Educazione terapeutica ai malati oncologici: esperienza degli infermieri italiani

Introduction. Therapeutic patient’ education is a complex process requiring a proper level of communication between the patient and the healthcare professional. Nurses play a key role in providing the patients and their families with educational activities. Objective: This paper is the report of a study which investigates the experiences of some Italian nurses with regards to their role in therapeutic education to cancer patients. Methods: Qualitative research. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 52 nurses working in different Local Health Service Units of two northern Italy regions: Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta. To identify categories and items arising from the data, the researchers used a qualitative content analysis. Results: The interview format was classified into six main categories: a) Patient education as daily care activity; b) Relevance of communication and dialogue for educational purposes; c) Relative usefulness of written information; d) Therapeutic education recording; e) Patients’ feedbacks as a tool for assessing therapeutic education; and f) Difficult communication. Conclusions: The experience of nurses in terms of their professional role in therapeutic education for cancer patients shows the steady presence of educational activities carried out in a non-planned way. This research confirms the need to launch educational interventions for nurses. Implications for Practice: It is essential to implement an action plan to promote opportunities of professional training in the field since among the most frequent reasons for project failure in therapeutic education is the lack of expert human resource

Barriers in the management of cancerrelated pain and strategies to overcome them: findings of a qualitative research involving physicians and nurses in Italy

Introduction and aims. There are many barriers and obstacles that even today lead to an inadequate treatment of cancer-related pain. The aim is to describe the experiences of a group of Italian physicians and nurses as far as the nature of these barriers is concerned and the possible tools to be used to overcome them. Material and method. We run 5 focus groups with 42 healthcare professionals (11 physicians, 31 nurses) working in 5 hospitals in Italy. The findings of the focus groups were analysed according to the “Content Analysis” method. Results. Five main items emerged: the importance of communication, the need for education regarding pain therapy, the ethnic/cultural/religious differences, the mutual trust and support within the working group, the daily challenges. Conclusion. In harmony with the most recent literature, physicians and nurses voice above all their need for an education more directly aimed at overcoming the prevailing barriers rooted in ignorance, prejudice and fears

Effectiveness of an educational video as an instrument to refresh and reinforce the learning of a nursing technique: a randomized controlled trial

The Undergraduate Nursing Course has been using videos for the past year or so. Videos are used for many different purposes such as during lessons, nurse refresher courses, reinforcement, and sharing and comparison of knowledge with the professional and scientific community. The purpose of this study was to estimate the efficacy of the video (moving an uncooperative patient from the supine to the lateral position) as an instrument to refresh and reinforce nursing techniques. A two-arm randomized controlled trial (RCT) design was chosen: both groups attended lessons in the classroom as well as in the laboratory; a month later while one group received written information as a refresher, the other group watched the video. Both groups were evaluated in a blinded fashion. A total of 223 students agreed to take part in the study. The difference observed between those who had seen the video and those who had read up on the technique turned out to be an average of 6.19 points in favour of the first (P < 0.05). The results of the RCT demonstrated that students who had seen the video were better able to apply the technique, resulting in a better performance. The video, therefore, represents an important tool to refresh and reinforce previous learning

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A WIRELESS QUEUING SYSTEM

This study aims to provide a solution to a physical queue in some service departments of Adventist University of the Philippines using a wireless queuing system that is easy to manage, flexible, easy to install and it has low power consumption. &nbsp; The wireless queuing system is divided into hardware and system software. The hardware consists of two section, controller section, and a receiver section. The controller section has four controllers which are responsible for setting and transmitting&nbsp; queue numbers. The receiver section is responsible for receiving the data, data processing, and displaying queue numbers in display monitor. Each counter controller is powered by an Atmega 328P microcontroller, a single radio transceiver that operates at 2.5 GHz&nbsp; frequency,&nbsp; a 32-character&nbsp; liquid crystal display,&nbsp; and a 12-button keypad. While&nbsp; the receiver is powered by a single-board computer Raspberry Pi 2, Atmega 328P microcontroller,&nbsp; single radio transceiver and it is connected to a display that has an HDMI (High-Definition &nbsp; Multimedia Interface) input. The implementation of the system software is classified into four parts: the receiver device configurations,&nbsp; the graphical user interface (GUI), the controller and the receiver. These software divisions complement each other to create a functional queuing system. The wireless queuing system is also capable of posting advertisements to promote ideas, products, and services

Commercial Nucleic-Acid Amplification Tests for Diagnosis of Pulmonary Tuberculosis in Respiratory Specimens: Meta-Analysis and Meta-Regression

BACKGROUND: Hundreds of studies have evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of nucleic-acid amplification tests (NAATs) for tuberculosis (TB). Commercial tests have been shown to give more consistent results than in-house assays. Previous meta-analyses have found high specificity but low and highly variable estimates of sensitivity. However, reasons for variability in study results have not been adequately explored. We performed a meta-analysis on the accuracy of commercial NAATs to diagnose pulmonary TB and meta-regression to identify factors that are associated with higher accuracy. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We identified 2948 citations from searching the literature. We found 402 articles that met our eligibility criteria. In the final analysis, 125 separate studies from 105 articles that reported NAAT results from respiratory specimens were included. The pooled sensitivity was 0.85 (range 0.36-1.00) and the pooled specificity was 0.97 (range 0.54-1.00). However, both measures were significantly heterogeneous (p<.001). We performed subgroup and meta-regression analyses to identify sources of heterogeneity. Even after stratifying by type of commercial test, we could not account for the variability. In the meta-regression, the threshold effect was significant (p = .01) and the use of other respiratory specimens besides sputum was associated with higher accuracy. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The sensitivity and specificity estimates for commercial NAATs in respiratory specimens were highly variable, with sensitivity lower and more inconsistent than specificity. Thus, summary measures of diagnostic accuracy are not clinically meaningful. The use of different cut-off values and the use of specimens other than sputum could explain some of the observed heterogeneity. Based on these observations, commercial NAATs alone cannot be recommended to replace conventional tests for diagnosing pulmonary TB. Improvements in diagnostic accuracy, particularly sensitivity, need to be made in order for this expensive technology to be worthwhile and beneficial in low-resource countries