KORELATI I PREVALENCIJA DEPRESIJE KOD OSOBA SMJEŠTENIH U KINESKIM DOMOVIMA ZA STARIJE OSOBE: IMPLIKACIJE ZA USLUGE I INTERVENCIJE

Due to paucity of research on prevalence of depression in Chinese elderly people residing in nursing homes, the present study investigated a set of predictors at personal, physical, social and psychosocial levels among 187 elderly residents in Hong Kong. The results show that 17.6% of the participants reported a manifest level of depression (GDS≥ 8). Financial strain and physical functioning impairment significantly augmented the likelihood of depression; however, strong support networks at residential settings as well as high self-esteem reduce the likelihood of this mental morbidity. Implications for services and intervention policies as well as further research are briefly discussed.Zbog nedostatka istraživanja o raširenosti depresije kod starijih osoba smještenih u kineskim domovima za starije osobe, ova studija istražuje niz prediktora depresije na osobnoj, fizičkoj. socijalnoj i psihosocijalnoj razini među 187 starijih korisnika u Hong Kongu. Rezultati pokazuju da je 17,6% sudionika iskazalo manifestnu razinu depresije (GDS≥ 8). Financijski pritisci i smanjena fizička pokretljivost značajno povećavaju mogućnost depresije. Snažna mreža podrške u rezidencijalnom smještaju kao i visoko samopoštovanje umanjuju mogućnost ovog mentalnog poremećaja. Implikacije za usluge i intervencije kao i za daljnja istraživanja su ukratko prikazani

KORELATI I PREVALENCIJA DEPRESIJE KOD OSOBA SMJEŠTENIH U KINESKIM DOMOVIMA ZA STARIJE OSOBE: IMPLIKACIJE ZA USLUGE I INTERVENCIJE

Due to paucity of research on prevalence of depression in Chinese elderly people residing in nursing homes, the present study investigated a set of predictors at personal, physical, social and psychosocial levels among 187 elderly residents in Hong Kong. The results show that 17.6% of the participants reported a manifest level of depression (GDS≥ 8). Financial strain and physical functioning impairment significantly augmented the likelihood of depression; however, strong support networks at residential settings as well as high self-esteem reduce the likelihood of this mental morbidity. Implications for services and intervention policies as well as further research are briefly discussed.Zbog nedostatka istraživanja o raširenosti depresije kod starijih osoba smještenih u kineskim domovima za starije osobe, ova studija istražuje niz prediktora depresije na osobnoj, fizičkoj. socijalnoj i psihosocijalnoj razini među 187 starijih korisnika u Hong Kongu. Rezultati pokazuju da je 17,6% sudionika iskazalo manifestnu razinu depresije (GDS≥ 8). Financijski pritisci i smanjena fizička pokretljivost značajno povećavaju mogućnost depresije. Snažna mreža podrške u rezidencijalnom smještaju kao i visoko samopoštovanje umanjuju mogućnost ovog mentalnog poremećaja. Implikacije za usluge i intervencije kao i za daljnja istraživanja su ukratko prikazani

A system for de-identifying medical message board text

There are millions of public posts to medical message boards by users seeking support and information on a wide range of medical conditions. It has been shown that these posts can be used to gain a greater understanding of patients’ experiences and concerns. As investigators continue to explore large corpora of medical discussion board data for research purposes, protecting the privacy of the members of these online communities becomes an important challenge that needs to be met. Extant entity recognition methods used for more structured text are not sufficient because message posts present additional challenges: the posts contain many typographical errors, larger variety of possible names, terms and abbreviations specific to Internet posts or a particular message board, and mentions of the authors’ personal lives. The main contribution of this paper is a system to de-identify the authors of message board posts automatically, taking into account the aforementioned challenges. We demonstrate our system on two different message board corpora, one on breast cancer and another on arthritis. We show that our approach significantly outperforms other publicly available named entity recognition and de-identification systems, which have been tuned for more structured text like operative reports, pathology reports, discharge summaries, or newswire

Assessment of Creative Thinking of Hong Kong Undergraduate Students Using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking

[EN] Creativity has been a key graduate attribute and transferrable skill for the universities nowadays. A better understanding of freshmen students’ level of creativity thinking facilitates the cultivation of the ways for nurturing the development of creativity in students throughout their university education studies. The purpose of this study was to investigate creative thinking abilities of first-year undergraduates in Hong Kong using the Torrance Tests of Creativity Thinking (TTCT) – a commonly known assessment for creativity. A total of 492 first-year undergraduates at a university in Hong Kong were asked to complete TTCT Figural Form consisting of picture construction, picture completion and lines activities. Generally, the creative potential of Hong Kong undergraduates was well above the average. The students demonstrated their abilities in generation of a number of relevant ideas (fluency), producing novel responses (originality), abstract thinking (abstractness of titles), and open-minded thinking (premature closure). They exhibited creative strength of, for example, flexible imagination, thinking with senses, and thinking beyond boundaries. However, students’ elaborative thinking, metaphorical-thinking and sense of humor had a lot of room for improvement. Based on the assessment results, some implications on the possible institutional strategies for nurturing creativity among students during university education were discussed.Ng, AWY.; Lee, C. (2019). Assessment of Creative Thinking of Hong Kong Undergraduate Students Using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. En HEAD'19. 5th International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1-8. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD19.2019.9051OCS1

