No description available.

Digital technology has greatly revolutionized the field of health care and medical practices. Digitalization has significantly excelled the operational efficiency and standards of medical care enhancing the overall experience for both medical professionals and patients. Despite its overwhelming advantages, Health care sectors have been lagging in adopting and implementing new digital technology innovations. Deciding and shifting towards digitalization would require adopters to have a flexible and open mindset.  However, health care has a great shortage of pathologists, and implementation of digitalization seems to be very limited in this area of healthcare. Most of the pathologists today work with manual cancer diagnosing techniques indicating an acute need for digitalization. This thesis is aimed at identifying the barriers and facilitators for the implementation of a digital prostate cancer diagnostic innovation in health care. A literature review provides a detailed outline of various aspects related to prostate cancer diagnosis. It provides a detailed description of different frameworks and theories in relation to existing barriers and facilitators in implementing innovation in health care. The methodological approaches applied in this study have also been described in the methodology chapter. Based on the data gathered from semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, three main themes were identified, and corresponding to these, possible barriers, and facilitators for implementing the digital cancer diagnostic innovation were developed.  Finally, the findings of this study concluded that implementation of digital cancer diagnostic innovation faces several barriers and facilitators. Some of the crucial barriers are financial barriers, time constraints, political conflicts, ethical policies, technology limitations, limited knowledge, skepticism towards new technology. Similarly, facilitators are Identifying key decision-makers, highly effective and cost-efficient technologies, high technical accuracy, openness in trying new technology.

Background: Public safety personnel (PSP) such as paramedics and police are exposed to traumatic situations which increases their risk for mental health issues. However, many PSP do not seek help in a timely manner. Peer support interventions have the potential to decrease stigma and increase treatment-seeking behaviours among PSP. However, little is known regarding how the organizational culture of public safety organizations (PSOs) may affect the implementation of a peer-based intervention. This study aims to understand the extent to which organizational culture, including masculinity contest cultures (MCC), within Canadian PSOs affects implementation of PeerOnCall, a new peer support app for PSP. Methods: A multiple case study design was adopted, integrating semi-structured interviews and a standardized MCC scale completed with organizational champions from three PSOs. Two to three champions from each PSO acted as key informants regarding their organizations. Interviews explored champions’ perceptions of how organizational culture might shape implementation. Interview data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. Interview data were also triangulated with MCC scale data to understand the extent to which an MCC exists and is important to consider when implementing this app-based intervention. Results: Interviews with champions resulted in the construction of four themes. The first theme focused on external drivers of organizational culture shift, while the second theme focused on internal drivers. The third theme focused on how culture can create resistance to implementation. The fourth theme emphasized that culturally competent implementation strategies could overcome this resistance Most participants perceived their organization to have low-to-moderate levels of MCC. Discussion/Conclusions: Each organization had a unique and changing culture, as evidenced through its cultural artifacts, beliefs, and values. Understanding how culture shapes implementation of PeerOnCall can guide the creation of contextually relevant strategies that optimize implementation of PeerOnCall within PSOs. Recommendations for strategies and further study are provided. / Thesis / Master of Public Health (MPH) / This multi-site case study explores how first responder culture influences implementation of the PeerOnCall peer support app. Interviews and surveys were conducted with seven workplace champions from one police and two paramedic organization(s). Interviews explored organizational culture in general while surveys focused on masculinity contest culture specifically. It was observed that: external and internal drivers of culture shift have created a window of opportunity for PeerOnCall implementation; cultures of mistrust, skepticism & apathy, and hegemonic masculinity can create resistance to implementation; and culturally competent implementation strategies can overcome this. Traditional norms of masculinity appeared to be changing within the organizations. While public safety organizations’ cultures have been studied, this study links culture to the implementation of a specific intervention and offers nuance to the issue of masculinity contest cultures. Findings can inform the creation of culturally competent strategies that optimize the implementation of resources such as PeerOnCall among first responders.

