Development of a measure of barriers to laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB) aftercare attendance

Background: Regular aftercare attendance following laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB) is associated with greater weight loss and fewer post-surgical complications. Despite high reported rates of attrition from LAGB aftercare, the reasons for non-attendance have not been thoroughly explored. The aim of the current study was to describe the scale development, explore the factor structure and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Gastric Banding Aftercare Attendance Questionnaire (GBAAQ)—a tool that measures barriers to aftercare attendance in LAGB patients. Methods: One hundred and eighty-three participants completed the GBAAQ; 107 regular attendees and 76 non-attendees. Results: A factor analysis identified four factors (Treatment Approach, Time Constraints, Stress and Pressures, Uncomfortable Participating) that demonstrated good known-groups validity and internal consistency. Conclusions: Although further validation is needed, the results of the present study provide preliminary support for the validity of the GBAAQ. Knowledge about the barriers to LAGB aftercare attendance can be used to identify those most at risk of non-attendance and can inform strategies aimed at reducing non-attendance

The Health Literacy Environment of a Regional Australian Elective Surgery Access Unit: consumer perspectives from pre-admission to post-discharge

Background: Healthcare services should conscientiously ensure their health literacy environment (HLE) supports wayfinding, and provides comprehensible health information. Despite the increasing focus on the importance of evaluating and enhancing the HLE, consumer perspectives about HLE barriers and enablers have received limited attention in the published literature.  Objective: This study aimed to identify barriers and enablers in the HLE of the Elective Surgery Access Unit (ESAU) at Albury Wodonga Health in regional south-east Australia.  Methods:Three consumers participated in the study. Two of these participants completed a wayfinding interview, verbalizing the barriers and enablers encountered during wayfinding from the nearest carpark to the ESAU. All participants reviewed samples of written materials for ESAU consumers. Two participants, who had been discharged, commented on whether any important information was overlooked, from a post-discharge perspective. The data was categorized into inter-related themes within broader overarching domains.  Results:The helpfulness of the physical environment was one domain, involving three themes: signage, parking, and visual cues. The helpfulness of written information was another domain, involving three themes: comprehensiveness, readability and relevance. A third overlapping domain was: the importance of verbal information-giving. This domain also involved three themes: the importance of a phone number to seek assistance, a clearly identifiable reception area, and in-person communication.  Conclusions: The insights of these three service users can inform health services trying to enhance access for everyone needing healthcare. If more Australian health services reviewed their HLE, the findings could inform organizational improvements towards safer, more efficient, and higher quality healthcare.&nbsp

Evaluating Health Literacy Environments in Australian Health Services

The term ‘health literacy’ refers to the knowledge and skills used by an individual to make decisions about his or her own health. However, the environment in which health decisions are made is increasingly recognised as a critical component of health literacy. The health literacy environment can help to moderate the typical relationship between low individual health literacy and poor health. Becoming a more health literate healthcare organisation may require only meager financial investment for relatively large effectiveness gains. In this article, a review of Australian government health policies identifies three major foci relevant to the health literacy environment: the complexity of health services, the content of health information, and the physical environment. An overarching theme identified in this review is the importance of consumer input in evaluating all aspects of the health literacy environment. Despite major policy imperatives and the ongoing need to ensure health investments are socially equitable and cost-effective, there is little published evidence of Australian healthcare services evaluating their own health literacy environment. This article establishes the importance of evaluating the health literacy of Australian healthcare services and reviews four potentially useful evaluation tools

Making the future a reality: Commitment assurances and time investment in daily life

Relatively little is known about how commitment manifests in couples’ everyday lives in a way that orients couples toward their future together. Building on the Investment Model of Commitment, we propose that, in everyday life, individuals with high levels of commitment are more likely to (a) assure their partners about the future of the relationship and (b) behaviorally invest in that future by spending more time in the partner’s presence. Results from a sample of individuals (N = 100) suggest that relationship commitment is associated with greater time investment in the relationship (i.e., time spent with the partner in daily life); results from a second sample of couple members (N = 269) replicate this effect and suggest that relationship commitment is associated with the use of daily assurances, which mediate the relationship between commitment and time spent co-present with the partner

