Experiences and perceptions of health care professionals making treatment decisions for older adults with memory loss: a qualitative systematic review protocol.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this review is to critically analyze and synthesize the experiences and perceptions of health care professionals making decisions that result in treatment recommendations for older adults living with memory loss who are experiencing health problems. INTRODUCTION: Health care professionals provide care to older adults living with memory loss and other coexisting health conditions across all clinical settings. Older adults living with memory loss most commonly experience impaired independent decision-making, which can challenge health care professionals when decisions about treatment need to be made. These challenges contribute to older adults with memory loss receiving inappropriate treatment and experiencing higher morbidity than those without memory loss. To date, existing reviews have not focused on the experiences and perceptions of health care professionals who are making treatment decisions when older adults living with memory loss experience health problems. A deeper exploration of this evidence is needed to understand health care professionals' experiences and perceptions of treatment decision-making to support the goal of improving care for older adults. INCLUSION CRITERIA: This systematic review will consider studies across all clinical settings focused on the experiences and perceptions of health care professionals making treatment decisions for older adults with memory loss who are experiencing health problems. METHODS: We will conduct a comprehensive systematic search using CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Scopus, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Two reviewers will independently appraise the selected studies and extract qualitative data using the recommended JBI method for study selection, critical appraisal, data extraction, and data synthesis. The ConQual approach will be applied to provide a level of confidence for the review findings. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION NUMBER: PROSPERO CRD42021271485.

Intimate partner violence and women living with episodic disabilities: a scoping review protocol.

BACKGROUND: Violence towards women with disabilities is most commonly perpetrated by current or former intimate partners and more than half of disabled women experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime. Disabilities differ by presence, type, and complexity, yet are commonly researched collectively. A more nuanced understanding of the relationship between intimate partner violence and episodic disability is required to better support women living with these concurrent challenges. The objective of this scoping review is to investigate and synthesize the literature reporting on intimate partner violence for women living with an episodic disability to identify key concepts and knowledge gaps on this topic. Ultimately, this review aims to improve health services for this stigmatized group of women with episodic disabilities. METHODS: This scoping review will consider all studies that focus on women (18 years of age or older) who have experienced intimate partner violence and have an episodic disability. Episodic disabilities will include multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, lupus, or rheumatoid arthritis. The broad review question is what is known about intimate partner violence within the context of women living with an episodic disability? Databases to be searched include MEDLINE (OVID), CINAHL, Embase, PsychInfo, and Scopus with no limits on language or time frame. Joanna Briggs Institute methodology will guide this scoping review to address the review questions outlined in the protocol. For papers that meet the inclusion criteria, data will be extracted, and findings will be presented in tables and narrative form. A PRISMA table will be included to enhance the transparency of the process. A descriptive qualitative approach to analysis will be conducted following Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis. The findings of the scoping review will be presented through a thematic narrative. DISCUSSION: Findings from this review will be used to identify important priorities for future research based on knowledge gaps and inform both health care practices and health and social interventions for women living with intimate partner violence and episodic disabilities.

Parental experiences of caring for their preschool children after declining vaccines: a qualitative systematic review protocol.

OBJECTIVE: This review will explore the experiences of parents after making the decision not to vaccinate their young children. This review aims to help health care providers understand parents' specific care strategies for their under-vaccinated or unvaccinated young children. INTRODUCTION: Much of the current qualitative research literature on parents who hesitate or refuse to vaccinate their young children focuses on parental perceptions about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and decision-making. However, limited attention has been paid to measures taken by parents to help their young children avoid contracting communicable diseases, promote resistance, and enhance their children's health. INCLUSION CRITERIA: This review will consider qualitative studies that describe parents' experiences of caring for their young children, aged 0 to six years, after making the decision not to vaccinate. Studies undertaken in any context will be considered. Studies that focus on young children who are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated for reasons not related to parental refusal will be excluded. METHODS: The JBI methodology for systematic reviews of qualitative evidence will be followed. Databases will be searched from 1998 onwards, and will include Web of Science, MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, with no language limits. Following critical appraisal, findings that describe parental experiences and the care activities they perform related to their young children will be extracted. The JBI process of meta-aggregation will be used to identify categories and synthesize findings. The ConQual approach will be used to assess confidence in the findings. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION NUMBER: PROSPERO CRD42021241781.

