1,720,963 research outputs found
Issues in education provision for new hospice services for non-cancer patients
No full textAim:
A potential barrier to the extension of specialist
palliative care to non-cancer patients is the skill base of
current palliative care specialists, which is commonly
oncology related. Data from an evaluation of innovative
hospice projects for non-cancer patients in the United
Kingdom, funded by Help the Hospices, are used to
consider the education and training needs of and
provision for project staff.
Method:
Qualitative interviews were conducted with a range of personnel
within 4 case study projects, plus with key informants
from a further 16 projects. Interviews were tape
recorded, transcribed and analysed using a framework
approach. Results:
Data show early concerns about noncancer
skills and knowledge to be common among staff
taking on this new role. The hospice projects provided education to their staff in a variety of ways, both formal
and informal. Initial analysis suggests that on-going and
informal education and support in practice are vital to
knowledge and skills provision and confidence building.Conclusion:
Hospices who are working to extend
palliative care to non-cancer patients need to set up
mechanisms for continued education and support for
staff in practice, to reinforce and extend formal
education. Specialists from other relevant disciplines
have an important role to play in this provision
The quality and adequacy of care received at home in the last 3 months of life by people who died following a stroke: a retrospective survey of surviving family and friends using the Views of Informal Carers Evaluation of Services questionnaire
No full textStroke is the third leading cause of death in the UK. Despite this, little is known about the care needs of people who die from or following a stroke. In early 2003, a total of 183 questionnaires were returned from a survey of 493 people who had registered a stroke-related death in four Primary Care Trusts, giving a response rate of 37%. This paper reports on 53 deceased from the survey who had lived at home during their last 3 months and who had been ill for more than 1 month. The data were analysed to explore the role of informal carers and the provision of community-based care in the last 3 months of life. Family and friends helped 82% of deceased with household tasks, 68% with personal care, 66% with taking medication and 54% with night-time care. By contrast, health and social services helped 30% with household tasks, 54% with personal care, 20% with taking medication and 6% with night-time care. Two-fifths (43%) of informants had to give up work or make major life changes to care for the deceased, and 26% of informants found looking after them ‘rewarding’. Half (51%) reported that help and support from health services were excellent or good compared to 38% for social services. Results from the Regional Study of Care for the Dying indicated that people who died from a stroke in 1990 and their informal carers would have benefited from increased levels of community-based care and enhanced communication with care professionals. Our data suggest that informal carers continue to provide the majority of care for those who die from stroke, despite government initiatives to improve care for stroke patients and frail elderly people. Further research is required to explore best practice and service provision in caring for this group.<br/
Experiences of hospital care reported by bereaved relatives of patients after a stroke: a retrospective survey using the VOICES questionnaire
No full textAim. This paper is a report of a study conducted to explore the determinants of satisfaction with health and social care services in the last 3 months and 3 days of life as reported by bereaved relatives of those who died from a stroke in an institutional setting.Background. There is limited research about how best to meet the needs of those who die from stroke. A thorough understanding of the determinants of satisfaction with end of life care is crucial for effective service provision to increase awareness of the needs of dying patients.Methods. During a six-month period in 2003, a population-based survey of bereaved relatives of patients after stroke was conducted using a stroke-specific version of the Views of Informal Carers Evaluation of Services postal questionnaire (183 informants, response rate 37%). The sub-sample included those informants who reported that the deceased person had died in an institutional setting (91%, n = 165). The analysis was divided into two phases: univariate (Pearson chi-square test) and multivariate phase (logistic regression).Results. Logistic regressions showed that discussing any worries about the treatment of the deceased person and feeling that the doctors and nurses knew enough about their condition were predictors of satisfaction with doctors and nurses in the last 3 months of life. Meeting the personal care needs of the deceased person, being involved in decisions and feeling that the deceased person died in the right place were predictors of satisfaction with care in the last 3 days of life.Conclusion. End of life care needs to address the individual needs of patients who die from stroke and those close to them. This study shows that individualised end of life care increases satisfaction and, although the data reported in this paper reflect care in 2003, there is no more recent evidence that contradicts this important overall finding
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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