Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative’s Benefits, Effectiveness, and Relevance to Internship at a Women’s Hospital

Background: This review was conducted to analyze the benefits and effectiveness of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative and compare it to my internship at a Baby-Friendly designated women’s hospital. Purpose: The purpose of this review was to compile and compare existing research on Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative to determine its benefits, effectiveness, and relevance to my internship. Method: Two databases, CINAHL Complete and MEDLINE, were used to find a total of 18 peer-reviewed journal articles on Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative benefits and effectiveness. Key words consisted of “baby friendly,” “hospital,” and “benefits or advantages.” Results: The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative has been found to increase initiation of breastfeeding; however, it has not been proven to increase duration of breastfeeding enough to get to the United States Healthy People 2030 goal of exclusive breastfeeding of 42.4% of infants through six months of life. Conclusion: The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative practices that have been analyzed were seen in my internship with a women’s hospital. I was able to witness a lot of these benefits firsthand and see many of the challenges that go along with Baby-Friendly practices

Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative’s Benefits, Effectiveness, and Relevance to Internship at a Women’s Hospital

Background: This review was conducted to analyze the benefits and effectiveness of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative and compare it to my internship at a Baby-Friendly designated women’s hospital. Purpose: The purpose of this review was to compile and compare existing research on Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative to determine its benefits, effectiveness, and relevance to my internship. Method: Two databases, CINAHL Complete and MEDLINE, were used to find a total of 18 peer-reviewed journal articles on Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative benefits and effectiveness. Key words consisted of “baby friendly,” “hospital,” and “benefits or advantages.” Results: The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative has been found to increase initiation of breastfeeding; however, it has not been proven to increase duration of breastfeeding enough to get to the United States Healthy People 2030 goal of exclusive breastfeeding of 42.4% of infants through six months of life. Conclusion: The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative practices that have been analyzed were seen in my internship with a women’s hospital. I was able to witness a lot of these benefits firsthand and see many of the challenges that go along with Baby-Friendly practices

Proper orthogonal decomposition: New approximation theory and a new computational approach

“Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) projection errors and error bounds for POD reduced order models of partial differential equations have been studied by many. In this research we obtain new results regarding POD data approximation theory and present a new difference quotient (DQ) approach for computing the POD modes of the data. First, we improve on earlier results concerning POD projection errors by extending to a more general framework that allows for non-orthogonal POD projections and seminorms. We obtain new exact error formulas and convergence results for POD data approximation errors, and also prove new pointwise convergence results and error bounds for POD projections. We consider both the discrete and continuous cases of POD within this generalized framework. We also apply our results to several example problems, and show how the new results improve on previous work. Next, we consider the relationship between POD, difference quotients (DQs), and pointwise ROM error bounds. It is known that including DQs is necessary in order to prove optimal pointwise in time error bounds for POD reduced order models of the heat equation. We introduce a new approach to including DQs in the POD procedure to further investigate the role DQs play in POD numerical analysis. Instead of computing the POD modes using all of the snapshot data and DQs, we only use the first snapshot along with all of the DQs and special POD weights. We show that this approach retains all of the numerical analysis benefits of the standard POD DQ approach, while using a POD data set that has half the number of snapshots as the standard POD DQ approach, i.e., the new approach is more computationally efficient. We illustrate our theoretical results with numerical experiments”--Abstract, page iv

An Ergonomic Assessment of Healthcare Rehabilitation Workers

Patient handling is a common task within the healthcare industry. Rehabilitation Therapists (RTs) and Rehabilitation Therapist Assistants (RTAs) report a significantly high incidence rate of low-back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). The purpose of this study was to characterize the ergonomic risks associated with patient transfers and assisted gait therapy. Exposure to ergonomic risk factors were assessed using the Strain Index (SI), Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA), and 3-Dimensional Static Strength Prediction Program (3DSSPP). Subjects included three RTs and one RTA at a local assisted living and rehabilitation healthcare facility. Preliminary results indicate a high risk of developing MSDs within the lower back and shoulders for both tasks. Further investigation of engineering and administrative control measures to mitigate the development of MSDs associated with patient handling activities is discussed

Quantitation of Gait and Stance Alterations Due to Monosodium Iodoacetate–induced Knee Osteoarthritis in Yucatan Swine

Knee osteoarthritis is one of the most common causes of chronic pain worldwide, and several animal models have been developed to investigate disease mechanisms and treatments to combat associated morbidities. Here we describe a novel method for assessment of locomotor pain behavior in Yucatan swine. We used monosodium iodoacetate (MIA) to induce osteoarthritis in the hindlimb knee, and then conducted live observation, quantitative gait analysis, and quantitative weight-bearing stance analysis. We used these methods to test the hypothesis that locomotor pain behaviors after osteoarthritis induction would be detected by multiparameter quantitation for at least 12 wk in a novel large animal model of osteoarthritis. MIA-induced knee osteoarthritis produced lameness quantifiable by all measurement techniques, with onset at 2 to 4 wk and persistence until the conclusion of the study at 12 wk. Both live observation and gait analysis of kinetic parameters identified mild and moderate osteoarthritis phenotypes corresponding to a binary dose relationship. Quantitative stance analysis demonstrated the greatest sensitivity, discriminating between mild osteoarthritis states induced by 1.2 and 4.0 mg MIA, with stability of expression for as long as 12 wk. The multiparameter quantitation used in our study allowed rejection of the null hypothesis. This large animal model of quantitative locomotor pain resulting from MIA-induced osteoarthritis may support the assessment of new analgesic strategies for human knee osteoarthritis