Survey of Pass/Fail Grading Systems in US Doctor of Pharmacy Degree Programs.

Objective. To understand how US schools and colleges of pharmacy use pass/fail grading systems in Doctor of Pharmacy degree programs.Methods. An electronic survey with 15 selected response items and six open-ended questions was developed to gather qualitative and quantitative data. The convenience survey was distributed in 2020 to the 10 academic pharmacy programs known to use a pass/fail grading system for the majority of their courses.Results. Leaders from eight of the 10 programs identified responded to the survey. Programs varied regarding the types of courses for which they used a pass/fail grading system and whether they shared numerical scores with their students. A variety of grade designations (honors, pass, no pass, fail, satisfactory, etc) were used, and the minimum pass level varied by program, ranging from 70% to 90%. For those institutions that used post-course remediation, the majority of remediation occurred immediately following the academic term or in the summer. The type of information shared with residency program directors (eg, GPA, class rank, overall percentile, qualitative comments) varied between programs.Conclusion. How pass/fail grading systems were used was inconsistent across the cohort. Programs that use a criterion-based grading system might benefit from engaging in conversations with other schools that do the same to determine whether and how consistency in terminology, passing level, percentages, grade point averages, and progression might be achieved. Additional insights on postgraduate training requirements and honorary societies are warranted should the use of pass/fail grading expand as it has in medical education. Further research on this topic is needed.

Equity-oriented frameworks to inform responses to opioid overdoses: a scoping review.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this scoping review was to systematically identify and describe literature that uses a health equity-oriented approach for preventing and reducing the harms of stigma or overdose for people who use illicit drugs or misuse prescription opioids. INCLUSION CRITERIA: To be included, papers had to both: i) use a health equity-oriented approach, defined as a response that addresses health inequities and aims to reduce drug-related harms of stigma or overdose; and ii) include at least one of the following concepts: cultural safety, trauma- and violence-informed care, or harm reduction. We also looked for papers that included an Indigenous-informed perspective in addition to any of the three concepts. METHODS: An a priori protocol was published and the JBI methodology for conducting scoping reviews was employed. Published and unpublished literature from January 1, 2000, to July 31, 2019, was included. The databases searched included CINAHL (EBSCOhost), MEDLINE (Ovid), Academic Search Premier (EBSCOhost), PsycINFO (EBSCOhost), Sociological Abstracts and Social Services Abstracts (ProQuest), JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, PROSPERO, Aboriginal Health Abstract Database, First Nations Periodical Index, and the National Indigenous Studies Portal. The search for unpublished studies included ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, Google Scholar, and targeted web searches. Screening and data extraction were performed by two reviewers using templates developed by the authors. Data extraction included specific details about the population, concepts, context, and key findings or recommendations relevant to the review objectives. RESULTS: A total of a total of 1065 articles were identified and screened, with a total of 148 articles included. The majority were published in the previous five years (73%) and were from North America (78%). Most articles only focused on one of the three health equity-oriented approaches, most often harm reduction (n = 79), with only 16 articles including all three. There were 14 articles identified that also included an Indigenous-informed perspective. Almost one-half of the papers were qualitative (n = 65; 44%) and 26 papers included a framework. Of these, seven papers described a framework that included all three approaches, but none included an Indigenous-informed perspective. Recommendations for health equity-oriented approaches are: i) inclusion of people with lived and living experience; ii) multifaceted approaches to reduce stigma and discrimination; iii) recognize and address inequities; iv) drug policy reform and decriminalization; v) ensure harm-reduction principles are applied within comprehensive responses; and vi) proportionate universalism. Gaps in knowledge and areas for future research are discussed. CONCLUSIONS: We have identified few conceptual frameworks that are both health equity-oriented and incorporate multiple concepts that could enrich responses to the opioid poisoning emergency. More research is required to evaluate the impact of these integrated frameworks for action.

