Strategies for facilitating social work placements in general practice.

Background: Hosting social work placements within general practice can provide opportunities to extend interdisciplinary skills, increase the ability to meet patient needs and improve understanding of social work as a discipline.

Objective: This paper is based on an Australian pilot project involving social work students being placed in general practice for their 500-hour placements. Collaboratively written by academics and practitioners from social work and general practice, it provides key strategies guiding practices to optimise implementing social work student placements.

The Dependency of Cochlear Lateral Wall Measurements on Observer and Imaging Type.

Hypothesis: Assessment techniques for the cochlear spatial lateral wall are associated with inter-rater variability, but derived clinical recommendations nonetheless offer value for individualized electrode selection.

Background: Anatomical variations influence the location of cochlear implant electrodes inside the cochlea. Preoperative planning allows individualization of the electrode based on characterization of the bony lateral wall.

Cochlear coverage with lateral wall cochlear implant electrode arrays affects post-operative speech recognition.

Objectives: The goal was to investigate the relationship between the insertion angle/cochlear coverage of cochlear implant electrode arrays and post-operative speech recognition scores in a large cohort of patients implanted with lateral wall electrode arrays.

Methods: Pre- and post-operative cone beam computed tomography scans of 154 ears implanted with lateral wall electrode arrays were evaluated. Traces of lateral wall and electrode arrays were combined into a virtual reconstruction of the implanted cochlea.

COULD WHITE-NOSE SYNDROME MANIFEST DIFFERENTLY IN MYOTIS LUCIFUGUS IN WESTERN VERSUS EASTERN REGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA? A REVIEW OF FACTORS.

White-nose syndrome (WNS) has notably affected the abundance of Myotis lucifugus (little brown myotis) in North America. Thus far, substantial mortality has been restricted to the eastern part of the continent where the cause of WNS, the invasive fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has infected bats since 2006. To date, the state of Washington is the only area in the Western US or Canada (the Rocky Mountains and further west in North America) with confirmed cases of WNS in bats, and there the disease has spread more slowly than it did in Eastern North America.