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The article provides an assessment on the effectivity of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy for sexually abused children and teenagers. It mentions the application of the Cochrane Collaboration's criteria for the classifying the quality of research and synthesis of data. It also notes the prevalence of sexual assault on men and women ranging from 3% to 29% and 7% to 36% respectively.

Short-term medical service trips (MSTs) aim to address unmet health care needs of low- and middle-income countries. The lack of critically reviewed empirical evidence of activities and outcomes is a concern. Developing evidence-based recommendations for health care delivery requires systematic research review. I focused on MST publications with empirical results. Searches in May 2013 identified 67 studies published since 1993, only 6% of the published Articles on the topic in the past 20 years. Nearly 80% reported on surgical trips. Although the MST field is growing, its medical literature lags behind, with nearly all of the scholarly publications lacking significant data collection. By incorporating data collection into service trips, groups can validate practices and provide information about areas needing improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. We determined all-cause, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cancer mortality in western Alaska Native people and examined agreement between death certificate information and adjudicated cause of deaths. Methods. Data from 4 cohort studies were consolidated. Death certificates and medical records were reviewed and adjudicated according to standard criteria. We compared adjudicated CVD and cancer deaths with death certificates by calculating sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, and j statistics. Results. Men (n = 2116) and women (n = 2453), aged 18 to 95 years, were followed an average of 6.7 years. The major cause of death in men was trauma (25%), followed by CVD (19%) and cancer (13%). The major cause of death in women was CVD (24%), followed by cancer (19%) and trauma (8%). Stroke rates in both genders were higher than those of US Whites. Only 56% of deaths classified as CVD by death certificate were classified as CVD by standard criteria; discordance was higher among men (55%) than women (32%; κs = 0.4 and 0.7). Conclusions. We found lower rates for coronary heart disease death but high rates of stroke mortality. Death certificates overestimated CVD mortality; concordance between the 2 methods is better for cancer mortality. The results point to the importance of cohort studies in this population in providing data to assist in health care planning [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Patient-centeredness is central to healthcare. Hospitals should address patients' unique needs to improve safety and quality. Patient engagement in healthcare, which may help prevent adverse events, can be approached as an independent patient safety practice (PSP) or as part of a multifactorial PSP. Objectives This review examines how interventions encouraging this engagement have been implemented in controlled trials. Methods We searched Medline, CINAHL, Embase and Cochrane from 2000 to 2012 for English language studies in hospital settings with prospective controlled designs, addressing the effectiveness or implementation of patient/family engagement in PSPs. We separately reviewed interventions implemented as part of selected broader PSPs by way of example: hand hygiene, ventilator-associated pneumonia, rapid response systems and care transitions. Results Six articles met the inclusion criteria for effectiveness with a primary focus on patient engagement. We identified 12 studies implementing patient engagement as an aspect of selected broader PSPs. A number of studies relied on patients' possible function as a reporter of error to healthcare workers and patients as a source of reminders regarding safety behaviours, while others relied on direct activation of patients or families. Definitions of patient and family engagement were lacking, as well as evidence regarding the types of patients who might feel comfortable engaging with providers, and in what contexts. Conclusions While patient engagement in safety is appealing, there is insufficient high- quality evidence informing real-world implementation. Further work should evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on patient and family engagement and clarify the added benefit of incorporating engagement in multifaceted approaches to improve patient safety endpoints. In addition, strategies to assess and overcome barriers to patients' willingness to actively engage in their care should be investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Modern medical care requires numerous patient handovers/handoffs. Handover error is recognised as a potential hazard in patient care, and the information error rate has been estimated at 13%. While accurate, reliable handover is essential to high quality care, uncertainty exists as to how intrahospital handover can be improved. This systematic review aims to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving the quality and/ or safety of the intrahospital handover process. Methods We searched for articles on handover improvement interventions in EMBASE, MEDLINE, HMIC and CINAHL between January 2002 and July 2012. We considered studies of: staff knowledge and skills, staff behavioural change, process change or patient outcomes. Results 631 potentially relevant papers were identified from which 29 papers were selected for inclusion (two randomised controlled trials and 27 uncontrolled studies). Most studies addressed shift-change handover and used a median of three outcome measures, but there was no outcome measure common to all. Poor study design and inconsistent reporting methods made it difficult to reach definite conclusions. Information transfer was improved in most relevant studies, while clinical outcome improvement was reported in only two of 10 studies. No difference was noted in the likelihood of success across four types of intervention. Conclusions The current literature does not confirm that any methodology reliably improves the outcomes of clinical handover, although information transfer may be increased. Better study designs and consistency of the terminology used to describe handover and its improvement are urgently required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A systematic review of the literature regarding the efficacy and effectiveness of cognitive-behaviour therapy and short-term psychodynamic therapy in the treatment of major depression in adults was conducted. This search of electronic databases (PsycArticles, PsycINFO, Social Services Abstracts and PsycLIT) was conducted between August and October 2011 and resulted in full text review of 13 publications. On balance the evidence, largely derived from randomised controlled trials, supported cognitive-behaviour therapy as the more efficacious treatment. The evidence for the efficacy of short-term psychodynamic therapy was somewhat fragmented due to the paucity of controlled studies, with the evidence base for short-term psychodynamic therapy relying heavily upon meta-analyses. There was comparable evidence for the effectiveness of cognitive-behaviour therapy and short-term psychodynamic therapy on the basis of standardised clinical outcome measures. More high-quality randomised controlled trials are required to assess the efficacy of short-term psychodynamic therapy for treating major depression, while the methodological challenges of meta-analyses need to be acknowledged where this methodology forms the primary evidence base for efficacy studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives To synthesise