Publications by authors named "Sharon Williams"

Purpose: Leadership was a critical component in managing the Covid-19 pandemic. A scoping review of clinical leadership investigates the leadership styles employed by clinicians during times of unprecedented crisis, with the Covid-19 pandemic as a focus.

Design/methodology/approach: The scoping review was designed based on a five-stage approach proposed by Arksey and O'Malley (2005).

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Background: Nurse staffing levels are increasingly challenged while pressures on healthcare systems are rising. There is a clear need to optimise efficiency in healthcare delivery in order to deliver safe, effective and quality health care.

Aim: To understand how nurses working shifts spend their time and explore opportunities to improve efficiency in care delivery.

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Purpose: This study investigates how a hospital can increase the flow of patients through its emergency department by using benchmarking and process improvement techniques borrowed from the manufacturing sector.

Design/methodology/approach: An in-depth case study of an Australasian public hospital utilises rigorous, multi-method data collection procedures with systems thinking to benchmark an emergency department (ED) value stream and identify the performance inhibitors.

Findings: High levels of value stream uncertainty result from inefficient processes and weak controls.

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Significant improvements in treatments for children with cancer have resulted in a growing population of childhood cancer survivors who may face long-term adverse outcomes. Here, we aimed to diagnose high-dose methotrexate-induced brain injury on [F]FDG PET/MRI and correlate the results with cognitive impairment identified by neurocognitive testing in pediatric cancer survivors. In this prospective, single-center pilot study, 10 children and young adults with sarcoma ( = 5), lymphoma ( = 4), or leukemia ( = 1) underwent dedicated brain [F]FDG PET/MRI and a 2-h expert neuropsychologic evaluation on the same day, including the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, second edition, for intellectual functioning; Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (DKEFS) for executive functioning; and Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning, second edition (WRAML), for verbal and visual memory.

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Aim: Expanding and sustaining student nurse placements outside of the acute sector is a universal challenge. This paper aims to evaluate the Care Home Education Facilitator Role introduced in one area of Wales, United Kingdom, and to report on the outcomes achieved from this novel role.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with key stakeholders including the Care Home Education Facilitator postholder leading the pilot, care home managers, higher education institutions' placement managers/coordinators, student nurses and national health service staff.

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Article Synopsis
  • Understanding what helps or makes it hard to carry out genetic testing programs is important to make them work well.
  • This study looked at a project in Australia, called Mackenzie's Mission, to see how the goals changed over time and what was important for making the project successful.
  • The researchers found out that good planning, teamwork, and good communication helped solve challenges, and they should keep focusing on meeting the needs of the community and finding funding for the future.
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Rationale: The restrictions to hospital visiting for carers and relatives during the pandemic were unprecedented. To ensure patients could stay in touch with their relatives and carers new liaison roles were introduced.

Aims And Objectives: The aim of this study is to report on the evaluation of a Family Liaison Officer (FLO) role to understand the rationale for introducing the role along with the challenges and benefits of its implementation.

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Background: Collaboration across health care professions is critical in efficiently and effectively managing complex and chronic health conditions, yet interprofessional care does not happen automatically. Professional associations have a key role in setting a profession's agenda, maintaining professional identity, and establishing priorities. The associations' external communication is commonly undertaken through social media platforms, such as Twitter.

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There is little understanding about what proportion of the target audience have read guidelines published through the traditional approach. The COVID-19 pandemic created a particularly difficult scenario for healthcare professionals (HCP) since the evidence base rapidly changed. In response, we established a freely accessible, video-based online resource, which was formally implemented requiring user registration.

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Background: In recent times, infection prevention and patient safety have become a global health policy priority with thought being given to understanding organisational culture within healthcare, and of its significance in initiating sustained quality improvement within infection prevention and patient safety. This paper seeks to explore the ways in which engagement of healthcare workers with infection prevention principles and practices, shape and inform patient safety culture within the context of hospital isolation settings; and vice-versa.

Research Methods: In this paper, we utilise focus group interviews at two hospital sites within one health board in order to engage healthcare staff in elaborating on their understandings of infection prevention practices and patient safety culture within isolation settings in their organisation.

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Background: There have been few interventions targeted for rural African American (AA) caregivers of persons with dementia despite their unique cultural, geographic, health-related and socio-economic needs, including relatively less access to-and willingness to engage with-formal supports and resources. One effective intervention, Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), has been found to be culturally acceptable in AA populations; however, no studies have assessed feasibility, acceptability and impact of an adapted mindfulness intervention targeting rural AA dementia caregivers.

Aims: The purpose of this study is to 1) determine the feasibility and acceptability of a telephone-delivered mindfulness training intervention in decreasing caregiver burden among rural, AA, informal caregiving teams of people with dementia; 2) to explore the effects of the training on caregiver burden and relevant secondary outcomes for both caregiving team members, including emotional regulation, tolerance of uncertainty, emotional and physical health, family conflict within the informal caregiving team, and self-efficacy; and 3) to explore comfort with and willingness to adopt technologies to access mindfulness practices and existing caregiving educational resources.