Interventions and programs that support the health and development of infants with prenatal substance exposure in foster care: a scoping review.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this scoping review was to describe the characteristics of interventions and programs that support the health and development of infants in foster care who have prenatal substance exposure, their foster care providers, and birth families. INTRODUCTION: Infants in foster care may have experienced prenatal substance exposure, neglect, and maltreatment, as well as disruptions in their relationships with primary caregivers. Despite multiple vulnerabilities, they also have great capacity for overcoming early adversities. Enhanced foster care has been identified as a key influence on the positive development of infants in the child welfare system. INCLUSION CRITERIA: This scoping review considered publications that described interventions and programs designed to support foster care providers who care for infants less than 12 months of age with prenatal substance exposure. This review included research studies and gray literature. This scoping review focused on sources that described caregiving interventions and elements of programs that took place within the context of family or home-based foster care. METHODS: A three-step search strategy was used to identify publications in the English language from January 2000 to December 2019. A literature search was conducted using MEDLINE, Academic Search Premier, PsycINFO, and CINAHL databases. Titles and abstracts were initially screened to assess if publications met the inclusion criteria, followed by full-text review. Publications that met the inclusion criteria were assessed by two independent reviewers using a data extraction tool developed for this review. Findings were thematically analyzed on the basis of similarity in focus and descriptively presented with tables and figures to support the findings. RESULTS: Eighty-one publications were included, including 48 research papers and 33 gray literature sources. Thematic analysis of the focus of each publication resulted in identification of four core themes: i) mental health promotion for infants in care; ii) child welfare program elements; iii) identification of infants and families at risk of requiring foster care; and iv) outcomes for infants in care and their families. The interventions and programs identified during this scoping review were primarily focused on supporting social-emotional development. With the significant focus on infant mental health, supporting birth parents to stay attached to their infants was a key focus of the majority of publications. The concept of being able to proactively identify risk factors that were associated with infants requiring foster care emerged in relation to how family preservation could be supported. Strategies identified as contributing to the development of successful interventions and programs included having foster care providers participate as collaborators in designing services, designing services that are adaptable to a range of contexts, involving community partners outside child welfare, and having developmentally appropriate programs. CONCLUSIONS: Infants represent a significant proportion of children in foster care. A developmental perspective is needed for child welfare service planning to address their unique needs. Intervention during the early years holds significant potential for promoting positive developmental pathways and family preservation.

Implementation and evaluation of an interprofessional physical assessment skills workshop for Wisconsin pharmacists.

BACKGROUND: Pharmacists have a critical, expanding role in health care delivery. In particular, pharmacists in community pharmacy and ambulatory care settings are important and frequent access points for health care services. OBJECTIVE: We describe the interprofessional development and implementation of an interactive, broadly applicable physical assessment skills-based continuing pharmacy education program to provide an avenue for the attainment of this warranted set of skills for pharmacists who desire to provide advanced patient care services in their respective practices. METHODS: Pharmacists, in collaboration with family medicine and emergency medicine physicians, developed workshop content, design, and flow. The structure of the workshops consisted of didactic training, hands-on practical application, simulated practice, and case-based certification examinations. RESULTS: On a postworkshop survey, all respondents answered "agree" or "strongly agree" when asked if the workshops were useful, advanced their skills, and advanced their confidence. It was also found that more than 50% of the participants used their physical assessment skills monthly and 11% daily. The most common assessment performed was obtaining an accurate manual blood pressure. CONCLUSION: The interprofessional development and implementation of workshops dedicated to physical assessment skills education is feasible and led to the incorporation of these skills into pharmacists' practice, particularly in the community and ambulatory care settings.

