Awareness regarding menopausal symptoms and effect on daily life of postmenopausal women

Introduction: Menopause is permanent cessation of menstruation at the end of reproductive life due to loss of ovarian follicular activity and hormone deficiency which causes various symptoms and negative effects on life. This study aimed to find out the awareness level of menopausal symptoms and effect on daily life of postmenopausal women. Method: A cross sectional study was conducted during April 2018 to February 2019 to find out the awareness level of menopausal symptoms and effect on daily life among postmenopausal women attending female outpatient department of Patan Hospital, Nepal. Non probability purposive sampling technique was used. Data were collected using structured interview schedule. The SPSS version 16 software was used for data analysis. The association between variables was measured by chi-square test Result: Among 160 postmenopausal women, the overall awareness of menopausal symptoms was inadequate in 130 (81.2%), effect on daily activities in 95 (59.3%), on work efficiency in 94(58.8%) and on social activities in 69 (43.2%). Educational, marital and occupational status were significantly associated with awareness level of menopausal symptoms and the symptoms had significant effect on daily life. Conclusion: The study revealed that more than two third of postmenopausal women had inadequate awareness of menopausal symptoms and more than half had effect on daily life. Educational, marital and occupational status were significantly associated with awareness level. Keyword: effect on daily life, menopause, menopausal symptom

Older adults, falls and technologies for independent living: a life space approach

This paper draws attention to the need for further understanding of the fine details of routine and taken-for-granted daily activities and mobility. It argues that such understanding is critical if technologies designed to mitigate the negative impacts of falls and fear-of-falling are to provide unobtrusive support for independent living. The reported research was part of a large, multidisciplinary, multi-site research programme into responses to population ageing in Ireland, Technologies for Independent Living (TRIL). A small, exploratory, qualitative life-space diary study was conducted. Working with eight community-dwelling older adults with different experiences of falls or of fear-of-falls, data were collected through weekly life-space diaries, daily-activity logs, two-dimensional house plans and a pedometer. For some participants, self-recording of their daily activities and movements revealed routine, potentially risky behaviour about which they had been unaware, which may have implications for falls-prevention advice. The findings are presented and discussed around four key themes: ‘being pragmatic’, ‘not just a faller’, ‘heightened awareness and blind spots’ and ‘working with technology’. The findings suggest a need to think creatively about how technological and other solutions best fit with people's everyday challenges and needs and of critical importance, that their installation does not reduce an older adult to ‘just a faller’ or a person with a fear-of-falls

Predictors of quality of life ratings from persons with dementia: the role of insight

Objective: Evidence suggests that people with dementia are able to respond accurately and consistently to questions about quality of life (QoL), although large discrepancies exist between patient and proxy ratings. This may be due, in part, to the reduced insight of the person with dementia. The aim of this study was to explore the predictors of QoL ratings in a sample of people with mild dementia, with a particular focus on the role of insight. Methods: Sixty-nine participants and their caregivers were recruited from a memory clinic setting. The Bath Assessment of Subjective Quality of Life in Dementia (BASQID), Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Quality of Life Scale, Memory Functioning Scale, Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study Activities of Daily Living (ADL) Inventory and Mini Mental Status Examination were administered. Results: Regression analyses indicated that the strongest predictor of QoL ratings from persons with dementia was their awareness of memory function, such that lower awareness was associated with higher QoL ratings. Proxy ratings of activity performance and enjoyment of activity were also significant predictors of BASQID scores. Conclusions: Awareness of memory function impacts directly on patient QoL ratings and can also mask the effects of changes in other outcomes such as ADL function. Measures of awareness should therefore be employed alongside patient QoL ratings in order to ensure they are interpreted accurately. Discrepancies between patient and proxy QoL ratings do not necessarily occur because of patient unreliability, but may instead reflect the application of distinct modes of QoL assessment that emphasise very different outcomes

Lifelong Learning Hub: A Seamless Tracking Tool for Mobile Learning

Lifelong learners’ learning activities are scattered along the day in different locations and they make use of multiple devices. Most of the times adults have to merge learning, work and everyday life making it difficult to have an account on how much time is devoted to learning activities and learning goals. Learning experiences are disrupted and mobile seamless learning tech- nology has to find new solutions to integrate daily life activities and learning in the same process. Hence, there is a need to provide tools that are smoothly inte- grated into adults’ daily life. The contribution of this demonstration is present- ing a mobile tool that leads the lifelong learning towards a self-regulated pro- cess: foster awareness on learning goals and learning moments; facilitates the user to keep track of learning time with frictionless interface; fosters engage- ment and motivation on the task providing useful statistics. The 3LHub project has been released under open access with the aim to foster adaptation to further communities as well as to facilitate the extension to the increasing number of NFC tags existent in the marke

How Do Patients Understand Safety for Cardiac Implantable Devices? Importance of Postintervention Education

This study was designed to assess the effect of patient education on the knowledge of safety and awareness about living with cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) within the context of phase I cardiac rehabilitation. Methods. The study was conducted with 28 newly implanted CIED patients who were included in "education group (EG)". Patients were questioned with a survey about living with CIEDs and electromagnetic interference (EMI) before and 1month after an extensive constructed interview. Ninety-three patients who had been living with CIEDs were included in the "without education group (woEG)". Results. Patients in EG had improved awareness on topics related to physical and daily life activities including work, driving, sports and sexual activities, EMI of household items, harmful equipment, and some of the medical devices in the hospital setting (p<0.05). Patients in EG gave significantly different percent of correct answers for doing exercise or sports, using the arm on the side of CIEDs, EMI of some of the household appliances, medical devices, and all of the harmful equipment compared to woEG (p<0.05). Conclusion. It was demonstrated that a constructed education interview on safety of CIEDs and living with these devices within the context of phase I cardiac rehabilitation is important for improving the awareness of patients significantly. Thus, patients might achieve a faster adaptation to daily life and decrease disinformation and misperceptions and thus promote the quality of life after the device implantation

