From hospital to home: a brief nurse practitioner intervention for vulnerable older adults.

A randomized controlled trial was conducted to evaluate the impact of a brief nurse practitioner (NP) intervention on care transitions among older hospitalized adults discharged to home (N = 199). Immediately following discharge, participants randomly assigned to the intervention received up to three home visits and two telephone calls from a registered NP that included medication review, care coordination, assessment of medical care needs, and brief coaching in self-management skills. Usual care participants received all standard medical care, including access to case management services.

Increased satisfaction with care and lower costs: results of a randomized trial of in-home palliative care.

Objectives: To determine whether an in-home palliative care intervention for terminally ill patients can improve patient satisfaction, reduce medical care costs, and increase the proportion of patients dying at home.

Design: A randomized, controlled trial.

Setting: Two health maintenance organizations in two states.

Barriers and facilitators to replicating an evidence-based palliative care model.

Recognition of the difficulties involved in replicating evidence- based interventions is well documented in the literature within the medical field. Promising research findings are often not translated into practice, and if they are, there is a significant time gap between study conclusion and practice adoption. The purpose of this article is to describe the barriers and facilitators encountered by two managed care organizations while replicating an evidence-based end of life in-home palliative care model.

Moving from tacit knowledge to evidence-based practice: the Kaiser Permanente community partners study.

For several decades both medical and social work practices have failed to consistently include measures to determine the effectiveness of their care and practices. This is especially true of care management practices. With the growth and aging of our population, this is of particular concern when many of our resources for older adults are channeled into services such as geriatric care management.

Physicians as medical center "extenders" in end-of-life care: physician home visits as the lynch pin in creating an end-of-life care system.

The article reviews a successful community-based end-of-life home care program. Specifically, physician visits were compared in the models of care studied, and it was concluded that the community-based model patients benefited significantly over the standard model of care patients due to the use of physicians.

Personality type in occupational therapy students: implications for teaching and learning strategies.

SUMMARY In this descriptive study, 130 occupational therapy students completed a widely-used personality inventory (the MBTI-M) as part of coursework in their first semester. The majority of students evinced a preference for seven out of the 16 possible personality types; one type was not selected by anyone. These findings closely resembled data from the 1970s on practicing occupational therapists.

Kaiser Permanente community partners project: improving geriatric care management practices.

This article describes a geriatric care management project that is testing whether geriatric care management plus a brief purchase of service (POS) intervention will lower medical costs, improve satisfaction with care, increase care plan adherence, and improve perceived quality of life. Kaiser Permanente members aged 65 and older who were eligible for geriatric care management and consented to participate in the study were randomized to one of four study groups: information and referral via mail, telephone care management, geriatric care management, or geriatric care management with POS capability. The POS intervention provides up to $2,000 of designated, paid services including in-home supportive services, transportation, respite, or medical equipment within the first 6 months of care management enrollment.

The emotional effects of writing about stressful experiences: an exploration of moderators.

The emotional effects of writing about stressful experiences was studied using a quasi-experimental design in which ninety-one college students, who journaled for fifteen minutes on two occasions, were compared to 71 participants in a comparison group. Locus of control, extroversion, and previous experience with journaling were considered as moderating variables. The results indicated greater improvements in emotional health for the treatment group, with males benefiting to a greater degree than females.