qualitative studies that investigated the experiences of healthcare professionals with using information from patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) to improve the quality of care. Design A qualitative systematic review was conducted by searching PubMed, PsycINFO and CINAHL with no time restrictions. Hand searching was also performed. Eligible studies were evaluated using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme toolkit for qualitative studies. A thematic synthesis identified common themes across studies. Study characteristics were examined to explain differences in findings. Setting All healthcare settings. Participants Healthcare professionals. Outcomes Professionals' views of PROMs after receiving PROMs feedback about individual patients or groups of patients. Results Sixteen studies met the inclusion criteria. Barriers and facilitators to the use of PROMs emerged within four main themes: collecting and incorporating the data (practical), valuing the data (attitudinal), making sense of the data (methodological) and using the data to make changes to patient care (impact). Conclusions Professionals value PROMs when they are useful for the clinical decision-making process. Practical barriers to the routine use of PROMs are prominent when the correct infrastructure is not in place before commencing data collection and when their use is disruptive to normal work routines. Technology can play a greater role in processing the information in the most efficient manner. Improvements to the interpretability of PROMs should increase their use. Attitudes to the use of PROMs may be improved by engaging professionals in the planning stage of the intervention and by ensuring a high level of transparency around the rationale for data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Despite the widely recognized link between schizophrenia and violence, the illness-specific factors underlying that association remain unclear. A body of work has implicated deficits in social cognition, consistently seen in schizophrenia, that may mediate the risk of violence. Two specific areas of interest are attributional bias and interpersonal style. We conducted a systematic literature search using EMBASE, Scopus, Ovid Medline, PsycINFO and Science Direct databases with search terms relating to attributional bias, interpersonal style and violence/aggression in schizophrenia. Eleven studies were identified, six related specifically to attributional bias and five to interpersonal style. Results suggest an association between hostile and externalizing attribution biases, and violence in schizophrenia. Furthermore, hostile, dominant, and coercive interpersonal styles are also frequently associated with violence in schizophrenia. An interaction between cognitive impairments and underlying personality traits, as well as other co-morbid or illness factors, is proposed to likely underpin associations with violence in schizophrenia. Conclusions are limited by methodological constraints. The field would benefit from consistent definitions of violence, and a more systematic approach to cognitive assessment. Furthermore, studies with more homogeneous samples; and longitudinal designs are warranted in order to gain a better understanding of causation with regard to illness factors specific to schizophrenia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) for students with disabilities can be categorized into the following categories: visual, auditory, mobile, and cognitive skills-based CAI. Cognitive-skills based CAI differs from other types of CAI largely in terms of an emphasis on instructional design features. We conducted both systematic review of literatures and meta-analysis of studies using cognitive skills-based CAI to determine the effectiveness of this technology on the learning outcomes of students with disabilities. This study also scrutinized critical instructional design features of CAI used in the synthesized studies. Results indicated (a) a moderate weighted average effect size of 0.35 for group-comparison design studies; (b) relatively large effect sizes, but inconsistent among different indices, in single-subject experimental design studies; and (c) insufficient information available on design features of the CAI used in the primary studies. Limitations, implications, and future research directions were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act encourages the meaningful use of certified electronic health record technology. A HITECH-compliant core component is nationwide electronic laboratory reporting (ELR) implementation for communicable disease surveillance. In Oklahoma, laboratories with ≥400 positive tests/year for reportable diseases must use ELR. Of 18 such laboratories, two have adopted ELR. We compared completeness and timeliness of ELR reports from these two laboratories with conventional reports from all other Oklahoma laboratories. Methods. We retrospectively reviewed confirmed reportable disease cases for January 1-December 31, 2011, excluding tuberculosis, hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, diseases without laboratory diagnoses, and immediately reportable diseases. Probable reportable tickborne disease cases were included. We compared ELR with conventional reporting (i.e., mail, fax, telephone, and Internet). We assessed data completeness based on eight demographic and two laboratory fields in each disease report and timeliness by percentage of cases reported in ≤1 business day. Results. Overall, 1,867 reports met the inclusion criteria; 24% of these reports had been submitted by ELR. Data completeness was 90% for ELR and 95% for conventional reporting. Patient addresses accounted for 97% of the missing data fields for ELR reports. Timeliness was 91% for ELR and 87% for conventional reports. Conclusions. Although early in the transition to ELR compliance in Oklahoma, ELR has already yielded improved timeliness for communicable disease surveillance. However, ELR did not yield more complete reports than conventional reporting. Requiring specific demographic data fields for ELR reports can improve the completeness of ELR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most Australian states, legislation makes provision for professionals to report their concerns about the future welfare of an unborn child to appropriate authorities. The legislation establishes guidance for the implementation of family supports to minimize future child protection involvement. Given the legislation and the potential benefits, empirical research linking substance misuse during pregnancy and child protection involvement is relatively limited. We review 21 original studies linking substance misuse during pregnancy with child protection outcomes and the potential generalizability of results to the Australian context. The majority of studies reviewed were conducted in the USA and were mostly retrospective. Other differences between studies include sample sizes, comparison groups, study setting, participants' ethnicity and pattern of drug use. In the postnatal literature, it is well established that child abuse is associated with a complex array of factors including partner, as well as broader family factors and yet, the studies reviewed focus upon maternal substance abuse without including the wider context. Given the available evidence-based literature, it is difficult to come to definitive conclusions that can assist clinicians involved in frontline decision-making for early intervention. Well-designed research, accessible by antenatal health-care professionals, is needed to adopt an evidence-based approach to risk assessment in the prenatal context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted a systematic review in June 2012 (updated September 2013) to examine the prevalence and factors shaping sexual