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Background
Lay family caregivers of patients receiving palliative care often confront stressful situations in the care of their loved ones. This is particularly true for families in the home-based palliative care settings, where the family caregivers are responsible for a substantial amount of the patient’s care. Yet, to our knowledge, no study to date has examined the family caregivers’ exposure to critical events and distress with home-based palliative care has been reported from Germany. Therefore, we attempt to assess family caregiver exposure to the dying patient’s critical health events and relate that to the caregiver’s own psychological distress to examine associations with general health within a home-based palliative care situation in Germany.
Methods
A cross-sectional study was conducted among 106 family caregivers with home-based palliative care in the Federal State of North Rhine Westphalia, Germany. We administered the Stressful Caregiving Adult Reactions to Experiences of Dying (SCARED) Scale. Descriptive statistics and linear regression models relating general health (SF-36) were used to analyze the data.
Results
The frequency of the caregiver’s exposure, or witness of, critical health events of the patient ranged from 95.2% “pain/discomfort” to 20.8% “family caregiver thought patient was dead”. The highest distress scores assessing fear and helpfulness were associated with “family caregiver felt patient had enough’” and “family caregiver thought patient was dead”. Linear regression analyses revealed significant inverse associations between SCARED critical health event exposure frequency (beta = .408, p = .025) and total score (beta = .377, p = .007) with general health in family caregivers.
Conclusions
Family caregivers with home-based palliative care in Germany frequently experience exposure to a large number of critical health events in caring for their family members who are terminally ill. These exposures are associated with the family caregiver’s degree of fear and helplessness and are associated with their worse general health. Thus the SCARED Scale, which is brief and easy to administer, appears able to identify these potentially upsetting critical health events among family caregivers of palliative care patients receiving care at home. Because it identified commonly encountered critical events in these patients and related them to adverse general health of family caregivers, the SCARED may add to clinically useful screens to identify family caregivers who may be struggling.
Purpose
In a knowledge-based society, one of the main driving forces of prosperity at city and regional levels is the ability to attract students and recently qualified graduates. The purpose of this paper is to identify the urban factors that contribute to “attractiveness” from a student perspective and to subsequently analyse the influence of these factors on students’ location choices. In the corresponding case study, the criteria identified were used to evaluate student satisfaction with the German city of Osnabrück.
Design/methodology/approach
A multi-level empirical research concept was used to analyse the relevant criteria. Focus group discussions served as the basis to design and conduct a survey of almost 2,300 students in the university city of Osnabrück at the end of 2016. A follow-up study in November 2017 at two universities in Berlin provided data for comparison.
Findings
Accessible – safe – clean and with affordable housing: these terms sum up the core expectations that students have of an attractive city. In contrast to the findings of Richard Florida regarding the creative class, cultural opportunities, exciting nightlife and a multicultural population were not important factors among the survey participants.
Research limitations/implications
As the study was conducted in two cities only, the findings cannot be generalised. It should be replicated in at least five other cities to validate and compare the research findings presented here. Furthermore, this study focused on the factors influencing the attractiveness of the city as a whole. However, the attractiveness of a specific neighbourhood may be of greater relevance to the decision-making process. As housing plays a major role, students’ particular needs with regard to accommodation should also be examined at greater depth.
Practical implications
Insights generated by the empirical study provide relevant information that may assist city stakeholders in taking effective measures regarding place management to attract and retain students.
Originality/value
To date, little research has been undertaken to empirically examine the specific factors that German students look for when deciding where to study and live. The goal of this paper is to present new empirical insights concerning the quality-of-life factors that influence students’ decision-making processes.
Introduction
Tests to evaluate the integrity of the alar ligaments are important clinical tools for manual therapists, but there is limited research regarding their validity.
Method
A single blinded examiner assessed alar ligament integrity using the lateral shear test (LST), rotation stress test (RST) and side-bending stress test (SBST) on a sample of convenience comprising 7 subjects with MRI confirmed alar ligament lesions and 11 healthy people. Alar ligament lesions were identified using both supine and high-field strength upright MRI.
Results
The RST had a sensitivity of 80% and a specificity of 69.2%. The SBST and the LST both showed a sensitivity of 80% and a specificity of 76.9%. In cases where all three tests were positive, the specificity increased to 84.6%.
Discussion
Tests of manual examination of alar ligament integrity have some diagnostic utility; however, these findings require further corroboration in a larger sample.
