Publications by authors named "Naef R"

Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to analyze the quality of nurse-patient interactions during the early COVID-19 pandemic in both acute and home care settings.
  • The research involved a survey with 443 nurses and 295 patients, using the Individualized Care Scale to measure perceptions of care individuality, with nurses rating their own support of patient individuality significantly higher than patients did.
  • Findings showed that while both groups recognized the importance of individualized care, nurses in home care settings reported better support for individuality than those in acute care environments.
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Aims: Caution around the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in visitation restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus among vulnerable older persons living in long-term care (LTC), which posed a threat to individual well-being and family togetherness across the globe. The purpose of this study was to explore family caregiver's experience of having a person who is living with dementia residing in a long-term care facility during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design: Qualitative descriptive study using constructivist grounded theory (GT) methodology.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The paper discusses the importance of intervention and implementation fidelity in healthcare research, emphasizing that strict adherence to core components of interventions is crucial for meaningful evaluation of outcomes.
  • - It highlights the need for flexibility in defining fidelity, as varying contexts and implementation strategies require researchers to adapt their approaches while ensuring that fidelity criteria are transparent and context-dependent.
  • - The authors argue that fidelity assessments should consider not just individual behaviors, but also organizational and system factors, further complicating the evaluation process and necessitating a deeper understanding of fidelity concepts.
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Background: The introduction of complex family interventions poses a challenge since they consist of various interacting components which affect multiple players and often require changes in behaviour and work processes. Implementation success is strongly influenced by environmental factors. The comprehensive implementation of complex interventions therefore needs a deliberate and systematic implementation process, including its evaluation.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to evaluate the implementation and experience of a Family Support Intervention (FSI) in adult ICU settings as part of the FICUS trial, using a mixed-methods approach and normalisation process theory.
  • Conducted in eight Swiss ICUs, the research involved 40 key clinical partners and utilized both qualitative group interviews and quantitative questionnaires to assess acceptability, feasibility, and appropriateness of the FSI at two different time points.
  • Findings showed overall positive integration of the FSI with high acceptability but moderate feasibility, highlighting barriers such as limited capacity of family nurses and clinician attitudes, while leadership support and teamwork facilitated the process, leading to two adoption pathways.
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Introduction: Effective collaborative practice between midwives and obstetricians improves patient safety and obstetrical outcomes, but its implementation remains challenging. Therefore, its determinants need to be better understood. This study examined factors impacting collaborative practice (CP) between these professional groups.

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The FICUS trial is a cluster-randomized superiority trial to determine the effectiveness of a nurse-led, interprofessional family support intervention (FSI) on the quality of care, family management and individual mental health of family members of critically ill patients, compared to usual care. This paper describes the statistical analysis plan of the FICUS trial. The primary outcome is quality of family care, assessed by the Family Satisfaction in ICU Questionnaire (FS-ICU-24R) at patient discharge from the ICU.

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Background: Reducing low-value care (LVC) is crucial to improve the quality of patient care while increasing the efficient use of scarce healthcare resources. Recently, strategies to de-implement LVC have been mapped against the Expert Recommendation for Implementing Change (ERIC) compilation of strategies. However, such strategies' effectiveness across different healthcare practices has not been addressed.

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The aim of this study was to investigate dermal delivery of the new active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) TOP-N53 into diabetic foot ulcer using an in vitro wound model consisting of pig ear dermis and elucidate the impact of drug formulation and wound dressing taking into consideration clinical relevance in the home care setting and possible bacterial infection. Different formulation approaches for the poorly water-soluble API including colloidal solubilization, drug micro-suspension and cosolvent addition were investigated; moreover, the effect of (micro-)viscosity of hydrogels used as primary wound dressing on delivery was assessed. Addition of Transcutol® P as cosolvent to water improved solubility and was significantly superior to all other approaches providing a sustained three-day delivery that reached therapeutic drug levels in the tissue.

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The quest for extending lifespan and promoting a healthy aging has been a longstanding pursuit in the field of aging research. The control of aging and age-related diseases by nitric oxide (NO) and cGMP signaling is a broadly conserved process from worms to human. Here we show that TOP-N53, a dual-acting NO donor and PDE5 inhibitor, can increase both lifespan and health span in .

