Evaluation of the burdens and benefits of participation in research by parents of children with life-limiting illnesses

BACKGROUND: Research is needed to improve care and diminish suffering for children with life-limiting illnesses and their parents. However, there are doubts about whether it is possible to conduct paediatric end of life research safely and ethically, as it may unduly burden or inadvertently harm participants. AIM: To compare and evaluate responses from participants to the assessments of burdens and benefits that were conducted at two timepoints during a phenomenological study that investigated parents' experiences of having a child with life-limiting cancer participate in a Phase I clinical trial. DISCUSSION: Parents reported that participating in the study was beneficial and resulted in minimal burden or distress. The assessment of benefits and burdens at the first timepoint appeared sufficient to understand participants' experiences. CONCLUSION: This study adds to the evidence that research may be safely and effectively conducted with parents of children who are deceased or have life-limiting illnesses. Further research is needed to evaluate the most effective timing of assessments of the burdens and benefits of their participation in research. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: It is important when conducting research with people with life-limiting illnesses or their family members to assess the burdens and benefits of their participation, to understand their experiences and assist in its conduct

Thermal garment

An anthropomorphic thermal garment made entirely of fluid-carrying tubing, joined in such a way that the tubes form a network or mesh fabric, is described

Crossing Organizational Boundaries in Palliative Care: The Promise and Reality of Community Partnerships

This report presents the first of a series of findings from the Community-Oriented Palliative Care Initiative (COPCI), an innovative program testing new approaches to caring for individuals with progressive, life threatening illness. Developed and supported by the United Hospital Fund, the project was designed to initiate collaborations among health care and social service organizations, with the goal of reaching seriously ill individuals and their caregivers earlier in the course of illness and providing a broad range of coordinated services. Six such networks of diverse partners received a total of $2.1 million in grants over the two-year period from mid-2000 into 2002.The urgency to provide alternatives to current standard practice is underscored by the number of individuals affected: in New York City alone, in the year 2000, some 46,000 people died of diseases typically marked by a lengthy course from diagnosis to death. While many could have benefited from appropriate and timely palliative care services, most did not receive them.The Fund reasoned that networks including not only hospitals and hospices but also social services agencies and other community resources could collectively respond, earlier and more fully, to the complex combination of medical, social, psychological, and spiritual needs that typify the months and years leading to death. Local expertise and resources should determine the structure of each network, the partners involved, and the specific model for service delivery. Drawing on the experiences of the six pioneering projects, this report focuses on the challenges of creating such new networks

A generalized approach to computer synthesis of digital holograms

Hologram is constructed by taking number of digitized sample points and blending them together to form ''continuous'' picture. New system selects better set of sample points resulting in improved hologram from same amount of information

Delaying dispreferred responses in English: From a Japanese perspective

This article employs conversation analysis to explore the interpenetration of grammar and preference organization in English conversation in comparison with a previous study for Japanese. Whereas varying the word order of major syntactic elements is a vital grammatical resource in Japanese for accomplishing the potentially universal task of delaying dispreferred responses to a range of first actions, it is found to have limited utility in English. A search for alternative operations and devices that conversationalists deploy for this objective in English points to several grammatical constructions that can be tailored to maximize the delay of dispreferred responses. These include the fronting of relatively mobile, syntactically ?non-obligatory? elements of clause structure and the employment of various copular constructions. A close interdependence is observed between the rudimentary grammatical resources available in the two languages and the types of operations that are respectively enlisted for the implementation of the organization of preference

Facebook used as an active marketing channel to expand customer base at a restaurant

The selected restaurant provides Cantonese style Chinese food. However, there has been a significant decrease in customers after opening day. The owner spent on newspaper promotion before opening day. The reality is that only a few people came. Therefore, the owner is looking for advice on the way of increasing his customer base and awareness. The project aims to demonstrate the value of using Facebook as a marketing channel to help a new Chinese restaurant promote itself to the public to increase profit and its customer base. The project gathered a total of 93 questionnaires and one interview by using mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative), followed by a theoretical review to show the owner that Facebook is the most effective channel to increase customer base and awareness. The results show that more than 95% of participants have social media and almost 92% of them have Facebook. 80% of participants agree that the restaurant should have a Facebook account so they can receive promotion and news. In conclusion, Facebook is the most effective and efficient channel to help the business get more attention from the public under the situation