Universal school-wide social-emotional screeners identify at-risk students with social-emotional behavior problems (Romer et al., 2020). Identifying such students alone cannot prevent these social, emotional, and behavioral concerns from becoming problematic. However, data gathered from social-emotional screening can guide the development of strategies, supports, interventions, and progress monitoring students at risk across all tiers (Yates et al., 2008), leading to the prevention of social-emotional and behavioral problems from turning maladaptive (Humphrey & Wigelsworth, 2016; Walker et al., 2004). A school district in the Mountain West area of the United States developed a screening survey that addresses school climate, culture, and connectedness to administer to their student body. Their survey aims to identify students' needs in the following character social-emotional learning (SEL) skills that contribute to student well-being: self-awareness, compassion, resilience, and respect. Their screening survey can potentially identify the general student body's social-emotional behavioral needs. The data gathered may be used to create tiered supports that address students' needs. In this study, we conducted two focus groups that provided a forum for school psychologists in this Mountain West school district who work in an elementary school to discuss what tiered supports may be appropriate to implement in response to needs identified by the survey. The discussion also included professional development topics the participants perceived necessary for school teams responding to the survey data. The findings from this study contribute to the existing literature by recognizing that school psychologists may understand implementation science and can help lay the needed groundwork before implementing social-emotional screeners so that the process can be more efficient and effective. The findings emphasize the understanding that from the perspective of school psychologists, social-emotional learning should be applied universally and collaboratively at school and at home. School teams need to allocate time to teach social-emotional learning at school. The findings also suggest that school psychologists can determine appropriate interventions if screening data suggest a weakness in social-emotional and behavioral areas and that data collected from the screener can be used to guide topics for professional development.

The presence of challenging and violent behaviors that pose risks to the overall safety and the educational learning experience in the public education setting have been on the rise in recent years. Traditional reactive, coercive, and punitive measures to address these behaviors have been futile. Congress responded to the national increase in violent behaviors by implementing several acts, including zero tolerance policies, in an effort to diminish the rise in violent behaviors. Of significance to this study was the inclusion of Functional Behavior Assessment in the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1997. Unfortunately, FBA has the least legal grounding of all the disciplinary provisions of IDEA and has been questioned by experts in the field if sufficient empirical support exists for the generalization of the technology to all students and whether or not school personnel have the skills required to conduct FBA with integrity (Drasgow, Yell, Bradley, & Shriner 1999; Quinn, 2000; Scott et al., 2005; Skiba, 2002). The purpose of this research study was to obtain and analyze information regarding the perceptions of special education teachers in the Commonwealth of Virginia on the use of Functional Behavior Assessment with students with high incidence disabilities in public schools. A nonexperimental survey design using an online self-report survey was conducted with special education teachers in the eight superintendent regions in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The study examined the behaviors that most frequently prompt a FBA, if a relationship exists between the type and frequency of training and the perceived effectiveness of FBA, the relationship between teacher attributes of beliefs and self-efficacy and the overall perceived effectiveness of FBA, and how teachers perceive the overall FBA/BIP process in public schools. The survey was distributed electronically to special education teachers through the office of the special education director in each of the 132 school divisions in Virginia. A total of 373 special education teachers responded to the survey. Respondents perceive the extent to which FBA contributes to the effectiveness of interventions that reduce challenging behaviors of students and the effectiveness of current FBA methods in increasing positive replacement behaviors and improving learning/academic achievement in public schools moderately effective. Congruent with the literature, special education teachers reported that chronic problem behaviors and physically aggressive behaviors were most likely to prompt an FBA. Respondents indicated their knowledge base, training experiences, and background in FBA. Overall, the majority of special education teachers reported that the training that they have received in FBA was moderately to very effective. Respondents indicated that further training in all areas of FBA was needed using a dynamic team based process with post training support. The most frequently reported area of FBA that requires more training was developing function-based interventions while the least reported area of need was developing hypotheses about the functions of the behavior. Teacher beliefs and self-efficacy were examined to determine if these attributes predict a special educator’s perceived effectiveness of FBA. High levels of teacher self-efficacy were associated with increased views of perceived effectiveness of FBA in public schools. Two belief items were found to correlate with the perceived effectiveness of FBA. The results of this study have important implications for personnel development and training for future and current special educators as well as information that can be applied to the exploration of a standardized process for conducting FBA in public schools in Virginia.

