Manual feeding device experiences of people with a neurodisability

Neurological bilateral upper limb weakness can result in self-feeding difficulties and reliance on carers. Mealtimes become time consuming and frustrating. This exploratory inquiry examined the experiences, of users of a feeding device. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted either by telephone or administered via email to explore quality of life, changes to independence, benefits/limitations, and psychological impact of the equipment. Findings: Thematic analysis gave rise to five themes: Independence, emotions, impact on life, motivation and limitations. Conclusion: This exploratory inquiry has contributed new qualitative evidence to the knowledge and understanding of users' experiences of a manual feeding device. Users report that the need for assistance/support is reduced and their quality of life, independence and freedom improved. Time and resources savings for the family, carers and staff appear to result in a more equal relationship between user and carer

Benchmarking first year assessment and standards across three institutions in the first year of a law program

For academics working in regional universities the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues on developing assessment tasks, setting criteria and marking guidelines can be limited. This in turn leads to questions about how we ensure that the learning outcomes and standards we are expecting and imposing on our students are appropriate. In particular how do we ensure that our students who come from such diverse backgrounds are performing at the same level as other law students and that the quality of their learning is equal to that of other institutions? With renewed emphasis on transparent standards and quality assurance, through both TEQSA and the development of Threshold Learning Outcomes in Law, a team of academics from three regional universities decided to try to find the answers to these questions. Determining that carefully designed assessment provides an effective measure of the standard of learning outcomes, the team embarked on a project to compare, cross-mark, benchmark and moderate assessment across the first year of law at the three universities

Lower cognitive baseline scores predict cognitive training success after 6 months in healthy older adults: Results of an online RCT

Background: Identifying predictors for general cognitive training (GCT) success in healthy older adults has many potential uses, including aiding intervention and improving individual dementia risk prediction, which are of high importance in health care. However, the factors that predict training improvements and the temporal course of predictors (eg, do the same prognostic factors predict training success after a short training period, such as 6 weeks, as well as after a longer training period, such as 6 months?) are largely unknown. Methods: Data (N = 4,184 healthy older individuals) from two arms (GCT vs. control) of a three-arm randomized controlled trial were reanalyzed to investigate predictors of GCT success in five cognitive tasks (grammatical reasoning, spatial working memory, digit vigilance, paired association learning, and verbal learning) at three time points (after 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months of training). Possible investigated predictors were sociodemographic variables, depressive symptoms, number of training sessions, cognitive baseline values, and all interaction terms (group*predictor). Results: Being female was predictive for improvement in grammatical reasoning at 6 weeks in the GCT group, and lower cognitive baseline scores were predictive for improvement in spatial working memory and verbal learning at 6 months. Conclusion: Our data indicate that predictors seem to change over time; remarkably, lower baseline performance at study entry is only a significant predictor at 6 months training. Possible reasons for these results are discussed in relation to the compensation hypothesis. J Am Geriatr Soc 68:-, 2020.This article is freely available via Open Access. Click on the Publisher URL to access it via the publisher's site.Alzheimer's Society UKpublished version, accepted version (12 month embargo), submitted versio

Neonatal ten-year retrospective study on neural tube defects in a second level University Hospital

Aim of this retrospective study was to describe clinical characteristics, diagnostic work-up, management and follow-up of newborns with neural tube defects (NTDs), admitted to the Mother and Child Department of the University Hospital of Palermo, in a ten years period