Publications by authors named "Megan Duckworth"

Background: Becoming a parent is a transformative experience requiring multiple transitions, including the need to navigate several components of health care, manage any mental health issues, and develop and sustain an approach to infant feeding. Baby2Home (B2H) is a digital intervention built on the collaborative care model (CCM) designed to support families during these transitions to parenthood.

Objectives: We aim to investigate the effects of B2H on preventive healthcare utilization for the family unit and patient-reported outcomes (PROs) trajectories with a focus on mental health.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study explored the implementation of an acute care patient portal at six hospital units over 18 months to improve patient engagement and care partner activation.
  • Analysis involved assessing the characteristics of users and their interaction with the portal, focusing on metrics like visit frequency and activation scores.
  • Results showed that over half of the sampled patients opted into the portal, with younger, less ill individuals being the primary users, highlighting limited use despite features like lab results and medication lists being available.
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Background: Patient falls are a major problem in hospitals. The development of a Patient-Centered Fall Prevention Toolkit, Fall TIPS (Tailoring Interventions for Patient Safety), reduced falls by 25% in acute care hospitals by leveraging health information technology to complete the 3-step fall prevention process-(1) conduct fall risk assessments; (2) develop tailored fall prevention plans with the evidence-based interventions; and (3) consistently implement the plan. We learned that Fall TIPS was most effective when patients and family were engaged in all 3 steps of the fall prevention process.

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Article Synopsis
  • Falls in hospitals are a major issue, necessitating comprehensive training for staff on prevention strategies.
  • A systematic literature review revealed a lack of validated fall prevention knowledge tests (FPKTs), prompting the development of a new FPKT.
  • The new 11-item FPKT demonstrated good reliability and significant knowledge improvement among nurses after training, highlighting the need for robust assessments in fall prevention education programs.
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Background: Patient falls during an acute hospitalization cause injury, reduced mobility, and increased costs. The laminated paper Fall TIPS Toolkit (Fall TIPS) provides clinical decision support at the bedside by linking each patient's fall risk assessment with evidence-based interventions. Strategies were needed to integrate this evidence into clinical practice.

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A patient safety plan dashboard was developed that captures disparate data from the electronic health record that is then displayed as a personalized bedside screensaver. The dashboard aligns all care team members, including patients and families, in the safety plan. The screensaver content includes icons that pertain to common geriatric syndromes.

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Understanding the current status of the discovery and development of anti-Helicobacter therapies requires an overview of the searches for therapeutic targets performed to date. A summary is given of the very substantial body of work conducted in the quest to find Helicobacter pylori genes that could be suitable candidates for therapeutic intervention. The products of most of these genes perform metabolic functions, and others have roles in growth, cell motility and colonization.

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Article Synopsis
  • Xanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (XGPRTase) in Helicobacter pylori is essential for the bacterium's survival, and its structure was analyzed to compare it with similar enzymes.
  • Researchers measured the enzyme's activity in H. pylori and in a lab-produced version, using bioinformatics to understand its evolutionary relationships and to model its structure.
  • The study confirmed that H. pylori's XGPRTase is functional and distinct from mammalian variants, identifying unique features and differences in how it interacts with inhibitors compared to human enzymes.
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