or physical violence against sex workers globally. We identified 1536 (update = 340) unique articles. We included 28 studies, with 14 more contributing to violence prevalence estimates. Lifetime prevalence of any or combined workplace violence ranged from 45% to 75% and over the past year, 32%to55%.Growing research links contextual factors with violence against sex workers, alongside known interpersonal and individual risks. This high burden of violence against sex workers globally and large gaps in epidemiological data support the need for research and structural interventions to better document and respond to the contextual factors shaping this violence. Measurement and methodological innovation, in partnership with sex work communities, are critical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Medication administration errors are frequent and lead to patient harm. Interruptions during medication administration have been implicated as a potential contributory factor. Objective To assess evidence of the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing interruptions during medication administration on interruption and medication administration error rates. Methods In September 2012 we searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care Group reviews, Google and Google Scholar, and hand searched references of included articles. Intervention studies reporting quantitative data based on direct observations of at least one outcome (interruptions, or medication administration errors) were included. Results Ten studies, eight from North America and two from Europe, met the inclusion criteria. Five measured significant changes in interruption rates pre and post interventions. Four found a significant reduction and one an increase. Three studies measured changes in medication administration error rates and showed reductions, but all implemented multiple interventions beyond those targeted at reducing interruptions. No study used a controlled design pre and post. Definitions for key outcome indicators were reported in only four studies. Only one study reported κ scores for inter-rater reliability and none of the multi-ward studies accounted for clustering in their analyses. Conclusions There is weak evidence of the effectiveness of interventions to significantly reduce interruption rates and very limited evidence of their effectiveness to reduce medication administration errors. Policy makers should proceed with great caution in implementing such interventions until controlled trials confirm their value. Research is also required to better understand the complex relationship between interruptions and error to support intervention design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AimTo review the effectiveness of physical activity interventions for adults aged 50 and above, delivered through general practice.BackgroundPhysical activity has beneficial effects on the common disorders of later life. General practice is a potentially important setting for promotion of physical activity among older adults, but the effectiveness of such interventions is presently unknown.MethodsStudies published between January 1998 and July 2011 were identified from electronic databases. We searched for studies of tailored physical activity interventions to older adults through general practice. The search and selection process was not restricted to any outcome measures but only included studies comparing two or more groups prospectively. Two reviewers screened the studies and obtained full texts of eligible studies. Included studies were assessed for their methodological quality and public health impact.FindingsAltogether, 4170 studies met the initial search criteria but only six were included in the review, with a total of 1522 participants. The interventions ranged from six weeks to six months. One study showed a statistically significant increase in physical activity in the intervention compared with the control group (P ⩽ 0.007). Four studies measured quality of life using the SF-36, of which three reported inconsistent results. This review shows some evidence of the effectiveness of physical activity promotion for older adults through general practice, but not enough to warrant widespread commissioning and implementation. Large-scale developmental projects with long follow-up (beyond two years), objective measures of physical activity and comprehensive documentation of resource use, should now be conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy makers, payers, and the general public are increasingly focused on health care quality improvement. Measuring quality requires robust data systems that collect data over time, can be integrated with other systems, and can be analyzed easily for trends. The goal of this project was to study effective tools and strategies in the design and use of clinical registries with the potential to facilitate quality improvement, value-based purchasing, and public reporting on the quality of care. The research team worked with an expert panel to define characteristics of effectiveness, and studied examples of effective registries in cancer, cardiovascular care, maternity, and joint replacement. The research team found that effective registries were successful in 1 or more of 6 key areas: data standardization, transparency, accuracy/completeness of data, participation by providers, financial sustainability, and/or providing feedback to providers. The findings from this work can assist registry designers, sponsors, and researchers in implementing strategies to increase the use of clinical registries to improve patient care and outcomes. (Population Health Management 2014;17:127-133). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, quality registries have been initiated, developed, and used by physicians essentially for research purposes. There is an unrealized opportunity to expand and strengthen the contribution of quality registries in health care quality improvement. This article aims to characterize quality registry annual reports regarding factors deemed important to process improvement. The 2012 annual reports of the 5 most highly developed Swedish quality registries were examined. Each of the 636 charts included was coded according to an abstraction form. Results show that league tables are highly prevalent, whereas funnel plots and control charts are rare. Health care quality is monitored over time on the basis of few and highly aggregated measurements, and it is usually measured using percentages. In conclusion, quality registry annual reports lack both the level of detail and the consideration of random variation necessary to being able to be systematically used in process improvement. Users of annual reports are recommended caution when discussing differences in quality, both over time and across health care providers, as they can be due to chance and insufficient guidance is provided on the reports in this regard. To better support process improvement, annual reports should thus be more detailed and give more consideration to random variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas the feasibility and effectiveness of Internet-based epidemiologic research have been established, methodological support for the quality of such data is still accumulating. We aimed to identify sociodemographic differences among members of a French cohort according to willingness to provide part of one's 15-digit national identification number (personal Social Security number (PSSN)) and to assess response consistency based on information reported on the sociodemographic questionnaire and that reflected in the PSSN. We studied 100,118 persons enrolled in an Internet-based prospective cohort study, the NutriNet-Santé Study, between 2009 and 2013. Persons aged 18 years or more who resided in France and had