Plos One
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End-of-life care policy has a focus on enabling patients to die in their preferred place; this is believed for most to be home. This review assesses patient preferences for place of death examining: the extent of unreported preferences, the importance of patient factors (place of care and health diagnosis) and who reports preferences. ⋯ It is unknown what proportion of patients prefers to die at home or elsewhere. Reported preferences for place of death often exclude the views of those with no preference or not asked: when 'missing data' are included, they supress the proportion of preferences for all locations. Caution should be exercised if asserting that most patients prefer to die at home.
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Review
Non-Invasive Continuous Respiratory Monitoring on General Hospital Wards: A Systematic Review.
Failure to recognize acute deterioration in hospitalized patients may contribute to cardiopulmonary arrest, unscheduled intensive care unit admission and increased mortality. ⋯ Based on the findings of this systematic review, implementation of routine continuous non-invasive respiratory monitoring on general hospital wards cannot yet be advocated as results are inconclusive, and methodological quality of the studies needs improvement. Future research in this area should focus on technology explicitly suitable for low care settings and tailored alarm and treatment algorithms.
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Meta Analysis Comparative Study
Harmonic Scalpel versus Electrocautery Dissection in Modified Radical Mastectomy for Breast Cancer: A Meta-Analysis.
Despite the common use of conventional electrocautery in modified radical mastectomy for breast cancer, the harmonic scalpel is recently emerging as a dominant surgical instrument for dissection and haemostasis, which is thought to reduce the morbidity, such as seroma and blood loss. But the results of published trials are inconsistent. So we made the meta-analysis to assess the intraoperative and postoperative endpoints among women undergoing modified radical mastectomy with harmonic scalpel or electrocautery. ⋯ Compared to standard electrocautery, harmonic scalpel dissection presents significant advantages in decreasing postoperative drainage, seroma development, intraoperative blood loss and wound complications in modified radical mastectomy for breast cancer, without increasing operative time. Harmonic scalpel can be recommended as a preferential surgical instrument in modified radical mastectomy.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Cost-Effectiveness of Financial Incentives to Promote Adherence to Depot Antipsychotic Medication: Economic Evaluation of a Cluster-Randomised Controlled Trial.
Offering a modest financial incentive to people with psychosis can promote adherence to depot antipsychotic medication, but the cost-effectiveness of this approach has not been examined. ⋯ Offering a modest financial incentive to people with psychosis is cost-effective in promoting adherence to depot antipsychotic medication. Direct healthcare costs (including costs of the financial incentive) are unlikely to be increased by this intervention.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Grant Peer Review: Improving Inter-Rater Reliability with Training.
This study developed and evaluated a brief training program for grant reviewers that aimed to increase inter-rater reliability, rating scale knowledge, and effort to read the grant review criteria. Enhancing reviewer training may improve the reliability and accuracy of research grant proposal scoring and funding recommendations. Seventy-five Public Health professors from U. ⋯ The increase in reliability for experienced reviewers is notable because it is commonly assumed that reviewers--especially those with experience--have good understanding of the grant review rating scale. The findings suggest that both experienced and novice reviewers who had not received the type of training developed in this study may not have appropriate understanding of the definitions and meaning for each value of the rating scale and that experienced reviewers may overestimate their knowledge of the rating scale. The results underscore the benefits of and need for specialized peer reviewer training.