Indigenous peoples' positive experiences of culturally safe health care: a qualitative systematic review protocol.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this systematic review is to explore what is known about Indigenous peoples' positive experiences with culturally safe health care. INTRODUCTION: Research indicates that Indigenous people often experience stigma and discrimination from non-Indigenous health care providers when accessing health care services. One approach that has been put forward to address Indigenous health inequities is cultural safety. Studies have been conducted to identify what comprises culturally safe care for Indigenous people, however, many of these studies target the health care provider's perspective, rather than the perspective of the Indigenous person who is receiving the care. INCLUSION CRITERIA: This review will consider studies that involve Indigenous peoples' positive experiences with culturally safe health care from any study setting. Studies that present relevant qualitative findings including descriptions, examples, or stories about how a health care provider enacted cultural safety from Indigenous perspectives will be considered. METHODS: MEDLINE, CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO, First Nations Periodical Index, the Native Health Database, the Indigenous Studies Portal, and the Arctic and Antarctic Regions Database will be searched for published studies. The search for unpublished studies will include Google and Google Scholar, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and OpenGrey. Databases will be searched from 1988 onward and only studies published in English will be included. The JBI systematic review guidelines will be followed. The JBI process of meta-aggregation will be used to identify categories and synthesize findings. The ConQual approach will be used to assess confidence in the review findings. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION NUMBER: PROSPERO CRD42020173003.

Public Health Nurses' Professional Practices to Prevent, Recognize, and Respond to Suspected Child Maltreatment in Home Visiting: An Interpretive Descriptive Study.

The purpose of this analysis was to understand public health nurses' experiences in preventing and addressing suspected child maltreatment within the context of home visiting. The principles of interpretive description guided study decisions and data were generated from interviews with 47 public health nurses. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings highlighted that public health nurses have an important role in the primary prevention of child maltreatment. These nurses described a six-step process for managing their duty to report suspected child maltreatment within the context of nurse-client relationships. When indicators of suspected child maltreatment were present, examination of experiential practice revealed that nurses developed reporting processes that maximized child safety, highlighted maternal strengths, and created opportunities to maintain the nurse-client relationship. Even with child protection involvement, public health nurses have a central role in continuing to work with families to develop safe and competent parenting skills.

Mothering Work and Perinatal Transfer: An Institutional Ethnographic Investigation.

BACKGROUND: While maternal or infant transfer is generally the safest course of action when health complications arise, the process of shifting from one hospital to another is stressful for mothers and their infants. There is limited understanding of how institutional processes coordinate patient transfer in ways that increase tensions for women and their families who are trying to navigate the institutional systems during health crises. METHODS: This institutional ethnographic study explored womens' experience of transfer. Interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of six childbearing women. The analysis highlights tensions and contradictions between patient care and institutional demands and shows how ordinary institutional decision-making practices impacted participants in unexpected ways. RESULTS: Women experienced uncertainty and stress when trying to convince health-care providers they needed care. Before, during, and after transfer, participants navigated home responsibilities, childcare, and getting care closer to home in difficult circumstances. CONCLUSION: The effort and skill women need to care for their infants and families as they are transferred is extraordinary. This study offers insight into the resources and support childbearing women need to accomplish the work of caring for their families in the face of perinatal crisis and multiple transfers.

Collective Action: The Medical College of Wisconsin COVID-19 Vaccination Program.

The Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) COVID-19 Vaccination Program facilitated early vaccination efforts in metro Milwaukee, Wisconsin from December, 2020 through April, 2021. Goals of the program were to work with clinical partners to ensure rapid vaccination availability for the institution's frontline workforce, to support state public health agencies in offering a vaccination opportunity for underserved and higher education community members, and to train vaccinators. A key component of the program was the MCW COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic, and 88% of MCW's workforce was fully immunized against COVID-19 with the 2-dose, mRNA vaccine by April 30, 2021. Within the MCW clinic, 219 pharmacy and medical students learned to administer vaccinations, and 12,450 community vaccinations were administered.

Comparison of Attitudes of Wisconsin Health Care Providers and Pharmacists Toward Vaccine Administration and Perceived Barriers.