Pulse oximeters are low-cost, easy to use, and effective at detecting hypoxemia (low blood oxygen levels), a common complication of bronchiolitis, asthma, and pneumonia, the leading infectious cause of death in children worldwide. However, pulse oximeters are often unavailable in lowincome settings, and if available, often underused, yet little research investigates why. In this thesis, I examine pulse oximeter implementation in low-income settings, focusing on Kenyan hospitals as a case study, and using a mixed-methods approach. I conducted a systematic literature review, examining how pulse oximeter use with children at admission to hospital impacts health outcomes; I then conducted quantitative analyses of 28,000 children admitted to seven Kenyan hospitals to determine with which children pulse oximeters are used, and pulse oximetry's impact on treatment provision; these analyses informed the qualitative research component, for which I conducted interviews with 30 healthcare workers (HCWs) and staff in 14 Kenyan hospitals and employed theoretical frameworks to determine how HCWs decide whether to use pulse oximeters, and the barriers to pulse oximetry. I found that pulse oximeter use varies substantially between and within Kenyan hospitals over time. After adjusting for case-mix and signs of illness severity, HCWs were most likely to use pulse oximeters with children with a very high respiratory rate, indrawing and/or who were not alert; children who obtained a pulse oximeter reading were more likely to be prescribed oxygen than if a pulse oximeter was not used; and children with a reading below 90% were more likely to be prescribed oxygen than those with higher readings, suggesting that HCW decision-making is influenced by international and national guidelines. However, HCWs sometimes cannot use pulse oximeters when they intend to, because of insufficient pulse oximeter availability, largely due to inefficient and confusing procurement processes and repair delays. Furthermore, HCWs sometimes use pulse oximeters incorrectly or misinterpret their results, because of insufficient training. Pulse oximeter promotion programme planners can use the recommendations I provide to effectively target barriers to pulse oximeter uptake in low-income settings. Increased pulse oximetry implementation could enable early detection of hypoxemia, improving accurate diagnosis, and supporting prompt, effective treatment, which could help reduce mortality in children needing oxygen, in line with Sustainable Development Goal 3.

Purpose of Review: This review aims to (1) conceptualize the complexity of the opioid use disorder epidemic using a conceptual model grounded in the disease continuum and corresponding levels of prevention and (2) summarize a select set of interventions for the prevention and treatment of opioid use disorder. Recent Findings: Epidemiologic data indicate non-medical prescription and illicit opioid use have reached unprecedented levels, fueling an opioid use disorder epidemic in the USA. A problem of this magnitude is rooted in multiple supply- and demand-side drivers, the combined effect of which outweighs current prevention and treatment efforts. Multiple primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention interventions, both evidence-informed and evidence-based, are available to address each point along the disease continuum—non-use, initiation, dependence, addiction, and death. Summary: If interventions grounded in the best available evidence are disseminated and implemented across the disease continuum in a coordinated and collaborative manner, public health systems could be increasingly effective in responding to the epidemic./p>

The increased prevalence rate of childhood obesity in Saudi Arabia is a nationwide health issue. The doctoral project was instituted in the pediatric out-patient clinic (POPC) of a tertiary university hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Child obesity clinic and clinical practice guideline (CPG) for primary prevention were not available in the pediatric outpatient clinic with a high incidence of newly diagnose obese children. The focus of this doctoral project was to improve the clinical nursing practice of POPC nurses through the adoption of CPG on primary prevention of childhood obesity. The knowledge translation into action framework provided a summary of descriptive series of ideal CPG implementation steps in POPC. The search for published CPGs was taken from DynaMed, National Guideline Clearinghouse, Guideline International Network, Pubmed, and Google Scholar. There were 2 tools applied for analysis and synthesis. First, the appraisal of guidelines for research and evaluation II instrument was used to assess the quality of the guidelines. Second, the BARRIERS' scale was used to assess the extent of nurses' perception of barriers in CPG utilization. The 1st findings from this study revealed that RNAO CPG was the best and high-quality CPG over the Endocrine Society and the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement CPGs. The 2nd findings showed that most of the nurses perceived BARRIERS to utilization towards on the unclear implications of the CPG in their daily nursing practice. Hence, one of the vital recommendations was to have CPG awareness and education before the implementation. Overall, the doctoral project contributed to positive social change through guidelines, policies, and protocol provision for childhood obesity prevention in similar settings.

