'They never talked to me about... ': Perspectives on aged care resident transfer to emergency departments.

Aims: To explore perspectives of three groups concerning transfers from aged care facilities to emergency departments. We sought to reveal factors influencing transfer decisions; how active each group was in making decisions; and to what extent groups ceded decision-making to others.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews of 11 residents, 14 relatives and 17 staff with content analysis of interview transcripts.

Decision to transfer to an emergency department from residential aged care: a systematic review of qualitative research.

Aim: If developing policies to optimize quality acute care within residential aged care facilities (RACF) is a goal, understanding the factors that influence the decision to transfer a resident from RACF to hospital emergency departments is important. The aim of the present study was to review the published literature pertaining to transfer decisions.

Methods: We carried out a systematic review of the qualitative literature to ascertain key influences on transfer decisions amongst three key stakeholder groups - residents, their family and carers.

Common factors that enhance the quality of life for women living in their own homes or in aged care facilities.

A qualitative study of older women living in their own homes and older women living in aged care facilities found that the concerns of the women living in their own homes were the realities of life for the residents in the aged care facilities. Twenty-five female residents across two facilities and 11 older women living in their own homes were interviewed. The positive outcomes of aging at home are relevant and desirable for residents of aged care facilities.

Effects of high-intensity progressive resistance training and targeted multidisciplinary treatment of frailty on mortality and nursing home admissions after hip fracture: a randomized controlled trial.

Rationale: Excess mortality and residual disability are common after hip fracture.

Hypothesis: Twelve months of high-intensity weight-lifting exercise and targeted multidisciplinary interventions will result in lower mortality, nursing home admissions, and disability compared with usual care after hip fracture.

Design: Randomized, controlled, parallel-group superiority study.

Improving adherence with the use of hip protectors among older people living in nursing care facilities: a cluster randomized trial.

Objectives: To test different adherent strategies aimed at improving hip protector use among nursing care facility residents.

Design, Setting And Participants: A cluster randomized controlled trial with 234 residents older than 75 years from 9 units of 7 nursing care facilities in the Northern Sydney region, Australia.

Intervention: Residents were cluster randomized in 3 groups.

Client satisfaction and unmet needs assessment: evaluation of an HIV ambulatory health care facility in Sydney, Australia.

A mixed-methods approach study was conducted at an ambulatory HIV health care facility in Sydney during 2007/2008. A quantitative self-administered structured questionnaire survey (phase 1) was conducted to assess client satisfaction levels, followed by qualitative semistructured interviews (phase 2) to investigate reasons for satisfaction/dissatisfaction and unmet needs. The mean overall satisfaction score of the 166 respondents in phase 1 was high (86 out of 100).

The role of a community kitchen for clients in a socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhood.

Issue Addressed: To investigate the role of a community kitchen for clients living in a socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhood.

Methods: In 2005, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 clients attending a community kitchen located in a socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhood in New South Wales. Participants were asked their reasons for attending the kitchen.

The Lidcombe program of early stuttering intervention: mothers' experiences.

Unlabelled: The Lidcombe Program is a behavioral treatment for early stuttering which is implemented by parents, typically the mother. Despite this, there is limited detailed knowledge about mothers' experiences of administering the treatment. This article describes the findings of a qualitative study which explored the experiences of 16 mothers during their implementation of the Lidcombe Program.

Assessing quality of life in paediatric clinical practice.

The rising prevalence of children with chronic conditions has made quality of life an increasingly important outcome measure in paediatric practice. The discrepancy between doctors' and patients' perceptions of quality of life makes formal assessment necessary. In this paper we use a case scenario to answer commonly asked questions.

Sleeping infants safely - considerations for GPs.

The sudden death of an infant is a traumatic experience for both families and health practitioners. The most common cause of sudden infant death is SIDS, defined as 'the sudden and unexpected death of an infant under 1 year of age, with onset of lethal episode apparently occurring during sleep, that remains unexplained after a thorough investigation including performance of a complete autopsy review of the circumstances of death and clinical history'. In 2004, SIDS accounted for 4.

