Nurses' perceptions of point of care testing in critical care: A cross-sectional survey.

Background: Nurses working in critical care (intensive or high dependency care units) perform a multitude of tasks including point-of-care testing (POCT), where diagnostic tests are performed at or near a patient's bedside. POCT can speed up clinical decision-making, but errors can occur at any point in the pre-analytical phase.

Aim: To investigate nurses' perceptions of current POCT practice in critical care pre and post the COVID-19 pandemic.

Blood sampling in adult critical care: a mixed methods study.

There are few studies exploring blood sampling practice in critical care. In particular, the views of nursing staff are missing from the literature. The aim of this mixed methods study was to understand blood sampling practice at a single centre National Specialist Orthopaedic NHS trust in London, England.

Fire and grass-bedding construction 200 thousand years ago at Border Cave, South Africa.

Early plant use is seldom described in the archaeological record because of poor preservation. We report the discovery of grass bedding used to create comfortable areas for sleeping and working by people who lived in Border Cave at least 200,000 years ago. Sheaves of grass belonging to the broad-leafed Panicoideae subfamily were placed near the back of the cave on ash layers that were often remnants of bedding burned for site maintenance.

Sites of Circadian Clock Neuron Plasticity Mediate Sensory Integration and Entrainment.

Networks of circadian timekeeping in the brain display marked daily changes in neuronal morphology. In Drosophila melanogaster, the striking daily structural remodeling of the dorsal medial termini of the small ventral lateral neurons has long been hypothesized to mediate endogenous circadian timekeeping. To test this model, we have specifically abrogated these sites of daily neuronal remodeling through the reprogramming of neural development and assessed the effects on circadian timekeeping and clock outputs.

The effect of curing hepatitis C with direct-acting antiviral treatment on endothelial function.

Background: Epidemiological data suggest that chronic HCV infection (CHC) is associated with increased cardiovascular risk, but it is unknown if it is associated with endothelial dysfunction. We aimed to assess the effect of antiviral treatment on endothelial function in non-cirrhotic adults with CHC.

Methods: Self-controlled before and after study.

Making midwifery work visible: The multiple purposes of documentation.

Background: Midwives have a professional, ethical and legal obligation to effectively and thoroughly document the care provided to women and the decisions made within the partnership relationship. To appreciate the best approach to documenting midwifery care, it is important to first understand the purpose of midwifery documentation.

Aim: The aim of this article is to explore the literature in relation to the purposes of midwifery documentation.

Intra-individual and inter-individual variation in breath alcohol pharmacokinetics: Variation over three visits.

Eleven male and 7 female student subjects underwent serial Breath Alcohol Concentration (BrAC) measurements after being given alcohol as 13% white wine (5.7 ml/kg for males and 4.7 ml/kg for females) in a fasting state on three separate occasions.

Supporting New Zealand graduate midwives to stay in the profession: An evaluation of the Midwifery First Year of Practice programme.

Background: the transition from undergraduate midwifery student to working as a confident midwife can be challenging for many newly qualified midwives. Supporting a smooth transition may have a positive impact on the confidence and retention of the new graduates within the workforce. In New Zealand the Midwifery First Year of Practice programme (MFYP) was introduced in 2007 as a structured programme of support for new graduate midwives for the whole of their first year of practice.

A GAL4 driver resource for developmental and behavioral studies on the larval CNS of Drosophila.

We report the larval CNS expression patterns for 6,650 GAL4 lines based on cis-regulatory regions (CRMs) from the Drosophila genome. Adult CNS expression patterns were previously reported for this collection, thereby providing a unique resource for determining the origins of adult cells. An illustrative example reveals the origin of the astrocyte-like glia of the ventral CNS.

Closing the health equity gap: evidence-based strategies for primary health care organizations.

Introduction: International evidence shows that enhancement of primary health care (PHC) services for disadvantaged populations is essential to reducing health and health care inequities. However, little is known about how to enhance equity at the organizational level within the PHC sector. Drawing on research conducted at two PHC Centres in Canada whose explicit mandates are to provide services to marginalized populations, the purpose of this paper is to discuss (a) the key dimensions of equity-oriented services to guide PHC organizations, and (b) strategies for operationalizing equity-oriented PHC services, particularly for marginalized populations.

The Concerns of Competent Novices during a Mentoring Year.

In an innovative group mentoring approach, four experienced midwives mentored four new graduates during their first year of practice. The new graduates were in practice as case-loading registered midwives having completed a three year Bachelor of Midwifery degree. Detailed data about the new graduates' concerns were collected throughout the year of the mentoring project.

Phytomedicine versus gonorrhoea: the Bapedi experience.

Records regarding the phytomedicine employed by the Bapedi are almost non-existent. This is the first study of herbal remedies used by Bapedi traditional healers to treat gonorrhoea, of concern as it is a danger to reproductive health. A semi-structured questionnaire, centred on sexual health, was administered to 30 traditional healers in 15 local municipalities across the three districts of Limpopo Province during 2009/10.

Dissimilatory nitrate reduction in anaerobic sediments leading to river nitrite accumulation.

