Respiratory care
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Interprofessional (IP) education is focused on learning about, from, and with other health care professionals in an effort to improve patient care and specifically patient safety. IP education does not diminish the importance of discipline-specific competencies but rather focuses on making the connections necessary to develop IP collaborative practice to improve the quality of health care. ⋯ The studies explored improving attitudes toward IP education, improving communication and collaboration skills, and improving patient safety. Review of the recently published IP education literature reveals opportunities for respiratory therapy educators, researchers, managers, and clinicians to discover ways to develop IP collaborative practice to ultimately have an important impact on the outcome of the patients we serve.
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Asthma is the most common chronic disease leading to hospital admissions and readmissions in childhood. Bedside nurses and respiratory therapists are the primary asthma educators, but they may lack time or knowledge to provide comprehensive asthma education and identify barriers to care. Patients and their parent(s) may benefit from comprehensive education and assessment of barriers from a certified asthma educator. ⋯ Providing comprehensive, face-to-face asthma education and working with subjects and their parent(s) to address barriers to medication adherence and facilitate specialty follow-up post discharge decreased health care utilization.
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COPD remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide. The impact of smoking and air pollution remain important causative factors. ⋯ These are supported by findings from exposures, symptoms, spirometry and radiologic imaging. This new approach can lead to earlier diagnosis and modification of risk factors, earlier therapeutic intervention and improved treatments of established disease.
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Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is useful in survivors of COVID-19-associated acute respiratory failure (ARF). The aim of this retrospective study on in-patient PR was to report rehabilitative trajectories and effects of cycle training. ⋯ In-patient PR could be tailored and progressively increased to survivors of COVID-19-associated ARF; cycle training was feasible in half of the participants. Benefits were independent of initial stage of physical performance and allowed participants to move from lower to higher levels of activities.
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Review
An Introduction to the Clinical Application and Interpretation of Electrical Impedance Tomography.
Electrical impedance tomography is no longer a new technology, but its clinical use at the bedside is still in its primary stage. Global research has drastically increased since its commercial availability, and this has slowly begun to make its way into routine clinical bedside use in some areas of the world. This paper will provide the bedside clinician an introduction to the technology, how it is used, and the most common applications found in the literature.