Internet access were eligible for enrollment. The sociodemographic profiles of participants with discordant data were compared against those of participants with concordant data via 2-sided polytomous logistic regression. In total, 84,442 participants (84.3%) provided the first 7 digits of their PSSN, and among them 5,141 (6.1%) had discordant data. Our multivariate analysis revealed differences by sex, age, education, and employment as regards response consistency patterns. The results support the quality of sociodemographic data obtained online from a large and diverse volunteer sample. The quantitative description of participant profiles according to response consistency patterns could inform future methodological work in e-epidemiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an update to a review of the joint working literature in the field of health and social care for adults, with particular emphasis given to the experiences of users and carers. Design/methodology/approach – The aims of the literature review remained largely the same as those of the original, they were to identify: models of joint working, evidence of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness and the factors promoting or hindering the models. However, to reflect the growing interest in the experiences of users and carers a fourth aim was added to map these experiences. Given their prominence in terms of policy debates about integration, the review focused on jointly organised services for older people and people with mental health problems in the UK only. Findings – The review demonstrates tentative signs that some initiatives designed to join-up or integrate services can deliver outcomes desired by government. Importantly some studies that report the experiences of users of services and carers suggest that they perceive benefits from efforts to join-up or integrate services. However it is our contention that the evidence is less than compelling and does not justify the faith invested in the strategy by current or previous governments. Originality/value – The study updates our knowledge of the impact of joint working in the field of health and social care for adults. Importantly the paper highlights what is known about the experiences of users and carers of joint/integrated services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2012, a novel case series method dubbed the “case-chaos” design was proposed as an alternative to case-control studies, whereby controls are artificially created by permutating the exposure information of the cases. Our aim in the current work was to further evaluate the case-chaos method. Using a theoretical example of 2 risk factors, we demonstrated that the case-chaos design yields risk estimations for which the odds ratios obtained for every risk factor are in the same ascending order as the risk factors' exposure prevalences in the case group. Applying the method to data from the European Study of Severe Cutaneous Adverse Reactions (EuroSCAR; 1997–2001), we were not able to obtain sensible results but instead produced results as predicted by our theoretical assessment. We therefore claim that the method is equivalent to declaring risk solely on the basis of prevalences obtained in cases. While the proposers of the case-chaos method view it as a useful adjunct, we show that it cannot produce sensible estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Multivariate imputation by chained equations (MICE) is commonly used for imputing missing data in epidemiologic research. The “true” imputation model may contain nonlinearities which are not included in default imputation models. Random forest imputation is a machine learning technique which can accommodate nonlinearities and interactions and does not require a particular regression model to be specified. We compared parametric MICE with a random forest-based MICE algorithm in 2 simulation studies. The first study used 1,000 random samples of 2,000 persons drawn from the 10,128 stable angina patients in the CALIBER database (Cardiovascular Disease Research using Linked Bespoke Studies and Electronic Records; 2001–2010) with complete data on all covariates. Variables were artificially made “missing at random,” and the bias and efficiency of parameter estimates obtained using different imputation methods were compared. Both MICE methods produced unbiased estimates of (log) hazard ratios, but random forest was more efficient and produced narrower confidence intervals. The second study used simulated data in which the partially observed variable depended on the fully observed variables in a nonlinear way. Parameter estimates were less biased using random forest MICE, and confidence interval coverage was better. This suggests that random forest imputation may be useful for imputing complex epidemiologic data sets in which some patients have missing data. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a profile and review of the O*NET online vocational guidance database product offered through the United States Department of Labor and its utility to libraries.

Gender-based violence (GBV) is widespread globally and has myriad adverse health effects but is vastly underreported. Few studies address the extent of reporting bias in existing estimates. We provide bounds for underestimation of reporting of GBV to formal and informal sources conditional on having experienced GBV and characterize differences between women who report and those who do not. We analyzed Demographic and Health Survey data from 284,281 women in 24 countries collected between 2004 and 2011. We performed descriptive analysis and multivariate logistic regressions examining characteristics associated with reporting to formal sources. Forty percent of women experiencing GBV previously disclosed to someone; however, only 7% reported to a formal source (regional variation, 2% in India and East Asia to 14% in Latin America and the Caribbean). Formerly married and never married status, urban residence, and increasing age were characteristics associated with increased likelihood of formal reporting. Our results imply that estimates of GBV prevalence based on health systems data or on police reports may underestimate the total prevalence of GBV, ranging from 11- to 128-fold, depending on the region and type of reporting. In addition, women who report GBV differ from those who do not, with implications for program targeting and design of interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The existing evaluation methodologies of semantic web databases are limited because they measure performance of the databases only in terms of time and do not cover resource utilization for their data manipulation operations. To cope with deficiencies of the existing methodologies, we have proposed a new scalability and performance evaluation methodology to perform comparative analysis of the databases and defined metrics for their query cost estimation. The proposed methodology comprises test cases for data access methods and query optimization techniques to analyze performance of the databases. The methodology was applied to the existing semantic web databases using the Barton library dataset. We highlighted the key strengths and weaknesses of the databases and discovered their scalability behavior. The evaluation results show that the proposed methodology depicts scalability behavior and performance analysis of each database better than the existing evaluation methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study that investigates the methods used in supporting interventions in mental health in the U.S. It presents the methodologies and results of the literature search utilizing manual searching and electronic searching in electronic databases. Moreover, the quality gaps discovered in the mental patients are mentioned.

