scholarly journals Introducing evidence based public health practice through a journal club for public health officers in Somaliland

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jibril I. M. Handuleh ◽  
Abdirahman A. Sulleiman ◽  
Yusuf S. Yusuf ◽  
Hayat Mohamed ◽  
Daniel Fekadu Wolde-Giorgis

Evidence based public health is one of the basic training tools of public health students and young officers in decision making. The training tools for early career specialists and trainees in public health is journal clubs (JC). It keeps the knowledge of professionals up to date and assist them in receiving information to design, plan, implement health care services, policies and strategies. The intention of the JC team was to raise awareness of methods for public health literature search, appraising it and applying this knowledge in their daily practices. A senior public health practitioner in Somaliland (the corresponding author) invited medical students and residents to have JCs as a part of their training. They did not accept the offer so the organizer invited practicing junior public health professionals instead. The JC team members were a general practitioner and 3 public health workers from Ministry of Health, public hospital physician, public health school and field public health officer. A weekly or twice weekly journal club took place to train them in critical appraisal. This continued for 15 months in a hybrid mentorship for the health care professionals. The team mentor selected a paper for discussion. Mentees choose a study design appraisal tool from the Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) that matched the study to present. In the process of appraisal, a team member led the discussion using the checklist. The mentees presented their critical appraisal either orally or via a presentation. The checklist and paper were compared for assessing the study design and structure of the paper of the week. This approach of empowering junior public health officers in Somalia is a way forward for encouraging the professionals to use evidence based practice in their daily practices. This will improve their selection of research tools and translating the scientific work into their practice and services.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerlinde Lenaerts ◽  
Geertruida E Bekkering ◽  
Martine Goossens ◽  
Leen De Coninck ◽  
Nicolas Delvaux ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND User-friendly information at the point of care for health care professionals should be well structured, rapidly accessible, comprehensive, and trustworthy. The reliability of information and the associated methodological process must be clear. There is no standard tool to evaluate the trustworthiness of such point-of-care (POC) information. OBJECTIVE We aim to develop and validate a new tool for assessment of trustworthiness of evidence-based POC resources to enhance the quality of POC resources and facilitate evidence-based practice. METHODS We designed the Critical Appraisal of Point-of-Care Information (CAPOCI) tool based on the criteria important for assessment of trustworthiness of POC information, reported in a previously published review. A group of health care professionals and methodologists (the authors of this paper) defined criteria for the CAPOCI tool in an iterative process of discussion and pilot testing until consensus was reached. In the next step, all criteria were subject to content validation with a Delphi study. We invited an international panel of 10 experts to rate their agreement with the relevance and wording of the criteria and to give feedback. Consensus was reached when 70% of the experts agreed. When no consensus was reached, we reformulated the criteria based on the experts’ comments for a next round of the Delphi study. This process was repeated until consensus was reached for each criterion. In a last step, the interrater reliability of the CAPOCI tool was calculated with a 2-tailed Kendall tau correlation coefficient to quantify the agreement between 2 users who piloted the CAPOCI tool on 5 POC resources. Two scoring systems were tested: a 3-point ordinal scale and a 7-point Likert scale. RESULTS After validation, the CAPOCI tool was designed with 11 criteria that focused on methodological quality and author-related information. The criteria assess authorship, literature search, use of preappraised evidence, critical appraisal of evidence, expert opinions, peer review, timeliness and updating, conflict of interest, and commercial support. Interrater agreement showed substantial agreement between 2 users for scoring with the 3-point ordinal scale (τ=.621, <i>P</i>&lt;.01) and scoring with the 7-point Likert scale (τ=.677, <i>P</i>&lt;.01). CONCLUSIONS The CAPOCI tool may support validation teams in the assessment of trustworthiness of POC resources. It may also provide guidance for producers of POC resources.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fadi Choucair ◽  
Nagham Younis

