Towards a toolkit for the assessment and monitoring of musculoskeletal ageing

The complexities and heterogeneity of the ageing process have slowed the development of consensus on appropriate biomarkers of healthy ageing. The MRC-Arthritis Research UK Centre for Integrated research into Musculoskeletal Ageing (CIMA) is a collaboration between researchers and clinicians at the Universities of Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle. One of CIMA's objectives is to 'Identify and share optimal techniques and approaches to monitor age-related changes in all musculoskeletal tissues, and to provide an integrated assessment of musculoskeletal function', i.e. to develop a toolkit for assessing musculoskeletal ageing. This toolkit is envisaged as an instrument that can be used to characterise and quantify musculoskeletal function during 'normal' ageing, lend itself to use in large-scale, internationally important cohorts, and provide a set of biomarker outcome measures for epidemiological and intervention studies designed to enhance healthy musculoskeletal ageing. Such potential biomarkers include: biochemical measurements in biofluids or tissue samples, in vivo measurements of body composition, imaging of structural and physical properties, and functional tests. The CIMA Toolkit Working Group assessed candidate biomarkers of musculoskeletal ageing under these four headings, detailed their biological bases, strengths and limitations, and made practical recommendations for their use. In addition, the CIMA Toolkit Working Group identified gaps in the evidence base and suggested priorities for further research on biomarkers of musculoskeletal ageing

A comparison of the nursing competence of graduates and diplomates from UK nursing programmes

This paper reviews the literature on nursing competence measurement and reports the results of a comparative quantitative study of the competencies of Project 2000 diplomates and BA (Hons) Adult Nursing graduates from two UK nursing programmes. The findings reveal that graduates appear to overcome any initial limitations and become more competent than the diplomates in certain areas. Attention to social awareness and participation is necessary in both pre-registration programmes, whilst greater attention could be given to graduates' leadership and management development. Diplomates need support in their professional development if they are to achieve the same level of competence as graduates during the first post-qualifying year. There are implications for the level of support afforded to qualifying nurses in their first staff positions; preceptorship programmes could be an important means of assisting newly qualified staff to gain confidence. More research on nurse competencies with larger samples drawn from programmes across the UK is needed