Traumatic brain injury patients' family members' evaluations of the social support provided by healthcare professionals in acute care hospitals

Aims and objectives The study aimed to examine traumatic brain injury (TBI) patient family members' (FMs) experiences of the support they received from healthcare professionals in acute care hospitals. Background The length of hospitalisation following TBI is constantly decreasing, and patients may return home with several problems. FMs care for the patients at home although they may not be prepared for the patient's medical needs or financial burden of the illness. The burden which some FMs experience can impair patient care and rehabilitation outcomes. Therefore, FMs require support during acute phases of TBI treatment. Design A structured questionnaire was sent to 216 TBI patients FMs. The response rate was 47% (n = 102). Methods A structured questionnaire-based on a systematic literature review and a previous questionnaire on TBI patient FMs' perceptions of support-was developed and used in the data collection. The questionnaire included 46 statements and 11 background questions. Data were collected via an electronic questionnaire. The STROBE checklist was followed in reporting the study. Results A factor analysis identified five factors that describe the guidance of TBI patient FMs: guidance of TBI patients' symptoms and survival; benefits of guidance; needs-based guidance; guidance for use of services; and guidance methods. Most of the FMs (51%-88%) felt that they had not received enough guidance from healthcare professionals in acute care hospitals across all five aspects of support. Conclusions The content of guidance should be developed, and healthcare staff should be trained to consider a FM's starting point when providing guidance. A calm environment, proper timing, sufficient information in different forms and professional healthcare staff were found to be key factors to comprehensive guidance. Involving FMs in the discharge process and rehabilitation of their loved ones both supports the abilities of caregivers and promotes the outcome of the patient's rehabilitation. Relevance to clinical practice This study provides varied information on the need for social support of TBI patients FMs in the early stages of treatment from the FMs' perspective. This research adopted the FM's perspective to identify various areas of social support that need to be developed so that the FMs of TBI patients receive enough support during the early stages of TBI treatment.Peer reviewe

Attentional coordination in demonstrator-observer dyads facilitates learning and predicts performance in a novel manual task

Observational learning is a form of social learning in which a demonstrator performs a target task in the company of an observer, who may as a consequence learn something about it. In this study, we approach social learning in terms of the dynamics of coordination rather than the more common perspective of transmission of information. We hypothesised that observers must continuously adjust their visual attention relative to the demonstrator's time-evolving behaviour to benefit from it. We eye-tracked observers repeatedly watching videos showing a demonstrator solving one of three manipulative puzzles before attempting at the task. The presence of the demonstrator's face and the availability of his verbal instruction in the videos were manipulated. We then used recurrence quantification analysis to measure the dynamics of coordination between the overt attention of the observers and the demonstrator's manipulative actions. Bayesian hierarchical logistic regression was applied to examine (1) whether the observers' performance was predicted by such indexes of coordination, (2) how performance changed as they accumulated experience, and (3) if the availability of speech and intentional gaze of the demonstrator mediated it. Results showed that learners better able to coordinate their eye movements with the manipulative actions of the demonstrator had an increasingly higher probability of success in solving the task. The availability of speech was beneficial to learning, whereas the presence of the demonstrator's face was not. We argue that focusing on the dynamics of coordination between individuals may greatly improve understanding of the cognitive processes underlying social learning

