Using accreditation of prior experiential learning (apel) to replace a practice placement: A controversial option?

The Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL) is established in higher education, but there are no studies on its use in occupational therapy. Brunel University wanted to investigate whether APEL could enable occupational therapy students meeting certain criteria to be exempt from the first-year practice placement, and so devised an APEL proposal. Practice placement educators and students were invited to give their opinion on the proposal through a questionnaire; additionally, the students attended a nominal group discussion. Three themes emerged from the six practice placement educators who agreed to participate: logistics, student experience and learning opportunities. The three students who participated valued APEL for confirming and recognising learning from previous experience. The low response impedes establishing any definite views on the topic, but could suggest that APEL is not a controversial option to practice placement educators and students. Further study is required on the adoption of APEL in occupational therapy education

Interprofessional learning in practice: The student experience

Interprofessional learning and the development of teamworking skills are recognised as essential for patient care and are also a government priority for undergraduate education. Sixteen occupational therapy students worked on an interprofessional training ward as part of their practice placement and three of them participated in an evaluation using the nominal group technique. Despite this small number, the evaluation identifies the value of this learning experience in giving the students an opportunity to appreciate the importance of interpersonal skills; to learn about other team members’ roles; and to experience the challenges of working on a busy rehabilitation ward for older people

Multidisciplinary perspectives on the role of nurses and health care assistants in the rehabilitation of older adults.

Aim. This paper describes the perceptions of nurses, healthcare assistants, doctors and therapists of rehabilitation and the role of nurses and healthcare assistants on an acute older adults ward in a London teaching hospital. Background. The role perception, education and training and attitudes towards the older adults have been identified as barriers that have an impact upon the nurses’ role within rehabilitation. However, little is known about the role of nurses and healthcare assistants in rehabilitation of older adults in acute health care. Design. Action research study. Method. Twenty-four semi-structured interviews were conducted and audio recorded about healthcare professionals’ understanding of rehabilitation, the type of skills needed and their perceptions of the role of nurses and healthcare assistants in rehabilitation. The interview transcripts were analysed using the thematic content analysis. Results. The findings suggest that the therapists relied on nurses and healthcare assistants for therapy carry-over. Healthcare assistants were perceived as the professional group who could deliver therapy carry-over. There was an evidence of role hierarchy as healthcare assistants perceived that they were not actively involved in decision-making or discharge planning. Conclusion. This paper suggests that healthcare assistants and nurses are viewed as the professional group best placed to deliver therapy carry-over. However, whilst there is an acknowledgement of their role, there remains a reluctance to acknowledge healthcare assistants as a professional group and to involve them within decision-making and discharge planning Relevance to clinical practice. Employers must be seen to advocate, support and implement education and training programs for healthcare assistants. However, whilst nurses and healthcare assistants have an integral role in rehabilitation, there needs to be more research into the how they are supported by therapy professionals

Cyclic peptide oral bioavailability: lessons from the past

Achieving high oral bioavailability for drugs is a key design objective in drug development. It is not surprising then that with the growing expectation of peptides as future drugs, there has also been an increasing interest in developing oral peptide therapeutics. Brought to the fore are questions such as what makes peptides orally bioavailable and how this can be achieved; questions which have inspired research into the area for decades. Early research in the area focused on linear peptides with more recent literature focusing on cyclic peptides, motivated in part by cyclic peptides like cyclosporine A that have demonstrated drug-like oral bioavailability. In this review, we take a look at research on the oral bioavailability of peptides, focusing on factors that affect passive permeability

Synthesis and Magnetic Properties of Cobalt Ferrite (CoFe2O4) Nanoparticles Prepared by Wet Chemical Route

Magnetic nanoparticles of cobalt ferrite have been synthesized by wet chemical method using stable ferric and cobalt salts with oleic acid as the surfactant. X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) confirmed the formation of single phase cobalt ferrite nanoparticles in the range 15-48nm depending on the annealing temperature and time. The size of the particles increases with annealing temperature and time while the coercivity goes through a maximum, peaking at around 28nm. A very large coercivity (10.5kOe) is observed on cooling down to 77K while typical blocking effects are observed below about 260K. The high field moment is observed to be small for smaller particles and approaches the bulk value for large particles.Comment: 18 pages, accepted in JMMM, (May, 2006

Older adults’ experiences of the rehabilitation process in acute health care.