Recent studies on Northern Ireland rivers have shown that summer nitrite (NO(inf2)(sup-)) concentrations greatly exceed the European Union guideline of 3 (mu)g of N liter(sup-1) for rivers supporting salmonid fisheries. In fast-flowing aerobic small streams, NO(inf2)(sup-) is thought to originate from nitrification, due to the retardation of Nitrobacter strains by the presence of free ammonia. Multiple regression analyses of NO(inf2)(sup-) concentrations against water quality variables of the six major rivers of the Lough Neagh catchment in Northern Ireland, however, suggested that the high NO(inf2)(sup-) concentrations found in the summer under warm, slow-flow conditions may result from the reduction of NO(inf3)(sup-).

Halting the upward trend in soluble phosphorus transported from a grassland catchment.

An upward trend in soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) concentrations in Northern Ireland rivers leading to increased eutrophication has been reported for the last two decades. To identify if a similar trend could be observed in land drainage waters SRP and other P fractions were measured weekly from 1989 to 1997 in land drainage from a 9-ha grassland catchment in Northern Ireland that had a mean P surplus applied of 23.4 kg P ha(-1) yr(-1).

Changing perspectives on the importance of urban phosphorus inputs as the cause of nutrient enrichment in Lough Neagh.

The scale and chronology of the phosphorus (P) enrichment of Lough Neagh, a large hypertrophic lake, was assessed using, as enrichment proxies, published palaeocological studies on diatoms and chironomid head capsules preserved in the lake sediments and, from 1974, monitoring data from the lake and its inflowing rivers. Enrichment commenced in 1880, and the scale and chronology of the diatom and chironomid records were similar up to 1960, but in the 1960s, chironomid accumulation rates increased dramatically, whereas diatom rates remained unchanged. From subsequent lake monitoring, the absence of a diatom response after 1960 was attributed to silica limitation so that P could be considered as the driver of increased diatom production only up to 1960.

Fertility of dairy cows in Northern Ireland.

A comprehensive database was established on the milk production and reproductive performance of dairy cows in 19 selected herds in Northern Ireland, varying in size, management system and genetic merit. Data were obtained for 2471 cows, 1775 of which calved in a second year, and 693 were culled from the herd for specific reasons. The estimated mean rate of heat detection (assessed by the interheat interval during the main breeding season) in all the herds was 71 per cent, with a range from 53 to 92 per cent The average conception rate to first insemination was 37.

Assessing the effectiveness of regulatory controls on farm pollution using chemical and biological indices of water quality and pollution statistics.

Water quality was measured in 42 streams in the Colebrooke and Upper Bann catchments in Northern Ireland over the period 1990-1998. Despite ongoing pollution control measures, biological water quality, as determined by the invertebrate average score per taxon (ASPT) index, did not improve and there was no appreciable decline in recorded farm pollution incidents. However, the lack of decline in pollution incidents could reflect changes in detection policy, as a greater proportion of incidents were recorded from less polluting discharges such as farm-yard runoff.

The importance of catchment and lake processes in the phosphorus budget of a large lake.

Total phosphorus (P) river inputs and lake concentrations for the Neagh system in Northern Ireland are compared from the period 1974-1997. The main routes of P transfer between the lake water and the sediment are settlement of abiotic particles and planktonic diatoms, summer sediment release and re-sedimentation in the last months of the year. The annual river loading to the lake varied between 0.

Community-living nonagenarians in northern ireland have lower plasma homocysteine but similar methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase thermolabile genotype prevalence compared to 70-89-year-old subjects.

This cross-sectional study assessed relationships between plasma homocysteine, 'thermolabile' methylenetetrahydrofolatereductase (MTHFR) genotype, B vitamin status and measures of renal function in elderly (70-89 years) and nonagenarian (90+ years) subjects, with the hypothesis that octo/nonagenarian subjects who remain healthy into old age as defined by 'Senieur' status might show reduced genetic or environmental risk factors usually associated with hyperhomocysteinaemia. Plasma homocysteine was 9.1 micromol/l (geometric mean [GM]) for all elderly subjects.

Evaluation of problem solving and communication skills of persons with schizophrenia.

Although much research has shown positive outcomes of teaching problem solving and communication skills to persons with schizophrenia, the amount of research on the assessment of these two sets of skills has been modest. The current study demonstrates an effective model for their assessment and includes a previously neglected procedure to determine if subjects attended to the skill prompts. It replicates and expands prior findings on problem solving and communication skills.

Helplessness, self-efficacy, cognitive distortions, and depression in multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury.

The aim of this study was to determine if learned helplessness, self-efficacy, and cognitive distortions would predict depression in a sample of 80 individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) and 80 individuals with a spinal cord injury (SCI). As MS and SCI usually present with disparate disease courses and etiologies, a secondary objective was to determine if individuals with MS would exhibit greater levels of helplessness, cognitive distortions, and depression and lower levels of self-efficacy than those with SCI. Results indicated that helplessness and self-efficacy significantly predicted depression for both the MS and SCI groups after controlling for confounding variables.

Influence of orthostatic hypotension in Parkinson's disease on plasma atrial natriuretic peptide.

The effect of orthostatic hypotension in Parkinson's disease (PD) on plasma atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) was examined in fifteen individuals with PD without autonomic dysfunction (63-85 years), nine PD patients with autonomic dysfunction (orthostatic hypotension; systolic BP change > 20 mmHg after 5 min standing: 69-82 years) and 14 fit elderly volunteers (62-93 years). The mean ANP level was 42.2 pg/ml (range 16.