The Upskilling Pathway

This chapter explores the impact of Upskilling Pathways (UP), a developing European programme adopted by the European Council in 2016. UP targets all people over 25 who may be in employment, or unemployed, or economically inactive, but require uplifting in literacy, numeracy and digital skills. This is at a time when 73 million adults have low levels of education and literacy across Europe. UP has no dedicated funding. Therefore, individual countries may define priority target groups for UP depending on national circumstances and must identify sources of match funding. The chapter examines differing responses through case studies from three European Union (EU) member states: the United Kingdom, Italy and Slovakia

Staphylococcal bacteremia in cancer patients: Risk factors and outcome in 134 episodes prior to and after introduction of quinolones into infection prevention in neutropenia

A total of 134 episodes of staphylococcal bacteremia (SBE) appearing among 9987 admissions, and 979 episodes of bacteremia in cancer patients within 5 years, were analyzed for risk factors, clinical course and outcome; 64 were monomicrobial and 70 polymicrobial. The most frequent risk factors were acute leukemia, catheter insertion, long-lasting neutropenia, and prior prophylaxis with quinolones. There was no significant difference between polymicrobial and monomicrobial SBE in risk factors. The two groups differed only in the source of bacteremia (gastrointestinal and respiratory-tract infections were more common in monomicrobial SBE) and etiology - Staphylococcus aureus appeared more frequently in monomicrobial than in polymicrobial bacteremia (20.3% compared to 4.3%, P<0.05). More complications (14.3%) such as abscesses, endocarditis, etc. appeared in the group of polymicrobial SBE (P<0.05). No difference was observed in clinical course and outcome between monomicrobial and polymicrobial SBE. The incidence of SBE has increased since 1991, when quinolones were first used in prophylaxis in afebrile neutropenia at our center; however, the infection-associated mortality in monomicrobial SBE was low (4.3%)