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Purpose: In end-of-life cancer care, 10-20% of bereaved family members experience adverse mental health effects, including prolonged grief disorder. Despite great efforts, evidence-based recommendations to support their grieving process and well-being are often not successfully adopted into routine clinical care. This study identified facilitators and barriers using implementation science methodology.

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Supporting families experiencing critical illness through family interventions is essential to ease illness burden, enable family management, and reduce their risk for adverse health. Thus far, there is no validated German instrument to measure the perceived support families receive from nurses. We translated the 14-item Iceland-Family Perceived Support Questionnaire (ICE-FPSQ) and tested its psychometric properties with 77 family members of intensive care patients.

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Inefficient wound healing poses a global health challenge with a lack of efficient treatments. Wound healing issues often correlate with low endogenous nitric oxide (NO) levels. While exogenous delivery with NO-releasing compounds represents a promising therapeutic strategy, controlling the release of the highly reactive NO remains challenging.

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Background: Losing a close other to cancer is an incisive experience that occurs after a long course of illness and intense family caregiving. Despite an evident need for family engagement and support and guidance on this, patients and family members may not receive the attention and support they need when a family unit is experiencing a disruption by death. A clear understanding of the quality of care that is currently provided and its ability to address family needs is necessary to improve end-of-life and bereavement support to families affected by cancer.

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Aims: To investigate the level of adoption of evidence-based family engagement and support during end-of-life cancer care and subsequent bereavement and its contextual facilitators and barriers from health professionals' perspectives, and to explore differences between professional groups.

Design: Contextual analysis using an online cross-sectional survey.

Methods: This study was conducted in four Swiss hospitals and three home care oncology and palliative care services.

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Aim: To identify current key areas for nursing research in Switzerland, we revised the Swiss Research Agenda for Nursing (SRAN) initially published in 2008.

Background: By developing a research agenda, nursing researchers internationally prioritize and cluster relevant topics within the research community. The process should be collaborative and systematic to provide credible information for decisionmakers in health care research, policy, and practice.

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Background: The Family in Intensive Care UnitS (FICUS) trial investigates the clinical effectiveness of a multicomponent, nurse-led interprofessional family support intervention (FSI) and explores its implementation in intensive care units (ICUs). The local context of each ICU strongly influences intervention performance in practice. To promote FSI uptake and to reduce variation in intervention delivery, we aimed to develop tailored implementation strategies.

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Background: The implementation of complex interventions is considered challenging, particularly in multi-site clinical trials and dynamic clinical settings. This study protocol is part of the family intensive care units (FICUS) hybrid effectiveness-implementation study. It aims to understand the integration of a multicomponent family support intervention in the real-world context of adult intensive care units (ICUs).

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Purpose: To improve inpatient care and self-management in patients with severe acute exacerbations of COPD, we implemented a nurse-led behavioral intervention. This study aimed to assess implementation outcomes from the perspective of the healthcare professionals (HCP) who delivered it.

Methods: Using an explanatory sequential mixed method approach, we conducted an online questionnaire and two small group interviews.

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Aims: To explore the implementation of a dementia care pathway in an acute care setting.

Background: Dementia care in acute settings is often constrained by contextual factors. We developed an evidence-based care pathway with intervention bundles, and implemented it on two trauma units, with the aim to empower staff and improve quality care.

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Interprofessional education is expected to promote collaborative practice and should therefore be included in health professionals' curricula. Reports on interprofessional curricular development and its evaluation are rare. We therefore undertook a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative evaluation of a new, mandatory course on interprofessional collaboration for medical students during their third year of the Bachelor of Medicine study programme.

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Chronic, non-healing wounds constitute a major health problem, and the current therapeutic options are limited. Therefore, pharmaceuticals that can be locally applied to complicated wounds are urgently needed. Such treatments should directly target the underlying causes, which include diabetes mellitus, chronic local pressure and/or vascular insufficiency.

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Aims: To explore nurse-patient interactions during the Covid-19 pandemic from both nurses' and patients' perspectives.

Design: Qualitative study using constructive grounded theory.

Methods: A total of 34 patients and 49 nurses from acute and home care settings participated in individual or focus group interviews between December 2020 and May 2021.

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