Needs Assessment of Residents and Nurses for Interprofessional Cross-Cultural Curriculum.

BACKGROUND: Clinicians must learn to care for patients from different cultures. They must also work in teams for optimal outcomes. Few studies have analysed the intersection of cross-cultural care and interprofessional education. We completed a needs assessment to determine what paediatric residents and nurses view as essential cross-cultural components. METHODS: We led a sequential mixed-methods study of residents and nurses at an urban tertiary care centre. We administered the 'Residency Training in Cross Cultural Care' instrument. Survey results informed focus group interview guide development. Thematic analysis of qualitative data was conducted following the five stages to qualitative research framework. FINDINGS: Thirty-five residents (70%) and 46 nurses (66%) completed the survey. Five residents and six nurses attended a focus group. Five themes resulted: 1) lack of clinician diversity and cross-cultural training, 2) effective cross-cultural care not always delivered, 3) multiple challenges for delivery of effective cross-cultural care, 4) call to action for enhanced cross-cultural education and 5) different cross-cultural educational needs between nurses and residents. DISCUSSION: Residents and nurses conveyed that meaningful cross-cultural care education is imperative, lacking, and must offer skills to improve patient care. They call for a robust cross-cultural curriculum that is up to date and teaches about intersectionality. CONCLUSION: We have used this data to implement interprofessional interventions to meet their unique learning needs and enhance upstander skills by using facilitated discussions of techniques, case studies and role plays. Ultimately, teaching all clinicians to care for patients of other cultures may lead to more equitable care.

Mimicking helical antibacterial peptides with nonpeptidic folding oligomers.

Unnatural oligomeric scaffolds designed to adopt defined secondary structures (e.g., helices), while retaining the chemical diversity of amino acid side chains, are of practical value to elaborate functional mimetics of bioactive alpha-polypeptides. Enantiopure N,N'-linked oligoureas as short as seven residues long have been previously shown to fold into a stable helical structure, stabilized by 12- and 14-membered H-bonded rings. We now report that eight-residue oligoureas designed to mimic globally amphiphilic alpha-helical host-defense peptides are effective against both gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria (including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus [MRSA]) and exhibit selectivity for bacterial versus mammalian cells. Circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy studies suggest enhanced helical propensity of oligoureas in the presence of phospholipid vesicles. The utility of this new class of nonpeptidic foldamers for biological applications is highlighted by high resistance to proteolytic degradation.