1,720,997 research outputs found
Nurses’ use of appropriate needle sizes when administering intramuscular injections
No full textBackground: In cases where patients are overweight or obese, administration of intramuscular medications can be ineffective due to inappropriate sizes of needles used. This study investigated whether the size of needles used to administer intramuscular injections is appropriate for patients on the basis of their weight or body mass index. Method: This retrospective review examined 100 instances of intramuscular injection on a 50-bed ward. Results: In most instances, intramuscular medication was inappropriately administered. Needle sizes were not determined based on body mass index, and the possibility of true intramuscular penetration was minimal. Appropriate needle sizes were more likely to be chosen when instructions were provided with medications. Conclusion: Current available needle sizes may be inappropriate for certain patients. Nursing staff require further education to assist them in making correct needle choices. It is also important that health care settings have evidence-based policies in place and the necessary resources provided to ensure safe and correct administration of medication.</p
The patient's experience of primary ciliary dyskinesia: a systematic review
No full textBackground: primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a rare genetic disorder characterised by progressive sinopulmonary disease, with symptoms starting soon after birth. The aim of this study is to critically review, analyse, and synthesise the literature in order to understand the experiences of patients with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) and the impact on health-related quality of life.Method: MEDLINE, EBSCO, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsycINFO and EMBASE were searched according to the inclusion criteria. A qualitative analysis of 14 studies was conducted.Results: fourteen studies were included in the review, five with qualitative methodologies. Studies originated from the UK, USA, Italy, Denmark and Belgium, one study included a survey distributed internationally. Significant relationships were found between age and worsening of respiratory symptoms, physical, and mental domains of health-related quality of life, with a greater decline compared with reference populations. Variations between the UK and Italy were found for health-related quality of life and its correlation with time since diagnosis. PCD was found to have a physical impact in all age groups: patients found it difficult to keep up with others, and found energy levels were easily depleted compared to family or peers. In terms of social impact, symptoms lead to embarrassment and a sense of isolation, with patients concealing symptoms and/or their diagnosis. In turn, isolation was also linked with the lack of public and medical knowledge. In relation to emotional impact, anxiety was reported in a number of qualitative studies; patients were anxious about getting sick or when thinking about their future health. The burden of treatment and factors influencing adherence were also discussed in depth.Conclusion: health-related quality of life decreases with age in patients with PCD. For all age groups, PCD was found to greatly impact physical, emotional, social functioning, and treatment burden. More research is needed on the psychosocial impact of the illness, disease burden and its effect on quality of life
The dangers of widespread nitric oxide screening for primary ciliary dyskinesia
No full textPrimary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is underdiagnosed and requires complex testing at specialist diagnostic centres. Measurement of nasal nitric oxide (nNO) has good sensitivity and specificity screening for PCD, but is currently usually measured at PCD centres rather than prior to referral. Proposals to include NO testing for asthma diagnoses could widen access to PCD screening if nasal mode analysers are available. Data from 282 consecutive referrals to our PCD diagnostic centre (31 PCD positive) were used to model predictive values for nNO testing with varying pretest probability and showed that predictive values were good in the referral population, but extending screening to more general populations would result in excessive false positives that may overwhelm diagnostic services. Although nNO remains a useful test, a 'normal' result with classical clinical history should still be considered for further testing
Validation of paediatric health-related quality of life instruments for primary ciliary dyskinesia (QOL-PCD)
No full textRationale
Having developed the first disease‐specific, health‐related quality of life (HRQoL) instruments for children with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), we aimed to assess the psychometric performance of quality of life (QOL)‐PCD child, adolescent, and parent‐proxy versions in terms of reliability and validity across cross‐cultural settings and caring for patients with this rare disease.
Methods
Children (n = 71), adolescents (n = 85), and parents (n = 68) from multiple centers in the UK and North America completed age‐appropriate QOL‐PCD and generic QOL measures: pediatric QOL inventory, COPD assessment test (CAT), and Sino‐Nasal Outcome Test 20. Total of 13 children, 13 parents, and 17 adolescents repeated QOL‐PCD 10 to 14 days later to assess test‐retest reliability. Multitrait analysis evaluated how the items loaded to hypothesized scales: physical, emotional & social functioning, treatment burden, role, vitality, upper and lower respiratory symptoms, and ears and hearing symptoms. Examination of item‐to‐total correlations led to removal of three, five, and six items, respectively in the prototype child, adolescent and parent‐proxy versions; the validated measures now comprise between 34 and 38 items.
Results
The QOL‐PCD scales had good internal consistency; Cronbach's α for QOL‐PCD parent‐proxy ranged 0.62 to 0.86. Test‐retest reliability demonstrated stability across all scales; for example QOL‐PCD adolescent intraclass correlation coefficients ranged 0.71 to 0.89. Significant relationships were found between QOL‐PCD scales and similar constructs on generic questionnaires, for example, QOL‐PCD adolescent lower respiratory symptoms and the CAT score (r = .64, P < .01); weaker correlations were found between different constructs.
Conclusion
Age‐specific QOL‐PCD demonstrated good internal consistency, test‐retest reliability, and validity. QOL‐PCD offers promising outcome measures for multicenter clinical trials, as well as monitoring symptoms, functioning, and QOL during routine care
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Full text linkWe 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
- …