Journal clubs are a valuable tool to assist learners in the evaluation of scientific literature and to promote the adoption of evidence-based practices. The Middle East Fertility Society Embryology Specialty Interest Group developed a concise journal club to enhance the engagement of embryologists and provide the structure of a journal club. The embryology journal club STAR format is a monthly super group journal club meeting in which an invited presenting “star” author exposes his group’s article to the entire embryologist’s community. In our modified approach, instead of a traditional lecture, the journal article to be discussed will be sent to participants in advance in conjunction with the STAR (Study design validity, Tackling the methodology, Analysis of the results, Reflecting the results into practice) critical appraisal checklist and a short online quiz to be completed before the meeting. The concise embryology journal club STAR format may be beneficial for embryologists to help them develop an efficient and consistent means to appraise evidence in clinical practice and stay abreast of the latest clinical research.


Author(s):  
Chase D Hendrickson

Abstract Training in endocrinology presents a major challenge: how to both develop a fellow’s medical knowledge and teach that fellow to independently increase that fund of knowledge as a future endocrinologist. Journal clubs hold a traditional role in teaching the most recent modern advances in medicine but frequently struggle to provide trainees with the skills needed to assess the quality of current literature. Using journal clubs to instill the skills needed for critical appraisal overcomes this difficulty and substantially enhances the value of journal clubs to trainees. Here, our journal club is reviewed, in which we teach critical appraisal by focusing on understanding study design as the key to assessing an article’s strengths and weaknesses. This journal club starts the year by reviewing study designs in a structured sequence, with sessions built to foster group participation and involvement of both fellows and faculty. Later, fellows put this learning into practice as they independently assess articles alongside their faculty. Generalizing this practice allows for implementation in other programs, including even those without faculty with a background in research methodology.


2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-62
Author(s):  
Joseph Donaher ◽  
Christina Deery ◽  
Sarah Vogel

Healthcare professionals require a thorough understanding of stuttering since they frequently play an important role in the identification and differential diagnosis of stuttering for preschool children. This paper introduces The Preschool Stuttering Screen for Healthcare Professionals (PSSHP) which highlights risk factors identified in the literature as being associated with persistent stuttering. By integrating the results of the checklist with a child’s developmental profile, healthcare professionals can make better-informed, evidence-based decisions for their patients.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnes T. Black ◽  
Marla Steinberg ◽  
Amanda E. Chisholm ◽  
Kristi Coldwell ◽  
Alison M. Hoens ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The KT Challenge program supports health care professionals to effectively implement evidence-based practices. Unlike other knowledge translation (KT) programs, this program is grounded in capacity building, focuses on health care professionals (HCPs), and uses a multi-component intervention. This study presents the evaluation of the KT Challenge program to assess the impact on uptake, KT capacity, and practice change. Methods The evaluation used a mixed-methods retrospective pre-post design involving surveys and review of documents such as teams’ final reports. Online surveys collecting both quantitative and qualitative data were deployed at four time points (after both workshops, 6 months into implementation, and at the end of the 2-year funded projects) to measure KT capacity (knowledge, skills, and confidence) and impact on practice change. Qualitative data was analyzed using a general inductive approach and quantitative data was analyzed using non-parametric statistics. Results Participants reported statistically significant increases in knowledge and confidence across both workshops, at the 6-month mark of their projects, and at the end of their projects. In addition, at the 6-month check-in, practitioners reported statistically significant improvements in their ability to implement practice changes. In the first cohort of the program, of the teams who were able to complete their projects, half were able to show demonstrable practice changes. Conclusions The KT Challenge was successful in improving the capacity of HCPs to implement evidence-based practice changes and has begun to show demonstrable improvements in a number of practice areas. The program is relevant to a variety of HCPs working in diverse practice settings and is relatively inexpensive to implement. Like all practice improvement programs in health care settings, a number of challenges emerged stemming from the high turnover of staff and the limited capacity of some practitioners to take on anything beyond direct patient care. Efforts to address these challenges have been added to subsequent cohorts of the program and ongoing evaluation will examine if they are successful. The KT Challenge program has continued to garner great interest among practitioners, even in the midst of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and shows promise for organizations looking for better ways to mobilize knowledge to improve patient care and empower staff. This study contributes to the implementation science literature by providing a description and evaluation of a new model for embedding KT practice skills in health care settings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
E Bossi ◽  
M Tringali ◽  
P Colombo ◽  
C Mazzali ◽  
G Puleo ◽  
...  

