Plos One
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Nurses encounter children who report of pain of diverse and unknown causes in their professional work. The current study therefore assessed and compared nursing students and nurses' knowledge and attitudes pertaining to children's pain in the Ghanaian context. The goal of this was to have a baseline information to guide the development and implementation of the content for a sustainable educational programme (short-course) for nursing students and nurses in Ghana. ⋯ Final year nursing students and nurses have unsatisfactory knowledge and attitudes regarding children's pain; which reiterates the need for urgent and effective educational efforts in this area. Regular in-service training should be offered to post-registration nurses to enhance their pediatric pain knowledge and attitudes for improved pain care in children.
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Dengue is a public health concern in northern Queensland, Australia. This study aimed to explore spatial and temporal characteristics of dengue cases in Queensland, and to identify high-risk areas after a 2009 dengue outbreak at fine spatial scale and thereby help in planning resource allocation for dengue control measures. Notifications of dengue cases for Queensland at Statistical Local Area (SLA) level were obtained from Queensland Health for the period 2010 to 2015. ⋯ The most likely cluster of autochthonous cases (Relative Risk, RR = 54.52, p<0.001) contained 50 SLAs in the north-east region of the state around Cairns occurred during 2013-2015. A cluster of overseas cases (RR of 60.81, p<0.001) occurred in a suburb of Brisbane during 2012 to 2013. These results show a clear spatiotemporal trend of recent dengue cases in Queensland, providing evidence in directing future investigations on risk factors of this disease and effective interventions in the high-risk areas.
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It has been reported that lateral gene transfer (LGT) events among Mycobacteroides abscessus strains are prevalent. The hsp65 gene, a chronometer gene for bacterial phylogenetic analysis, is resistant to LGT events, particularly among mycobacterial strains, rendering the hsp65-targeting method the most widely used method for mycobacterial detection. To determine the prevalence of M. abscessus strains that are subject to hsp65 LGT, we applied rpoB typing to 100 clinically isolated Korean strains of M. abscessus that had been identified by hsp65 sequence analysis. ⋯ In conclusion, we identified two M. abscessus subsp. massiliense rough strains from Korean patients with hsp65 genes that might be laterally transferred from M. abscessus subsp. abscessus. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of possible LGT events associated with the hsp65 gene in mycobacteria. Our results also suggest that there is the potential for misidentification when the hsp65-based protocol is used for mycobacterial identification.
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An infectious disease outbreak such as the 2009 influenza pandemic is an unexpected demand shock to hospital emergency departments (EDs). We analysed changes in key performance metrics in (EDs) in Victoria during this pandemic to assess the impact of this demand shock. ⋯ This pandemic event caused excess demand leading to increased waiting times, did-not-wait patients and access block. Increases in admitted patients were more strongly associated with crowding than non-admitted patients during the pandemic period, so policies to divert or mitigate low-complexity non-admitted patients are unlikely to be effective in reducing ED crowding.
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Use of psychotropic drugs is common among older adults. Population-based studies on the associations of psychotropic drug use with mortality are sparse. ⋯ Use of opioids, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines is significantly associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality among community-dwelling older adults in Germany. Clinicians should be careful in prescribing these psychotropic drugs to older adults while patients already under psychotropic therapy should well balance the risks and benefits of drug use. Further studies with a larger sample size and information on specific indications for psychotropic drug use and mental comorbidities are required to confirm the findings of the present study.