Rehabilitation is a key component of nursing and allied healthcare professionals’ roles in most health and social care settings. This paper reports on stage 2 of an action research project to ascertain older adult’s experience of rehabilitation. Twenty postdischarge interviews were conducted and the interview transcripts were analysed using thematic content analysis. All older adults discharged from an acute older acute rehabilitation ward to their own homes in the community were eligible to participate. The only exclusion criterion was older adults who were thought to be unable to give consent to participate by the nurse in charge and the researcher. Whilst 92 older adults were eligible to participate in this research study, only 20 were interviewed. The findings from this study suggest that older adults valued communication with health professionals but were aware of their time constraints that hindered communication. This study suggests that both nurses and allied health professionals are not actively providing rehabilitative services to promote health and well-being which contradicts the focus of active ageing. Furthermore, there was evidence of unmet needs on discharge, and older adults unable to recall the professions that were involved in their interventions and the rationale for therapy input. It is suggested that further research is needed to explore the effectiveness of allied health rehabilitation in the acute setting. This study highlights the need for further research into older adults’ perceptions of the rehabilitation process in the acute setting

CyBase: a database of cyclic protein sequences and structures, with applications in protein discovery and engineering

CyBase was originally developed as a database for backbone-cyclized proteins, providing search and display capabilities for sequence, structure and function data. Cyclic proteins are interesting because, compared to conventional proteins, they have increased stability and enhanced binding affinity and therefore can potentially be developed as protein drugs. The new CyBase release features a redesigned interface and internal architecture to improve user-interactivity, collates double the amount of data compared to the initial release, and hosts a novel suite of tools that are useful for the visualization, characterization and engineering of cyclic proteins. These tools comprise sequence/structure 2D representations, a summary of grafting and mutation studies of synthetic analogues, a study of N- to C-terminal distances in known protein structures and a structural modelling tool to predict the best linker length to cyclize a protein. These updates are useful because they have the potential to help accelerate the discovery of naturally occurring cyclic proteins and the engineering of cyclic protein drugs. The new release of CyBase is available at http://research1t.imb.uq.edu.au/cybas

Comparison of next-generation portable pollution monitors to measure exposure to PM2.5 from household air pollution in Puno, Peru.

Assessment of personal exposure to PM2.5 is critical for understanding intervention effectiveness and exposure-response relationships in household air pollution studies. In this pilot study, we compared PM2.5 concentrations obtained from two next-generation personal exposure monitors (the Enhanced Children MicroPEM or ECM; and the Ultrasonic Personal Air Sampler or UPAS) to those obtained with a traditional Triplex Cyclone and SKC Air Pump (a gravimetric cyclone/pump sampler). We co-located cyclone/pumps with an ECM and UPAS to obtain 24-hour kitchen concentrations and personal exposure measurements. We measured Spearmen correlations and evaluated agreement using the Bland-Altman method. We obtained 215 filters from 72 ECM and 71 UPAS co-locations. Overall, the ECM and the UPAS had similar correlation (ECM ρ = 0.91 vs UPAS ρ = 0.88) and agreement (ECM mean difference of 121.7 µg/m3 vs UPAS mean difference of 93.9 µg/m3 ) with overlapping confidence intervals when compared against the cyclone/pump. When adjusted for the limit of detection, agreement between the devices and the cyclone/pump was also similar for all samples (ECM mean difference of 68.8 µg/m3 vs UPAS mean difference of 65.4 µg/m3 ) and personal exposure samples (ECM mean difference of -3.8 µg/m3 vs UPAS mean difference of -12.9 µg/m3 ). Both the ECM and UPAS produced comparable measurements when compared against a cyclone/pump setup

Does Colour Filling-In Account for Colour Perception in Natural Images?

It is popular to attribute the appearance of extended colour fields to a process of filling-in from the differential colour signals at colour edges, where one colour transitions to another. We ask whether such a process can account for the appearance of extended colour fields in natural images. Some form of colour filling-in must underlie the equiluminant colour Craik-O’Brien-Cornsweet effect and the Water colour Effect, but these effects are too weak to account for the appearance of extended colour fields in natural images. Moreover, the graded colour disappearance effect reported as evidence for colour filling-in does not work under natural viewing conditions. We demonstrate that natural images do not look very colourful when their colour is restricted to edge transitions . Moreover, purely chromatic images with maximally graded (‘edgeless’) transitions look fully colourful. Consequently, we conclude that colour filling-in makes no more than a minor contribution to the appearance of extended colour regions in natural images