Health Care Disciplines Research Articles

A Verbal De-escalation Standardized Patient Workshop for Third- and Fourth-Year Medical Students.

Verbal de-escalation is an essential skill for physicians across specialties and is the first-line intervention for patients who present with agitation. Training in verbal de-escalation for medical students is less robust compared to other health care disciplines. We describe the creation and evaluation of a novel verbal de-escalation curriculum for third- and fourth-year medical students on their psychiatry clerkship rotation. We developed a simulation using standardized patient (SP) methodology and a dedicated reflection session, implementing it in the third-year psychiatry clerkship. Participants in the scenario received targeted feedback from their peers and SPs. The sessions were video recorded, and a random sample was selected and reviewed to identify key observations and themes from student performance. A total of 139 students participated in the encounter. One hundred twenty-two of 125 students (82%) stated the activity met the learning objectives, with 108 (86%) assigning the letter grade A to the activity. Written feedback indicated that the majority of students believed the activity to be realistic, instructive, and helpful but felt the SPs de-escalated too quickly. Video review of the encounters found that while the students effectively used the skills, many jumped to a quick fix, and some offered inappropriate choices to end the encounter. This SP activity was effective in allowing students to practice skills in a safe setting and was valued by students. In the future, adding another workshop in the fourth year could facilitate higher retention and practice of skills.

Integrated Care Approaches: Optimizing Diabetes Management in Sickle Cell Anemia

This review article delves into the intricate landscape of diabetes management in individuals with sickle cell anemia, emphasizing the imperative need for integrated care strategies. The coexistence of these two chronic conditions poses unique challenges that warrant a multidisciplinary and personalized approach. Through an exploration of the current understanding of the interplay between sickle cell anemia and diabetes, this review highlights the role of collaborative interventions, technological innovations, and patient education in achieving optimal outcomes. The integration of various healthcare disciplines, coupled with personalized medicine and patient empowerment, emerges as a key theme in navigating the complexities of managing diabetes in the context of sickle cell anemia. As the medical community continues to evolve, embracing integrated care models becomes essential for addressing the nuanced needs of individuals grappling with these comorbidities.

An Extensive Review of the Literature Using the Diophantine Equations to Study Fuzzy Set Theory

Every field in mathematics has made significant progress in research with fuzzy sets. Numerous application fields were discovered in both empirical and theoretical investigations, ranging from information technology to medical technology, from the natural sciences to the physical sciences, and from technical education to fine arts education. However, it has limitations of its own and has not been able to function in real‐world situations. An interdisciplinary approach of fuzzy theory with number theory, especially Diophantine equations, needs to be accomplished to overcome this problem. A thorough literature study of the Diophantine equations, fuzzy sets, and the combination known as the linear Diophantine fuzzy set (LDFS) is accomplished in the present study. New forms of LDFSs have been added recently, and these additions have found use in a variety of fields, including the disciplines of pharmacology, power, healthcare, goods, and finance. The genesis of these expansions is also examined in this study of the literature. Hence, in the present work, some applications of LDFS are described in detail. Further in the present study, the existing primary constraints in the research on LDFS are highlighted. Also, the last section of the review is dedicated to outlining some future directions for the study of LDFS.

Multidisciplinary understanding of modifiable physical disability risk factors for health professionals: A scoping review protocol.

Physical disability represents a major burden to health and lifespan, particularly as the proportion of older adults within the United States is expected to grow. Prevention efforts for physical disability targets methods and strategies to decrease modifiable risk factors. Potential challenges for health professionals may exist in synthesizing and interpreting this broad spectrum of literature due to the discipline-specific nuance of language used, practice type or specialty, and lack of interdisciplinary resources. This scoping review will map and synthesize the literature across healthcare disciplines to identify modifiable risk factors and the evidence related to their ability to predict physical disability. We will also draw attention to the possibility of modifiable risk factors for physical disability being operationalized as pre-disability in order to strengthen primary and secondary prevention efforts. A planned search strategy using physical disability terminology will be searched in English across MEDLINE, CINAHL, Health Source, PEDro, and REHABDATA by two reviewers in line with our review objectives and inclusion criteria. Eligibility for inclusion include peer-reviewed primary research published in the English language and have established a relationship between a person-level measurable characteristic that is modifiable by changes in lifestyle behaviors and any of the commonly accepted terms used to categorize or describe physical disability. Presentation of results will be using the PRISMA flowchart, with additional mapping and synthesis of evidence for modifiable risk factors for physical disability to clarify divergent terms used in classifying and measuring these factors and their potential for prediction of physical disability. It is anticipated that this scoping review will identify and highlight a variety of modifiable risk factors for physical disability that may aid primary and secondary prevention efforts for health professionals.

