6 research outputs found
Accuracy and reliability of formant frequency measurements in synthetic infant CV syllables
No full text
Promoting Activity in Geriatric Rehabilitation: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Accelerometry
Get PDFThis is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Background
Low activity levels in inpatient rehabilitation are associated with adverse outcomes. The study aimed to test whether activity levels can be increased by the provision of monitored activity data to patients and clinicians in the context of explicit goal setting.
Methods
A randomized controlled trial in three sites in Australia included 255 inpatients aged 60 and older who had a rehabilitation goal to become ambulant. The primary outcome was patients’ walking time measured by accelerometers during the rehabilitation admission. Walking times from accelerometry were made available daily to treating therapists and intervention participants to motivate patients to improve incidental activity levels and reach set goals. For the control group, ‘usual care’ was followed, including the setting of mobility goals; however, for this group, neither staff nor patients received data on walking times to aid the setting of daily walking time targets.
Results
The median daily walking time in the intervention group increased from 10.3 minutes at baseline to 32.1 minutes at day 28, compared with an increase from 9.5 to 26.5 minutes per day in the control group. Subjects in the intervention group had significantly higher non-therapy walking time by about 7 minutes [mean (95% CI): 24.6 (21.7, 27.4)] compared to those in the control group [mean(95% CI): 17.3 (14.4, 20.3)] (p = 0.001).
Conclusions
Daily feedback to patients and therapists using an accelerometer increased walking times during rehabilitation admissions. The results of this study suggest objective monitoring of activity levels could provide clinicians with information on clinically important, mobility-related activities to assist goal setting.
Trial Registration
Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12611000034932 http://www.ANZCTR.org.au
Experiences Associated with Pediatric Dysphagia: A Mother’s Perspective
No full textBackground: Pediatric dysphagia arises from various etiologies but often coincides with complex health issues. Tasks associated with the management of pediatric dysphagia are often unfamiliar and arduous, leaving a heavy burden on the primary caregiver. Little is known regarding how these experiences affect caregivers and family systems.Aims: This study was conducted to examine dysphagia and its vast implications from a caregiver’s perspective in order to reveal a perceived role in management.Methods & Procedures: A qualitative case study design was chosen. Consistent with this tradition of inquiry, naturalistic data were collected through ethnographic interviewing procedures, collection of artifacts for analysis, and multiple lamination sessions obtained through electronic mail messages. These data were analyzed inductively, in which authors independently reviewed data several times and coded the data line by line with a category of idea or action that represented the raw data. As data collection and analysis continued in a cyclical fashion, several initial categories clumped into more abstract overarching themes related to the participant’s experience with dysphagia.Outcomes & Results: Data interpretation suggests that encounters associated with caring for multiple children with dysphagia are multifaceted and that consequences of dysphagia extend far beyond the individual with dysphagia and into the entire family system.Conclusion: This paper argues for further consideration of social and affective factors in pediatric dysphagia management and the inspection of dysphagia from a dynamic lens that accounts for all layers of the disorder
