Developing a tool to measure enactment of complex quality improvement interventions in healthcare.

Quality improvement (QI) projects are common in healthcare settings and often involve interdisciplinary teams working together towards a common goal. Many interventions and programmes have been introduced through research to convey QI skills and knowledge to healthcare workers, however, a few studies have attempted to differentiate between what individuals 'learn' or 'know' versus their capacity to apply their learnings in complex healthcare settings. Understanding and differentiating between delivery, receipt, and enactment of QI skills and knowledge is important because while enactment alone does not guarantee desired QI outcomes, it might be reasonably assumed that 'better enactment' is likely to lead to better outcomes.

Influences of post-implementation factors on the sustainability, sustainment, and intra-organizational spread of complex interventions.

Background: Complex interventions are increasingly applied to healthcare problems. Understanding of post-implementation sustainment, sustainability, and spread of interventions is limited. We examine these phenomena for a complex quality improvement initiative led by care aides in 7 care homes (long-term care homes) in Manitoba, Canada.

Transformation under pressure: Discovery of a novel crystalline form of anthelmintic drug Praziquantel using high-pressure supercritical carbon dioxide.

Supercritical carbon dioxide (CO) has been used as a processing technique to control polymorphism of pharmaceuticals. However, there are fewer reports of novel polymorphs being discovered by supercritical CO processing. As supercritical crystallization methods gain attention for potential in pharmaceutical processing, they may become a critical screening tool for discovery of new polymorphs.

Ternary Phase Diagram Development and Production of Niclosamide-Urea Co-Crystal by Spray Drying.

In this work, a ternary phase diagram was developed for a Niclosamide-urea co-crystal (NCS-UR) in isopropanol (IPA) using a combination of slurry and solvent addition methods. The ternary phase diagram showed that solubility of Niclosamide and urea differed by an order of magnitude in IPA, leading to an incongruently saturating system. Spray drying was explored as a method to generate NCS-UR.

The role of motivation in the diffusion of innovations in Canada's long-term care sector: a qualitative study.

Background: Long-term care facilities offer shelter and care for Canadian seniors; however, there are great variances in the quality of care that is provided to older adults across facilities. One factor that could contribute to this variation in quality is the diffusion and implementation of advice and innovations within this sector. This study sought to understand the motivations of identified opinion leaders within the Canadian long-term care sector to disseminate advice within their social networks.