Healthcare decision-makers need high quality evidence to inform policy and practice decisions. Systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), including meta- analyses of study effects, are considered one of the highest forms of evidence to inform such decisions. Most applications of systematic reviews and meta-analyses are based on a standardized cannon of methods that seek to collect, abstract, assess, and synthesize evidence from primary studies to produce a comprehensive and unbiased summary of the evidence. While useful, standard synthesis methods tend to assume simple data structures (e.g., two-arm comparison of a single intervention vs. a similar control evaluated in a parallel individual randomized design) and some practices (e.g., author contact) may not always be supported by empirical evidence. Complex interventions are of increasing focus in healthcare and public health and pose challenges to the standard methods of systematic review and meta-analysis. While different definitions of complex interventions have been proposed, most definitions assume: i) multiple intervention ‘components’ that may or may not interact with each other to increase or decrease observed intervention effects and ii) effect modification by study-specific characteristics (e.g., healthcare setting, patient population). At least three challenges may result from this complexity. First, reviewers will likely have to contact authors for additional information about intervention components and contextual factors that may operate as effect modifiers. Unfortunately, evidence supporting optimal strategies for achieving response from author contact is lacking. Second, complex interventions are often evaluated using a cluster randomized trial (CRT) design that randomize units of patients to different healthcare/health policy interventions. Analyses from CRTs that are not adjusted for the clustering effect are said to have unit of analysis errors, which if incorporated in meta-analyses could lead to biased summary estimates and overly precise confidence intervals (CIs). Methods for reviewers to appropriately appraise abstract evidence from CRTs are limited. Thirdly, standard meta-analyses estimate an overall effect of a singular ‘complex intervention’. Such analyses answer the question “Do complex interventions as a whole lead to a difference in observed outcomes?” and tend to exhibit high statistical heterogeneity since variation in intervention components and effect modifiers are not accounted for. Hierarchical multivariate meta-regression models have been proposed as an alternative synthesis approach for complex interventions to better account for observed heterogeneity and answer the question decision-makers are really interested in; that is “What component(s) (or combination of components) work and under what conditions?”. Hierarchical multivariate meta-regression models however have yet to be applied in the review of complex healthcare interventions. The overall aim of my doctoral research was to explore the utility of three methodological approaches to address these challenges and optimize the synthesis of complex interventions using a large systematic review of diabetes quality improvement interventions as a case study. The first objective of this thesis was to do an RCT evaluation of the effect of telephone call versus repeated email contact of non-responding authors for additional study information on response rates and research costs. We found authors contacted by telephone call were more likely to complete requests for additional information (response rate 36.7% vs. 20.2%; adjusted odds ratio 2.26 [95% CI 1.10-4.76]) but the intervention took more time to deliver in total (20 vs. 10 hours over several months vs. one month) and was more expensive overall (approximately $505 vs. $253). The second objective of this thesis was to better account for evidence from CRTs and involved a descriptive study and a methodological study. The descriptive study described the proportion of studies with unit of analysis errors and the nature of the error (inappropriate analysis versus unclear or incomplete reporting). The methodological study investigated the utility of building a database of intracluster correlation coefficients (ICCs) and use of an ICC posterior predictive distribution model to correct unit of analysis errors identified in the descriptive study. We found that although trials often adjusted for the cluster effect (67% across outcomes; range 25%-81%), most did not report enough information to extract adjusted effect estimates required for meta-analysis (an average of 77% of studies with remaining unit of analysis errors across outcomes; range 42%-100%). We were able to construct a posterior predictive distribution of the ICC for most outcomes in our review using estimates of the ICC obtained from the descriptive study combined with external estimates and use these distributions to impute missing ICCs to correct unit of analysis errors. Finally, the third objective of this thesis was to illustrate the use of hierarchical multivariate meta-regression for quantitative synthesis when estimating the effects of complex interventions and exploring effect heterogeneity. Using an arm-based analysis of post-treatment means of one continuous outcome, we demonstrated that hierarchical multivariate meta-regression models can be used to estimate a ‘response surface’ that accounts for complex intervention multiple components and study characteristics, and these models can be used to infer estimates of component effects, interactions among components, and effect modification by study covariates. Collectively the results from this thesis suggest three methodological approaches (contacting authors by telephone, imputing missing ICCs using a predictive distribution, estimating complex intervention effects using a hierarchical multivariate meta-regression) can be used to optimize the processes of synthesizing complex interventions. Further work is needed to evaluate the impact of additional study-covariates on explaining residual heterogeneity and testing these methods in other reviews of complex interventions.