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Aim. This paper is a review of the effectiveness of non-surgical, non-pharmaceutical interventions designed to promote weight loss in people with a learning disability and how qualitative evidence on people's experiences and motivations can help understanding of the quantitative research outcomes. Background. The health risks of obesity underline the importance of effective evidence-based weight loss interventions for people with learning disabilities as they are at increased risk of being overweight. Data sources. Papers published from 1998 to 2009 were identified through searches of the Cumulative Index for Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Proquest, Medline (PubMed), PSYCHINFO databases, and the Cochrane Library. Review methods. An integrative review method was used. Studies included were non-surgical or non-pharmaceutical interventions aimed at weight reduction for people with a learning disability. Synthesis of the findings related to study design, participants, types of interventions, outcome measures and participant perspectives. Results. Twelve studies met the inclusion criteria. The most common research design was quasi-experimental pretest and post-test. Few researchers used a clinical trial approach, and there was only one predominantly qualitative study. Interventions were mainly focused on energy intake, energy expenditure or health promotion. Only a few studies incorporated behaviour modification approaches. Conclusion. Nurses who work with clients with learning disabilities have a key role to play in the management of obesity. Future research needs to focus on qualitative studies of the perceptions of clients and their families, controlled trials investigating the effectiveness of interventions and their costs and sustainability, and longitudinal studies examining weight loss over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims This study aimed to compare the findings of the quality of nursing doctoral education survey across seven countries and discuss the strategic directions for improving quality. Background No comparative evaluation of global quality of nursing doctoral education has been reported to date despite the rapid increase in the number of nursing doctoral programmes. Design A descriptive, cross-country, comparative design was employed. Methods Data were collected from 2007-2010 from nursing schools in seven countries: Australia, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Thailand, UK and USA. An online questionnaire was used to evaluate quality of nursing doctoral education except for Japan, where a paper version was used. Korea and South Africa used e-mails quality of nursing doctoral education was evaluated using four domains: Programme, Faculty (referring to academic staff), Resource and Evaluation. Descriptive statistics, correlational and ordinal logistic regression were employed. Results A total of 105 deans/schools, 414 faculty and 1149 students/graduates participated. The perceptions of faculty and students/graduates about the quality of nursing doctoral education across the seven countries were mostly favourable on all four domains. The faculty domain score had the largest estimated coefficient for relative importance. As the overall quality level of doctoral education rose from fair to good, the resource domain showed an increased effect. Conclusions Both faculty and students/graduates groups rated the overall quality of nursing doctoral education favourably. The faculty domain had the greatest importance for quality, followed by the programme domain. However, the importance of the resource domain gained significance as the overall quality of nursing doctoral education increased, indicating the needs for more attention to resources if the quality of nursing doctoral education is to improve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]