"Becoming a Person Who Does Self-Care": How Health Care Trainees Naturalistically Develop Successful Self-Care Practices.

Self-care is an ethical imperative for health professionals as it can mitigate the adverse effects of stress on professional functioning and health. Yet, there tends to be a lack of self-care among healthcare trainees and an insufficient focus on self-care in medical education. The objective of this study was to develop a grounded theory of how health trainees become successful self-care users. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 students in a variety of healthcare disciplines. Data were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. Health trainees underwent 4 iterative phases to become successful at self-care: Having a Wake-Up Call, Building Skills, Gaining Confidence, and Building an Identity. Our model also explained why some trainees were unsuccessful at developing self-care practices. We offer the first theory to explain how health trainees develop effective self-care habits. Understanding how self-care practices naturalistically develop has critical implications for developing interventions and curricula: By basing curricula about self-care on knowledge of what works, we have an opportunity to be more successful as educators. Indeed, other researchers have noted a lack of success in self-care and anti-burnout interventions for healthcare professionals. We conclude by discussing implications and recommendations for medical training and curriculum for health professions, including augmenting naturally occurring processes, linking self-care to personalized values, providing opportunities for deliberate practice, focusing on persistence with self-care, and faculty promotion and acceptance of trainee self-care.

Transforming Home Community Nursing Practice Through Nurse Empowerment: H.O.P.E. Approach to Care

Ageing at home is the expressed wish of the fastest growing older adult population. Life care, not just medical/health care, can holistically address care needs of this population. Receiving care at home provides the best opportunity for care providers to address a person’s care needs within their natural environment- the place they call home. With heightened concerns of COVID-19 transmission, older audits are hesitant to have multiple care providers in the home and staff are overwhelmed with work as several team members are off due to personal and/or medical reasons. Coupled with the current state of the Canadian homecare practice setting at the system level, a change is needed. The pandemic became the catalyst to transform/evolve the way SE Health provides care for the betterment of our clients, staff and organization- thus spearheading the H.O.P.E.- Home, Opportunity, People, Empowerment model of care. This leading organizational model of care provides nurses with optimal autonomy and flexibility to deliver best life, home and community care. Empowerment provides nurses with optimal autonomy and flexibility to deliver excellent life care with clients and their circle of care members. Caseload management and self-directed scheduling are unique home and community care competencies that are fostered and supported by optimization of operational processes. Therefore, operationalization of nursing practice in this model requires both optimization of Service Coordination function and digital enablement. One digital innovation, MySE Life App was created to address this need. The MySE Life App is a bespoke digital application designed by nurses, for nurses that provides access to key information to support holistic care delivery in a single application. The tool empowers informed decision making around planning, coordination, and delivering exceptional quality care by giving nurses access to client information on demand. The components of H.O.P.E. Model of Care brings homecare back to basics and care back to the future. To bring this ambition to life, we employed implementation science to bring rigor to the implementation approach and support the change management of over 8,000 leaders across the organization nationally. As Primary Nursing is the core of this organizational model, first year of implementation has focused on optimizing scope of nursing practice and continuity of care. H.O.P.E. nursing competency development through a Novice to Expert journey was also undertaken. Three key success insights will be shared with real life implementation scenarios: 1) empowering the nurse and the client, 2) implementation science informed execution, and 3) operationalizing nurse practice with enabling technology and redesigned structures, processes, and leadership. Learning insights can inform healthcare organizations in how creating a nurse empowered practice culture impacts client safety, quality care and sustainable business outcomes. As the implementation moves towards sustainability in nursing, the learnings will also be applied to accelerate the implementation across other health care disciplines such as personal support workers and allied health disciplines in the organization. The implementation of H.O.P.E. Model of Care illustrates how home and community care can work better for people and the broader system in a resource constrained environment.