Identifying Potential Adverse Effects Using the Web: A New Approach to Medical Hypothesis Generation

Medical message boards are online resources where users with a particular condition exchange information, some of which they might not otherwise share with medical providers. Many of these boards contain a large number of posts and contain patient opinions and experiences that would be potentially useful to clinicians and researchers. We present an approach that is able to collect a corpus of medical message board posts, de-identify the corpus, and extract information on potential adverse drug effects discussed by users. Using a corpus of posts to breast cancer message boards, we identified drug event pairs using co-occurrence statistics. We then compared the identified drug event pairs with adverse effects listed on the package labels of tamoxifen, anastrozole, exemestane, and letrozole. Of the pairs identified by our system, 75–80% were documented on the drug labels. Some of the undocumented pairs may represent previously unidentified adverse drug effects

The growing needs of genetic counselling—Feasibility in utilization of tele-genetic counselling in Asia and Hong Kong

The need for the expansion of genomic services has been at a record time high in the past decade. As technological advancement continues to strengthen the entire genetic and genomic pipeline and clinical operational workflow, the major challenge remains to be the speed of workforce development to meet service growth. In particular, the international expansion of genetic counselling (GC) services has been a topic of interest for the past few years. GC is an emerging profession in most of Asia, and in many countries the profession of GC often refers to physicians or front-line health workers with expertise in genetics to provide GC services rather than being a specific independent profession. As genetic and genomic services, especially pre-test and post-test GC, expand globally, the need to tackle the longstanding obstacles of GC personnel shortage and funding issues must not be overlooked. There is an urgent need internationally, and especially in Asia, where GC profession is comparatively less well-established, to seek alternative approaches to meet service demand. The present review examines the global development and feasibility of tele-genetics and tele-genetic counselling (TGC), and serves as the foundation to explore a possible roadmap in Hong Kong via the Hong Kong Genome Project

Efficacy of once-daily extended-release topiramate (USL255): A subgroup analysis based on the level of treatment resistance

AbstractResults from a previously conducted global phase III study (PREVAIL; NCT01142193) demonstrate the safety and efficacy of once-daily USL255, Qudexy™ XR (topiramate) extended-release capsules, as adjunctive treatment of drug-resistant partial-onset seizures (POSs). In this study, we report a post hoc analysis of PREVAIL data according to patient level of treatment resistance (based upon the number of concomitant antiepileptic drugs [AEDs] and lifetime AEDs) at baseline, with patients defined as either having “highly” drug-resistant seizures (≥2 concurrent AEDs and ≥4 lifetime AEDs) or having “less” drug-resistant seizures (1 concurrent AED or <4 lifetime AEDs) at baseline. For each subgroup, median percent reduction in POS frequency (primary endpoint), responder rate, Clinical Global Impression of Change (CGI-C), and Quality of Life in Epilepsy — Problems (QOLIE-31-P) survey were assessed. Of 249 PREVAIL patients, 115 were classified as having highly drug-resistant seizures (USL255: n=52, placebo: n=63), and 134 were classified as having less drug-resistant seizures (USL255: n=72, placebo: n=62) at baseline. For the primary endpoint, USL255 resulted in significantly better seizure outcomes compared with placebo regardless of drug-resistant status (P=.004 and P=.040 for “highly” and “less”, respectively). Responder rate was also significantly improved in patients with highly drug-resistant group (P=.023). The CGI-C scores indicated significant improvement in both subgroups (P=.003 and P=.013 for “highly” and “less”, respectively). On the QOLIE-31-P, a significant improvement on the seizure worry subscale for the group with less drug-resistant seizures was noted in USL255-treated patients compared with placebo-treated patients (P=.003); the overall score and all other subscales were not significantly different for both subgroups. We conclude that USL255 led to significant improvements across multiple outcomes compared with placebo, including in those classified as having highly drug-resistant seizures to prior treatment, making it a valuable treatment option for patients with epilepsy

Humor Therapy: Relieving Chronic Pain and Enhancing Happiness for Older Adults

The present study examined the effectiveness of a humor therapy program in relieving chronic pain, enhancing happiness and life satisfaction, and reducing loneliness among older persons with chronic pain. It was a quasiexperimental pretest-posttest controlled design. Older persons in a nursing home were invited to join an 8-week humor therapy program (experimental group), while those in another nursing home were treated as a control group and were not offered the program. There were 36 older people in the experimental group and 34 in the control group. Upon completion of the humor therapy program, there were significant decreases in pain and perception of loneliness, and significant increases in happiness and life satisfaction for the experimental group, but not for the control group. The use of humor therapy appears to be an effective nonpharmacological intervention. Nurses and other healthcare professionals could incorporate humor in caring for their patients