“I lied a little bit.” A qualitative study exploring the perspectives of elite Australian athletes on self-reported data

Objectives: Explore the perceptions and experiences of elite Australian athletes’ engagement with reporting data in surveillance systems. Design: Qualitative Descriptive. Setting: Semi-structured interviews conducted using Zoom. Participants: We recruited 13 elite Australian athletes competing at a national or international level for semi-structured interviews. Main outcome measures: Audio recordings were transcribed using DeScript, checked for errors and imported into QSR NVIVO. Thematic analysis using QSR NVIVO was used to determine key themes from transcripts. Results: Thematic analysis uncovered four key themes: ‘the paradox of reporting’, ‘data for data\u27s sake’, ‘eyes on reporting’ and ‘athlete friendly reporting’. Conclusion: Athletes perceived reporting as a burden and the athlete management system presented numerous technological difficulties which led to athletes to backfill data entries and compromise data accuracy. Athletes had little knowledge on how their data was used and managed and often received minimal feedback from staff accessing the data. Athletes were unaware of who has access to their data, which is of concern as sensitive information may be collected and athletes may be underage. As a result, many athletes chose to report dishonest data to avoid their performance being questioned

Co-creation of a student-implemented allied health service in a First Nations remote community of East Arnhem Land, Australia

Objectives: To co-create a culturally responsive student-implemented allied health service in a First Nations remote community and to determine the feasibility and acceptability of the service. Design: Co-creation involved a pragmatic iterative process, based on participatory action research approaches. Feasibility and acceptability were determined using a mixed-method pre/postdesign. Setting: The service was in Nhulunbuy, Yirrkala and surrounding remote First Nations communities of East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. Participants: Co-creation of the service was facilitated by the Northern Australia Research Network, guided by Indigenous Allied Health Australia leadership, with East Arnhem local community organisations and community members. Co-creation of the day-to-day service model involved local cultural consultants, service users and their families, staff of community organisations, students, supervisors, placement coordinators and a site administrator. Findings: A reciprocal learning service model was co-created in which culturally responsive practice was embedded. The service was feasible and acceptable: it was delivered as intended; resources were adequate; the service management system was workable; and the service was acceptable. Health outcome measures, however, were not appropriate to demonstrate impact, particularly through the lens of the people of East Arnhem. Recommendations for the service included: continuing the reciprocal learning service model in the long term; expanding to include all age groups; and connecting with visiting and community-based services. Conclusion: The co-created service was feasible and acceptable. To demonstrate the impact of the service, measures of health service impact that are important to First Nations people living in remote communities of northern Australia are required

Improving Evidence-Based Practice education in healthcare courses: A Participatory Action Research multiple-case study

[EN] This paper synthesises the results of three participatory action research (PAR) studies undertaken to improve the integration of evidence-based practice (EBP) education in three undergraduate health courses at one Australian university: Bachelor of Nursing, Bachelor of Occupational Therapy, and Bachelor of Physiotherapy. The PAR process with interested academics uncovered a range of EBP education strengths and weaknesses in the three courses. Common themes were evident, which are likely to be applicable in other similar courses. Identified weaknesses included a lack of explicit teaching about the meaning, principles, steps, and importance of EBP, partly stemming from a lack of shared understanding. A relative lack of emphasis on certain EBP steps was also noted, particularly the first step of ‘asking’ questions. A lack of communication with workplace learning (WPL) supervisors about how to facilitate EBP was also noted, raising concerns about variable EBP-education quality across WPL settings. Opportunities for improvement were identified by academics in each course, across multiple subjects and year levels. In our experience, PAR has been a highly constructive approach to EBP curriculum improvement. We encourage consideration of a PAR approach for addressing similarly complex curriculum challenges.Murphy, K.; Parnell, T.; Pope, R.; Hughes, C.; Biles, J.; Bramble, M.; Oconnor, S.... (2019). Improving Evidence-Based Practice education in healthcare courses: A Participatory Action Research multiple-case study. En HEAD'19. 5th International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 605-6014. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD19.2019.9152OCS605601