Conditions for Implementing Windowless Offices in High-Density Urban Centers of Malaysia: A Bibliometric and Systematic Review

The dearth of land in high-density urban centres necessitates constructing structures with deep interiors, with little or no connection to the external environment. Additionally, the negative relationships between high-rise structures in the city centres in recent times are increasingly making contact with the outdoor environments undesirable. Whether in the built environment, decision sciences, healthcare, or technological disciplines, there is a need to understand the factors necessary for windowless office implementation, its prominent researchers, and geographical contexts, among other conditions for practical application. These background variables could assist in arriving at emerging themes, problems and gaps for concrete windowless office development in Malaysia. In this systematic review, the bibliographic information of title, abstract and keywords was mined from 255 documents on the Scopus database to generate scientometric maps and links showing relationships on co-authorship, co-citation, co-occurrences, and bibliometric coupling. The top trending variables in windowless office research are COVID-19, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, heart rate variability, performance assessment, visual reality, and workplace environment. Like other advanced economies in Asia, Malaysia is seen to attain a satisfactory level of development to implement the windowless office design module, with stable electricity power, technological advancement, and psychological stability of the people. The emerging variables in this review will give novel directions in exploring the developmental, psychological and health conditions for effective windowless office implementation in the country and similar economies in Asia, Africa and South America, where metropolises are fast becoming compacted due to ever-growing city centres

Agent-based simulation and child protection systems: Rationale, implementation, and verification

Background and objectiveSimulation models are an important tool used in health care and other disciplines to support operational research and decision-making. In the child protection literature, simulation models are an under-utilized source of research evidence. Participants and settingIn this paper, we describe the rationale for and the development of an agent-based simulation of a child protection system in the US. Using the investigation, prevention service, and placement histories of 600,000 children served in an urban child welfare system, we walk the reader through the development of a prototype known as OSPEDALE. MethodsThe governing equations built into OSPEDALE probabilistically simulate the onset of investigations. Then, drawing from empirical survival distributions, the governing equations trace the probability of subsequent interactions with the system (recurrence of maltreatment, service referrals, and placement) conditional on the characteristics of children, their assessed risk level, and prior child protection system involvement. ResultsAs an initial test of OSPEDALE's utility, we compare empirical admission counts with counts generated from OSPEDALE. Though the verification step is admittedly simple, the comparison shows that OSPEDALE replicates the empirical count of new admissions closely enough to justify further investment in OSPEDALE. ConclusionsManagement of public child protection systems is increasingly research evidence-dependent. The emphasis on research evidence as a decision-support tool has elevated evidence acquired through randomized clinical trials. Though important, the evidence from clinical trials represents only one type of research evidence. Properly specified, simulation models are another source of evidence with real-world relevance.

Chronic pain in the paramedic practice setting – a qualitative study of patients’ perspective

Background Chronic pain is highly prevalent among the global population and has a significant impact on a patient's livelihood in multiple areas. Chronic pain is now more widely recognised as a standalone medical condition by most healthcare disciplines, separate from that of acute pain. This has allowed for the development of a unique evidence-based approach to caring for these patients, which incorporates the biological, psychological, and social dimensions in which chronic pain transverses. However, in the paramedic practice setting, chronic pain has received scant mention. This knowledge gap leaves many paramedics operating without guidelines suitable for the care of chronic pain patients or an epidemiological foundation describing the incidence or treatment requirements of this patient cohort. Most importantly, the perspectives and experiences of chronic pain patients who are treated by paramedics have yet to be investigated which is vital to ensure relevant care. Aims To describe and understand the experience of patients requiring ambulance attendance for chronic pain-related complaints. Methods Six participants were enlisted using convenience sampling. Participants responded, via Zoom, to an inductive, semi-structured interview. Analysis was performed using qualitative reflexive thematic analysis with a non-positivist, constructive approach. Results The themes identified were ‘the impact of stigma’ and ‘inadequate paramedic education’. Most participants shared similar attitudes and experiences regarding paramedic management, expressing dissatisfaction with the current standard of practice in relation to chronic pain complaints. Conclusion Patients experiencing chronic pain are underserved by the standard of care being offered in this practice setting. Concerns raised by patients centred around the impact both stigma and educational understanding have on treatment. These findings indicate a need for further research, including the revision of guidelines and consideration of the patient perspective to be conducted in this area.

