1,721,193 research outputs found
The maintenance of totally implanted venous access device: When the difference is made by the nursing practice. Reply to the Letter to the Editor
No full textPressure Ulcers in Older Adults: A Prevalence Study
No full textOBJECTIVE:
The purpose of this study was to measure the prevalence of pressure ulcers (PrUs) in an older adult population.
DESIGN:
A cross-sectional study.
SETTING:
The study included all the individuals being cared for in the units of medicine, surgery, intensive care, and medical-surgical specialties of 47 hospitals, 57 public nursing homes, and 37 home care services.
PARTICIPANTS:
The authors' observational study included 11,957 patients older than 70 years.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:
Of the population, 50.75% (6067) were assessed to be at risk of developing PrUs according to the Braden Scale, and 24.66% (2949) had already developed PrUs. In addition, a significant association was found between increased risk (Braden <16) and the presence of PrUs with an odds ratio (OR) of 8.71 (confidence interval [CI], 7.52-10.10) in high-risk subjects (Braden ≤12) and an OR of 3.86 (CI, 3.36-4.44) in very high-risk patients (Braden 13-16). In the survey, 84.6% of the subjects with PrUs were incontinent, and incontinence increased the risk of developing PrUs in the authors' sample (OR, 1.54; CI, 1.34-1.77).
CONCLUSIONS:
The authors' data reported in the literature show that the prevalence of PrUs increases as an individual ages. The authors gathered data that showed a large area of intervention in managing the prevention of PrUs, such as an adequate use of protective aids, correcting malnutrition, and controlling incontinence. These results suggest that clinicians should focus more on the prevention of PrUs in older adults
Normal saline versus heparin solution to lock totally implanted venous access devices: Results from a multicenter randomized trial
No full textPURPOSE: Our aim was to determine the non-inferiority of normal saline flushing compared to heparin flushing in maintaining the patency of totally implanted venous access devices (TIVADs).
METHOD: Four hundred and thirty patients were recruited from 14 Italian centres. Patients were randomized to heparin group or to normal saline group. The primary outcome of the study was TIVAD occlusion.
RESULTS: After randomisation, 203 patients were assigned to normal saline group and 212 to heparin group. Median follow up time was 204 days in normal saline group and 294 in the heparin group. We observed 24 withdrawal occlusions (5.78%): 10 in the heparin group and 14 in the normal saline group. One total occlusion was observed in the normal saline group. Taking as reference the arm treated with heparin, the absolute risk difference was 2.67 with the 90% CI including the non - inferiority margin of 4%. No significant difference between hazards of occlusion was found.
CONCLUSIONS: This study failed to demonstrate that normal saline flushing is not inferior to heparin flushing, even if a significant difference between the two treatments was not found. The use of heparin is controversial and other prospective trials are necessary in this field.
TRIAL REGISTRATION: EudraCT number: 2009-013620-22
A Situation-Specific Theory of Self-Care Behaviors in People Living With an Intestinal or Urinary Ostomy
No full text: The literature on self-care in people living with an ostomy pouch is expanding rapidly, yet a guiding theoretical framework remains lacking. This article aims to present the development of a situation-specific theory of self-care in people living with an ostomy pouch, encompassing both intestinal (colostomy and ileostomy) and urinary (urostomy) diversions. We describe the process of ostomy self-care, the key predictors of self-care behaviors, and their outcomes. Underlying assumptions and theoretical propositions are also outlined. Self-care includes actions directed toward maintaining the physiological stability of the stoma (maintenance), detecting complications (monitoring), and responding to them (management). Factors influencing ostomy self-care include self-efficacy and cultural context. Predictors of self-care may be sociodemographic, psychological, or clinical. Outcomes are categorized as clinical or psychosocial. A total of 9 theoretical propositions are proposed. This situation-specific theory offers a framework for understanding the multifaceted nature of self-care engagement in people living with an ostomy pouch. Future research should refine the theory by testing its propositions and assessing its applicability across diverse populations and health care settings
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
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