Nursing teamwork in the care of older people: A mixed methods study

Healthcare is increasingly complex and requires the ability to adapt to changing demands. Teamwork is essential to delivering high quality care and is central to nursing. The aims of this study were to identify the processes that underpin nursing teamwork and how these affect the care of older people, identify the relationship between perceived teamwork and perceived quality of care, and explore in depth the experience of working in nursing teams. The study was carried out in three older people's wards in a London teaching hospital. Nurses and healthcare assistants completed questionnaires (n=65) on known dynamics of teamwork (using the Nursing Teamwork Survey) together with ratings of organisational quality (using an adapted AHRQ HSPS scale). A sample (n=22; 34%) was then interviewed about their perceptions of care, teamwork and how good outcomes are delivered in everyday work. Results showed that many care difficulties were routinely encountered, and confirmed the importance of teamwork (e.g. shared mental models of tasks and team roles and responsibilities, supported by leadership) in adapting to challenges. Perceived quality of teamwork was positively related to perceived quality of care. Work system variability and the external environment influenced teamwork, and confirmed the importance of team adaptive capacity. The CARE model shows the centrality of teamwork in adapting to variable demand and capacity to deliver care processes, and the influence of broader system factors on teamworking

Graphene-based ultrathin flat lenses

Flat lenses when compared to curved surface lenses have the advantages of being aberration free and they offer a compact design necessary for a myriad of electro-optical applications. In this paper we present flat and ultra-thin lenses based on graphene, the world’s thinnest known material. Monolayers and low number multilayers of graphene were fabricated into Fresnel zones to produce Fresnel zone plates which utilize the reflection and transmission properties of graphene for their operation. The working of the lens and their performance in the visible and terahertz regimes was analyzed computationally. Experimental measurements were also performed to characterize the lens in the visible regime and a good agreement was obtained with the simulations. The work demonstrates the principle of atom thick graphene-based lenses, with perspectives for ultra-compact integration.HB would like to thank The Leverhulme Trust for the research funding. QD is supported by Bureau of International Cooperation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (121D11KYSB20130013).This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from ACS at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ph500197j

Influence of angiogenetic factors and matrix metalloproteinases upon tumour progression in non-small-cell lung cancer

We attempted to investigate immunohistochemical expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), platelet-derived growth factor (PD-ECGF), c-erbB-2, matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2), and MMP-9 using surgical specimens of 119 non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) cases and to evaluate the relationship between the expression levels of each molecule and clinicopathological factors or prognosis. VEGF expression levels were significantly associated with the local invasion (P = 0.0001), lymph node involvement (pN-factor) (P = 0.0019), pathological stage (p-stage) (P = 0.0027) and lymphatic permeation (P = 0.0389). PD-ECGF expression levels were associated with pN-factor (P = 0.0347). MMP-2 expression levels were associated with pN-factor (P = 0.004) and lymphatic permeation (P = 0.0056). Also, MMP-9 expression levels showed a significant correlation to local invasion (P = 0.0012), pN-factor (P = 0.0093) and p-stage (P = 0.0142). Multivariate analysis showed VEGF to be the most related to local invasion (P = 0.0084), and MMP-2 was the only factor with significant independent impact on lymphatic permeation (P = 0.0228). Furthermore, log-rank analysis showed significant association with poor survival by VEGF, bFGF, MMP-2 and MMP-9. Especially, combined overexpression of VEGF and MMP-2 revealed poor prognosis, our study might provide a basis for the better evaluation of biological characteristics and a new therapeutic strategy based on chemotherapy. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co

A922 Sequential measurement of 1 hour creatinine clearance (1-CRCL) in critically ill patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)

Meeting abstrac

Non-technical Skills in Healthcare

AbstractNon-technical Skills (NTS) are a set of generic cognitive and social skills, exhibited by individuals and teams, that support technical skills when performing complex tasks. Typical NTS training topics include performance shaping factors, planning and preparation for complex tasks, situation awareness, perception of risk, decision-making, communication, teamwork and leadership. This chapter provides a framework for understanding these skills in theory and practice, how they interact, and how they have been applied in healthcare, as well as avenues for future research

Sports video categorizing method using camera motion parameters

In this paper, we propose a content based video categorizing method focusing broadcasted sports videos using camera motion parameters. We define two new features in the proposed method; "Camera motion extraction ratio " and "Camera motion transition". Camera motion parameters in the video sequence contain very significant information for categorization of broadcasted sports video, because in most of sports video, camera motions are closely related to the actions taken in the sports, which are mostly based on a certain rule depending on types of sports. Based on the characteristics, we design a sports video categorization algorithm for identifying 6 major different sports types. In our algorithm, the features automatically extracted from videos are analyzed in a statistical manner. The experimental results show a clear tendency the applicability of the proposed method for sports genre identification