Enhanced Safety and Efficiency of Ambulatory Cardiology Admissions: A Quality Improvement Initiative.

Background: Pediatric cardiac patients have experienced evolving illnesses progressing to instability while awaiting inpatient admission from ambulatory settings. Admission delays and communication breakdowns increase the risk for tenuous patients. This quality improvement initiative aimed to improve safety and efficiency for patients admitted from an ambulatory Clinic to the Acute Cardiac Care Unit (ACCU) using standardized communication and admission processes within one year.

The effectiveness of physical activity interventions in improving higher education students' mental health: A systematic review.

Traditional interventions aiming to improve students' mental health and quality of life include meditation or canine therapy. The development of physical activity-related interventions has increased over the past decade. We aimed to review all studies using physical activity for improving the mental health and quality of life in higher education students whilst describing the interventions, measurements and effectiveness.

An IT-based self-checking system of spreadsheet exercises for learners with visual impairments.

Purpose: In vocational education and training of computer literacy as part of vocational rehabilitation, learners often work on problem-solving exercises as self-study assignments, and check if their answers are correct. Sighted learners can get information on their incorrect answers by comparing their answers with the correct answers. However, learners with visual impairments largely depend on their teachers for getting this feedback.

Translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and validation of the Chinese version of the COVID-19 health literacy scale in nursing students.

Background: Effective communication is an essential component of high-quality nursing care. Health literacy, the ability to access, describe, evaluate and apply health information to make informed decisions, is an important component of effective communication in nursing. Nurses, including student nurses, with good levels of health literacy (HL) are well positioned to communicate reliable public health-related information effectively, at times like the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Cenobamate, a Sodium Channel Inhibitor and Positive Allosteric Modulator of GABA Ion Channels, for Partial Onset Seizures in Adults: A Comprehensive Review and Clinical Implications.

Medical management of epilepsy seeks to eliminate or to reduce the frequency of seizures, help patients maintain a normal lifestyle, and maintain psychosocial and occupational activities, while avoiding the negative side effects of long-term treatment. Current FDA approved drugs have been shown to have similar efficacy; however, they all share a commonality of having side effects that have the potential to significantly reduce a patient's quality of life. Cenobamate, a newly-FDA approved drug used to treat partial-onset seizures in adult patients, has demonstrated promise in that it works on two proposed mechanisms that are commonly associated with epilepsy.

Improving Safety of Intravenous Prostacyclin Administration to Pediatric Patients With Pulmonary Hypertension.

Background: Pulmonary hypertension is a rare, life-threatening disease with limited therapeutic options and no definitive cure. Continuous intravenous prostacyclin therapy is indicated for treatment of severe disease. These medications have a narrow therapeutic index and a brief half-life; therefore, administration errors can be lethal.

Convergent Validity, Concurrent Validity, and Diagnostic Accuracy of the interRAI Depression Rating Scale.

Aims: Depression Rating Scale (DRS) is one of the clinical outcome measures of the International Resident Assessment Instrument (interRAI) assessment. The primary aim of this study is to investigate the diagnostic accuracy and concurrent validity of the 3-day assessment window version of the DRS.

Methods: The performance of DRS was compared with a gold standard clinical diagnosis of depression in 92 patients (age ≥65) who had interRAI version 9.

Psychiatric support for mothers in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Objective: This study describes mental health treatment and follow-up for mothers of infants in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

Study Design: Data were collected retrospectively about 204 mothers referred to a Level 3 NICU Psychiatric Consult Liaison Team over 2 years. This included medical, demographic and treatment information about both mother and infant.

Metered dose inhalers versus nebulizers for aerosol bronchodilator delivery for adult patients receiving mechanical ventilation in critical care units.

Background: Nebulizers and metered dose inhalers (MDI) have both been adapted for delivering aerosol bronchodilation to mechanically ventilated patients, but there is incomplete knowledge as to the most effective method of delivery.

Objectives: To compare the effectiveness of nebulizers and MDIs for bronchodilator delivery in invasively ventilated, critically ill adults.

Search Methods: We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library 2012, Issue 5); Ovid MEDLINE (1950 to Week 19 2012); Ovid EMBASE (1980 to Week 19 2012); CINAHL via EBSCOhost (1982 to Week 19 2012) and reference lists of articles.

The use of data-mining to identify indicators of health-related quality of life in patients with irritable bowel syndrome.

Aim: To examine the health-related quality of life in a cohort of individuals with irritable bowel syndrome and to explore the use of several data-mining methods to identify which socio-demographic and irritable bowel syndrome symptoms are most highly associated with impaired health-related quality of life.

Background: Health-related quality of life can be adversely affected by irritable bowel syndrome. Little is presently known about the predictive factors that may influence the quality of life in these patients.

Record linkage in Scotland and its applications to health research.

Aims And Objectives:   This paper will focus on the key concepts behind record linkage and describe how probability matching of Scottish health records can be used for national health research.

Background:   Record linkage can bring together two or more records relating to the same individual. This allows information from multiple sources to be joined together to produce richer data sets for research purposes and has wide applicability in public health and epidemiological research.

Online video in clinical skills education of oral medication administration for undergraduate student nurses: a mixed methods, prospective cohort study.

Background: Improvements in the safety of the prescribing, dispensing and administration of medicines are identified as a priority across international healthcare systems. It is therefore essential that higher education institutions play their part in helping to meet this patient safety objective. New developments in clinical skills education which are aligned to emerging educational theory are available, but evaluations and supportive evidence are limited.

Approaches for dealing with missing data in health care studies.

Aim: The aims of this study were to highlight the problems associated with missing data in healthcare research and to demonstrate the use of several techniques for dealing with missing values, through the use of an illustrative example.

Background: In healthcare research studies, it is almost impossible to avoid at least some missing values during data collection, which in turn can threaten the validity of the study conclusions. A range of methods for reducing the impact of missing data on the validity of study findings have been developed, depending on the nature and patterns which the missing values may take.

An epidemiological study of Henoch-Schönlein purpura.

Aim: To describe the incidence of hospital admission among children in the Scottish population for Henoch-Schönlein purpura (HSP).

Method: The annual, quarterly and monthly incidences of HSP were derived from routinely collected data for Scotland from 1995 to 2007.

Results: Annual incidences of childhood cases of HSP in Scotland ranged from 20.

An examination of subgroup classification in irritable bowel syndrome patients over time: a prospective study.

Background: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a complex functional gastrointestinal disorder which to date remains poorly understood. Therapies for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients are usually aimed at relieving the predominant symptom; however, little evidence exists as to whether or not the predominant symptom changes with time. Nurses are becoming increasingly involved in the assessment and management of IBS patients.

A histopathologic evaluation of the Plasma Skin Regeneration System (PSR) versus a standard carbon dioxide resurfacing laser in an animal model.

Background And Objectives: A variety of high energy, pulsed, and scanned carbon dioxide lasers are available to perform cutaneous resurfacing. Rhytec has developed a device for skin regeneration that utilizes energy delivered via a burst of nitrogen plasma. This study was undertaken to benchmark the energy outputs of the plasma skin regeneration device as compared to an ultra-short pulsed carbon dioxide laser (the control device).