Using participatory and creative methods to facilitate emancipatory research with people facing multiple disadvantage: a role for health and care professionals

Participatory and creative research methods are a powerful tool for enabling active engagement in the research process of marginalised people. It can be particularly hard for people living with multiple disadvantage, such as disabled people from ethnic minority backgrounds, to access research projects that are relevant to their lived experience. This article argues that creative and participatory methods facilitate the co-researchers’ engagement in the research process, which thus becomes more empowering. Exploring the congruence of these methods with their professional ethos, health and care professionals can use their skills to develop them further. Both theory and practice examples are presented

Practical strategies to implement the ESPNIC nutrition clinical recommendations into PICU practice

Background: The European Society of Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care (ESPNIC) published 32 clinical recommendations around supporting nutrition in critically ill children following an extensive review of the literature online in January 2020. The challenge now is to engage with paediatric intensive care unit teams to implement these into their practice. Objective: This practical implementation guide uses a recognised implementation model to guide pediatric intensive care professionals to implement these evidence-based clinical recommendations into clinical practice. Results and conclusions: We use the Pronovost implementation of evidence into practice model to provide a practical framework with associated documents to facilitate PICU healthcare professional's implementation of these clinical recommendations into PICU practice. The paper is structured around the four steps in this model: summarising the evidence, identifying local barriers to implementation, measuring performance and ensuring all patients receive the intervention and useful checklists for implementation and compliance monitoring are provided, in addition to tables outlining key professional roles and responsibilities around nutrition in the paediatric intensive care unit

WHEDA study: Effectiveness of occupational therapy at home for older people with dementia and their caregivers - the design of a pragmatic randomised controlled trial evaluating a Dutch programme in seven German centres

Contains fulltext : 80941.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: A recent Dutch mono-centre randomised controlled trial has shown that occupational therapy improves daily functioning in dementia. The aim of this present study is to compare the effects of the Dutch community occupational therapy programme with a community occupational therapy consultation on daily functioning in older people with mild or moderate dementia and their primary caregivers in a German multi-centre context. METHODS/DESIGN: A multi-centre single blind randomised controlled trial design is being used in seven health care centres (neurological, psychiatric and for older people) in urban regions. Patients are 1:1 randomised to treatment or control group. Assessors are blind to group assignment and perform measurements on both groups at baseline, directly after intervention at 6 weeks and at 16, 26 and 52 weeks follow-up. A sample of 140 community dwelling older people (aged >65 years) with mild or moderate dementia and their primary caregivers is planned. The experimental intervention consists of an evidence-based community occupational therapy programme including 10 sessions occupational therapy at home. The control intervention consists of one community occupational therapy consultation based on information material of the Alzheimer Society. Providers of both interventions are occupational therapists experienced in treatment of cognitively impaired older people and trained in both programmes. 'Community' indicates that occupational therapy intervention occurs in the person's own home. The primary outcome is patients' daily functioning assessed with the performance scale of the Interview for Deterioration in Daily Living Activities in Dementia and video tapes of daily activities rated by external raters blind to group assignment using the Perceive, Recall, Plan and Perform System of Task Analysis. Secondary outcomes are patients' and caregivers' quality of life, mood and satisfaction with treatment; the caregiver's sense of competence, caregiver's diary (medication, resource utilisation, time of informal care); and the incidence of long-term institutionalisation. Process evaluation is performed by questionnaires and focus group discussion. DISCUSSION: The transfer from the Dutch mono-centre design to the pragmatic multi-site trial in a German context implicates several changes in design issues including differences in recruitment time, training of interventionists and active control group treatment.The study is registered under DRKS00000053 at the German register of clinical trials, which is connected to the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform

APPLIED COGNITIVE STRATEGY BEHAVIOURS IN PEOPLE WITH PARKINSON'S DISEASE DURING DAILY ACTIVITIES: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Contains fulltext : 224755.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

The Case for Pair Programming in the Computer Science Classroom

Previous studies indicate that the use of pair programming has beneficial effects on student learning. In this article, we present a controlled study that directly measured students\u27 acquisition of individual programming skills using laboratory practica (in which students programmed individually under exam conditions). Additionally, we analyzed other measures of student performance, attitudes, and retention. Our results provide direct evidence that pair programming improves the individual programming skills of lower SAT students, and that students who pair program are more confident in their work and are more likely to successfully complete the course. Results from the four other major studies of the effects of pair programming are reviewed and compared with those presented here in order to draw broader conclusions. © 2011 ACM