Implementing SAFE™ care: Evaluation of a geriatric model of care for real-world practice.

Systems Addressing Frail Elders (SAFETM) Care is a geriatric model of care that identifies high-risk hospitalized older adults, and provides targeted interprofessional interventions for risk factors associated with frailty. This post, mixed methods study sought to evaluate SAFETM Care implementation retrospectively at one public academic medical center and describe practical "real-world" considerations for implementation using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR). In addition to barriers and facilitators, hidden characteristics to consider for implementation include initiating conditions, skills and experiences of implementers, interpersonal challenges, unique facilitators and barriers, surprising conditions, and threats to and requirements for sustainability. Implementation of SAFETM Care demonstrated effective adoption and implementation, but faced multiple threats that led to failed sustainability. The public sharing of these successes and failures will help implementers understand and make progress in adapting such important geriatric programs and quality improvement initiatives.

Using flatbed scanners to collect high-resolution time-lapsed images of the arabidopsis root gravitropic response.

Research efforts in biology increasingly require use of methodologies that enable high-volume collection of high-resolution data. A challenge laboratories can face is the development and attainment of these methods. Observation of phenotypes in a process of interest is a typical objective of research labs studying gene function and this is often achieved through image capture. A particular process that is amenable to observation using imaging approaches is the corrective growth of a seedling root that has been displaced from alignment with the gravity vector. Imaging platforms used to measure the root gravitropic response can be expensive, relatively low in throughput, and/or labor intensive. These issues have been addressed by developing a high-throughput image capture method using inexpensive, yet high-resolution, flatbed scanners. Using this method, images can be captured every few minutes at 4,800 dpi. The current setup enables collection of 216 individual responses per day. The image data collected is of ample quality for image analysis applications.