ZhiWo: Activity tagging and recognizing system from personal lifelogs

With the increasing use of mobile devices as personal record- ing, communication and sensing tools, extracting the seman- tics of life activities through sensed data (photos, accelerom- eter, GPS etc.) is gaining widespread public awareness. A person who engages in long-term personal sensing is engag- ing in a process of lifelogging. Lifelogging typically involves using a range of (wearable) sensors to capture raw data, to segment into discrete activities, to annotate and subse- quently to make accessible by search or browsing tools. In this paper, we present an intuitive lifelog activity record- ing and management system called ZhiWo. By using a su- pervised machine learning approach, sensed data collected by mobile devices are automatically classified into different types of daily human activities and these activities are inter- preted as life activity retrieval units for personal archives

A user-friendly tool to increase awareness about impacts of human daily life activities on carbon footprint

In recent decades, climate change has demanded more and more attention. Consumers have the power to influence the carbon footprint of goods and services through their purchasing decisions, but to do this they need to learn more. To address this need, it is necessary to develop online questionnaires able to make people aware of which activities have a greater environmental impact in their daily lives. Focusing on this goal, we formulated two tools for quantifying an individual’s carbon footprint over a year. The innovativeness of these tools lies in being user-friendly and providing online open access to compilers, as well as using specific emission factors for the reference context. Specifically, we focused on the main emission sources: gas and electricity consumption, mobility, food, and waste. During these last years, the tools have been proposed to Italian students at different levels of education and to employees of Italian and international companies. The responses from 3260 users revealed an average annual direct carbon footprint per capita of about 5600 kg CO2-eq, which, integrated with the estimate of indirect emissions, provides an estimate in good agreement with the value provided by the Italian National Inventory of greenhouse gases. With the developed tools, people are able to observe which sectors have the greatest impact and consequently are stimulated to emit less by adopting more sustainable behaviors

Feasibility and Effect Sizes of the Revised Daily Engagement of Meaningful Activities Intervention for Persons with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Their Caregivers

A nurse-led intervention, Daily Engagement of Meaningful Activities (DEMA), was evaluated for feasibility and effect sizes in a two-group randomized pilot study with 36 patient–caregiver dyads (17 DEMA and 19 attention control). Effect sizes were estimated on 10 outcomes: dyad functional ability awareness congruence; patients' meaningful activity performance and satisfaction, confidence, depressive symptoms, communication satisfaction, physical function, and life satisfaction; and caregivers' depressive symptoms and life changes. High feasibility of DEMA was supported by the following indicators: consent (97.7%), session completion (91.7%), and Time 3 measure completion (97.2%). Compared to the attention control group, the DEMA group had higher dyad congruence in functional ability awareness and life satisfaction 3 months post-intervention and improved physical function at 2 weeks post-intervention. Although DEMA showed high feasibility and benefits on some health-related outcomes, further testing of DEMA in a larger randomized controlled clinical trial is needed

Integrating big data into a sustainable mobility policy 2.0 planning support system

It is estimated that each of us, on a daily basis, produces a bit more than 1 GB of digital content through our mobile phone and social networks activities, bank card payments, location-based positioning information, online activities, etc. However, the implementation of these large data amounts in city assets planning systems still remains a rather abstract idea for several reasons, including the fact that practical examples are still very strongly services-oriented, and are a largely unexplored and interdisciplinary field; hence, missing the cross-cutting dimension. In this paper, we describe the Policy 2.0 concept and integrate user generated content into Policy 2.0 platform for sustainable mobility planning. By means of a real-life example, we demonstrate the applicability of such a big data integration approach to smart cities planning process. Observed benefits range from improved timeliness of the data and reduced duration of the planning cycle to more informed and agile decision making, on both the citizens and the city planners end. The integration of big data into the planning process, at this stage, does not have uniform impact across all levels of decision making and planning process, therefore it should be performed gradually and with full awareness of existing limitations

Walking as a social practice: dispersed walking and the organisation of everyday practices

This paper uses social practice theory to study the interweaving of walking into everyday practices and considers how greater awareness of everyday walking can influence its position within the organisation and scheduling of everyday life. Walking is of policy interest because of its perceived benefits for health. This paper asserts that increased awareness of everyday walking allows users to become more active without having to reschedule existing activities. Using Schatzki’s distinction between dispersed and integrative practices, it argues that by increasing awareness of dispersed walking can enlist walking into the teleoaffective organisation of some social practices and prompt the performance of new ‘health practices’ within everyday domains of life such as shopping and employment. While this analysis offers useful insights for the design of behaviour change strategies, it also points to some unintended consequences of using digital feedback to increase walking awareness. In directing the gaze of participants at one particular element of their daily practices, the paper suggests, digital walking feedback provides a ‘partial’ view of practices: in highlighting the exercise value of walking at the expense of other values it can prompt feedback recipients to pass moral judgements on themselves based on this partial view