carers: a factorial pragmatic randomised trial.

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate peer support and reminiscence therapy, separately and together, in comparison with usual care for people with dementia and their family carers.

Design: Factorial pragmatic randomised trial, analysed by treatment allocated, was used for this study.

Setting: The trial ran in Community settings in England.

Acceptance checklist for clinical effectiveness pilot trials: a systematic approach.

Conducting a pilot trial is important in preparing for, and justifying investment in, the ensuing larger trial. Pilot trials using the same design and methods as the subsequent main trial are ethically and financially advantageous especially when pilot and main trial data can be pooled. For explanatory trials in which internal validity is paramount, there is little room for variation of methods between the pilot and main trial.

Causes of crises and appropriate interventions: the views of people with dementia, carers and healthcare professionals.

The aims of this study were to identify which factors may lead to crisis for people with dementia and their carers and identify interventions these individuals believe could help in crisis. Qualitative study using focus groups to compare the perspectives of people with dementia, family carers and healthcare professionals on causes of crises and crisis interventions. To help in a crisis, people with dementia were favourable towards support from family and friends, access to mobile phones and home adaptations to reduce risks.

Involving service users in the development of the Support at Home: Interventions to Enhance Life in Dementia Carer Supporter Programme for family carers of people with dementia.

Background: Involving service users in research can be an effective way of improving the practicalities and acceptability of interventions for target end users.

Objectives: The current paper presented two consensus methods, not commonly used in consultation with service users, to develop a peer support intervention for family carers of people with dementia (SHIELD Carer Supporter Programme).

Design: Study 1 was a modified Delphi process combined with a consensus conference to explore details of the intervention from the carer and volunteer perspective.

Peer support for family carers of people with dementia, alone or in combination with group reminiscence in a factorial design: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Peer support interventions can improve carer wellbeing and interventions that engage both the carer and person with dementia can have significant mutual benefits. Existing research has been criticised for inadequate rigour of design or reporting. This paper describes the protocol for a complex trial that evaluates one-to-one peer support and a group reminiscence programme, both separately and together, in a factorial design.

A Good War? Exploring British veterans' moral evaluation of deployment.

Historically, war trauma research has concentrated on the relationship between level of exposure and development of post-traumatic symptoms. More recently, it has been recognized that intra- and interpersonal differences can mediate how service personnel are affected by their experiences. This paper is a qualitative study exploring moral evaluations of 30 British male veterans towards their deployment in conflicts from WWII to the most recent Iraq War (2003-2009).