An Educational Intervention to Train Professional Nurses in Promoting Patient Engagement: A Pilot Feasibility Study

Introduction: Growing evidence recognizes that patients who are motivated to take an active role in their care can experience a range of health benefits and reduced healthcare costs. Nurses play a critical role in the effort to make patients fully engaged in their disease management. Trainings devoted to increase nurses' skills and knowledge to assess and promote patient engagement are today a medical education priority. To address this goal, we developed a program of nurse education training in patient engagement strategies (NET-PES). This paper presents pilot feasibility study and preliminary participants outcomes for NET-PES. Methods: This is a pilot feasibility study of a 2-session program on patient engagement designed to improve professional nurses' ability to engage chronic patients in their medical journey; the training mainly focused on passing patient engagement assessment skills to clinicians as a crucial mean to improve care experience. A pre-post pilot evaluation of NET-PES included 46 nurses working with chronic conditions. A course specific competence test has been developed and validated to measure patient engagement skills. The design included self-report questionnaire completed before and after the training for evaluation purposes. Participants met in a large group for didactic presentations and then they were split into small groups in which they used role-play and case discussion to reflect upon the value of patient engagement measurement in relation to difficult cases from own practice. Results: Forty-six nurses participated in the training program. The satisfaction questionnaire showed that the program met the educational objectives and was considered to be useful and relevant by the participants. Results demonstrated changes on clinicians' attitudes and skills in promoting engagement. Moreover, practitioners demonstrated increases on confidence regarding their ability to support their patients' engagement in the care process. Conclusions: Learning programs teaching nurses about patient engagement strategies and assessment measures in clinical practice are key in supporting the realization of patient engagement in healthcare. Training nurses in this area is feasible and accepted and might have an impact on their ability to engage patients in the chronic care journey. Due to the limitation of the research design, further research is needed to assess the effectiveness of such a program and to verify if the benefits envisaged in this pilot are maintained on a long-term perspective and to test results by employing a randomized control study design

Visualización de documentos: un ambiente para la visualización de noticias

La disciplina de visualización de información ha ganado la atención de muchos expertos e investigadores en los últimos años. Esta disciplina comprende la exploración de vastos y complejos espacios de información, por lo tanto, proveer de ayudas de orientación intuitivas y técnicas de navegación es esencial para permitir la exploración y el reconocimiento de tendencias y relaciones ocultas en los datos. En este trabajo presentamos un ambiente de visualización para noticias de los medios gráficos. El objetivo que perseguimos durante el desarrollo fue la creación de un ambiente amigable y potente. Amigable en el sentido cuya operación sea intuitiva y no demande al usuario más que un mínimo de aprendizaje. Potente en el sentido de ofrecerle al usuario la posibilidad de explorar las noticias por medio de distintas visualizaciones, sin que por ello se pierda la coherencia entre un salto de vista a otro. La herramienta permitirá explorar las noticias por fecha, sección y por temática, así como también brindar la posibilidad de interacción con el fin de lograr una mayor comprensión y capacidad de análisis del conjunto seleccionado de datos.Eje: Computación gráfica, Imágenes y Visualización (CGI)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Visualización de documentos: un ambiente para la visualización de noticias

La disciplina de visualización de información ha ganado la atención de muchos expertos e investigadores en los últimos años. Esta disciplina comprende la exploración de vastos y complejos espacios de información, por lo tanto, proveer de ayudas de orientación intuitivas y técnicas de navegación es esencial para permitir la exploración y el reconocimiento de tendencias y relaciones ocultas en los datos. En este trabajo presentamos un ambiente de visualización para noticias de los medios gráficos. El objetivo que perseguimos durante el desarrollo fue la creación de un ambiente amigable y potente. Amigable en el sentido cuya operación sea intuitiva y no demande al usuario más que un mínimo de aprendizaje. Potente en el sentido de ofrecerle al usuario la posibilidad de explorar las noticias por medio de distintas visualizaciones, sin que por ello se pierda la coherencia entre un salto de vista a otro. La herramienta permitirá explorar las noticias por fecha, sección y por temática, así como también brindar la posibilidad de interacción con el fin de lograr una mayor comprensión y capacidad de análisis del conjunto seleccionado de datos.Eje: Computación gráfica, Imágenes y Visualización (CGI)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

The ASAMET trial: a randomized, phase II, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter, 2 × 2 factorial biomarker study of tertiary prevention with low-dose aspirin and metformin in stage I-III colorectal cancer patients

Background: Epidemiological studies and cardiovascular prevention trials have shown that low-dose aspirin can reduce colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence and mortality, including inhibition of distant metastases. Metformin has also been associated with decreased colon adenoma recurrence in clinical trials and lower CRC incidence and mortality in epidemiological studies in diabetics. While both drugs have been tested as single agents, their combination has not been tested in cancer prevention trials. Methods/design: This is a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, 2 × 2 biomarker trial of aspirin and metformin to test the activity of either agent alone and the potential synergism of their combination on a set of surrogate biomarkers of colorectal carcinogenesis. After surgery, 160 patients with stage I-III CRC are randomly assigned in a four-arm trial to either aspirin (100 mg day), metformin (850 mg bis in die), their combination, or placebo for one year. The primary endpoint biomarker is the change of IHC expression of nuclear factor kappa-B (NFκB) in the unaffected mucosa of proximal and distal colon obtained by multiple biopsies in two paired colonoscopies one year apart. Additional biomarkers will include: 1) the measurement of circulating IL-6, CRP and VEGF; 2) the IHC expression of tissue pS6K, p53, beta-catenin, PI3K; 3) the associations of genetic markers with treatment response as assessed by next generation sequencing of primary tumors; 4) the genomic profile of candidate genes, pathways, and overall genomic patterns in tissue biopsies by genome wide gene expression arrays; and 5) the evaluation of adenoma occurrence at 1 year. Discussion: A favorable biomarker modulation by aspirin and metformin may provide important clues for a subsequent phase III adjuvant trial aimed at preventing second primary cancer, delaying recurrence and improving prognosis in patients with CRC. Trial registration: EudraCT Number: 2015–004824-77; ClinicalTrial.gov Identifier: NCT03047837. Registered on February 1, 2017