1,720,961 research outputs found
A mixed-methods study to explore the modifiable aspects of treatment burden in Parkinson’s disease and develop recommendations for improvement
Background: People with Parkinson’s (PwP) and their caregivers have to manage multiple daily healthcare tasks (treatment burden). This can be challenging and may lead to poor health outcomes.Objective: To identify the extent and key modifiable factors of treatment burden, and develop recommendations to improve the treatment burden in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Methods: This was a mixed-methods study, involving 1) a cross-sectional survey for PwP and caregivers in the UK to determine the extent and associations of treatment burden using the Multimorbidity Treatment Burden Questionnaire (MTBQ), followed by 2) focus group discussions with key stakeholders to discuss the survey findings and develop recommendations. Results: 160 PwP (mean age=68 years) and 30 caregivers (mean age=69 years) completed the national surveys. The surveys found that 21% (N=34) of PwP and 50% (N=15) of caregivers reported high treatment burden using the MTBQ. Higher treatment burden in PwP was significantly associated with advancing PD severity, frailty, higher number of non-motor symptoms, and higher frequency of medications (>3 times/day). Caregivers with higher treatment burden were more likely to care for someone with memory issues, had lower mental well-being scores and higher caregiver burden. Three online focus groups involved 11 participants (3 PwP, 1 caregiver and 7 healthcare professionals) recruited from the South of England. Focus group discussions resulted in recommendations to reduce treatment burden including improving communication, clear expectation setting with appropriate signposting from healthcare professionals, increasing education and awareness of PD complexity, increasing flexibility of appointment structures, increasing access to healthcare professionals, and embracing the role of technology.Conclusions: Treatment burden is common amongst PwP and caregivers and can be identified in a clinical setting using the MTBQ. There is a need for change at individual provider and system levels to recognise and minimise treatment burden to improve health outcomes in PD. <br/
What are the modifiable factors of treatment burden and capacity among people with Parkinson’s disease and their caregivers: a qualitative study
Background: People with long-term conditions must complete many healthcare tasks such as take medications, attend appointments, and change their lifestyle. This treatment burden and ability to manage it (capacity) is not well-researched in Parkinson’s disease.Objective: To explore and identify potentially modifiable factors contributing to treatment burden and capacity in people with Parkinson’s disease and caregivers.Methods: Semi-structured interviews with nine people with Parkinson’s disease and eight caregivers recruited from Parkinson’s disease clinics in England (ages 59–84 years, duration of Parkinson’s disease diagnosis 1–17 years, Hoehn and Yahr (severity of Parkinson’s disease) stages 1–4) were conducted. Interviews were recorded and analyzed thematically.Results: Four themes of treatment burden with modifiable factors were identified: 1) Challenges with appointments and healthcare access: organizing appointments, seeking help and advice, interactions with healthcare professionals, and caregiver role during appointments; 2) Issues obtaining satisfactory information: sourcing and understanding information, and satisfaction with information provision; 3) Managing medications: getting prescriptions right, organizing polypharmacy, and autonomy to adjust treatments; and 4) Lifestyle changes: exercise, dietary changes, and financial expenses. Aspects of capacity included access to car and technology, health literacy, financial capacity, physical and mental ability, personal attributes and life circumstances, and support from social networks.Conclusions: There are potentially modifiable factors of treatment burden including addressing the frequency of appointments, improving healthcare interactions and continuity of care, improving health literacy and information provision, and reducing polypharmacy. Some changes could be implemented at individual and system levels to reduce treatment burden for people with Parkinson’s and their caregivers. Recognition of these by healthcare professionals and adopting a patient-centered approach may improve health outcomes in Parkinson’s disease
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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