Providing Monthly Health and Wellness Presentations in a Patient Library: Program Development and Brief Assessment

Objectives: To describe the development, implementation, and brief assessment of a lunch time health and wellness series of presentations on a variety of consumer health related topics. The presentations were held in the Community Health Education Center, a patient library located inside a large academic medical center and were open to patients, their families, community members, and academic and health care employees. Methods: We collaborated with marketing to identify topics and potential speakers. Topics included: stress, diabetes, healthy eating, care giving, depression, cancer, and others. Presentations were advertised via mass mail and flyers were posted in the library and relevant hospital waiting areas. Health displays were created for each topic and attendees were provided with a packet of health information. Presentations were conducted over the lunch hour and lunches were provided to facilitate employee and patient attendance. Participant attendance at each program was recorded. Attendees were asked to complete a short paper-based survey at the end of the presentation. Results: There were 39 health and wellness presentations from 2010 to 2014 in the library with a total of 974 attendees. The majority of the attendees were either health care employees (42%) or academic employees (39%); followed by other (8%), students (6%), and patients (5%). The majority of attendees were made aware of our programs through university and hospital mass e-mail (49.9%). Attendees rated the programs highly. On a scale of 1 (very bad) to 5 (very good), 69.6% rated the programs very good; 24.9% rated them good; 4.7% rated them average; 0.17% rated them bad; and 0.67% rated the programs very bad. Attendees responded that they were likely or very likely to attend another library program (99.5%) while only 0.5% responded that they were unlikely to attend another library health and wellness program. Conclusions: The programs were very well attended by academic and hospital employees who reported finding out about the programs through mass e-mail. The programs were rated highly by attendees and the majority of attendees responded they are likely to attend another program. Other methods of publicity need to be explored to reach more hospital patients/family members and community members, but overall the health and wellness programs have been successful

Extending Two-Dimensional Knowledge Management System Theory with Organizational Activity Systems\u27 Workflow Dynamics

Between 2005 and 2010 and across 48 countries, including the United States, an increasing positive correlation emerged between national intellectual capital and gross domestic product per capita. The problem remains organizations operating with increasingly complex knowledge networks often lose intellectual capital resulting from ineffective knowledge management practices. The purpose of this study was to provide management opportunities to reduce intellectual capital loss. The first research question addressed how an enhanced intelligent, complex, and adaptive system (ICAS) model could clarify management\u27s understanding of organizational knowledge transfer. The second research question addressed how interdisciplinary theory could become more meaningfully infused to enhance management practices of the organization\u27s knowledge ecosystem. The nature of this study was phenomenological to gain deeper understanding of individual experiences related to knowledge flow phenomena. Data were collected from a single historical research dataset containing 11 subject interviews and analyzed using Moustakas\u27 heuristic framework. Original interviews were collected in 2012 during research within a military unit, included in this study based on theme alignment. Organizational, knowledge management, emergent systems, and cognition theories were synthesized to enhance understandings of emergent ICAS forces. Individuals create unique ICAS flow emergent force dynamics in relation to micro- and macro-meso sensemaking and sensegiving. Findings indicated individual knowledge work significantly shapes emergent ICAS flow dynamics. Collectively enhancing knowledge stewardship over time could foster positive social change by improving national welfare

Information Needs and Information Sources of Patients Diagnosed with Rare Cancers

Abstract INFORMATION NEEDS AND INFORMATION SOURCES OF PATIENTS DIAGNOSED WITH RARE CANCERS By Dana L. Ladd, Ph.D., MS, SLIS BACKGROUND: Approximately 25% of all cancers diagnosed are considered rare. Patients may face many significant challenges including difficulty obtaining information about their rare conditions. Patients often have high information needs and may seek desired information from a variety of informational sources including healthcare providers, media, print, government and non-profit organizations in order to meet their needs. Accessing reliable consumer-level information can be challenging and often information needs are unmet. Dissatisfaction with health information provision can result in negative health-related outcomes and factors including decreased health-related quality of life. METHOD: This cross-sectional design study used validated measures to assess the information needs, information sources, information satisfaction, and health-related quality of life of patients diagnosed with rare cancers (n=113). Adult patients at the VCU Health Massey Cancer Center who had been diagnosed with a rare cancer in the past 12 months were contacted via mail survey. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize patients’ information need and information received levels. Unmet needs were analyzed using a two-sample T-test. Chi-square tests were used to analyze information needs and received by demographics for gender and race and logistic regression analysis was used for age. Descriptive statistics summarized information sources used and preferred. Finally, descriptive statistics were used to summarize information satisfaction. The relationship between information satisfaction and health-related quality of life was assessed using a two-sample T-test. RESULTS: Study participants had high information needs, particularly for information about disease, medical tests, and treatment. Though patients also reported receiving information at high levels, 21 participants (18.9%) reported being unsatisfied with information provision. Unmet needs were found for information about disease and on the item level for information about causes of cancer, whether their cancer was under control, expected benefits of treatment, and financial, insurance, and work-related information. Although participants reported preferring information from their healthcare providers, they most commonly sought information from the Internet more than any other source. CONCLUSION: By identifying patients’ information needs and sources, this study fills an important gap in the information needs and sources literature of patients diagnosed with rare cancers. Identification of these needs allows healthcare providers to tailor information provision to more effectively meet patients’ information needs

Students as Investigators: Utilizing Active Learning to Engage Genetic Counseling Students