Enablers and barriers to referral and delivery of multidisciplinary prehabilitation in the autologous stem cell transplant population: a theory-based interview study.

Health care professionals (HCP) play a vital role in effectiveness of prehabilitation programs, but information is limited about what assists HCP deliver an effective service. This study evaluated HCP perceptions of enablers and barriers to two behaviours: referral for, and delivery of, multidisciplinary prehabilitation prior to autologous stem cell transplant. Based on the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) of behaviour change, we conducted semi-structured interviews, purposively sampling 14 participants (from various healthcare disciplines) at a tertiary cancer centre. Discipline-specific topic guides were created based on the TDF and the behaviours appropriate to each discipline. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, anonymised, content analysed (grouping, then labelling, thematically similar responses), and classified into theoretical domains. Structured decision rules were used to classify themes as high, medium, or low priority. Fifty enablers and 31 barriers were identified; of these 26 enablers and 16 barriers classified as high priority. Four domains had the most frequent high-priority enablers: Social professional role and identity (e.g. multidisciplinary teamwork); Beliefs about consequences (e.g. patient benefit); Memory, attention, and decision processes (e.g. refer as early as possible); and Environmental context and resources (e.g. electronic medical records are beneficial). High-priority barriers were most frequent in four domains: Memory, attention, and decision processes (e.g. conflicting views about who should be referred); Environmental context and resources (e.g. lack of time); Social influences (e.g. families); and Emotions (e.g. patient distress). Participants reported more enablers than barriers. Findings can support delivery of prehabilitation programs in hospital settings where uptake remains low.

Exploring Rehabilitation Provider Experiences of Providing Health Services for People Living with Long COVID in Alberta.

COVID-19 infection can result in persistent symptoms, known as long COVID. Understanding the provider experience of service provision for people with long COVID symptoms is crucial for improving care quality and addressing potential challenges. Currently, there is limited knowledge about the provider experience of long COVID service delivery. To explore the provider experience of delivering health services to people living with long COVID at select primary, rehabilitation, and specialty care sites. This study employed qualitative description methodology. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with frontline providers at primary care, rehabilitation, and specialty care sites across Alberta. Participants were interviewed between June and September 2022. Interviews were conducted virtually over zoom, audio-recorded, and transcribed with consent. Iterative inductive qualitative content analysis of transcripts was employed. Relationships between emergent themes were examined for causality or reciprocity, then clustered into content areas and further abstracted into a priori categories through their interpretive joint meaning. A total of 15 participants across Alberta representing diverse health care disciplines were interviewed. Main themes include: the importance of education for long COVID recognition; the role of symptom acknowledgement in patient-centred long COVID service delivery; the need to develop recovery expectations; and opportunities for improvement of navigation and wayfinding to long COVID services. Provider experience of delivering long COVID care can be used to inform patient-centred service delivery for persons with long COVID symptoms.

Students’ meaning-making processes in an IPE programme with students from education-, health-, and social care programmes. A qualitative study

Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) is increasingly being recognised as an important mechanism to improve the quality of services offered to children. This study imparts results from an investigation of undergraduate students’ participation in an interprofessional education (IPE) programme focusing on working with children (0–18). The programme participants include students across the disciplines of education, health, and social care. In the study the students’ accounts of group processes by which they negotiated their positions and the relevance of their emerging professional knowledge in interprofessional student groups are explored. The more overarching aim is to contribute to a knowledge base serving the development of broad IPE initiatives. Qualitative interviews were conducted with students (n = 15) to explore their experiences participating in the programme. Positioning theory was used as an analytical framework. The results indicate that the students’ joint constructions of the aim of the learning activity were vital for their joint meaning-making in the interprofessional learning (IPL) groups and for processes of positioning. In addition, students’ participation in the IPL groups was closely linked to their approach to negotiations of relevance. The pedagogical implications of these results are discussed.