Acculturation, sexual behaviour, risk and knowledge in Vietnamese men living in metropolitan Sydney.

Objectives: To describe the relationship between acculturation, sexual risk and sexually transmissible infections (STIs) and blood borne viruses (BBVs) knowledge among Vietnamese men living in inner Sydney and to compare this prevalence with national data.

Method: Telephone interviews were completed with a random sample of Vietnamese men, selected from the electronic phone book using a list of common Vietnamese surnames.

Results: Of the 761 eligible men contacted, data were obtained from 499 men, giving a response rate of 66%.

'Is it normal to feel these questions ...?': a content analysis of the health concerns of adolescent girls writing to a magazine.

Background: There is a mismatch between presenting concerns of adolescents to GPs and behaviours that lead to adolescent morbidity and mortality. Better understanding of health concerns of this target group would enhance communication between health professionals and adolescent patients.

Objective: To explore and categorize the health concerns of adolescent girls sending unsolicited emails to a teenage girls' magazine.

Health and wellbeing through work and retirement transitions in mature age: understanding pre-post and retrospective measures of change.

The capacity to measure change is essential in examining successful adaptation to ageing. Few studies measuring change have compared findings using pre-post approaches (employing difference scores) with those from retrospective approaches (employing self-ratings). Where this has occurred, differences have been attributed either to ceiling and floor effects or to the operation of social comparison (Choi, 2002, 2003).

Low knowledge and high infection rates of hepatitis in Vietnamese men in Sydney.

Objective: To describe hepatitis B and C knowledge and self-reported infection and risk behaviour in a group of Vietnamese men living in inner-urban Sydney, in order to assist with future program planning.

Methods: Data were collected through telephone interviews conducted in Vietnamese using a structured questionnaire from 499 of 761 eligible men contacted, giving a response rate of 66%. The data were weighted to be consistent with the age distribution of Vietnamese men in the area.

Outlooks for the future in independently living older Australians.

Objectives: To explore outlooks for the future which exist in an older population, through construction of a typology of combinations of absence or presence of reported hopes and fears for the future and a detailed analysis of the characteristics of older people in each of the four outlook categories created: optimistic, pessimistic, realistic or detached.

Methods: The findings are based on population survey responses from 8881 older Australians (65 + yr) living independently in the community. The Cochrane-Armitage test was used to detect the presence of trends, while logistic regression modelling was used to examine predictors of respondents expressing no main hope and/or no main fear.

Perceptions of personal safety among older Australians.

Introduction: There is public perception, partly attributable to the media, that older people are disproportionately the victims of crime and are greatly concerned for their personal safety.

Objectives: To identify at a population level older people's perceptions of their personal safety in their home and separately in their neighbourhood, and the predictors of feeling safe in each setting.

Methods: Logistic regression analysis of responses from randomly selected older Australians (65+ years) living independently in the community (n= 8881) to a cross-sectional telephone general health survey.

Stuttering and its treatment in adolescence: the perceptions of people who stutter.

Unlabelled: Adolescence is a complicated phase of maturation during which a great deal of physical, neurological and social development occurs. Clinically this phase is thought to be the last chance to arrest the development of the disorder of stuttering before it becomes chronic in adulthood. However, little treatment development for this age group has occurred.

Knowledge of STIs and blood-borne viruses among Vietnamese men in metropolitan Sydney.

Objective: To describe the sexual health knowledge of a group of Vietnamese men living in inner urban Sydney in order to assist with future program planning.

Method: Data were collected through telephone interviews conducted in Vietnamese using a structured questionnaire. Data were obtained from 499 of 761 eligible men contacted, giving a response rate of 66%.

How older Vietnamese Australian women manage their medicines.

Safe use of medicines is relevant to all, but especially older people, primarily because they have ageing bodies that require more medicines and are therefore more likely to experience complications, including adverse drug interactions. Australia has a rapidly growing migrant older population composed of people with different beliefs about, and practices using, medicines. This paper presents qualitative findings from interviews and focus groups conducted with older Vietnamese-Australian women living in Sydney, Australia.