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Introduction. Clinical Pharmacy Services (CPS) have been growing worldwide and have positively impacted health outcomes. However, studies that go deep into the steps of CPS implementation in the healthcare networks of the Brazilian healthcare system (SUS) are incipient. Objective. To analyze the implementation and propose strategies for integrating CPS into healthcare networks. Methods. A study was carried out in the Recife city, in three steps, from July 2015 to October 2017. The first step corresponded to a quasi-experimental study (before and after), carried out through the problematization with the Maguerez Arc in order to implement CPS. The second step gathered two qualitative studies, conducted through focus groups and semi-structured interviews, in order to identify barriers, facilitators and strategies that influenced the implementation. The third step included a methodological development study, conducted through semi-structured interviews and a nominal group, to propose and prioritize CPS integration strategies for SUS. Participants in the study were pharmacists, health managers and decision-makers involved in implementation, patients and panel experts. This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee. Results. We carried out in the first step: i) initial evaluations (before): identified incipient CPS, deficiencies in the structure and work process of pharmacists; ii) planning: 16 brainstorming meetings and a strategic plan; iii) intervention: 22 political-administrative meetings were held with managers and health staff, 768 hours of theoretical-practical training with Mentoring for pharmacists; iv) preliminary evaluation (after): structure indicators presented a statistically significant difference, differently from the work process, and 1,465 pharmaceutical appointments were performed with 842 patients. It was possible to identify changes in the clinical status of the most prevalent diseases among the patients attended by three pharmaceutical appointments. In the second step, two focus groups were held with pharmacists and five interviews with health managers, which identified 43 barriers and 39 facilitators related to the healthcare networks, pharmacists, health team, implementation process and/or patients. In addition, 21 strategies related to pharmacists were identified as necessary for the implementation of CPS. In the third step, interviews were conducted with five managers and seven decision-makers who identified 21 barriers and 20 facilitators. From these results, specialists who composed the nominal group proposed 41 CPS integration strategies and prioritized the following: formalizing CPS; agreeing on care flows and referral protocols; evaluating and publicizing CPS results/benefits; planning and defining CPS; sensitizing the health managers. Conclusion. The analysis of the process identified factors that may have influenced the implementation of CPS, planning of the interventions and their application to reality, as well as in the prioritization of the strategies of integration of these services to SUS. Thus, the results obtained in this thesis can serve as a guide to help pharmacists, managers and decision-makers to plan, implement and integrate CPS in SUS. / Introdução. Serviços Clínicos Farmacêuticos (SCF) tem se expandido mundialmente e tem impactado positivamente nos resultados em saúde. Entretanto, estudos que se aprofundem nas etapas de implementação de SCF nas redes de atenção à saúde do sistema de saúde brasileiro (SUS) são incipientes. Objetivo. Analisar a implementação e propor estratégias para integração de SCF às redes de atenção à saúde. Métodos. Foi realizado estudo na cidade do Recife-PE, em três etapas, de julho/2015 a outubro/2017. A primeira etapa correspondeu a um estudo quasi-experimental (antes e depois), realizado por meio da metodologia da problematização com Arco de Maguerez, a fim de implementar SCF. A segunda etapa compreendeu dois estudos qualitativos, realizados por meio de grupos focais e entrevistas semiestruturadas, com a finalidade de identificar barreiras, facilitadores e estratégias que influenciaram na implementação dos SCF. A terceira etapa compreendeu estudo de desenvolvimento metodológico, realizado por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas e grupo nominal, para propor e priorizar estratégias de integração de SCF ao SUS. Os participantes do estudo foram farmacêuticos, gestores e decision-makers envolvidos na implementação dos SCF, pacientes e painel de especialistas. Este estudo foi aprovado pelo Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa. Resultados. Na primeira etapa foram realizados: i) diagnóstico situacional (antes): identificou SCF incipientes, carências na estrutura e no processo de trabalho dos farmacêuticos; ii) planejamento: foram realizadas 16 reuniões de brainstorming com diferentes atores e um cronograma de atividades; iii) intervenção: foram realizadas 22 reuniões político-administrativas com gestores e equipe de saúde, 768 horas de treinamento teórico-prático com Mentoring para os farmacêuticos; iv) avaliação preliminar (depois): indicadores de estrutura apresentaram diferença estatística significativa, diferentemente dos indicadores de processo, e foram realizadas 1.465 consultas farmacêuticas com 842 pacientes, impactando em mudanças na situação clínica das doenças mais prevalentes entre pacientes atendidos por três consultas. Na segunda etapa foram realizados dois grupos focais com farmacêuticos e cinco entrevistas com gestores, o que identificou 43 barreiras e 39 facilitadores relacionados à rede de saúde, farmacêuticos, equipe de saúde, processo de implementação e/ou pacientes. Ademais, 21 estratégias relacionadas aos farmacêuticos foram identificadas como necessárias à implementação de SCF. Na terceira etapa foram realizadas entrevistas com cinco gestores e sete decision-makers que identificaram 21 barreiras e 20 facilitadores. A partir destes resultados, especialistas que compuseram o grupo nominal propuseram 41 estratégias para integração de SCF e priorizaram as seguintes: institucionalizar os SCF; pactuar fluxos assistenciais e protocolos de encaminhamentos; avaliar e divulgar os resultados/benefícios dos SCF; planejar e definir SCF; sensibilizar a gestão. Conclusão. A análise do processo identificou fatores que podem ter influenciado na implementação de SCF, planejamento das intervenções e sua aplicação à realidade, bem como na priorização das estratégias de integração desses serviços ao SUS. Assim, os resultados obtidos nesta tese poderão servir como eixos norteadores para que farmacêuticos, gestores e decision-makers planejem, implementem e integrem SCF no SUS. / Aracaju