Plos One
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Degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) is a spinal cord condition that results in progressive non-traumatic compression of the cervical spinal cord. Spine surgeons must consider a large quantity of information relating to disease presentation, imaging features, and patient characteristics to determine if a patient will benefit from surgery for DCM. We applied a supervised machine learning approach to develop a classification model to predict individual patient outcome after surgery for DCM. ⋯ Worse pre-operative disease severity, longer duration of DCM symptoms, older age, higher body weight, and current smoking status were associated with worse surgical outcomes. We developed a model that predicted positive surgical outcome for DCM with good accuracy at the individual patient level on an independent testing cohort. Our analysis demonstrates the applicability of machine-learning to predictive modeling in spine surgery.
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Workplace bullying experienced by clinical nurses is associated with burnout, a factor that threatens the quality of nursing care and patient safety. This study examined the association of workplace bullying with burnout, professional quality of life, and turnover intention among clinical nurses. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted using a structured questionnaire. ⋯ Controlling for the general characteristics of the participants, workplace bullying had a significant association with emotional exhaustion (B = 0.29, p < 0.01) and depersonalization (B = 0.15, p < 0.01) among the subdomains of burnout, compassion fatigue among the components of professional quality of life (B = 0.15, p < 0.01), and turnover intention (B = 0.05, p < 0.01). Thus, preventing workplace bullying is important to reduce clinical nurses' burnout and turnover. The role of nursing leadership is crucial to develop interventions that reduce workplace bullying and successfully create a professional, nurturing, and supportive work culture.
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Noncommunicable diseases including cancer are widespread amongst the 5.6 million Syrian refugees currently hosted in the Middle East. Given its prevalence as the third leading cause of death in Syria, cancer is likely to be an important health burden among Syrian refugees. Against this background, our aim was to describe the clinical, ethical and policy decision-making experiences of health actors working within the current refugee cancer care system; the impact of refugee cancer care health policies on health care providers and policy makers in this context; and provide suggestions for the way delivery of care should be optimised in a sustained emergency situation. ⋯ Our findings confirm and expand understanding of the challenges involved in resource allocation decisions for cancer care in refugee populations, and highlight these for the particular situation of long term Syrian refugees in Jordan. The insights offered by frontline clinicians and policy makers in this context reveal the unintended personal and moral impact of resource allocation decisions. With many countries facing similar challenges in the provision of cancer care for refugees, the lessons learned from Jordan suggest key areas for policy revision and international investment in developing cancer care policies for refugees internationally.
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As part of the Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) project, this study aimed to answer the following research questions: 1) How do European citizens perceive the quality of primary health care provided for children? And 2) What are their priorities with respect to quality assessment of primary health care aimed at satisfying children's needs? ⋯ Between countries, significant differences exist in the perceived quality of primary care and priorities with regard to quality assessment. Taking into account the citizens' perspective in decision-making means that aspects with low perceived quality that are highly prioritized warrant further action.
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Biochemical adrenal insufficiency induced by glucocorticoid treatment is prevalent, but data on the clinical implications are sparse. We investigated clinical consequences of glucocorticoid-induced adrenal insufficiency after oral glucocorticoid cessation. ⋯ Oral glucocorticoid withdrawal was associated with adverse outcomes attributable to adrenal insufficiency. Our study underscores the need for future research to establish evidence-based clinical guidance on management of patients who discontinue oral glucocorticoids.