Sensor-based gait analyses of the six-minute walk test identify qualitative improvement in gait parameters of people with multiple sclerosis after rehabilitation

Journal of Neurology - The aim of this work was to determine whether wearable inertial measurement units (IMUs) could detect gait improvements across different disability groups of people with...     

Current assessments of quality and safety education in nursing

Concerns about the quality and safety of health care have changed practice expectations and created a mandate for change in the preparation of health care professionals. The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses project team conducted a survey to assess current levels of integration of quality and safety content in pre-licensure nursing curricula. Views of 195 nursing program leaders are presented, including information about satisfaction with faculty expertise and student competency development related to 6 domains that define quality and safety content: patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics. With competency definitions as the sole reference point, survey respondents indicated that quality and safety content was embedded in current curricula, and they were generally satisfied that students were developing the desired competencies. These data are contrasted with work reported elsewhere in this issue of Nursing Outlook and readers are invited to consider a variety of interpretations of the differences.     

The use of a wax bite wafer and a double computed tomography scan procedure to obtain a three-dimensional augmented virtual skull model

A detailed visualization of the interocclusal relationship is essential in a three-dimensional virtual planning setup for orthognathic and facial orthomorphic surgery. The purpose of this study was to introduce and evaluate the use of a wax bite wafer in combination with a double computed tomography (CT) scan procedure to augment the three-dimensional virtual model of the skull with a detailed dental surface. A total of 10 orthognathic patients were scanned after a standardized multislice CT scanning protocol with dose reduction with their wax bite wafer in place. Afterward, the impressions of the upper and lower arches and the wax bite wafer were scanned for each patient separately using a high-resolution standardized multislice CT scanning protocol. Accurate fitting of the virtual impressions on the wax bite wafer was done with surface matching using iterative closest points. Consecutively, automatic rigid point-based registration of the wax bite wafer on the patient scan was performed to implement the digital virtual dental arches into the patient's skull model (Maxilim, version 2.0; Medicim NV, St-Niklaas, Belgium). Probability error histograms showed errors of < or =0.16 mm (25% percentile), < or =0.31 mm (50% percentile), and < or =0.92 (90% percentile) for iterative closest point surface matching. The mean registration error for automatic point-based registration was 0.17 +/- 0.07 mm (range, 0.12-0.22 mm). The combination of the wax bite wafer with the double CT scan procedure allowed for the setup of an accurate three-dimensional virtual augmented model of the skull with detailed dental surface. However, from a clinical workload, data handling, and computational point of view, this method is too time-consuming to be introduced in the clinical routine.     

Technological advances in pediatrics: challenges for parents and nurses

Ongoing technological advances in pediatrics are improving the survival rates among babies born with life-threatening anomalies. For these neonates, surgeries like brain shunts, trachea, gut and heart reconstruction, and organ transplants are replacing palliative care. Although parents and health care professionals alike are celebrating the successes, advancing technology also raises issues for everyone involved. This paper incorporates Dunst and Trivette's Effective Helpgiving framework and the Calgary Family Intervention Model to recommend nursing care that moves beyond life-saving highly technical surgical procedures and responds to the challenges parents face with their children with complex congenital heart disease, for example, who have "beat the odds."