Research in nursing & health
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Comparative Study
Symptom clusters in adults with inflammatory bowel disease.
Symptoms (pain, fatigue, sleep disturbance, depression, and anxiety) in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are associated with reduced quality of life. Understanding how IBD symptoms cluster and the clinical and demographic factors associated with symptom clusters will enable focused development of symptom management interventions. The study purposes were to (i) identify symptom cluster membership among adults with IBD and (ii) examine associations between demographic (age, gender, race/ethnicity, and education) and clinical factors (smoking status, time since diagnosis, medication type, IBD type, disease activity), and membership in specific symptom cluster groups. ⋯ In latent class analysis (LCA), four groups of participants were identified based on symptoms: "low symptom burden" (26% of sample), "high symptom burden" (38%), "physical symptoms" (22%), and "psychological symptoms" (14%). In multinomial regression, female gender, smoking, corticosteroids, Crohn's disease, and active disease state were associated with membership in the high symptom burden group. Additional research is needed to test interventions that may be effective at reducing symptom burden for individuals with IBD.
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Background and design of the symptom burden in end-stage liver disease patient-caregiver dyad study.
Over half a million Americans are affected by cirrhosis, the cause of end-stage liver disease (ESLD). Little is known about how symptom burden changes over time in adults with ESLD and their informal caregivers, which limits our ability to develop palliative care interventions that can optimize symptom management and quality of life in different patient-caregiver dyads. The purpose of this article is to describe the background and design of a prospective, longitudinal descriptive study, "Symptom Burden in End-Stage Liver Disease Patient-Caregiver Dyads," which is currently in progress. ⋯ Integrated multilevel and latent growth mixture modeling will be used to identify trajectories of change in symptom burden, linking those changes to clinical events, and quality of life outcomes and characterizing types of patient-caregiver dyads based on patient-, caregiver-, and dyad-level factors. Challenges we have encountered include unexpected attrition of study participants, participants not returning their baseline questionnaires, and hiring and training of research staff. The study will lay the foundation for future research and innovation in ESLD, end-of-life and palliative care, and caregiving.
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Well-prepared informal caregivers play an important role in heart failure (HF) care, so an instrument to evaluate their preparedness to care is important. To date, HF caregiver preparedness has been rarely investigated quantitatively. The Caregiver Preparedness Scale (CPS) has been used in other chronic condition populations, but its psychometric characteristics have never been tested in HF caregivers. ⋯ Significant correlations (p < .05) of the CPS with both the CC-SCHFI and the HADS supported concurrent validity. The composite reliability index, Cronbach's alpha, factor score determinacy coefficient, and ICC were .89, .91, .96, .91, respectively, supporting reliability. Our study provides evidence that the CPS is a valid and reliable instrument to measure HF caregiver preparedness, enabling clinicians, and researchers to target specific interventions to HF caregivers.
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The A(H1N1)pdm09 influenza virus reached pandemic level in Spain in 2009, prompting a national vaccination campaign. To avoid transmission to patients, healthcare professionals' vaccination against pandemic influenza is crucial. The main objective of this study was to analyze factors associated with the failure by healthcare professionals to accept the pandemic vaccination in 2009. ⋯ The strongest predictor of not receiving the pandemic vaccine was not having had seasonal vaccinations in that year or the previous year. Those who had not received the pandemic vaccine were more often female; nurses; under 45; denied contact with at-risk groups; and had negative beliefs about the vaccine effectiveness and little concern for getting the disease, being infected at work, or passing it on to patients. It would be prudent to direct preventive campaigns not only at individuals at risk of catching flu but also at health professionals with a negative view of flu vaccine, with a particular focus on nurses, who have a key role in recommending flu vaccine.