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The purpose of this post-hoc investigation was to determine the difference in response rates between respondents who received personalized prenotification prior to receiving an electronic survey and those who did not. An electronic survey was e-mailed to 236 program directors or other designated individuals from nurse practitioner (NP) programs around the United States. Seventy six percent of the NP program directors were personally contacted about the survey in advance, and 97.5% agreed to participate. The remaining 24% were sent e-mails with a link to the survey without prenotification. Response rates for those in the prenotification group who had agreed to participate versus those who did not receive prenotification were 49% and 45%, respectively. Personalized prenotification did not affect the electronic survey response rates. Electronic research methodology offers a unique opportunity to potentially survey an entire population (e.g., nursing faculty), thus further investigation regarding factors associated with electronic survey response rates and ways to improve these rates is warranted. Keywords: electronic surveys; methodological inquiry; methods; response rates; prenotification

To quantify the effect of hand-hygiene interventions on rates of gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses and to identify interventions that provide the greatest efficacy, we searched 4 electronic databases for hand-hygiene trials published from January 1960 through May 2007 and conducted meta-analyses to generate pooled rate ratios across interventions (N = 30 studies). Improvements in hand hygiene resulted in reductions in gastrointestinal illness of 31% (95% confidence intervals [CI] = 19%, 42%) and reductions in respiratory illness of 21% (95% C1=5%, 34%). The most beneficial intervention was hand-hygiene education with use of nonantibacterial soap. Use of antibacterial soap showed little added benefit compared with use of nonantibacterial soap. Hand hygiene is clearly effective against gastrointestinal and, to a lesser extent, respiratory infections. Studies examining hygiene practices during respiratory illness and interventions targeting aerosol transmission are needed.

Interdisciplinarity has become the model of scholarly inquiry generally espoused by many who seek federal research funding. Interdisciplinary research centers pose challenges to academic settings and to investigators. In a conference of directors of diverse research centers at a single research university we found that the challenges facing centers and their universities fell into three major categories: fiscal sustainability, recruiting and retaining faculty, and leadership sustainability. These challenges are discussed, and institutional recommendations are proposed to address these challenges. Key Words: Academic Health Centers, Interdisciplinary Research, Research Centers, Introduction Throughout the academic and research community, interdisciplinary research has become a catch phrase (Giacomini, 2004; Robertson, Martin, & Singer, 2003). With the recent emphasis in the NIH Roadmap initiative [...]

* BACKGROUND Antibiotic misuse and noncompliance with injection control precautions have contributed to increasing levels of antimicrobial resistance in hospitals. * OBJECTIVES To assess the extent to which resistance is [...]

We examined whether household use of antibacterial cleaning and hygiene products is an emerging risk factor for carriage of antimicrobial drug-resistant bacteria on hands of household members. Households (N = [...]

* BACKGROUND Adherence to hand hygiene standards is poor. Approaches and systems to improve hand hygiene practices warrant testing. * OBJECTIVE To compare the frequency of use of manually operated [...]

* BACKGROUND For bedridden patients unable to perform personal hygiene measures because of acute illness or chronic debilitation, the bed bath, with either the traditional basin or, more recently, disposable [...]

Trained interviewers visited 631 inner city households to determine community prevalence and predictors of antibiotic use. Infectious disease symptoms were reported in 911 (33.2%) of 2,743 household members in the [...]

The results of basic biomedical research are not always tested on patients and the results of those patient trials are not always put into practice by doctors when treating their own patients. The predominant causes of this failure are a lack of funding, study subjects, trained scientists, and integrated information systems to support medical research. Participants in the Institute of Medicine's Clinical Research Roundtable present their recommendations for eliminating these obstacles.