OBJECTIVE: To measure the attitudes of pharmacists and other health care providers towards vaccine administration, overall acceptance of pharmacists as immunization providers, and perceived immunization barriers in Wisconsin. METHODS: The authors conducted a cross-sectional study utilizing an online survey to assess the attitudes of pharmacists and other health care providers toward their role as immunization providers and perceived barriers to providing immunizations. The survey was distributed between November 2018 and February 2019. RESULTS: Two hundred thirty-six pharmacists and 51 other health care providers completed the survey. Of the pharmacists who responded, 203 (86%) provided immunizations. Most respondents (97.9% of pharmacists and 90.2% of other health care providers) see vaccinations as a shared professional responsibility. Both pharmacists (82.6%) and other health care providers (79.6%) believe pharmacists have adequate training to administer vaccines to patients. Immunizing pharmacists identified 2 primary barriers to providing immunizations: patients refusing vaccines for financial reasons (55%) and patients not having insurance coverage for vaccines received in a pharmacy (55%). In contrast, the primary barrier identified by non-immunizing pharmacists is other responsibilities taking precedence over vaccinating (75%). Other health care providers identified determining whether their patients' insurance will reimburse for a vaccine (52%) as their primary barrier toward providing immunizations. CONCLUSION: These surveys provide a baseline measure of the attitudes of Wisconsin pharmacists and other health care providers toward immunization provision and offer opportunities for comparison. Our findings highlight barriers, such as insurance coverage for immunizations, that may prevent pharmacists from increasing vaccination rates in Wisconsin.

Immunizations at Wisconsin Pharmacies: Results of a statewide vaccine registry analysis and pharmacist survey.

BACKGROUND: There is currently limited data in the United States on the proportion of immunization doses given at pharmacies outside the influenza vaccine. This study aims to obtain baseline information on the percentage of vaccine doses administered at pharmacies in Wisconsin and to understand the immunization barriers for Wisconsin pharmacists, to inform interventions to increase immunization access at pharmacies. METHODS: Aggregated data from the Wisconsin Immunization Registry (WIR) was obtained for all vaccines administered at pharmacies to patients over the age of six from July 2017 through June 2018. In addition, a survey on attitudes towards and barriers to vaccination was sent to 2000 Wisconsin pharmacists with 236 respondents yielding a 12% response rate. RESULTS: WIR data demonstrates that zoster and influenza vaccines have the highest proportion of doses administered at pharmacies (39% and 20%, respectively). Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines have the lowest proportion of doses at 0.2%. Pharmacy survey shows that 86% provide immunizations. Most stock influenza vaccines (84%), whereas much fewer stock HPV vaccines (21%). The greatest immunization barriers for the pharmacy respondents include billing and reimbursement challenges and competing demands for staff. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the barriers, community pharmacies have significant potential to address vaccination gaps. Physicians, patients, and legislative bodies are generally well-accepting of pharmacists as immunizers. Pharmacists, in order to be fully utilized as immunizers, must engage in active communication with patients and be willing to collaborate with physicians. Legislative policy and health insurance reimbursement reforms are also necessary to facilitate further pharmacist participation in immunization.

Nurse-Family Partnership and Geography: An Intersectional Perspective.

Nurse-Family Partnership is a targeted public health intervention program designed to improve child and maternal health through nurse home visiting. In the context of a process evaluation, we posed the question: "In what ways do Canadian public health nurses explain their experiences with delivering this program across different geographical environments?" The qualitative methodology of interpretive description guided study decisions and data were collected through 10 focus groups with 50 nurses conducted over 2 years. We applied an intersectionality lens to explore the influence of all types of geography on the delivery of Nurse-Family Partnership. The findings from our analysis suggest that the nature of clients' place and their associated social and physical geography emphasizes inadequacies of organizational and support structures that create health inequities for clients. Geography had a significant impact on program delivery for clients who were living with multiple forms of oppression and it worked to reinforce disadvantage.

Weathering the rural reality: delivery of the Nurse-Family Partnership home visitation program in rural British Columbia, Canada.

