Ethical challenges experienced by clinical research nurses:: A qualitative study.

Background:: Clinical investigation is a growing field employing increasing numbers of nurses. This has created a new specialty practice defined by aspects unique to nursing in a clinical research context: the objectives (to implement research protocols and advance science), setting (research facilities), and nature of the nurse-participant relationship. The clinical research nurse role may give rise to feelings of ethical conflict between aspects of protocol implementation and the duty of patient advocacy, a primary nursing responsibility.

Efficient Research Design: Using Value-of-Information Analysis to Estimate the Optimal Mix of Top-down and Bottom-up Costing Approaches in an Economic Evaluation alongside a Clinical Trial.

In designing economic evaluations alongside clinical trials, analysts are frequently faced with alternative methods of collecting the same data, the extremes being top-down ("gross costing") and bottom-up ("micro-costing") approaches. A priori, bottom-up approaches may be considered superior to top-down approaches but are also more expensive to collect and analyze. In this article, we use value-of-information analysis to estimate the efficient mix of observations on each method in a proposed clinical trial.

Direct health costs of inflammatory polyarthritis 10 years after disease onset: results from the Norfolk Arthritis Register.

Objectives: To explore the change in direct medical costs associated with inflammatory polyarthritis (IP) 10 to 15 years after its onset.

Methods: Patients from the Norfolk Arthritis Register who had previously participated in a health economic study in 1999 were traced 10 years later and invited to participate in a further prospective questionnaire-based study. The study was designed to identify direct medical costs and changes in health status over a 6-month period using previously validated questionnaires as the primary source of data.

The impact of double-blind placebo- controlled food challenge (DBPCFC) on the socioeconomic cost of food allergy in Europe.

Background: Double-blind placebo controlled food challenge (DBPCFC) is the gold standard diagnostic test in food allergy because it minimizes diagnostic bias.

Objective: To investigate the potential effect of diagnosis on the socioeconomic costs of food allergy.

Methods: A prospective longitudinal cost analysis study was conducted in Spain and Poland within the EuroPrevall project.

Comparing time use in individuals at different stages of psychosis and a non-clinical comparison group.

Social functioning difficulties are a common and disabling feature of psychosis and have also been identified in the prodromal phase. However, debate exists about how such difficulties should be defined and measured. Time spent in structured activity has previously been linked to increased psychological wellbeing in non-clinical samples and may provide a useful way of assessing social functioning in clinical settings.