Detecting nonlinearity in run-up on a natural beach

International audienceNatural geophysical timeseries bear the signature of a number of complex, possibly inseparable, and generally unknown combination of linear, stable non-linear and chaotic processes. Quantifying the relative contribution of, in particular, the non-linear components will allow improved modelling and prediction of natural systems, or at least define some limitations on predictability. However, difficulties arise; for example, in cases where the series are naturally cyclic (e.g. water waves), it is most unclear how this cyclic behaviour impacts on the techniques commonly used to detect the nonlinear behaviour in other fields. Here a non-linear autoregressive forecasting technique which has had success in demonstrating nonlinearity in non-cyclical geophysical timeseries, is applied to a timeseries generated by videoing the waterline on a natural beach (run-up), which has some irregular oscillatory behaviour that is in part induced by the incoming wave field. In such cases, the deterministic shape of each run-up cycle has a strong influence on forecasting results, causing questionable results at small (within a cycle) prediction distances. However, the technique can clearly differentiate between random surrogate series and natural timeseries at larger prediction distances (greater than one cycle). Therefore it was possible to clearly identify nonlinearity in the relationship between observed run-up cycles in that a local autoregressive model was more adept at predicting run-up cycles than a global one. Results suggest that despite forcing from waves impacting on the beach, each run-up cycle evolves somewhat independently, depending on a non-linear interaction with previous run-up cycles. More generally, a key outcome of the study is that oscillatory data provide a similar challenge to differentiating chaotic signals from correlated noise in that the deterministic shape causes an additional source of autocorrelation which in turn influences the predictability at small forecasting distances

Summative assessment of clinical practice of student nurses : a review of the literature

Objectives: To describe assessment of nursing student’s clinical practice concerned nursing education. Design: Systematic review and synthesis of qualitative and quantitative studies. Data sources: The data were collected with the support of an information specialist from scientific databases Cinahl, PubMed, Medic, ISI Web of Science, Cochrane library and Eric published in January 2000 – May 2014. All of the included studies citations were also performed. Methods: 725 articles concerned with nurse student clinical practice assessment were identified. After inclusion and exclusion criteria were met 23 articles for selected for critical review. Two independent reviewers selected the studies according to the inclusion criteria. These articles were analyzed using content analysis. Results: Findings suggest that the assessment process of nursing students’ clinical practice lacks consistency, it is open to the subjective bias of the assessor and the quality of assessment varies greatly. Nursing students clinical assessment was divided into 3 themes: acts (things to do) before final assessment, the actual final assessment situation and the acts after the final assessment situation. Mentors and students need orientation to the assessment process and to the paperwork by teachers. Terminology on evaluation forms is sometimes so difficult to grasp, that the mentors did not understand what they mean. There is no consensus about written assignments’ ability to describe the students’ skills. Mentors have timing problems to ensure relevant assessment of student nurses. At the final interview students normally self assess their performance, the mentor assesses by interview and by written assignments whether the student has achieved the criteria and role of the teacher is to support the mentor and the student in appropriate assessment. The variety of patient treatment environments in which nursing students do their clinical practice periods is challenging also for the assessment of nursing students’ expertise. Mentors alone want that clinical practice is a positive experience and it might lead to higher grades than what nurse student competency earns. It is very rare that students fail their clinical practice, if the student does not achieve the clinical competencies they are allowed to have extra time in clinical areas until they will be assessed as competent. Conclusions: This systematic review provides a description of challenges in nursing students’ assessment in clinical settings. Further research needs to be carried out to have more knowledge of final assessment in the end of the clinical practice. Through further research it will be possible to have better methods for high quality assessment processes and feedback to nurse students. Quality in assessment provides better nurses and therefore better patient safety

Field observations of swash zone infragravity motions and beach cusp evolution

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 110 (2005): C02018, doi:10.1029/2004JC002485.Fluid flows consistent with low-mode edge waves were evident in video observations of swash motions during a field experiment in which beach cusps developed on an initially smooth beach. As beach cusps grew, energy lying along low-mode dispersion curves increased. The most energetic edge-wave propagation direction changed from upcoast to downcoast as the orientation of the cusp horns rotated. These observations suggest a coupling between morphodynamics and hydrodynamics, and are evidence that beach cusp evolution might control low-mode edge wave dynamics.This work was performed while Y. C. was a visiting scientist at NIWA funded by UPC. Y. C. thanks NIWA for its kind hospitality. G. C. is supported by the (New Zealand) Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (contract C01X0401). S. E. was supported by ONR, NSF, and ARO

