Incubating Collaboration for a Neonatal Scholars Writing Group.

One method to improve writing and scholarship is through the formation of writing teams. While not new, we will present our innovative strategy for creating an effective neonatal writing team for faculty and students. Tuckman's Model of Team Development was used to guide our group through the five stages of effective teams including forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning to develop an effective writing group.

What Would You Do?: Engaging Remote Learners Through Stop-Action Videos.

Background: Engaging remote learners can be challenging for nurse educators. With an increase in virtual learning, nurse educators are seeking activities that support engagement and improve critical thinking.

Problem: Students in virtual classes need learning experiences that support critical thinking and involve appropriate case studies for knowledge application.

Thermoneutral Environment for Neonates: Back to the Basics.

Thermoregulation is an essential component to the stability and long-term outcomes of newborns and critically-ill neonates. A thermoneutral environment (TNE) is an environment in which a neonate maintains a normal body temperature while minimizing energy expenditure and oxygen consumption. Neonates who experience thermal stability within a TNE demonstrate enhanced growth, decreased respiratory support, decreased oxygen requirements, increased glucose stability, reduced mortality, and reduced morbidities associated with hyperthermia and hypothermia.

Mystery in the Crib: An Interactive Case Study Experience.

Nurses and nurse practitioners are often required to process vast amounts of information while caring for neonates. The ability to process available information, analyze relevance, and collaborate with others requires specialized knowledge and skills. Mystery in the Crib is an innovative, critical thinking activity where neonatal nurse practitioner students are presented clues in the form of historical, diagnostic, and clinical data.

Improving Quality in Neonatal Care Through Competency-Based Simulation.

Approximately 440,000 patients die each year due to preventable errors. Although human error is inevitable, we can mitigate this risk by enhancing skills and clinical competencies by improving the quality of neonatal care through competency-based simulation. Clinical skills are learned activities necessary to function within an environment.

Characterizing the impact of verbal communication and health literacy in the patient-surgeon encounter.

Background: Patients with limited health literacy (HL) have difficulty understanding written/verbal information. The quality of verbal communication is not well understood. Therefore, our aim was to characterize patient-surgeon conversations and identify opportunities for improvement.

The association of health literacy and postoperative complications after colorectal surgery: A cohort study.

Background: Health literacy is a determinant of health. Few studies characterize its association with surgical outcomes.

Methods: Retrospective cohort study of patients undergoing elective colorectal surgery 2015-2020.

Transition to Practice for New Nurse Graduates: Barriers and Mitigating Strategies.

Inadequate transition to practice increases stress for new health care providers and threatens employment longevity. This integrative review aimed to synthesize the evidence on transition process for newly graduated registered nurses and advanced practice nurses in hospital settings and to identify enablers/barriers and mitigating strategies. Two databases were systematically searched for articles that described the process, strategies, participant perceptions, and implications of role transition with a final yield of 23 articles.

Simulation to Enhance Communication Skills in Neonatal Nursing Practice.

Effective communication is essential to the delivery of safe, quality health care. Handoff reporting, situational reporting, interprofessional collaboration, caregiver communication, and team huddles are forms of status reporting and communication common in a neonatal nursing practice. Adequate training for health care professionals on effective communication techniques is often lacking.

From Presentation to Publication: Where did Abstracts at the 2017 Academic Surgical Congress End up? A Three-Year Analysis.

Introduction: Medical school and residency programs encourage increased research, and thousands of abstracts are submitted to conferences annually. This study sought to determine the rate of publication of oral presentations from the 2017 Academic Surgical Congress (ASC) and assess factors that influence the likelihood of publication.

Methods: Abstracts selected for oral, plenary, and QuickShot presentations at the 2017 ASC were evaluated for publication status.

Do Internal or External Characteristics More Reliably Predict Burnout in Resident Physicians: A Multi-institutional Study.