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Introduction: Current diabetes self-management programs are often insufficient to improve outcomes for African Americans because of a limited focus on medication adherence and addressing culturally influenced beliefs about diabetes and medicines. This study evaluated the feasibility and acceptability of a novel culturally tailored diabetes self-management intervention that addressed key psychosocial and sociocultural barriers to medication adherence for African Americans.

Methods: The intervention consisted of group education and race-congruent peer-based phone support.

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Objective: Maggot therapy (MT) or larval debridement therapy is a recognised, effective but underutilised treatment for the management of hard-to-heal wounds and infected ulcers. It is available on NHS prescription in the UK, where wound management is predominantly nurse-led. Anecdotal reports and published literature suggest that nurses may be reluctant to utilise the therapy.

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Background: There is an urgent need for culturally tailored diabetes self-management education to improve health outcomes in African Americans, especially given the disproportionate prevalence of diabetes and medication non-adherence. Stakeholder engagement can guide and enrich the development of these interventions by integrating content directly addressing barriers to African Americans' adherence with existing community-based diabetes self-management education programs. The aim of this study is to explore stakeholder perspectives on a novel culturally tailored diabetes self-management program for African Americans.

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Purpose: Quality improvement collaboratives (QICs) are a popular approach to improving healthcare services and patient outcomes. This paper evaluates a QIC implemented by a large, integrated healthcare organisation in Wales in the UK.

Design/methodology/approach: This evaluation study draws on two well-established evaluation frameworks: Kirkpatrick's approach to gather data on participant satisfaction and learning and Stake's approach to gather data and form judgements about the impact of the intervention.

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Objective: The aim of the study was to explore public opinion and perceptions of maggot therapy (larval therapy), a treatment option for hard-to-heal wounds.

Method: The study used a mixed-method approach to obtain quantitative and qualitative data. A focus group was convened to explore opinions and views of maggot therapy with a small group of members of the public.

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In today's complex media environment, does media coverage influence youth and young adults' (YYA) tobacco use and intentions? We conceptualize the "public communication environment" and effect mediators, then ask whether over time variation in exogenously measured tobacco media coverage from mass and social media sources predicts daily YYA cigarette smoking intentions measured in a rolling nationally representative phone survey (N = 11,847 on 1,147 days between May 2014 and June 2017). Past week anti-tobacco and pro-tobacco content from Twitter, newspapers, broadcast news, Associated Press, and web blogs made coherent scales (thetas = 0.77 and 0.

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The development and evaluation of an interprofessional education (IPE) pre-professional geriatrics experience involving learners from 10 different health discipline programs is described. The experience provided learners with opportunities to use small-group collaborative approaches in two 3-hour interprofessional sessions. Learners gained exposure to geriatric principles and awareness of the needs of older adults and their families using case studies developed by experienced interprofessional faculty.

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Background: The focus of much Intensive Care research has been on short-term survival, which has demonstrated clear improvements over time. Less work has investigated long-term survival, and its correlates. This study describes long-term survival and identifies factors associated with time to death, in patients who initially survived an Intensive Care admission in Victoria, Australia.

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Universally improving healthcare systems is difficult to achieve in practice with organisations implementing a range of quality improvement (QI) approaches, in varying and changing contexts, and efforts ranging from project-based improvements to whole system change. This study aimed to identify how organisations overcome the challenges to improving the quality of the services they deliver. Drawing on the eight challenges from the 'Quality and Safety in Europe by Research (QUASER) hospital guide, we assessed eight cases reported by the UK-based regulator Care Quality Commission as improving their performance.

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During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic there have been much publicised shortages in Personal Protective Equipment for frontline health care workers, from masks to gowns. Recent previous airborne pandemics provide an opportunity to learn how to effectively lead and manage supply chains during crisis situations. Identifying and plotting this learning against time will reveal what has been learnt, when and, significantly, what can be learnt for the future.

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Purpose: This research examines how knowledge and information are managed within two care networks. We develop a conceptual framework drawing on the notion of brokering and the 3T framework, which is used to describe the relative complexity of boundaries (referred to in the framework as syntactic, semantic and pragmatic) as well as capabilities and processes required to exchange information within the network. Previous research on brokering has focused on healthcare managers and professionals, but this research extends to patients and caregivers.

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Article Synopsis
  • The LIME study focuses on preventing type 2 diabetes among Caribbean-descent individuals with prediabetes, aiming to reduce the high incidence of diabetes in this population.
  • It involves a six-week lifestyle modification workshop, followed by metformin medication for participants who do not achieve significant weight loss or improvements in blood sugar levels within six months.
  • The study takes place across four clinical sites in the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and measures effectiveness based on the proportion of participants who lower their hemoglobin A1c levels below 6%.
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Purpose: One overlooked determinant of interprofessional teamwork is the mobilisation of professional identity. Taking a health or social care practitioner out of their professional silo and placing them in an interprofessional team setting will challenge their professional identity. The theory of signature pedagogy was used to investigate the challenges and what is needed to support practitioners to mobilise their professional identity to maximise teamwork.

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