BACKGROUND: Pregnant girls/young women and new mothers living in situations of social and economic disadvantage are at increased risk for poor health. Rural living may compound marginalization and create additional challenges for young mothers. Public health nurses (PHNs) delivering the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) to mothers living in rural communities may help to improve maternal and child health outcomes. The purpose of this analysis, grounded in data collected as part of a broader process evaluation, was to explore and understand the influence of rural geography on the delivery of NFP in British Columbia, Canada. METHODS: For the analysis of this qualitative data, principles of inductive reasoning based on the methodology of interpretive description were applied. A total of 10 PHNs and 11 supervisors providing the NFP program in rural communities were interviewed. RESULTS: The results of this analysis reflect the factors and challenges of providing the NFP program in rural communities. PHNs noted the importance of NFP in the lives of their rural clients, especially in the face of extreme financial and social disparity. Remaining flexible in their approach to rural nursing and protecting time to complete NFP work supported nurses practicing in rural environments. Rural PHNs were often the sole NFP nurse in their office and struggled to remain connected to their supervisors and other NFP colleagues. Challenges were compounded by the realities of rural geography, such as poor weather, reduced accessibility, and long travel distances; however, these were considered normal occurrences of rural practice by nurses. CONCLUSIONS: PHNs and NFP supervisors are well-positioned to identify the modifications that are required to support the delivery of NFP in rural geography. NFP nurses need to articulate what classifies as rural in order to effectively determine how to best provide services to these populations. Environmental conditions must be considered when offering NFP in rural communities, particularly if they impact the time required to deliver the program and additional services offered to young mothers. Regular NFP meetings and education opportunities address common problems associated with rural nursing but could be enhanced by better use of technology.

Health equity-oriented approaches to inform responses to opioid overdoses: a scoping review protocol.

REVIEW QUESTION/OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this scoping review is to systematically identify and describe literature that uses a health equity-oriented (HEO) approach for preventing and reducing the harms of stigma or overdose for people who use illicit drugs or misuse prescription opioids.The question of the review is: What is currently known about the use of an HEO approach for preventing the harms of stigma or overdose when people use illicit or street drugs, or use prescription opioids for other than their intended purposes?Specifically, the review objectives are.

Cultivating Praxis Through Chinn and Kramer's Emancipatory Knowing.

Nursing actions in support of equitable health and social relations have always been central to the work of our discipline. The mandate for social justice advocacy is identified in many of our professional and ethical frameworks, with systems-level advocacy situated as a core competency for advanced practice nurses. And yet, the sociopolitical processes that generate health inequities are not always readily understood by nurses. Emancipatory knowing provides an accessible lens to reveal how social injustice occurs while delineating a practical structure through which reflective action can be undertaken toward social change, otherwise known as nursing praxis.

Working to Full Scope: The Reorganization of Nursing Work in Two Canadian Community Hospitals.

Work relationships between registered nurses (RNs) and practical nurses (LPNs) are changing as new models of nursing care delivery are introduced to create more flexibility for employers. In Canada, a team-based, hospital nursing care delivery model, known as Care Delivery Model Redesign (CDMR), redesigned a predominantly RN-based staffing model to a functional team consisting of fewer RNs and more LPNs. The scope of practice for LPNs was expanded, and unregulated health care assistants introduced. This study began from the standpoint of RNs and LPNs to understand their experiences working on redesigned teams by focusing on discourses activated in social settings. Guided by institutional ethnography, the conceptual and textual resources nurses are drawing on to understand these changing work relationships are explicated. We show how the institutional goals embedded in CDMR not only mediate how nurses work together, but how they subordinate holistic standards of nursing toward fragmented, task-oriented, divisions of care.

The Role of Education in Developing Leadership in Nurses.

Nurses, with their intimate knowledge of person-centred healthcare, are called to lead at the point of care and to promote health across settings and the continuum of care. Capacity building and knowledge development for nursing leadership is a current priority in Canada, and therefore, academic preparation is foundational to developing nurses who lead. We provide examples of how to build leadership capacity in undergraduate, graduate and continuing professional development programs. Nurse educators across practice settings need to align educational content and pedagogies with the necessary knowledge, skills and attributes for leading both within and beyond healthcare contexts. Excellence in nursing education and strong partnerships with health sectors will contribute to effective and collaborative healthcare provided through nursing's distinctive lens.