Assessing the clinical and cost-effectiveness of inpatient mental health rehabilitation services provided by the NHS and independent sector (ACER): protocol

Background: Mental health rehabilitation services provide specialist treatment to people with particularly severe and complex problems. In 2018, the Care Quality Commission reported that over half the 4,400 mental health inpatient rehabilitation beds in England were provided by the independent sector. They raised concerns that the length of stay and cost of independent sector care was double that of the NHS and that their services tended to be provided much further from people’s homes. However, there has been no research comparing the two sectors and we therefore do not know if these concerns are justified. The ACER Study (Assessing the Clinical and cost-Effectiveness of inpatient mental health Rehabilitation services provided by the NHS and independent sector) is a national programme of research in England, funded from 2021 to 2026, that aims to investigate differences in inpatient mental health rehabilitation provided by the NHS and independent sector in terms of: patient characteristics; service quality; patient, carer and staff experiences; clinical and cost effectiveness. Methods: ACER comprises a:1) detailed survey of NHS and independent sector inpatient mental health rehabilitation services across England; 2) qualitative investigation of patient, family, staff and commissioners’ experiences of the two sectors; 3) cohort study comparing clinical outcomes in the two sectors over 18 months; 4) comprehensive national comparison of inpatient service use in the two sectors, using instrumental variable analysis of routinely collected healthcare data over 18 months; 5) health economic evaluation of the relative cost-effectiveness of the two sectors. In Components 3 and 4, our primary outcome is ‘successful rehabilitation’ defined as a) being discharged from the inpatient rehabilitation unit without readmission and b) inpatient service use over the 18 months. Discussion: The ACER study will deliver the first empirical comparison of the clinical and cost-effectiveness of NHS and independent sector inpatient mental health rehabilitation services. Trial registration: ISRCTN17381762 retrospectively registered

Novel venom gene discovery in the platypus

Background: To date, few peptides in the complex mixture of platypus venom have been identified and sequenced, in part due to the limited amounts of platypus venom available to study. We have constructed and sequenced a cDNA library from an active platypus venom gland to identify the remaining components.Results: We identified 83 novel putative platypus venom genes from 13 toxin families, which are homologous to known toxins from a wide range of vertebrates (fish, reptiles, insectivores) and invertebrates (spiders, sea anemones, starfish). A number of these are expressed in tissues other than the venom gland, and at least three of these families (those with homology to toxins from distant invertebrates) may play non-toxin roles. Thus, further functional testing is required to confirm venom activity. However, the presence of similar putative toxins in such widely divergent species provides further evidence for the hypothesis that there are certain protein families that are selected preferentially during evolution to become venom peptides. We have also used homology with known proteins to speculate on the contributions of each venom component to the symptoms of platypus envenomation.Conclusions: This study represents a step towards fully characterizing the first mammal venom transcriptome. We have found similarities between putative platypus toxins and those of a number of unrelated species, providing insight into the evolution of mammalian venom

Validating MOSPA questionnaire for measuring physical activity in Pakistani women

BACKGROUND: Precise measurements of activity at a population level are important for monitoring trends and evaluating health promotion strategies. Few studies have assessed the measurement of physical activity in developing countries. The aim of this study was to validate the MOSPA (Monica Optional Study of Physical Activity) questionnaire which was developed for the WHO-Monitoring trends and determinants of cardiovasculr disease (MONICA) study sites. METHODS: The MOSPA questionnaire assesses energy expendtiture (EE) related to physical activity (employment, household work, transportation, and leisure time) over a one year period. This questionnaire has been described in the manuscript as the long term (LT) questionnaire. An adapted short term (ST) 5 day questionnaire was developed to assess convergent validity. Questionnaire data were compared with physical activity EE estimates from a Caltrac accelerometer and with body composition measures (height, weight and bioelectrical impedance) in 50 women from the Aga Khan University (AKU) hospital antenatal clinics, Pakistan. Other forms of EE i.e. resting EE and thermic effect of food were not assessd in this study. RESULTS: Subjects were aged 26 ± 3.8 years and were 16.1 ± 6.7 weeks pregnant. Their average weight was 58.8 ± 10.7 Kg. The average EE/day assessed by the Caltrac accelerometer, was 224 kcal and by MOSPA LT questionnaire it was 404 kcal. The questionnaires and Caltrac data were reasonably well correlated: r = 0.51 and r = 0.60 (P < 0.01) for LT and ST questionnaires respectively. Energy expenditure from questionnaire data was not correlated with body composition measures. CONCLUSION: The MOSPA questionnaire is useful in assessing physical activity levels in a sedentary population over a one year period