For nearly a decade, interest groups, from politicians to economists to physicians, have touted digitization of the nation's health information. One frequently mentioned benefit is the transmission of information electronically from laboratories to public health personnel, allowing them to rapidly analyze and act on these data. Switching from paper to electronic laboratory reports (ELRs) was thought to solve many public health surveillance issues, including workload, accuracy, and timeliness. However, barriers remain for both laboratories and public health agencies to realize the full benefits of ELRs. The New York City experience highlights several successes and challenges of electronic reporting and is supported by peer-reviewed literature. Lessons learned from ELR systems will benefit efforts to standardize electronic medical records reporting to health departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information in the Global Unique Device Identification Database (GUDID). It notes that GUDID is going to become a publicly searchable database administered by the U.S. Food and Drug Association (FDA). Aside from that, GUDID will serve as a reference catalog for each device with identifier.

Speech-language pathologists are faced with demands for evidence to support practice. Federal legislation requires high-quality evidence for decisions regarding school-based services as part of evidence-based practice. The purpose of this article is to discuss the limited scientific evidence for making appropriate decisions about speech-language services for children and adolescents in schools, to identify factors that have contributed to this situation, and to present options for enhancing the depth and breadth of the evidence base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Research on foster care focuses almost exclusively on maltreated youth and, to a lesser extent, on foster parents. There is very limited information about the experiences and outcomes of the sons and daughters of parents who choose to foster. The objective of this scoping review was to systematically identify and describe existing empirical research on sons and daughters of foster parents as a beginning effort at understanding this large but understudied population of children and youth. A comprehensive search was conducted that included four key sources: scholarly databases, hand-searches of reference lists, Google Scholar, and personal communications with key foster care stakeholders from North America, South America, Europe, and Australia. All empirical studies within samples that were comprised of sons and daughters of foster parents were included. Over 5500 articles were screened for inclusion. After removing the studies that were not about sons and daughters of foster parents, articles that did not match the inclusion criteria, articles that could not be located, and duplicates, there were 46 articles that met the inclusion criteria describing 39 different studies. An analysis of these indicates that: this literature is in the early stages of knowledge development; interviews/focus groups dominate data collection methods; nonprobability samples are almost always used; even basic demographic data is scarce; and the relationships among and between all participants in the fostering process likely to affect the quality of the fostering experience. As the first scoping review on sons and daughters of foster parents, this study describes much of the known research about this sub-population within foster homes. The results indicate that, more than a century after the first foster homes were established, we are still in the dark ages with respect to the experiences of this sub-population. This article provides a resource for researchers and practitioners to further develop this neglected area of child welfare services. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Despite their needs, kinship care families receive less support and fewer resources than other foster care families. This study systematically reviews thirteen studies that evaluated services and programs for kinship caregivers and children. Studies evaluating the effectiveness of the Kinship Navigator Program, financial assistance, support services, and training/educational programs were identified and reviewed. The Levels of Evidence-Based Intervention Effectiveness (LEBIE) scale was used to evaluate the research designs. The findings indicate that although positive results are shown for enhanced well-being and permanency outcomes of children and kinship caregivers, the rigor of the research designs are low, making it difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the effectiveness of these programs. Recommendations for child welfare practice and future research include the need to develop services for informal caregivers and particular racial/ethnic groups. In addition, more rigorous research designs and qualitative research should be conducted to support the effectiveness or social validity of the services and to inform evidence-based practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Dysfunction of β-glucocerebrosidase (GCase) has no hydrolytic activity in patients of Gaucher's disease and increasing the risk factor for Parkinson's disease occurrence. Pharmacological chaperone design has been used to treat with misfolded protein in related disease, which utilized a small compound to cause protein folding correctly. This study employed the world largest traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) database for searching for potential lead compound as pharmacological chaperone, and we also performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to observe the stability of binding conformation between ligands and active site of G Case structure.The docking results fromdatabase screening show that N-methylmescaline and shihunine have high binding ability to GCase than tetrahydroxyazepanes. From MD simulation analysis, tetrahydroxyazepanes displayed high opportunity of ligand migration instead of our TCM candidates, and H-bonds number was decreased in the end of MD snapshot. Our result indicated that binding conformation of N-methylmescaline and shihunine remains stable during MD simulation, demonstrating that the two candidates are suitable for GCase binding and might be potential as pharmacological chaperone for GCase folding correctly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. We compared an electronic health record-based influenza-like illness (ILI) surveillance system with manual sentinel surveillance and virologic data to evaluate the utility of the automated system for routine ILI surveillance. Methods. We obtained weekly aggregate ILI reports from the Electronic medical record Support for Public Health (ESP) disease-detection and reporting system, which used an automated algorithm to identify ILI visits among a patient population of about 700,000 in Eastern Massachusetts. The percentage of total visits for ILI ("percent ILI") in ESP, percent ILI in the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's sentinel surveillance system, and percentage of laboratory specimens submitted to participating Massachusetts laboratories that tested positive for influenza were compared for the period October 2007-September 2011. We calculated Spearman's correlation coefficients and compared ESP and sentinel surveillance systems qualitatively, in terms of simplicity, flexibility, data quality, acceptability, timeliness, and usefulness. Results. ESP and sentinel surveillance percent ILI always peaked within one week of each other. There was 80% correlation between the two and 71%-73% correlation with laboratory data. Sentinel surveillance percent ILI was higher than ESP percent ILI during influenza seasons. The amplitude of variation in ESP percent ILI was greatest for 5- to 49-year-olds and typically peaked for the 5- to 24-year-old age group before the others. Conclusions. The ESP system produces percent ILI data of similar quality to sentinel surveillance and offers the advantages of shifting disease reporting burden from clinicians to information systems, allowing tracking of disease by age group, facilitating efficient surveillance for very large populations, and producing consistent and timely reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the ProMusicDB database from eMusia for management and cataloging of professional music credits and records.

