Background: In Canada, healthcare aides (also referred to as nurse aides, personal support workers, nursing assistants) are unregulated personnel who provide 70-80% of direct care to residents living in nursing homes. Although they are an integral part of the care team their contributions to the resident care planning process are not always acknowledged in the organization. The purpose of the Safer Care for Older Persons [in residential] Environments (SCOPE) project was to evaluate the feasibility of engaging front line staff (primarily healthcare aides) to use quality improvement methods to integrate best practices into resident care. This paper describes the process used by teams participating in the SCOPE project to select clinical improvement areas.
Methods: The study employed a collaborative approach to identify clinical areas and through consensus, teams selected one of three areas. To select the clinical areas we recruited two nursing homes not involved in the SCOPE project and sampled healthcare providers and decision-makers within them. A vote counting method was used to determine the top five ranked clinical areas for improvement.
Results: Responses received from stakeholder groups included gerontology experts, decision-makers, registered nurses, managers, and healthcare aides. The top ranked areas from highest to lowest were pain/discomfort management, behaviour management, depression, skin integrity, and assistance with eating.
Conclusions: Involving staff in selecting areas that they perceive as needing improvement may facilitate staff engagement in the quality improvement process.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2318-12-59 | DOI Listing |
PLoS Negl Trop Dis
January 2025
ISGlobal, Barcelona, Spain.
Background: The Lihir Islands of Papua New Guinea, located in an area with high burden of malaria and hosting a large mining operation, offer a unique opportunity to study transmission. There, we investigated human and vector factors influencing malaria transmission.
Methods: In 2019, a cross-sectional study was conducted on 2,914 individuals assessing malaria prevalence through rapid diagnostic tests (RDT), microscopy, and quantitative PCR (qPCR).
In this paper, we reflect on factors that seem to have influenced the accessibility of medical assistance in dying (MAID) in the Canadian context. Since legalization in 2016, the uptake of MAID has increased rapidly to equal or exceed rates in other countries. In that MAID implementation involves numerous ethical/moral complexities, we consider four factors that appear to have influenced this growth.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcad Med
December 2024
R.H. Kon is associate professor of medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3326-5203.
ProblemLongitudinal patient relationships can positively affect medical students' professional identity formation (PIF), understanding of illness, and socialization within medical practice, but a longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC) model is not always feasible. The authors describe the novel Patient Student Partnership (PSP) program, which provides authentic roles for students in mentored longitudinal patient relationships while maintaining a traditional block clerkship model.ApproachThe PSP program at the University of Virginia School of Medicine pairs all matriculating medical students with a patient living with chronic illness to follow across multiple health care settings until graduation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcad Med
December 2024
K.M.J.M.H. Lombarts is professor, Professional Performance & Compassionate Care Research Group, Department of Medical Psychology, Amsterdam University Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, and researcher, Quality of Care Program, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Purpose: Cultures of wellness, defined as shared norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors that promote personal and professional growth and well-being, are robust determinants of professional fulfillment and professional performance. A major and largely overlooked aspect of a culture of wellness in medicine is residents' perceived appreciation or experience of feeling valued. Considering the pressing workforce and retention challenges that residency programs face, this study addressed the following research questions: How does appreciation at work manifest in the eyes of residents and how do residents perceive appreciation in relation to their professional fulfillment and performance?
Method: Guided by an interpretative phenomenological approach, this qualitative study purposively sampled 12 residents from different specialties, training years, regions in the Netherlands, and genders.
PLoS One
January 2025
Division of Intramural Research, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States of America.
Background: Early initiation of treatment for lung cancer has been shown to improve patient survival. The present study investigates disparities in time to treatment initiation of invasive lung cancer within and between Black and White patients in Tennessee.
Methods: A population-based registry data of 42,970 individuals (Black = 4,480 and White = 38,490) diagnosed with invasive lung cancer obtained from the Tennessee Cancer Registry, 2005-2015, was analyzed.
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