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Patient centred care in diagnostic radiography (Part 1): Perceptions of service users and service deliverers
No full textNoIntroduction
There is growing awareness of the importance of patient centered care (PCC) in health care. Within Radiography in the UK, elements of PCC are embedded within professional body publications and guidance documents. However, there is limited research evidence exploring whether perceptions of PCC are equivalent between those delivering (radiographers) and those experiencing (patient) care. This study aimed to address this gap by determining compatibility in perceptions of PCC between those using and those delivering radiography services. This is the first step in developing measurable indicators of PCC in diagnostic radiography.
Methods
A multi-method two stage approach was undertaken using survey and interview data collection techniques. Ethical approval was granted by University of Derby College of Health & Social Care Ethics committee. This paper reports Stage 1 of the study, the online, cross sectional survey. Participants were asked to indicate their level of agreement to a series of attitudinal statements using a 5-point Likert scale. Statements were paired, but not co-located to increase validity. Participants were invited to provide free text comments to supplement their responses. Stage 2 of the project is reported separately.
Results
Survey responses were received from all 3 participant subgroups. A minimum response rate of 30 participants per sub-group was set as a target. Response rates varied across subgroups, with only radiography managers failing to meet the expected response threshold. Wide disparity between perceptions of service users and those delivering radiography services on what constitutes high quality PCC was evident.
Conclusion
It is evident that there is still work required to ensure parity between expectations of service users and deliverers on what constitutes high quality PCC.
Implications for practice
Further work is required to identify measurable service delivery outcomes that represent PCC within radiographic practice
Growth factor concentrations in platelet-rich plasma for androgenetic alopecia: an intra-subject, randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled, pilot study
Get PDFYesBackground: Platelet rich plasma (PRP), processed from autologous peripheral blood, is used to
treat androgenetic alopecia (AGA). Objective: To determine the efficacy of PRP for hair growth
promotion in AGA patients in a randomized, blinded, placebo controlled, pilot clinical trial
(NCT02074943). Methods: The efficacy of an 8 week, 5 session, PRP treatment course was
determined by measuring hair density and hair caliber changes in 10 AGA affected patients. For
each PRP sample, the concentrations of selected growth factors were determined using a
multiplex assay system. The clinical results were then correlated to the growth factor
concentrations in PRP. Results: At 16 weeks, 8 weeks after the last PRP injection, treated areas
exhibited increased mean hair density (+12.76%) over baseline compared to placebo (+0.99%).
Mean hair caliber decreased in both treated and placebo regions (-16.22% and -19.46%
respectively). Serial analysis of PRP significant variability in concentrations between patients.
Overall, there was a positive correlation between GDNF concentration and hair density (p=
0.004). Trends, though not statistically significant, were also observed for FGF2 and VEGF.
Limitations: Small sample size and lack of comparative cohorts receiving protocol variations
limit confidence in the study data. Conclusions: This small pilot clinical trial suggests PRP
treatment may be beneficial for AGA. However, the variable hair growth responses between
patients indicate there is a significant opportunity to improve PRP therapy protocols for hair
growth promotion. The variability in growth factor concentration in PRP suggests
standardization of growth factors post-processing might improve hair growth responses.RepliCel Life Sciences Inc. (Canada
The phylogenetic landscape and nosocomial spread of the multidrug-resistant opportunist Stenotrophomonas maltophilia
Get PDFYesRecent studies portend a rising global spread and adaptation of human- or healthcare- associated pathogens. Here, we analyse an international collection of the emerging, multi-drug-resistant, opportunistic pathogen Stenotrophomonas maltophilia from 22 countries to infer population structure and clonality at a global level. We show that the S. maltophilia
complex is divided into 23 monophyletic lineages, most of which harbour strains of all
degrees of human virulence. Lineage Sm6 comprises the highest rate of human-associated
strains, linked to key virulence and resistance genes. Transmission analysis identifies
potential outbreak events of genetically closely related strains isolated within days or weeks
in the same hospitals
Why part-time nurses should be valued