Abstract Issue With population aging, increased demand for healthcare and limited availability of economic and human resources, well-functioning and sustainable health systems have to rely on rigorous and evidence-based assessments of complex technologies' clinical effectiveness and safety. The Lombardy Region in Northern Italy has a well-established HTA program that offers technical support to its hospitals' network to produce and to review Health Technology Assessment (HTA) reports. Description of the Problem To better coordinate the HTA network and to reduce self-referencing of University and Community hospitals, Lombardy Region carried out an intense field training and distance learning from year 2017, with a project aimed at involving health care professionals in an accurate evaluation of technologies in 18 HTA reports. The regional HTA Supporting Centre developed a Toolkit for the critical appraisal of reports and supporting literature to improve the quality of hospital-based reports. Results In compliance with the regional Law DGR XI/1046 17.12.2018 and the framework proposed, during year 2019 hospitals used the Toolkit to help writing complete and good quality HTA reports on 37 different technologies. With a Public Health resident internship, the Toolkit was revised, extended and then used in 2020 by the hospital's HTA network during the double blinded peer review, mandated by the regional Law DGR XI/2672 16.12.2019, of the year 2019 HTA reports. Detailed results will be presented at the conference. Lessons We observed an increase in number of HTA reports from 2018 to 2019, a greater language's and format's homogeneity and an improvement in the quality of some reports, which will be submitted to the Regional HTA Committee for appraisal and reimbursement. Key messages The development and use of a Critical Appraisal Toolkit in an Regional HTA program can help hospitals write complete and good quality HTA reports. A centrally supported quality improvement of distributed assessment activities in a network of hospitals can enhance the production of HTA reports, relevant to the needs of a local healthcare system.


Author(s):  
Tinne Dilles ◽  
Jana Heczkova ◽  
Styliani Tziaferi ◽  
Ann Karin Helgesen ◽  
Vigdis Abrahamsen Grøndahl ◽  
...  

Pharmaceutical care necessitates significant efforts from patients, informal caregivers, the interprofessional team of health care professionals and health care system administrators. Collaboration, mutual respect and agreement amongst all stakeholders regarding responsibilities throughout the complex process of pharmaceutical care is needed before patients can take full advantage of modern medicine. Based on the literature and policy documents, in this position paper, we reflect on opportunities for integrated evidence-based pharmaceutical care to improve care quality and patient outcomes from a nursing perspective. Despite the consensus that interprofessional collaboration is essential, in clinical practice, research, education and policy-making challenges are often not addressed interprofessionally. This paper concludes with specific advises to move towards the implementation of more interprofessional, evidence-based pharmaceutical care.


2011 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. S60-S66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Suchanek Hudmon ◽  
Robert L. Addleton ◽  
Frank M. Vitale ◽  
Bruce A. Christiansen ◽  
George C. Mejicano

Author(s):  
Amarjot Singh Gill ◽  
Nistara Singh Chawla ◽  
Sandeep Singh Saini

Background: The practices of various health-care professionals have been improvised to accommodate the on-going covid-19 pandemic situation. Different guidelines have been set in place to ease the process of re-opening of non-elective healthcare services like out-patient physiotherapy clinics. Although the measures taken should be guided by evidence based information, major consensus amongst practicing therapists needs to guide the India physiotherapy clinics. Objective: To identify and present the opinions of different physiotherapists about the various strategies for re-opening the out-patient physiotherapy clinics. Methods: An online cross-sectional survey was conducted. Over 169 participants were selected to participate in the survey according to the pre-decided inclusion and exclusion criteria. The data was collected and saved via google forms. Result and conclusion: A majority of respondents had a consensus over different strategies for re-opening the physiotherapy OPDs. These were regarding different measures to be adapted including modifications in the clinic infrastructure and the practice pattern. This would help in smoothly re-instating the physiotherapy services post the covid-19 lockdown.


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