1,721,023 research outputs found
Facilitating trial recruitment: a qualitative study of patient and staff experiences of an orthopaedic trauma trial
Get PDFBackground: Qualitative research has been used to explore patients' and healthcare professionals' experiences of surgical randomised controlled trials (RCTs). From this research, reasons why patients accept or decline participation and barriers to engaging clinicians in trials have been identified. In a trauma setting, recruitment to surgical trials can be particularly difficult as patients may require urgent treatment and their ability to consider their options, ask questions and reach a decision may be hindered by the impact of their injury. Little research, however, has explored patients' and healthcare professionals' experiences of surgical RCTs in a trauma setting. This study aimed to understand patients' and staff's experiences of an orthopaedic trauma trial. Methods: We carried out semi-structured interviews with 11 patients and 24 staff (10 surgeons and 14 research associates) participating in a UK multi-centre feasibility trial comparing intramedullary nails versus distal locking plates for fractures of the distal femur (TrAFFix). Interviews explored patients' experience of TrAFFix and their reason for participating and staffs' experience of recruiting to TrAFFix and trauma trials more generally. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Three themes were identified. These were i) navigating research with patients after orthopaedic trauma, ii) knowing that it is the right decision and iii) making it work. These themes reflect: i) how research associates supported and guided patients through the consent process enabling them to participate, ii) the difficulty in engaging surgeons in a trial when individual equipoise and experience of the interventions are low despite the presence of community equipoise and iii) the way in which research teams worked together and encouraged the development of a research culture within the clinical teams in order to facilitate recruitment. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the pivotal role of research associates (RAs) in facilitating trial recruitment. RAs supported patients to enable them to make a decision about participation and assisted in developing a research culture within the team by promoting studies and communicating research to clinical staff. Our findings also reinforce surgeons' difficulty with equipoise and suggest that accepting community equipoise could facilitate recruitment.</p
A mixed-methods systematic review of patients' experience of being invited to participate in surgical randomised controlled trials
Get PDFRationale: randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of surgical interventions are increasing. Such trials encounter challenges that are not present in RCTs of non-surgical interventions because of the nature of the intervention. Several studies have explored patients' experiences of surgical trials to improve recruitment or identify barriers and facilitators to research in this setting. Synthesizing these studies may reveal further insights or confirm whether saturation of relevant themes has been achieved.Objective: this review aimed to understand the experiences of adults who are invited to participate in surgical RCTs.Method: MEDLINE, Web of Science, and CINAHL were searched to identify articles meeting the inclusion criteria. Assessment of quality was conducted with studies given an overall quality rating of good, fair, or poor. A segregated approach was used to synthesize the data. This method included a thematic synthesis of the qualitative data and a narrative review of the quantitative data. The findings of both syntheses were then integrated.Results: thirty-four articles reporting 28 trials were included. This review found that the decision to participate in a surgical trial is influenced by multiple factors including patients' individual circumstances and attitudes, and the characteristics of the trial itself. The study identified three themes which encompass both qualitative and quantitative findings. These themes reveal it was important for patients to i) make sense of the trial and trial processes, ii) weigh up the risks and benefits of their different treatment options and participation, and iii) trust the trial and staff.Conclusions: a patient-centred approach to trial recruitment may help staff build trusting relationships with patients and address their individual concerns about the trial and the risks and benefits of participation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
A qualitative study of patients' experience of recovery after a distal femur fracture
Get PDFPurposeThis qualitative study was conducted as part of a feasibility study for TrAFFix, (ISRCTN92089567), a randomised controlled trial that will compare two surgical interventions used to fix distal femoral fractures. Our aim was to understand patients’ experiences of treatment and the early phase of recovery after a distal femoral fracture. While, much is known about the experience of recovery from hip fracture, little is known about whether patients with other lower limb fragility fractures experience the same concerns and challenges.Materials and MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 patients participating in TrAFFix or their relative. Interviews were conducted face to face or by telephone. With agreement from participants, interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were analysed inductively using thematic analysis. As part of the user involvement for TrAFFix, we held a focus group with PPI representatives who had experience or knowledge of lower limb fractures, to learn about factors that might influence patients’ recovery after a fragility facture. Data from the focus group relevant to themes from our thematic analysis are also presented.ResultsThree themes were identified within patients’ accounts of their experience. Our data revealed that: i) being informed about treatment and recovery was important to patients; ii) patients muddled through and found ways to manage at home, often needing the support of others; and iii) rehabilitation was arduous for patients who received limited rehabilitative support and at times lacked confidence to follow the instructions that they were given.ConclusionsOur findings highlight the struggle patients endure while recovering after a distal femoral fracture and the limited rehabilitative support they receive after discharge from hospital. They reinforce the need to ensure a patient feels informed about their treatment and recovery and the need for greater support for patients to manage at home and move with confidence
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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
No full textWe 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
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