BACKGROUND Dignity Therapy is a brief psychotherapy that can enhance a sense of legacy while addressing the emotional and existential needs of patients receiving hospice or palliative care. In Dignity Therapy, patients create a formalized "legacy" document that records their most cherished memories, their lessons learned in life, as well as their hopes and dreams for loved ones in the future. T...

The National Institutes of Health Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS; trademarked by the National Institutes of Health) Roadmap initiative (available at www.nihpromis.org) is a cooperative research program designed to develop, evaluate, and standardize item banks to measure patient-reported outcomes across different medical conditions as well as the US population (...

OBJECTIVE To quantify the additional hospital length of stay (LOS) and costs associated with in-hospital falls and fall injuries in acute hospitals in Australia. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS A multisite prospective cohort study conducted during 2011-2013 in the control wards of a falls prevention trial (6-PACK). The trial included all admissions to 12 acute medical and surgical wards of s...

A systematic review of recruitment approaches was conducted as a step towards creating a culturally sensitive approach to enhance participation of African Americans into our Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) treatment research. From this review, a recruitment plan providing a collaborative partnership between the African American community and the clinical investigators was adopted. We sought...

This paper gives a n overview of o u r f ramework for the automated segmentation and motion analysis of cardiac motion from MRI tagging lines. I t consists of a series of novel methods which utilize theory from image processing, deformable models a n d finite elements. O u r f ramework consists of several steps. I n the first step we use G a b o r Filter banks a n d deformable models for the au...

Correspondence to Dr Clare Relton; [email protected] ABSTRACT Introduction: Breast feeding can promote positive long-term and short-term health outcomes in infant and mother. The UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates (duration and exclusivity) in the world, resulting in preventable morbidities and associated healthcare costs. Breastfeeding rates are also socially patterned, thereb...

S. JAEGER Intera tive Systems Laboratories University of Karlsruhe Computer S ien e Department, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany email: stefan.jaeger ira.uka.de This paper presents an investigation of a ognitive problem in terms of omplexity theory. Two global optimization approa hes are presented for re overing traje tories from stati , handwritten word images. Both take graph-theoreti al representati...

OBJECTIVE To develop a comprehensive, psychometrically sound, and conceptually grounded patient reported outcomes (PRO) measurement system for individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). METHODS Individual interviews (n=44) and focus groups (n=65 individuals with SCI and n=42 SCI clinicians) were used to select key domains for inclusion and to develop PRO items. Verbatim items from other cutti...

O L I V E R PFA A R1, 2, CL AUS BAC H E R T3, AL B R E C H T BU FE 4, RO L A N D BU H L 5, CH R IS TO F EB N E R 6, PE T E R EN G7, FR A N K FR I E D R I C HS 8, TH O M A S FU C HS 9, EC K A R D HA M E L M A N N10, DO R IS HA R T W I G-BA D E11, TH O M A S HE R I N G12, IS I D O R HU T T E G G E R13, K I R S T E N JU N G14, LU D G E R K L I M E K1, MAT T H I A S VO L K M A R KO PP15, HA NS ME R...

OBJECTIVE To compare the effect of two strategies (enhanced hand hygiene vs meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) screening and decolonisation) alone and in combination on MRSA rates in surgical wards. DESIGN Prospective, controlled, interventional cohort study, with 6-month baseline, 12-month intervention and 6-month washout phases. SETTING 33 surgical wards of 10 hospitals in ...