Providing one-shot instruction sessions can be difficult, particularly in the graduate learning environment. As librarians, we want to provide students with the skills to search effectively for health information without overwhelming or confusing them. In health science graduate programs, we are expected to connect literature searching skills with the content of the courses in a manner that is engaging to students. This challenge can be exacerbated when students are new to graduate school and have not yet become familiar with scientific literature searching or the research process. Two medical librarians sought to overcome these challenges by empowering genetic counseling students in a Masters-level introduction to research class to be investigators. In an effort to engage students, the librarians incorporated an active learning session focused on genetic consumer health resources. After a brief overview of the resources, students were divided into groups and each group was assigned a consumer health website to explore and evaluate. To facilitate their exploration, students were given a particular genetic disorder to investigate. Each group reported back what they learned about the website that would be beneficial to them in their future professions as genetic counselors and how they thought patients could benefit from the site. This activity empowered students to engage in searching for reliable health information sites and provided them an opportunity to be peer instructors when they reported what they had learned. Searching for a specific disorder provided a framework and a focus for the exercise and resulted in rich and specific feedback about the different features of each genetic consumer health site. The librarians received excellent feedback from the School of Medicine faculty member who reported supporting more active engagement in future classes. Students also reported that they enjoyed the session and felt engaged in the class

New Dimensions of Staffing Patterns in Nursing Homes and Nursing Home Quality: Comparing Staffing Instability to Staffing Turnover.

OBJECTIVE: This study examines how measures of staffing-turnover and instability-are associated with one another and how they independently contribute to quality of care in nursing homes. DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of 2021-2022 administrative data. Data included the Payroll Based Journal for daily staffing information, merged with Nursing Home Care Compare (NHCC) data for nursing home characteristics, total staffing turnover, and nursing home quality. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: A total of 11,840 nursing homes nationally reporting data on daily staffing and staffing turnover. METHODS: We explored correlations between measures of staffing and estimated facility-level regression models with robust standard errors. The dependent variables were indicators of nursing home quality included in the NHCC 5-star ratings. The independent variables of interest were average total staffing hours per resident-day, total staffing turnover, and total staffing instability. RESULTS: For the 11,840 nursing homes in the study, there was a weak positive correlation between turnover and instability, with some overlap between nursing homes with high instability and high turnover. Regression analysis revealed that staffing instability and turnover contributed independently to nursing home quality, with instability having a stronger association with some measures of quality and turnover with others. Staffing instability was positively and more strongly associated with long-stay residents decline in activities of daily living levels and receipt of antipsychotic drugs and short-stay residents functioning at discharge. Turnover was positively and more strongly associated with long-stay residents prevalence of pressure ulcers and worsening mobility, and short-stay residents hospitalizations. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Instability and turnover in total nursing home staffing independently contribute to nursing home quality. This suggests that adding measures of staffing instability to the existing measures of average staffing and staff turnover in NHCC may enhance the report cards value for providers engaged in quality improvement and consumers searching for high-quality nursing homes

Profiles in Science: John Bennett Fenn

“Don’t ever try to be a scientist or engineer!” Had John Bennett Fenn listened to this advice given by his ninth grade teacher, he might not have gone on to pursue a career in analytical chemistry which would culminate in the attainment of the Nobel Prize in 2002. Gathered from interviews, publication analyses, glowing tributes, and his reminiscences, this paper outlines the academic and professional life of John Fenn from childhood through the end of his career in 2010

Synchronous spawning of nursery-raised elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) outplanted to reefs in the Florida Keys (United States)

Here, we provide the first reports of spawning activity by Acropora palmata colonies outplanted to reefs in Florida, USA. In 2020, we observed light spawning from A. palmata colonies five years after they had been outplanted on two Florida reefs. In 2021 and 2022, we observed outplanted A. palmata colonies spawning synchronously with other nearby (<3 m) outplants and wild colonies more than 100 m away. During the 2022 spawning event, some colonies spawned in as few as four years after they had been outplanted. Among all spawning seasons, gametes collected from the outplanted colonies yielded high fertilization rates and viable larvae. These observations are promising for A. palmata restoration as they indicate fragments of A. palmata can spawn four years after outplanting and that efforts to restore A. palmata may be close to achieving the first step towards self-sustaining populations that can produce viable larvae, resulting in an increase in the population’s genotypic diversity upon successful recruitment to the reef

The National Early Warning Score and its subcomponents recorded within ±24 hours of emergency medical admission are poor predictors of hospital-acquired acute kidney injury

YesBackground: Hospital-acquired Acute Kidney Injury (H-AKI) is a common cause of avoidable morbidity and mortality. Aim: To determine if the patients’ vital signs data as defined by a National Early Warning Score (NEWS), can predict H-AKI following emergency admission to hospital. Methods: Analyses of emergency admissions to York hospital over 24-months with NEWS data. We report the area under the curve (AUC) for logistic regression models that used the index NEWS (model A0), plus age and sex (A1), plus subcomponents of NEWS (A2) and two-way interactions (A3). Likewise for maximum NEWS (models B0,B1,B2,B3). Results: 4.05% (1361/33608) of emergency admissions had H-AKI. Models using the index NEWS had the lower AUCs (0.59 to 0.68) than models using the maximum NEWS AUCs (0.75 to 0.77). The maximum NEWS model (B3) was more sensitivity than the index NEWS model (A0) (67.60% vs 19.84%) but identified twice as many cases as being at risk of H-AKI (9581 vs 4099) at a NEWS of 5. Conclusions: The index NEWS is a poor predictor of H-AKI. The maximum NEWS is a better predictor but seems unfeasible because it is only knowable in retrospect and is associated with a substantial increase in workload albeit with improved sensitivity.The Health Foundatio