Clinical Leadership Perspectives: Advancements in Manual Physical Therapy Practice with the Pakistani Context

Physical therapy is a healthcare discipline that is dedicated to help individuals and patients in maintaining their health while optimizing their strength, function, and movements. Pakistan being a developing country, experiences a slower pace in the establishment of advancements in the medical professions. Whereas physical therapy is significantly improving day by day in Pakistan; additionally, this study aims to discuss the advances, in manual therapy concerning the physical therapy profession in Pakistan. This study aimed to evaluate the perception of clinical leadership and its recent advancements concerning the manual physical therapy practice in Pakistan for the preceding year. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 physical therapists from 5 different cities in Pakistan. Physical therapists with at least 10 years of clinical practice were included in the data collection. The interviews were audio/video recorded, data verbatim transcribed, and analyzed manually by open coding and in-vivo coding. Furthermore, thematic analysis was done to identify different elements of recent advancements concerning manual physical therapy by finding the appropriate patterns in the gathered data. The results showed that advancements occurred in the last decade, such as international certifications, workshops, hands-on practice and master programs. There is lack of awareness, gender barriers, and financial constraints in adopting new advancements. The focus was shifted more toward muscle energy technique and myofascial release. Modalities were preferred in the past for pain relief; however, in the recent decade, they have been replaced by manual therapy techniques. Pain management and prognosis are better with manual therapy. These advancements will be cost-effective for the patient. This study concluded that manual therapy in Pakistan has undergone a significant transformation during the last preceding years. There is still great potential for more advancement in manual therapy techniques in Pakistan.

Perceptions of the Scope of Practice of Audiology.

The primary purpose of this study was to determine which scope of practice roles and responsibilities are attributed to the profession of audiology (AUD) relative to other health care disciplines by a group of health and human services faculty and students. An online survey inquiring about participant knowledge of different health professions' scopes of practice, and experience with and attitude toward the profession of AUD, was sent to faculty and students in the Western Michigan University College of Health and Human Services. Students also completed two subscales of the Interprofessional Attitudes Scale. Descriptive statistics and chi-square and Kruskal-Wallis analyses evaluating response differences between groups are presented. Thirty-six faculty and 118 students (48 graduate and 70 undergraduate) completed the survey. AUD was the profession most often associated with all hearing-related scope of practice activities. Speech-language pathology was often associated with hearing-related scope of practice activities. Audiologists were less commonly associated with vestibular, balance, and mobility scope of practice activities. Group was significant for four scope of practice activities. About half of respondents indicated they knew nothing or a little about AUD, and a majority had no or rare interactions with audiologists in class or clinic. Only about half of participants responded they were likely or very likely to refer patients to an audiologist. Increased knowledge of the scope of practice and exposure to the profession of AUD may benefit other health care professionals and patients, possibly leading to increased interprofessional practice and an increased number of appropriate referrals.

Implementation and evaluation of visitation procedures for patients hospitalised with COVID-19

Background/Aims Visits from loved ones can be highly beneficial to the wellbeing of hospital inpatients, but this can be difficult to facilitate if the patient has a highly contagious disease such as COVID-19. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to implement and evaluate a set of visitation procedures for patients hospitalised with COVID-19. Methods A set of visitation procedures was developed by a panel of professionals from a range of healthcare disciplines, then implemented in a hospital in Spain. The procedures established three types of visitation options: virtual visits, short-term in-person visits and long-term in-person visits. Patients and visitors were asked to rate their likelihood of recommending their visitation method to a family member or colleague on a scale of 1–10, with results used to generate a net promoter score. Participants were also asked for qualitative information on what they would improve about the visitation procedures. Results A total of 20 patients and 51 visitors took part in the study. Among patient participants, the net promoter score was 90/100, with an individual score range of 8–10, indicating high satisfaction. Among visitors, individual scores ranged from 0–10, with a net promoter score of 41/100. There was little difference in scores between those who experienced a virtual and in-person visit. Suggestions for improvement included increasing the frequency of visits and providing technological support for virtual visits. Conclusions The visitation procedures used in this study could serve as a useful basis for other hospitals looking to implement safe visiting policies for patients with highly infectious diseases such as COVID-19.