Background and aims
In 2008, the International Association for the Study of Pain Special Interest Group on Neuropathic Pain (NeuPSIG) proposed a clinical grading system to help identify patients with neuropathic pain (NeP). We previously applied this classification system, along with two NeP screening tools, the painDETECT (PD-Q) and Leeds Assessment of Neuropathic Symptoms and Signs pain scale (LANSS), to identify NeP in patients with neck/upper limb pain. Both screening tools failed to identify a large proportion of patients with clinically classified NeP, however a limitation of our study was the use of a single clinician performing the NeP classification. In 2016, the NeuPSIG grading system was updated with the aim of improving its clinical utility. We were interested in field testing of the revised grading system, in particular in the application of the grading system and the agreement of interpretation of clinical findings. The primary aim of the current study was to explore the application of the NeuPSIG revised grading system based on patient records and to establish the inter-rater agreement of detecting NeP. A secondary aim was to investigate the level of agreement in detecting NeP between the revised NeuPSIG grading system and the LANSS and PD-Q.
Methods
In this retrospective study, two expert clinicians (Specialist Pain Medicine Physician and Advanced Scope Physiotherapist) independently reviewed 152 patient case notes and classified them according to the revised grading system. The consensus of the expert clinicians’ clinical classification was used as “gold standard” to determine the diagnostic accuracy of the two NeP screening tools.
Results
The two clinicians agreed in classifying 117 out of 152 patients (ICC 0.794, 95% CI 0.716–850; κ 0.62, 95% CI 0.50–0.73), yielding a 77% agreement. Compared to the clinicians’ consensus, both LANSS and PD-Q demonstrated limited diagnostic accuracy in detecting NeP (LANSS sensitivity 24%, specificity 97%; PD-Q sensitivity 53%, specificity 67%).
Conclusions
The application of the revised NeP grading system was feasible in our retrospective analysis of patients with neck/upper limb pain. High inter-rater percentage agreement was demonstrated. The hierarchical order of classification may lead to false negative classification. We propose that in the absence of sensory changes or diagnostic tests in patients with neck/upper limb pain, classification of NeP may be further improved using a cluster of clinical findings that confirm a relevant nerve lesion/disease, such as reflex and motor changes. The diagnostic accuracy of LANSS and PD-Q in identifying NeP in patients with neck/upper limb pain remains limited. Clinical judgment remains crucial to diagnosing NeP in the clinical practice.
Implications
Our observations suggest that in view of the heterogeneity in patients with neck/upper limb pain, a considerable amount of expertise is required to interpret the revised grading system. While the application was feasible in our clinical setting, it is unclear if this will be feasible to apply in primary health care settings where early recognition and timely intervention is often most needed. The use of LANSS and PD-Q in the identification of NeP in patients with neck/upper limb pain remains questionable.
Objectives: To identify emancipatory strategies to strengthen the social protagonism of recyclable materials collectors in the light of entrepreneurial Nursing care.
Methods: Qualitative study carried out in two stages: field approach from healthcare interventions in a Recycling Materials Association, and individual interviews conducted between October and December 2018.
Results: The analysis resulted in three thematic categories: Social contribution of recyclable materials collectors; From the assistentialist perception to entrepreneurial Nursing care; Emancipatory strategies of recycling work.
Final Considerations: The emancipatory strategies to strengthen the social protagonism of recyclable materials collectors in the light of entrepreneurial Nursing care are related to the appreciation, recognition and enhancement of social work that has been already performed by these professionals, and to the creation of spaces for the socialization of experiences, expectations and perspectives.
The deployment of containers as building modules has grown in popularity over the past years due to their inherent strength, modular construction, and relatively low cost. The upcycled container architecture is being accepted since it is more eco-friendly than using the traditional building materials with intensive carbon footprint. Moreover, owing to the unquestionable urgency of climate change, existing climate-adaptive design strategies may no longer respond effectively as they are supposed to work in the previous passive design. Therefore, this paper explores the conceptual design for an upcycled shipping container building, which is designed as a carbon-smart modular living solution to a single family house under three design scenarios, related to cold, temperate, and hot–humid climatic zones, respectively. The extra feature of future climate adaption has been added by assessing the projected future climate data with the ASHRAE Standard 55 and Current Handbook of Fundamentals Comfort Model. Compared with the conventional design, Rome would gradually face more failures in conventional climate-adaptive design measures in the coming 60 years, as the growing trends in both cooling and dehumidification demand. Consequently, the appropriate utilization of internal heat gains are proposed to be the most promising measure, followed by the measure of windows sun shading and passive solar direct gain by using low mass, in the upcoming future in Rome. Future climate projection further shows different results in Berlin and Stockholm, where the special attention is around the occasional overheating risk towards the design goal of future thermal comfort.