Utilização da modelagem computacional para avaliar a influência das planícies de maré na hidrodinâmica de regiões estuarinas

Os ambientes costeiros vêm sofrendo um considerável processo de degradação ambiental, gerado pela crescente pressão sobre os recursos naturais marinhos. Uma importante ferramenta utilizada para apoio à tomada de decisões no gerenciamento ambiental de um corpo hídrico é a modelagem computacional das condições hidrodinâmicas do escoamento e da qualidade da água. Um dos fenômenos físicos mais importantes para a hidrodinâmica dos estuários é a maré, que ao se propagar do oceano para regiões estuarinas, sofre distorções que podem ser representadas pelo crescimento não-linear de constituintes harmônicos compostos dos principais constituintes da maré astronômica. As assimetrias nas marés causam diferenças na duração da enchente e da vazante da maré vertical, originando sistemas nos quais as correntes enchentes (ou vazantes) podem dominar sobre a vazante (ou enchentes). Essas características podem ser representadas pelos parâmetros a/h (amplitude da maré/profundidade do canal) e Vs/Vc (volume do armazenamento entre marés/volume do canal no nível médio do mar). Dessa forma, realizou-se neste estudo simulações computacionais, com auxílio do mecanismo de alagamento e secamento em meio poroso do SisBaHiA®, em estuários idealizados com o objetivo de avaliar a influência das planícies de maré na dominância das correntes. Os testes mostraram que estuários sem presença de planícies, nos quais os fenômenos de fricção com o leito sobressaem, tendem a ser dominados pela enchente. Já os estuários com presença de planícies de maré tendem a ser dominado pela vazante. Pôde-se observar, também, que as assimetrias das marés são intensificadas quando as planícies de maré aumentam e quando a maré penetra em direção a cabeça do estuário

Chloridodimeth­yl(thio­semi­carbazide)tin(IV) chloride

In the title salt, [Sn(CH3)2Cl(CH4N3S)]Cl, the SnIV atom is five-coordinated in a distorted trigonal-bipyramidal geometry with two methyl groups and one S atom in the equatorial plane, and one N atom and one Cl atom occupying the apical positions. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by inter­molecular N—H⋯S hydrogen bonds with set graph-motif C(4) along [010]. N—H⋯ Cl hydrogen bonds with graph-set motif D(2) and D 3 3(10) link cations and anions

Redetermination of tetra­kis(N,N-diethyl­dithio­carbamato)tin(IV)

The crystal structure of the title compound, [Sn(C5H10NS2)4], was originally determined by Harreld & Schlemper [Acta Cryst. (1971), B27, 1964–1969] using intensity data estimated from Weissenberg films. In comparison with the previous refinement, the current redetermination reveals anisotropic displacement parameters for all non-H atoms, localization of the H atoms, and higher precision of lattice parameters and inter­atomic distances. The complex features a distorted S6 octa­hedral coordination geometry for tin and a cis disposition of the monodentate dithio­carbamate ligands

A cross-country examination on the fear of covid-19 and the sense of loneliness during the first wave of covid-19 outbreak

The aim of the current study is to examine gender, age. and cross-country differences in fear of COVID-19 and sense of loneliness during the lockdown, by comparing people from those countries with a high rate of infections and deaths (e.g., Spain and Italy) and from countries with a mild spread of infection (e.g., Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina). A total of 3876 participants (63% female) completed an online survey on “Everyday life practices in COVID-19 time” in April 2020, including measures of fear of COVID-19 and loneliness. Males and females of all age groups in countries suffering from the powerful impact of the COVID-19 pandemic reported greater fear of COVID-19 and sense of loneliness. In less endangered countries, females and the elderly reported more symptoms than males and the young; in Spanish and Italian samples, the pattern of differences is considerably more complex. Future research should thoroughly examine different age and gender groups. The analysis of emotional well-being in groups at risk of mental health issues may help to lessen the long term social and economic costs due to the COVID-19 outbreak