Parental satisfaction with follow-up services for children with major anatomical congenital anomalies.

BACKGROUND: Since 1999 a multidisciplinary follow-up programme for parents and children with major anatomical congenital anomalies is in place in our hospital, run by a dedicated team. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the services of this team from a parental perspective. METHODS: Parents completed a questionnaire including open and closed questions about satisfaction with the various professional disciplines involved in the follow-up, statements on usefulness of the follow-up services and suggestions for improvement. RESULTS: Four hundred and sixty-nine surveys were sent out, of which 71% were returned. Non-responding parents included significantly more parents of non-Dutch origin (P= 0.038) and parents who never responded to invitations for follow-up examinations (P < 0.001). Parental satisfaction differed for the various disciplines. Eighty per cent of the parents were (very) satisfied with the social worker, compared with 92% with nurses. More than half of the parents agreed that the follow-up services give peace of mind. Almost a quarter of parents, however, considered the follow-up services as redundant. The children of these parents had significantly shorter intensive care unit stay (P= 0.02), were older at the time of the questionnaire (P= 0.04), of higher socio-economic status (P= 0.001) and less likely to be of non-Dutch origin (P= 0.008). Sixty-one per cent of the parents had contacted the 24-h helpline. Ninety per cent of the parents were satisfied with the intensive care unit, almost 80% with the general ward. CONCLUSION: Overall, parents were satisfied with the services of the follow-up team. Some parents, however, saw room for improvement related to better communication, recognizability of the team and better planning and organization.

Callousness and meanness traits are associated with increased N2 amplitude in a community sample of adolescents and adults.

The lack of consistent findings in the research field of psychopathy unveils the heterogeneity of this personality structure and, therefore, a dissociation of its phenotypic components is a promising venue to conciliate paradoxical results. The current study aims to assess the dissociable effects of psychopathic traits on N2 and P3 modulation, while analyzing the stability of some endophenotypic processes across development. A sample of adolescents (n = 33) and adults (n = 31) completed, respectively, the Youth Psychopathy Inventory and the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure and performed the same Go/No-Go task during an EEG recording. For adolescents, the unemotionality and remorselessness subdimensions of the callous-unemotional (CU) factor predicted, respectively, reduced N2 and P3 amplitudes. This suggests impaired inhibitory control in both subdimensions of the broad CU factor. However, the callousness subdimension of the CU factor predicted increased N2 amplitude. This pattern of findings was also observed for meanness in adults, which leads to the hypothesis that callousness traits may be a specific precursor of meanness.

[Neurological defects and developmental disorders following neonatal extracorporeal membrane oxygenation: results of a follow-up study after 5 years]. / Neurologische afwijkingen en ontwikkelingsstoornissen na extracorporele membraanoxygenatie van pasgeborenen: resultaten van een follow-uponderzoek na 5 jaar.

OBJECTIVE: Descriptive study of the development of children 5 years after neonatal extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). DESIGN: Descriptive. METHOD: 98 treated children were subjected to a paediatric, neurological, psychological, physiotherapeutic and logopaedic examination. The children came from 2 Dutch ECMO-centres (the Erasmus MC-Sophia Children's Hospital in Rotterdam and the University Medical Centre St Radboud in Nijmegen, The Netherlands). RESULTS: Neurological disorders were found in 17 of the 98 investigated children, and in 6 cases these were serious. Among the remaining 92 children, 24 had motor disorders and 11 had delayed cognitive development. The average IQ (100.5) was within the normal range. CONCLUSION: A significant proportion ofthe children that had been treated with ECMO had long-term morbidity in the form of neurological defects and developmental disorders.

Young children's organizational strategies on a same-different task: A microgenetic study and a training study.

This study was designed to explore young children's strategy development using a new kind of "same-different" task that minimized memory demands. Four-year-old children were asked to judge whether 2 sets of 7 toys were the same or different. Sets were identical or differed by one toy, with one set presented on a table and the other in a linen bag. Children's spontaneous behavior was highly strategic, and over trials it developed differently for "same" and "different" trials. Most children who did not spontaneously use the most effective strategy, that is, matching, could be trained to do so and were able to transfer this strategy to new materials. Results concerning production and utilization deficiencies are discussed in relation to task characteristics, trial type (same or different), and findings from prior research.