Current Status and Challenges in Delivering Comprehensive Care for Patients with Hemophilia.

The importance of comprehensive care as a treatment strategy for patients with hemophilia is recognized worldwide. Comprehensive care entails addressing full spectrum of medical and psychological aspects impacting both patients and their families. The primary objective of comprehensive care for individuals with hemophilia is to enable them to lead their daily lives just as anyone else would. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to have a positive and collaborative approach across various healthcare disciplines. This extends beyond clinical specialists, encompassing pediatricians, hematologists, orthopedic surgeons, dental and oral surgeons, gynecologists, nurses, physical therapists, clinical psychologists, and other professionals from diverse fields. This review article discusses the current status and challenges associated with comprehensive care for patients with hemophilia. We categorize these challenges as follows: hemophilic arthritis, rehabilitation, oral care, transitioning from pediatric to adult care, addressing carrier issues, and providing psychological care. There is still substantial work to be undertaken in addressing these hurdles and advancing the quality of comprehensive care for hemophilia patients.

Clinical Learning Environment and Supervision: Experience and Satisfaction Level of Final Year Basic Students, Kaduna State College of Nursing and Midwifery, Kafanchan

Background: Clinical Learning Environment is essentially anywhere students of healthcare disciplines learn clinical experience about patient care. Thus, Clinical placement forms a significant part of educating the nursing and midwifery students whose curriculum stipulates spending more than twice the number of hours in a clinical environment relative to the hours in the classroom necessary for competence development, integration of theoretical knowledge, clinical practice, and professionalism. This study assessed the experience and satisfaction level of nursing and midwifery students with CLE and supervision at Kaduna State College of Nursing and Midwifery, Kafanchan, and attempted to associate the program type with the study variables. Method: The study employed a descriptive cross-sectional design. Stratified sampling was adopted in selecting 92 final year students of nursing and midwifery schools out of 120. Adapted CLES+T was used to collect data from the respondents. For experience and satisfaction level towards CLE and Supervision, items were scored. For each variable, score <40%, ≥40<70%, and ≥70% was considered inadequate, moderate, and adequate, respectively. Chi-square was used to test the association between variables at a significant level of 0.05. Result: The mean age of respondents was 23.6 (±0.3) years, as the majority (54.4%) were between ages 19-24 years who have had a minimum of 5 clinical placements (41.1%). The majority of the respondents reported moderate experience with CLE and supervision (71.1%), which translated to respondents who reported adequate satisfaction with CLE and supervision (77.8%). There was a statistical association between the type of program and satisfaction with CLE and supervision (χ2 =7.19, df = 2, p = 0.027), with basic midwifery programs accounting for the difference. Conclusion: Given the moderate experience with CLE and Supervision and the positive relationship between the type of program and satisfaction with CLE and Supervision where basic midwifery accounted for the difference, the management of the College and that of the General Hospital must evaluate the CLE, ensuring learning objectives can be met in all sections and units of the hospital, to better prepare students for practice.

A Cytomegalovirus (CMV) Case Study to Promote Interprofessional Learning (IPL) Between Audiology and Biomedical Science Students in Higher Education.

Modern and effective patient care requires specialist healthcare professionals working together. Interprofessional learning (IPL) seeks to provide opportunities for different healthcare disciplines to learn with, from and about each other. This study focused on the delivery and evaluation of a cytomegalovirus (CMV) case study workshop to facilitate IPL between two Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) regulated courses: Biomedical Science and Audiology. The 2h online workshop consisted of 1) defining the roles, responsibilities and skills of the two healthcare professions, 2) the structure of the Biomedical Science and Audiology departments, 3) routes to HCPC registration, 4) core curriculum of both degree programmes and 5) interpreting interdisciplinary data related to a CMV patient case. The workshop was interactive, with the virtual learning environment promoting peer discussions and the use of online polling. Student responses were collected through an online questionnaire. A total of 108 respondents completed a post-event survey and Mann-Whitney U tests revealed there were no significant differences in the responses between the two student cohorts in response to each of the survey statements (p > 0.05). A total of 82.4% of students agreed that they need to know the role of other healthcare professionals for their future practice, whilst 84.2% agreed that the CMV case study was a good format to facilitate effective IPL. A total of 93.5% of respondents recognised the importance of both professions in diagnosing a patient with CMV. Thematic analysis identified four common themes, including appreciation of shared roles, recognition of similarities in registration pathways, working together to provide holistic patient care and the role of clinicians in the patient journey. This novel collaboration between Biomedical Science and Audiology facilitated effective IPL whilst meeting the interprofessional education HCPC requirements. Collaborative working is an essential component of delivering effective patient care and allied healthcare degrees need to provide opportunities within their curriculum to foster this. We hope this study encourages other higher education institutes to expand and develop their current IPL activities to include a broader spectrum of healthcare courses.

