Activity

In recent years, South Korea has become more concerned about a dignified death and the ‘well-dying’ law has been enacted. Oncology nurses’ perceptions of death are crucial in maintaining dying patients’ sense of dignity; fostering their physical, mental, and spiritual quality of life; and ensuring that they die a comfortable death. This study accordingly examined the relationships between attitudes towards a dignified death, compassion competence, resilience, and occupational stress to provide basic data to promote better attitudes towards death among oncology nurses in South Korea.

This study, conducted between 2 to 31 January 2018, adopted a descriptive cross-sectional design. Oncology nurses (N = 329) participated, and the differences in their attitudes towards a dignified death correlating to their demographic and work-related characteristics were analysed using t-tests and analyses of variance. Pearson’s correlations were used to examine the relationships between nurses’ attitudes towards a dignified death, compassion competence, resilience, and occupational stress.

Participants’ attitudes towards a dignified death were weaker than those of the general population but stronger than those of non-oncology nurses. Attitudes towards a dignified death were significantly correlated with compassion competence and resilience-traits that appear to enable nurses’ efficient response to various stressful situations.

Educational programmes should promote nurses’ compassion competence and resilience. Nurses should receive death-related education to reduce the stress that arises from providing end-of-life care and enhance their attitudes towards a dignified death.

Educational programmes should promote nurses’ compassion competence and resilience. 5-Chloro-2′-deoxyuridine cost Nurses should receive death-related education to reduce the stress that arises from providing end-of-life care and enhance their attitudes towards a dignified death.The biophysical properties of cells reflect their identities, underpin their homeostatic state in health, and define the pathogenesis of disease. Recent leapfrogging advances in biophysical cytometry now give access to this information, which is obscured in molecular assays, with a discriminative power that was once inconceivable. However, biophysical cytometry should go ‘deeper’ in terms of exploiting the information-rich cellular biophysical content, generating a molecular knowledge base of cellular biophysical properties, and standardizing the protocols for wider dissemination. Overcoming these barriers, which requires concurrent innovations in microfluidics, optical imaging, and computer vision, could unleash the enormous potential of biophysical cytometry not only for gaining a new mechanistic understanding of biological systems but also for identifying new cost-effective biomarkers of disease.Chromatography is widely applied industrially. However, some limitations are associated with its common supports, and the impossibility to fully control their structural features is particularly restrictive. Additive manufacturing (AM) is emerging as a fast, highly precise, and reproducible technology for producing chromatographic supports that can improve its performance.

There is an urgent need to empower practitioners to undertake quality improvement (QI) projects in burn services in low-middle income countries (LMICs). We piloted a course aimed to equip nurses working in these environments with the knowledge and skills to undertake such projects.

Eight nurses from five burns services across Malawi and Ethiopia took part in this pilot course, which was evaluated using a range of methods, including interviews and focus group discussions.

Course evaluations reported that interactive activities were successful in supporting participants to devise QI projects. Appropriate online platforms were integral to creating a community of practice and maintaining engagement. Facilitators to a successful QI project were active individuals, supportive leadership, collaboration, effective knowledge sharing and demonstrable advantages of any proposed change. Barriers included staff attitudes, poor leadership, negative culture towards training, resource limitations, staff rotation and poor access to information to guide practice.

The course demonstrated that by bringing nurses together, through interactive teaching and online forums, a supportive community of practice can be created. Future work will include investigating ways to scale up access to the course so staff can be supported to initiate and lead quality improvement in LMIC burn services.

The course demonstrated that by bringing nurses together, through interactive teaching and online forums, a supportive community of practice can be created. Future work will include investigating ways to scale up access to the course so staff can be supported to initiate and lead quality improvement in LMIC burn services.

Many vocal enhancement and rehabilitation programs for voice professionals define vocal exercises without analyzing their effects on that specific population in which they will be applied, in the established dose and often without considering the presence and absence of vocal alteration. Journalists have sought the voice clinic due to new professional vocal demands and a vocal program is being elaborated.

To determine the immediate effect of humming in professionals with and without voice disorders who work under high vocal demand in a journalistic context.

Thirty-six individuals who completed the Dysphonia Risk Screening Protocol and underwent voice recording participated in the study. Three speech therapists defined the presence and/or absence of vocal changes by consensus. Subsequently, five repetitions of humming were proposed; the exercises lasted five seconds each and were separated by five seconds of complete silence, and recordings were made before and after the exercise (vowel and phrase). For s working in a journalistic context, and the changes were particularly evident in aspects of the voice that were initially altered.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is progressive and irreversible. Some discrepancies about IPF staging exists, especially in mild phases. Forced vital capacity (FVC) higher than 80% has been considered early or mild IPF even for the design of clinical trials.

Spanish multicentre, observational, retrospective study of IPF patients diagnosed between 2012 and 2016, based on the ATS/ERS criteria, which presented FVC greater or equal 80% at diagnosis. Clinical and demographic characteristics, lung function, radiological pattern, treatment, and follow-up were analyzed.

225 IPF patients were included, 72.9% were men. The mean age was 69.5 years. The predominant high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) pattern was consistent usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP) (51.6%). 84.7% of patients presented respiratory symptoms (exertional dyspnea and/or cough) and 33.33% showed oxygen desaturation below 90% in the 6min walking test (6MWT). Anti-fibrotic treatment was initiated at diagnosis in 55.11% of patients. Median FVC was 89.