Get PDFYesThe article discusses how nurses are increasingly being valued as autonomous decision makers and co-ordinators of patient care. Topics include relating to the age of the dependent children, a woman's working hours and any successive career breaks, woman's career progression directly related to the school age of the dependent children, and children being inhibit and is driven in part by a determination to maintain traditional employment practices
Team Trust
No full textNoThis chapter seeks to clarify the definition of trust and its conceptualization specifically at the team or workgroup level, as well as discussing the similarities and differences between interpersonal and team level trust. Research on interpersonal trust has shown that individual perceptions of others trustworthiness and their willingness to engage in trusting behavior when interacting with them are largely history‐dependent processes. Thus, trust between two or more interdependent individuals develops as a function of their cumulative interaction. The chapter describes a multilevel framework with individual, team and organizational level determinants and outcomes of team trust. It aims to clarify core variables and processes underlying team trust and to develop a better understanding of how these phenomena operate in a system involving the individual team members, the team self and the organizational contexts in which the team operates. The chapter concludes by reviewing and proposing a number of directions for future research and future‐oriented methodological recommendations
Targeting the mesolithic: Interdisciplinary approaches to archaeological prospection inthe Brown Bank area, southern North Sea
Get PDFYesThis paper describes some results of the research undertaken over the Brown Bank area during recent (2018/2019) geoarchaeological surveys in the North Sea which included seismic imaging, shallow (vibro)coring and dredging. It examines the benefits of simultaneous high-resolution (0.5 – 1m) and ultra-high-resolution (10 – 20cm) seismic survey techniques and a staged approach to resolving the submerged Holocene landscape in the highest possible detail for the purpose of targeted prospecting for archaeological material from the Mesolithic landscape of Doggerland. The materials recovered from such surveys offer significantly greater information due to an enhanced understanding of the context in which they were recovered. The importance of this information cannot be understated archaeologically, as few locations on land provide the opportunity to recover archaeological finds in situ within preserved landscapes. Moreover, it allows offshore areas of potential human activity to be prospected with some certainty of success.ER
Ex vivo/in vitro protective effect of myricetin bulk and nano-forms on PhIP-induced DNA damage in lymphocytes from healthy individuals and pre-cancerous MGUS patients
Get PDFYes2-Amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo [4,5-b]pyridine (PhIP) is a central dietary mutagen, produced when proteinaceous food is heated at very high temperatures potentially causing DNA strand breaks. This study investigates the protective potential of a well-researched flavonoid, myricetin in its bulk and nano-forms against oxidative stress induced ex vivo/in vitro by PhIP in lymphocytes from pre-cancerous monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) patients and those from healthy individuals. The results from the Comet assay revealed that in the presence of myricetin bulk (10 µM) and myricetin nano (20 µM), the DNA damage caused by a high dose of PhIP (100 µM) was significantly (P < 0.001) reduced in both groups. However, nano has shown better protection in lymphocytes from pre-cancerous patients. Consistent results were obtained from the micronucleus assay where micronuclei frequency in binucleated cells significantly decreased upon supplementing PhIP with myricetin bulk (P < 0.01) and myricetin nano (P < 0.001), compared to the PhIP treatment alone. To briefly determine the cellular pathways involved in the protective role of myricetin against PhIP, we studied gene expression of P53 and ATR kinase (ATM- and Rad3-related), using the real-time PCR technique
Ewastools: Infinium Human Methylation BeadChip pipeline for population epigenetics integrated into Galaxy
Get PDFYesInfinium Human Methylation BeadChip is an array platform for complex evaluation of DNA methylation at an individual CpG locus in the human genome based on Illumina’s bead technology and is one of the most common techniques used in epigenome-wide association studies. Finding associations between epigenetic variation and phenotype is a significant challenge in biomedical research. The newest version, HumanMethylationEPIC, quantifies the DNA methylation level of 850,000 CpG sites, while the previous versions, HumanMethylation450 and HumanMethylation27, measured >450,000 and 27,000 loci, respectively. Although a number of bioinformatics tools have been developed to analyse this assay, they require some programming skills and experience in order to be usable.