Nursing students’ emotional empathy, emotional intelligence and higher education-related stress: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundNursing is one of the critically important disciplines in healthcare. Due to its complexity and specificity, nursing students often face additional higher education-related stress. However, there is less research on higher education-related stress among nursing students. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of emotional empathy and emotional intelligence on the dimensions of higher education-related stress among nursing students.MethodsThis study utilized a multi-stage sampling design and was completed within the March-June 2023 period. A total of 1126 nursing students were recruited to complete the questionnaire. The self-administered questionnaire included the basic characteristics of the subjects, an emotional empathy scale, an emotional intelligence scale, and a higher education-related stress scale. One-way ANOVA/t-tests, correlation coefficients, and hierarchical linear regression analyses were used to explore the factors affecting higher education-related stress and the relationship between emotional empathy and emotional intelligence with the dimensions of higher education-related stress.ResultsThe mean (SD) scores of challenges and dissatisfaction dimensions of higher education-related stress among nursing students were 30.052 (7.466) and 8.270 (2.205), respectively. Emotional empathy was significantly and positively related to the challenges and dissatisfaction dimensions of higher education-related stress. Emotional intelligence was negatively correlated with the challenges dimension of higher education-related stress and positively correlated with the dissatisfaction dimension. Stratified multiple regression analyses revealed that nursing students' emotional empathy and emotional intelligence were significant predictors of the dimensions of higher education-related stress.ConclusionOverall, emotional empathy and emotional intelligence were significantly correlated with all dimensions of higher education-related stress. Consequently, in future interventions, the Chinese government and education sector can develop nursing students' ability to use emotional empathy and emotional intelligence rationally through emotional regulation strategies and emotional intelligence courses, to reduce the higher education-related stress they experience.

Establishing an evidence-based cultural competency program with advanced practice providers in a community oncology setting.

199 Background: The United States continues to grow in both population and diversity. The trigger for this project was the dramatic increase in patient diversity in Texas and the lack of adequate cultural competency training for providers at a Texas Oncology clinic network. Clinicians must increase their self-awareness and knowledge to provide culturally competent care. The literature review found multiple educational modalities, across many health care disciplines, used by researchers to improve the cultural competency of health care providers. Methods: This project sought to improve satisfaction and adherence of patients over the age of 25 diagnosed with cancer by increasing provider cultural sensitivity and self-awareness of bias within 1 month of cultural competency training. The project sample was 14 advanced practice providers, 10 APRNs and 4 PAs. The educational plan for this project included an evidence-based course and a follow-up focus group to reinforce learning. Quantitative data were analyzed using the Cultural Competence Assessment tool to compare participants’ anonymous pre- and posteducation with the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Qualitative data was obtained during focus groups. Results: The quantitative data indicated that cultural awareness and sensitivity increased following training, with median scores increasing from 6.09 to 6.55, p = 0.03. However, the data do not suggest that cultural competence and behavior changed after training, as median scores went from 3.96 to 4.23 after training, p = 0.06. Overall, the focus group participants agreed about improving self-awareness, identifying biases, improving patient experience by asking more open-ended questions, and being vulnerable. Conclusions: Despite the small sample size, the quantitative and qualitative data suggest that cultural awareness and sensitivity improved following the EBP course and focus group meetings. Cultural competency and behavior did not change according to the data. However, the project implications include improvement in provider knowledge and increased self-awareness, which promote individualized, culturally sensitive care.