Objectives. We assessed the impact that possible veteran suicide misclassification biases (i.e., inaccuracy in ascertainment of veteran status on the death certificate and misclassification of suicide as other manner of death) have on veteran suicide rate estimates. Methods. We obtained suicide mortality data from the 2003-2010 National Violent Death Reporting System and the 2003-2010 Department of Defense Casualty Analysis System. We derived population estimates from the 2003-2010 American Community Survey and 2003-2010 Department of Veterans Affairs data. We computed veteran and nonveteran suicide rates. Results. The results showed that suicide rates were minimally affected by the adjustment for the misclassification of current military personnel suicides as veterans. Moreover, combining suicides and deaths by injury of undetermined intent did not alter the conclusions. Conclusions. The National Violent Death Reporting System is a valid surveillance system for veteran suicide. However, more than half of younger (< 25 years) male and female suicides, labeled as veterans, were likely to have been current military personnel at the time of their death and misclassified on the death certificate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. We compared school nurse visit syndromic surveillance system data to emergency department (ED) visit data for monitoring illness in New York City schoolchildren. Methods. School nurse visit data recorded in an electronic health record system are used to conduct daily surveillance of influenza-like illness, fever-flu, allergy, asthma, diarrhea, and vomiting syndromes. We calculated correlation coefficients to compare the percentage of syndrome visits to the school nurse and ED for children aged 5 to 14 years, from September 2006 to June 2011. Results. Trends in influenza-like illness correlated significantly (correlation coefficient = 0.89; P < .001) and 72% of school signals occurred on days that ED signaled. Trends in allergy (correlation coefficient = 0.73; P < .001) and asthma (correlation coefficient = 0.56; P < .001) also correlated and school signals overlapped with ED signals on 95% and 51% of days, respectively. Substantial daily variation in diarrhea and vomiting visits limited our ability to make comparisons. Conclusions. Compared with ED syndromic surveillance, the school nurse system identified similar trends in influenza-like illness, allergy, and asthma syndromes. Public health practitioners without school-based surveillance may be able to use age-specific analyses of ED syndromic surveillance data to monitor illness in schoolchildren. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. We compared a statewide telephone health survey with electronic health record (EHR) data from a large Wisconsin health system to estimate asthma prevalence in Wisconsin. Methods. We developed frequency tables and logistic regression models using Wisconsin Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and University of Wisconsin primary care clinic data. We compared adjusted odds ratios (AORs) from each model. Results. Between 2007 and 2009, the EHR database contained 376 000 patients (30 000 with asthma), and 23 000 (1850 with asthma) responded to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System telephone survey. AORs for asthma were similar in magnitude and direction for the majority of covariates, including gender, age, and race/ethnicity, between survey and EHR models. The EHR data had greater statistical power to detect associations than did survey data, especially in pediatric and ethnic populations, because of larger sample sizes. Conclusions. EHRs can be used to estimate asthma prevalence in Wisconsin adults and children. EHR data may improve public health chronic disease surveillance using high-quality data at the local level to better identify areas of disparity and risk factors and guide education and health care interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. We examined the potential influences of certain selection factors on the utility of the Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program (CWHSP) data for tracking disease distribution and trends. Methods. We combined data from the CWHSP and the Energy Information Administration to examine any influence of variable worker participation on observed disease prevalence. We evaluated effects of differential participation by coal mining region, temporal changes in employment, and active surveillance efforts. Results. The published findings of pneumoconiosis distribution and trends from the CWHSP were robust compared with the various participation factors that might have affected their validity for population-based estimates of disease burden. Exploration of factors that could potentially bias the findings generally led to small increases in the primary estimates, mostly for the early years of the program. Conclusions. We confirmed previously reported findings that there was a high prevalence of coal worker pneumoconiosis (CWP) around 1970-1974, a substantial decline in 1995-1999, and indications of an increase since then. Overall our findings suggest that the previously reported distribution and trends in CWP prevalence were broadly accurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Administrative databases have become an important tool to monitor diseases. Patients with epilepsy could be traced using disease-specific codes and prescriptions, but formal validation is required to obtain an accurate case definition. The aim of the study was to correlate administrative data on epilepsy with an independent source of patients with epilepsy in a district of Lombardy, Northern Italy, from 2000 to 2008. Methods Data of nearly 320 600 inhabitants in the district of Lecco collected from the Drug Administrative Database of the Lombardy Region were analysed. Among them were included patients who fulfilled the International Classification of Diseases 9 (ICD-9) codes and/or the disease-specific exemption code for epilepsy and those who had at least one EEG record and took antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) as monotherapy or in variable combinations. To ascertain epilepsy cases, 11 general practitioners (GPs) with 15 728 affiliates were contacted. Multiple versions of the diagnostic algorithm were developed using different logistic regression models and all combinations of the four independent variables. Results Among the GP affiliates, 71 (4.5/1000) had a gold standard diagnosis of epilepsy. The best and most conservative algorithm included EEG and selected treatment schedules and identified 61/71 patients with epilepsy (sensitivity 85.9%, CI 76.0% to 92.2%) and 15 623/15 657 patients without epilepsy (specificity 99.8%,CI 99.7% to 99.8%). The positive and negative predictive values were 64.2% and 99.9%. Sensitivity (86.7%) and the positive predictive value (68.4%) increased only slightly when patients with single seizures were