Introduction: Surgical residents have been shown to experience high rates of burnout. Whether this is influenced predominately by intrinsic characteristics, external factors, or is multifactorial has not been well studied. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between these elements and burnout.

Emotional Intelligence and Burnout in Surgical Residents: A 5-Year Study.

Objective: We sought to characterize the interactions of burnout with internal and external factors over the past 5 years for surgery residents at our institution. We hypothesized that burnout levels would be consistent among years, inversely related to emotional intelligence (EI) and job resources, and directly related to disruptive behaviors.

Design: General surgery residents at a single institution were invited to complete a survey each year from 2015 to 2019 that included a combination of the 22-item Maslach-Burnout Inventory, 30-item trait EI questionnaire, as well as focused questions assessing disruptive behaviors (8 items), job resources (8 items), and demographic characteristics.

Differential effects of SNARE-dependent gliotransmission on behavioral phenotypes in a mouse model of Huntington's disease.

Huntington's disease (HD) is a dominantly inherited neurodegenerative disease caused by a polyglutamine expansion in the widely expressed huntingtin protein. Multiple studies have indicated the importance of mutant huntingtin (mHTT) in astrocytes to HD pathogenesis. Astrocytes exhibit SNARE-dependent exocytosis and gliotransmission, which can be hampered by transgenic expression of dominant negative SNARE (dnSNARE) in these glial cells.

Transition Home: Safe Plan of Care for Infants With a History of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome.

Background And Purpose: Opioid use disorder is an ever-expanding health epidemic affecting populations across the lifespan. Infants diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) often require additional resources while inpatient and after discharge to support ongoing NAS symptoms and improve outcomes. The purpose of this article is to highlight the need for a "safe plan of care" for infants with a history of NAS and provide evidence-based recommendations for providers.

Measles-What's Old Is New Again.

Measles (rubeola) was once nearly eradicated in the United States. Unfortunately, it has reappeared, with more than three times the number of confirmed cases in 2019 than in 2018. The virus, which produces a distinct rash that appears within days of exposure, can spread quickly and can produce severe complications.

Clinician's Guide to Supporting Women With Breast Milk Pumping.

The benefits of breastfeeding and breast milk are well established. Women may intend to exclusively breastfeed their infants, but they often need to provide expressed breast milk upon returning to employment or other activities. Without specialized lactation services, women may turn to health care providers, social media, and Web-based information for support and education.

Shining a Light: Integrating Protocols Into Clinical Practice for Treatment of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome.

Background And Purpose: The epidemic use of opioids is negatively influencing the health of the American people. Pregnant women and their unborn babies have not escaped the ravages of substance use. A dramatic increase in maternal opioid use has led to an increasing number of infants experiencing withdrawal symptoms known as neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS).

Mutant huntingtin reduction in astrocytes slows disease progression in the BACHD conditional Huntington's disease mouse model.

Neuronal and non-neuronal cells express the huntingtin (HTT) protein, yet neurodegeneration in Huntington's disease (HD) is largely selective, affecting most prominently striatal medium spiny neurons and cortical pyramidal neurons. Selective toxicity of full-length human mutant HTT (fl-mHTT) may be due in part to its expression in non-neuronal cells. While studies suggest neuronal-glial interactions are important in HD and fl-mHTT is expressed in astrocytes, it has not been determined whether the expression of fl-mHTT in astrocytes is necessary for HD pathogenesis.

The oleate-stimulated phospholipase D, PLDdelta, and phosphatidic acid decrease H2O2-induced cell death in Arabidopsis.

Hydrolysis of common membrane phospholipids occurs in response to various environmental stresses, but the control and cellular function of this hydrolysis are not fully understood. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a pivotal signaling molecule involved in various stress responses. Here, we show that the plasma membrane-bound phospholipase D, PLDdelta, is activated in response to H2O2 and that the resulting phosphatidic acid (PA) functions to decrease H2O2-promoted programmed cell death.