Results
We have developed a pipeline for the Galaxy platform for those without experience aimed at DNA methylation analysis using the Infinium Human Methylation BeadChip. Our tool is integrated into Galaxy (http://galaxyproject.org), a web-based platform. This allows users to analyse data from the Infinium Human Methylation BeadChip in the easiest possible way.
Conclusions
The pipeline provides a group of integrated analytical methods wrapped into an easy-to-use interface. Our tool is available from the Galaxy ToolShed, GitHub repository, and also as a Docker image. The aim of this project is to make Infinium Human Methylation BeadChip analysis more flexible and accessible to everyone.Research Development Fund Publication Prize Award winner, May 2020
A hybrid modular approach for dynamic fault tree analysis
Get PDFYesOver the years, several approaches have been developed for the quantitative analysis of dynamic fault trees (DFTs). These approaches have strong theoretical and mathematical foundations; however, they appear to suffer from the state-space explosion and high computational requirements, compromising their efficacy. Modularisation techniques have been developed to address these issues by identifying and quantifying static and dynamic modules of the fault tree separately by using binary decision diagrams and Markov models. Although these approaches appear effective in reducing computational effort and avoiding state-space explosion, the reliance of the Markov chain on exponentially distributed data of system components can limit their widespread industrial applications. In this paper, we propose a hybrid modularisation scheme where independent sub-trees of a DFT are identified and quantified in a hierarchical order. A hybrid framework with the combination of algebraic solution, Petri Nets, and Monte Carlo simulation is used to increase the efficiency of the solution. The proposed approach uses the advantages of each existing approach in the right place (independent module). We have experimented the proposed approach on five independent hypothetical and industrial examples in which the experiments show the capabilities of the proposed approach facing repeated basic events and non-exponential failure distributions. The proposed approach could provide an approximate solution to DFTs without unacceptable loss of accuracy. Moreover, the use of modularised or hierarchical Petri nets makes this approach more generally applicable by allowing quantitative evaluation of DFTs with a wide range of failure rate distributions for basic events of the tree.Dependability Engineering Innovation for Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) (DEIS) H2020 Project under Grant 732242; LIVEBIO: Light-weight Verification for Synthetic Biology Project under Grant EPSRC EP/R043787/1
High-gain metasurface in polyimide on-chip antenna based on CRLH-TL for sub-terahertz integrated circuits
Get PDFYesThis paper presents a novel on-chip antenna using standard CMOS-technology based on metasurface implemented on two-layers polyimide substrates with a thickness of 500 μm. The aluminium ground-plane with thickness of 3 μm is sandwiched between the two-layers. Concentric dielectric-rings are etched in the ground-plane under the radiation patches implemented on the top-layer. The radiation patches comprise concentric metal-rings that are arranged in a 3 × 3 matrix. The antennas are excited by coupling electromagnetic energy through the gaps of the concentric dielectric-rings in the ground-plane using a microstrip feedline created on the bottom polyimide-layer. The open-ended feedline is split in three-branches that are aligned under the radiation elements to couple the maximum energy. In this structure, the concentric metal-rings essentially act as series left-handed capacitances CL that extend the effective aperture area of the antenna without affecting its dimensions, and the concentric dielectric rings etched in the ground-plane act as shunt left-handed inductors LL, which suppress the surface-waves and reduce the substrates losses that leads to improved bandwidth and radiation properties. The overall structure behaves like a metasurface that is shown to exhibit a very large bandwidth of 0.350-0.385 THz with an average radiation gain and efficiency of 8.15dBi and 65.71%, respectively. It has dimensions of 6 × 6 × 1 mm3 that makes it suitable for on-chip implementation.RTI2018-095499-B-C31, Funded by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Gobierno de España (MCIU/AEI/FEDER,UE), and innovation programme under grant agreement H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016 SECRET-722424 and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant EP/E022936/1.Research Development Fund Publication Prize Award winner, March 202