included. Conclusions A diagnostic algorithm including EEG and selected treatment schedules is only moderately sensitive for the detection of epilepsy and seizures. These findings apply only to the Northern Italian scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transgender community represents a highly marginalised portion of the Australian population, frequently experiencing discrimination, social isolation, and harm. This review explores literature informing Australian social work with transgender people. It highlights the importance of generating a transgender-positive discourse within Australian social work to effectively engage with and advocate for individuals with nontraditional gender identities. Key themes emerged from reviewing the literature related to the medical model, the mental health of transgender people, interdisciplinary and alternative transgender literature, minority status of transgender people, existing social work approaches to transgenderism, and Indigenous transgender literature. The views of transgender Australians are largely absent from the literature. However, the Australian transgender community's emerging voice and political activism highlights the potential for collaboration to play a significant role in the process of building a working knowledge base for social work. Based on the identified gaps in literature, in this paper we call for continued progress in developing a theoretical and practical knowledge base that incorporates the lived experiences of transgender Australians. We argue for the development of an approach to practice that is responsive to gender diversity. Highlighted in the review are the conditions that promote greater engagement with the transgender community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives. We assessed the timeliness, accuracy, and cost of a new electronic disease surveillance system at the local health department level. We describe practices associated with lower cost and better surveillance timeliness and accuracy. Methods. Interviews conducted May through August 2010 with local health department (LHD) staff at a simple random sample of 30 of 100 North Carolina counties provided information on surveillance practices and costs; we used surveillance system data to calculate timeliness and accuracy. We identified LHDs with best timeliness and accuracy and used these categories to compare surveillance practices and costs. Results. Local health departments in the top tertiles for surveillance timeliness and accuracy had a lower cost per case reported than LHDs with lower timeliness and accuracy ($71 and $124 per case reported, respectively; P = .03). Best surveillance practices fell into 2 domains: efficient use of the electronic surveillance system and use of surveillance data for local evaluation and program management. Conclusions. Timely and accurate surveillance can be achieved in the setting of restricted funding experienced by many LHDs. Adopting best surveillance practices may improve both efficiency and public health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Query-by-Example Spoken Term Detection (QbE STD) aims at retrieving data from a speech data repository given an acoustic query containing the term of interest as input. Nowadays, it has been receiving much interest due to the high volume of information stored in audio or audiovisual format. QbE STD differs from automatic speech recognition (ASR) and keyword spotting (KWS)/spoken term detection (STD) since ASR is interested in all the terms/words that appear in the speech signal and KWS/STD relies on a textual transcription of the search term to retrieve the speech data. This paper presents the systems submitted to the ALBAYZIN 2012 QbE STD evaluation held as a part of ALBAYZIN 2012 evaluation campaign within the context of the IberSPEECH 2012 Conference a. The evaluation consists of retrieving the speech files that contain the input queries, indicating their start and end timestamps within the appropriate speech file. Evaluation is conducted on a Spanish spontaneous speech database containing a set of talks from MAVIR workshops b, which amount at about 7 h of speech in total. We present the database metric systems submitted along with all results and some discussion. Four different research groups took part in the evaluation. Evaluation results show the difficulty of this task and the limited performance indicates there is still a lot of room for improvement. The best result is achieved by a dynamic time warping-based search over Gaussian posteriorgrams/posterior phoneme probabilities. This paper also compares the systems aiming at establishing the best technique dealing with that difficult task and looking for defining promising directions for this relatively novel task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. Vibrio is a naturally occurring waterborne pathogen with potential occupational, recreational, and commercial impacts. During the last 15 years in the U.S. and in Maryland, the incidence of vibriosis has increased. Due to the increase in cases in Maryland, warming water temperatures, and public concern about human health effects resulting from exposure to the Chesapeake Bay, we reviewed cases of vibriosis and evaluated the Vibrio surveillance system in Maryland for timeliness and data quality, attributes necessary for successful outbreak investigation and illness prevention. Methods. The evaluation included (1) informal qualitative surveys of state and local personnel who report and manage Vibrio cases and (2) a review of Vibrio surveillance data from 2002 through 2008 for data quality and timeliness of the system. Results. From 2002 to 2008, 188 laboratory-confirmed cases of vibriosis were reported in Maryland with an annual average of 27 cases. The species of Vibrio that were most frequently responsible for infection, regardless of clinical presentation, were V. parahaemolyticus (43.6%), V. vulnificus (23.9%), V. alginolyticus (9.6%), and non-toxigenic V. cholerae (9.0%). The case fatality rate fluctuated during the study period, but the number of cases increased. Conclusions. The surveillance system in Maryland is flexible and captures cases of vibriosis where specimens were collected for testing; however, the system may not adequately capture mild, self-limiting infections. Better integration of data collection for clinical, laboratory, and environmental information and improved completion of variables for shellfish harvest or water exposure locations could improve the system. Quarterly meetings comprising surveillance, public health laboratory, and food-control personnel could direct and ensure the success of improvement efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. We examined completeness, an attribute of data quality, in the context of electronic laboratory reporting (ELR) of notifiable disease information to public health agencies. Methods. We extracted more than seven million ELR messages