The Monash Autism-ADHD genetics and neurodevelopment (MAGNET) project design and methodologies:a dimensional approach to understanding neurobiological and genetic aetiology

Background: ASD and ADHD are prevalent neurodevelopmental disorders that frequently co-occur and have strong evidence for a degree of shared genetic aetiology. Behavioural and neurocognitive heterogeneity in ASD and ADHD has hampered attempts to map the underlying genetics and neurobiology, predict intervention response, and improve diagnostic accuracy. Moving away from categorical conceptualisations of psychopathology to a dimensional approach is anticipated to facilitate discovery of data-driven clusters and enhance our understanding of the neurobiological and genetic aetiology of these conditions. The Monash Autism-ADHD genetics and neurodevelopment (MAGNET) project is one of the first large-scale, family-based studies to take a truly transdiagnostic approach to ASD and ADHD. Using a comprehensive phenotyping protocol capturing dimensional traits central to ASD and ADHD, the MAGNET project aims to identify data-driven clusters across ADHD-ASD spectra using deep phenotyping of symptoms and behaviours; investigate the degree of familiality for different dimensional ASD-ADHD phenotypes and clusters; and map the neurocognitive, brain imaging, and genetic correlates of these data-driven symptom-based clusters. Methods: The MAGNET project will recruit 1,200 families with children who are either typically developing, or who display elevated ASD, ADHD, or ASD-ADHD traits, in addition to affected and unaffected biological siblings of probands, and parents. All children will be comprehensively phenotyped for behavioural symptoms, comorbidities, neurocognitive and neuroimaging traits and genetics. Conclusion: The MAGNET project will be the first large-scale family study to take a transdiagnostic approach to ASD-ADHD, utilising deep phenotyping across behavioural, neurocognitive, brain imaging and genetic measures.</p

Assessing Potato Psyllid Haplotypes in Potato Crops in the Pacific Northwestern United States

The potato psyllid, Bactericera cockerelli (Šulc), is a vector of the bacterium ‘Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum’ (Lso) that has been linked to the economically devastating zebra chip disease of potato. To date, four haplotypes of the potato psyllid have been identified and include Central, Western, Northwestern, and Southwestern haplotypes. Zebra chip was reported in potato crops in the Pacific Northwestern United States for the first time in 2011, and the Lso-infected psyllids collected from zebra chip-affected fields were identified as the Western haplotype. Additional studies have reported a mix of the Western and Northwestern psyllid haplotypes in the Pacific Northwest. The present study further examined psyllid population dynamics over the duration of the 2012 potato season in the Pacific Northwest by haplotype analysis of 864 potato psyllids collected from potato fields in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. In the Yakima Valley of Washington and the lower Columbia Basin of Washington and Oregon, the Northwestern haplotype was predominant (78%), and was detected earlier in the season than the Western haplotype. Interestingly, in south-central Idaho, all four psyllid haplotypes were identified, but the predominant haplotype was the Western haplotype (77%). Here, Northwestern psyllids were detected early in the season from June to mid-August, whereas Central psyllidswere detected in late July and thereafter. These results suggest that haplotype composition of psyllid populations in potato fields throughout the 2012 growing season in south-central Idaho differed greatly from those in Washington and Oregon. Additionally, all psyllids were analyzed for the presence of Lso, and no Lso-positive psyllids were found in Washington and Oregon, whereas Lso-positive psyllids were found in south-central Idaho. These Lso-positive psyllids consisted of the Western, Northwestern, and Central haplotypes

The Lantern, 2019-2020

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