Niche-based species distribution models (SDMs) play a central role in studying species response to environmental change. Effective management and conservation plans for freshwater ecosystems require SDMs that accommodate hierarchical catchment ordering and provide clarity on the performance of such models across multiple scales. The scale-dependence components considered here are: (a) environment spatial structure, represented by hierarchical catchment ordering following the Strahler system; (b) analysis grain, that included 1st to 5th order catchments; and (c) response grain, the grain at which species respond most, represented by local and upstream catchment area effects. We used fish occurrence data from the Danube River Basin and various factors representing climate, land cover and anthropogenic pressures. Our results indicate that the choice of response grain – local vs. upstream area effects – and the choice of analysis grain, only marginally influence the performance of SDMs. Upstream effects tend to better predict fish distributions than corresponding local effects for anthropogenic and land cover factors, in particular for species sensitive to pollution. Key predictors and their relative importance are scale and species dependent. Consequently, choosing proper species dependent spatial scales and factors is imperative for effective river rehabilitation measures.
Reduzierung im Außer-Haus-Verzehr zu erleichtern, analysiert unsere Studie die Auswirkungen von zwei gängigen Interventionsstrategien zur Reduzierung von Speiseresten in einem ganzheitlichen Verhaltensmodell. Auf der Grundlage eines quasi-experimentellen Baseline-Interventions-Designs haben wir in einem Strukturgleichungsmodell untersucht, wie sich das Aushängen von Informationspostern und die Reduzierung von Portionsgrößen auf persönliche, soziale und umweltbezogene Faktoren auswirken. Anhand von Daten aus Online-Befragungen und Beobachtungen von 880 Gästen (503 Baseline, 377 Intervention) während zwei Wochen in einer Universitätsmensa erlaubt das vorgeschlagene Modell, die Effekte der beiden Interventionen auf die Tellerreste spezifischen Veränderungen von Verhaltensdeterminanten zuzuordnen. Es hat sich gezeigt, dass die Verringerung der Portionsgröße bei den Zielgerichten mit einer geringeren Menge an Tellerabfällen zusammenhängt, die auf bewusster Wahrnehmung, die sich in einer geringeren Bewertung der Portionsgröße ausdrückt. Die Auswirkungen des Sehens von Informationsplakaten auf veränderten persönlichen Einstellungen, subjektiven Normen und wahrgenommener Verhaltenskontrolle beruhen. Je nachdem, wie eine Person auf die Information reagiert (indem sie sich nur bemüht, alle Speisen aufzuessen, oder indem sie sich bemüht und zusätzlich ein anderes Gericht in der Kantine wählt), ergeben sich jedoch entgegengesetzte Auswirkungen auf diese Determinanten und folglich auch auf die Tellerreste. Insgesamt sprechen die differenzierten Ergebnisse zu den Interventionseffekten dafür, dass ganzheitlichere und tiefer gehende Analysen von Interventionen zur Reduktion von Essensresten und damit zu einem nachhaltigeren Lebensmittelkonsum in der Außer-Haus-Verpflegung beitragen können.
Niche-based species distribution models (SDMs) have become an essential tool in conservation and restoration planning. Given the current threats to freshwater biodiversity, it is of fundamental importance to address scale effects on the performance of niche-based SDMs of freshwater species’ distributions. The scale effects are addressed here in the context of hierarchical catchment ordering, considered as counterpart to coarsening grain-size by increasing grid-cell size. We combine fish occurrence data from the Danube River Basin, the hierarchical catchment ordering and multiple environmental factors representing topographic, climatic and anthropogenic effects to model fish occurrence probability across multiple scales. We focus on 1st to 5th order catchments. The spatial scale (hierarchical catchment order) only marginally influences the mean performance of SDMs, however the uncertainty of the estimates increases with scale. Key predictors and their relative importance are scale and species dependent. Our findings have useful implications for choosing proper species dependent spatial scales for river rehabilitation measures, and for conservation planning in areas where fine grain species data are unavailable.