from multiple clinical information systems in two states. We calculated and compared the completeness of various data fields within the messages that were identified to be important to public health reporting processes. We compared unaltered, original messages from source systems with similar messages from another state as well as messages enriched by a health information exchange (HIE). Our analysis focused on calculating completeness (i.e., the number of nonmissing values) for fields deemed important for inclusion in notifiable disease case reports. Results. The completeness of data fields for laboratory transactions varied across clinical information systems and jurisdictions. Fields identifying the patient and test results were usually complete (97%--100%). Fields containing patient demographics, patient contact information, and provider contact information were suboptimal (6%--89%). Transactions enhanced by the HIE were found to be more complete (increases ranged from 2% to 25%) than the original messages. Conclusion. ELR data from clinical information systems can be of suboptimal quality. Public health monitoring of data sources and augmentation of ELR message content using HIE services can improve data quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Appraisal, or independent performance review (IPR) is used in human resources management in the commercial and public sectors to evaluate the performance of an employee against agreed local organisational expectations and objectives, and to identify their requirements for development and effective management. IPR for NHS consultants may provide essential information for job planning, contribute towards medical appraisal for revalidation, and facilitate productivity and quality improvement. Aims To develop a framework for IPR for consultants, and to determine attitudes on its value, process and content. Method Information from commercial, public and voluntary sector models and published and other literature sources were used to develop an IPR framework. This was assessed through a three-cycle action research methodology involving qualitative interviews with 22 consultants (predominantly with medical management roles). Results The domains of the IPR framework included: (1) performance against objectives; (2) behaviour and leadership; (3) talent management; (4) agreed future objectives. A number of themes were identified from the consultant interviews including: ineffective current appraisal systems reflecting a lack of valid performance data and allotted time; a lack of empowerment of medical managers to address performance issues; IPR as a more explicit system, offering value in evaluating doctors performance; and the dependence of successful implementation on the engagement of the Trust executive. Conclusions IPR may have value for performance evaluation of consultants, contributing toward job planning and complementing medical appraisal. Support by their employing organisation and engagement with medical managers in design and implementation is likely to be essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most significant inaccuracies of bibliometric databases is that of omitted citations, namely, missing electronic links between a paper of interest and some citing papers, which are (or should be) covered by the database. This paper proposes a novel approach for estimating a database's omitted-citation rate, based on the combined use of 2 or more bibliometric databases. A statistical model is also presented for (a) estimating the 'true' number of citations received by individual papers or sets of papers, and (b) defining an appropriate confidence interval. The proposed approach could represent a first step towards the definition of a standard for evaluating the accuracy level of databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terminal illness affects the entire family, both the one with the illness and their loved ones. These loved ones must deal not only with the loss but with the challenges of managing daily care. The purpose of the systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature was to identify and explore depression and related interventions for caregivers of hospice patients. While the prevalence of depression reported in the identified studies of hospice caregivers ranges from 26–57%, few interventions specific to this population have been tested and the research methods have been only moderately rigorous. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Twenty-three studies identified from a previous systematic review examining the effects of communication partner training on persons with aphasia and their communication partners were evaluated for methodological quality. Two reviewers rated the studies on defined methodological quality criteria relevant to each study design. There were 11 group studies, seven single-subject participant design studies, and five qualitative studies. Quality scores were derived for each study. The mean inter-rater reliability of scores for each study design ranged from 85-93%, with Cohen's Kappa indicating substantial agreement between raters. Methodological quality of research on communication partner training in aphasia was highly varied. Overall, group studies employed the least rigorous methodology as compared to single subject and qualitative research. Only two of 11 group studies complied with more than half of the quality criteria. No group studies reported therapist blinding and only one group study reported participant blinding. Across all types of studies, the criterion of treatment fidelity was most commonly omitted. Failure to explicitly report certain methodological quality criteria may account for low ratings. Using methodological rating scales specific to the type of study design may help improve the methodological quality of aphasia treatment studies, including those on communication partner training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did scientific knowledge reach the public? Using the press and keeping in mind the population’s limited access to written material, this paper establishes how the latest scientific news was divulged to unspecialised audiences. In times of sanitary crisis in Oporto, such as the cholera morbus epidemic of 1854–1856, the bubonic plague in 1899 and the 1918 influenza pandemic, newspapers were important sources to access the information and advice given to the public. A database of 6700 articles, medical reports and advertisements published in daily newspapers reveals the state of the art of medical science. It also reveals the importance given by health authorities and journalists to the publication of recent discoveries and adequate hygiene procedures to prevent the spread of the epidemics. This is a subject that contributes to the debates on the dissemination of science and on the place that Portugal occupied in the international scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]