Background: Bullying, harassment, and undermining behaviour has a profound detrimental effect on the multi-professional team, patient safety, and clinical outcomes. Bullying creates a poor working and training environment , increasing stress, damaging confidence, and impairing wellbeing. We sought to characterize the prevalence and nature of bullying, harassment and undermining within cardiothoracic surgery in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The health visiting service in England leads the government's Healthy Child Programme (HCP) for children under five years. Local authorities and their provider partners deliver this service differently across England.
Objective: To describe local authority variation in the delivery of health visiting to children under five years in England (2018-2020).
Health visiting in England is a universal service that aims to promote the healthy development of children aged under five years and safeguard their welfare. We consulted stakeholders about their priorities for research into health visiting and also used these consultations and a literature review to generate a logic model. Parents wanted research to explore how health visiting teams can provide a caring, responsive, accessible service (the mechanisms of change).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 2013, Kenya implemented free maternity services, later expanded in 2016 into the 'Linda Mama' policy to provide essential health services for pregnant women. This study explored the policy formulation background, processes, content, and actors' roles in formulation and implementation. Using a convergent parallel mixed-methods case study design, we reviewed documents and conducted in-depth interviews with national stakeholders, county officials, and healthcare workers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrim Health Care Res Dev
October 2024
Neoantigen immunoediting drives immune checkpoint blockade efficacy, yet the molecular features of neoantigens and how neoantigen immunogenicity shapes treatment response remain poorly understood. To address these questions, 80 patients with non-small cell lung cancer were enrolled in the biomarker cohort of CheckMate 153 (CA209-153), which collected radiographic guided biopsy samples before treatment and during treatment with nivolumab. Early loss of mutations and neoantigens during therapy are both associated with clinical benefit.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuring infection Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) forms physiologically distinct subpopulations that are recalcitrant to treatment and undetectable using standard diagnostics. These difficult to culture or differentially culturable (DC) Mtb are revealed in liquid media, their revival is often stimulated by resuscitation-promoting factors (Rpf) and prevented by Rpf inhibitors. Here, we investigated the role of nitric oxide (NO) in promoting the DC phenotype.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInternational guidelines recommend 'heart teams' as the preferred method for decision-making. Heart team processes, mandatory attendees and investigations vary significantly between hospitals. We assessed outcomes following mitral valvular surgery in a tertiary referral centre with a dedicated mitral multi-disciplinary team (MDT).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The health visiting service in UK promotes the health and wellbeing of families with young children and comprises a universal offer (three mandated contacts between birth and 12 months) and additional contacts based on need. We aimed to understand how the level of health visiting support received varies by family characteristics.
Methods: Using the Community Services Data Set linked to Hospital Episode Statistics, we identified 52 555 children in 10 local authorities with complete health visiting data for 12 months between April 2016 and March 2020.
Health Soc Care Deliv Res
September 2024
Background: Child health programmes in the United Kingdom offer every child and their family an evidence-based programme to support child health and development. During the COVID-19 pandemic, health visiting services in many areas were reduced to a partial service, with significant variability between and within the four United Kingdom countries. This study investigated the impact of the pandemic on health visiting services and developed recommendations for policy and practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAntimicrob Agents Chemother
August 2024
Efflux of antibiotics is an important survival strategy in bacteria. has approximately sixty efflux pumps, but little is known about the role of each pump or the substrates they efflux. The putative efflux pump, EfpA, is a member of the major facilitator superfamily and has been shown to be essential by saturation transposon mutagenesis studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCardiac strangulation is a rare but potentially lethal complication of epicardial pacemaker insertion. We present the case of a 9-year-old girl who was identified as having cardiac strangulation on routine follow-up for an epicardial pacemaker inserted on day 1 of life for congenital complete heart block (CCHB). The potential clinical presentations and risk factors for pacemaker strangulation are then discussed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIdentifying sources of variance that contribute to residual feed intake (RFI) can aid in improving feed efficiency. The objectives of this study were to investigate immune cells phenotype and bioenergetic measures in CD4 T cells in low feed efficient (LE) and high feed efficient (HE) dairy cows. Sixty-four Holstein cows were enrolled at 93 ± 22 days in milk (DIM) and monitored for 7 weeks to measure RFI.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Postpartum depression negatively impacts maternal mental health and child development. The high prevalence of postpartum depression (PPD) in low and lower middle-income countries raises questions about its predictors. This study examines the association between PPD and breastfeeding experience, child death, unresolved pregnancy, forced displacement, COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, marital, and financial status among Ukrainian women.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeasonally abundant arthropods are a crucial food source for many migratory birds that breed in the Arctic. In cold environments, the growth and emergence of arthropods are particularly tied to temperature. Thus, the phenology of arthropods is anticipated to undergo a rapid change in response to a warming climate, potentially leading to a trophic mismatch between migratory insectivorous birds and their prey.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Perinatal mental health defines new mothers, their families, and the social, emotional, and cognitive development of their children. The factors contributing to Ukrainian mothers' mental health are not well-defined in the literature. This study aims to explore how Ukrainian women understand mental health and its psychosocial determinants through their perinatal experience.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlobal climate change has altered the timing of seasonal events (i.e., phenology) for a diverse range of biota.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInterdiscip Cardiovasc Thorac Surg
May 2024
Objectives: There is a lack of high-quality data informing the optimal antithrombotic drug strategy following bioprosthetic heart valve replacement or valve repair. Disparity in recommendations from international guidelines reflects this. This study aimed to document current patterns of antithrombotic prescribing after heart valve surgery in the UK.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Kenya still faces the challenge of mothers and neonates dying from preventable pregnancy-related complications. The free maternity policy (FMP), implemented in 2013 and expanded in 2017 (Linda Mama Policy (LMP)), sought to address this challenge. This study examines the quality of care (QoC) across the continuum of maternal care under the LMP in Kenya.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe periparturient period for dairy cows is a metabolically dynamic time period where the cow is adjusting from gestation to the onset of lactation. Metabolic disorders such as ketosis, hypocalcemia, and fatty liver occur during this time; however, tools to diagnose these diseases on-farm is limited. The need for compact metabolite quantification devices that can quantify metabolites on farm from whole blood samples is warranted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Cabbage stem flea beetle (CSFB, Psylliodes chrysocephala L.) is a major pest of oilseed rape (OSR, Brassica napus L.) in the UK and low availability of effective chemical control has increased the need for integrated pest management approaches.
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