Trauma Training and Workload: A National Survey

Trauma is a major source of mortality and morbidity throughout Ireland. Training in trauma is dependant on experience gained by trainees within specific posts. Trauma services are a topical issue at present with much discussion about delivery and restructuring. With this in mind we conducted an online survey of trainees in emergency medicine, orthopaedic and general surgery to assess current experience and opinions with regard to trauma. The survey was vetted and distributed by the relevant training bodies. 59(98.33%) respondents believed smaller units should be bypassed for major trauma and 55 (91.67%) believed that larger hospitals receiving major trauma should have a trauma theatre available 24-hours a day. 55 (91.67%) also foresaw themselves covering major trauma as consultants, consequently these trainees will be the consultants developing, moulding and working in this restructured trauma service.

A review of the role of assistive technology for people with dementia in the hours of darkness

Assistive Technology (AT) has been utilized to support people with dementia (PwD) and their carers in the home. Such support can extend the time that PwD can remain safely at home and reduce the burden on the tertiary healthcare sector. Technology can assist people in the hours of darkness as well as during the day. The objective of this literature review is to evaluate reported healthcare technologies appropriate to night time care. This paper summarises and categorises the current evidence base. In all, 131 abstracts were returned from a database search, yielding fifty four relevant papers which were considered in detail. While night-time specific studies identified very few papers (4 papers, 7%), most of the more general AT findings could be adopted to benefit night-time assistance. Studies have used technology for prompting and reminding as loss of time and forgetfulness are major problems; for monitoring daily activities in a sensor enriched environment and utilised location aware technologies to provide information to enhance safety. Technology also supports a range of therapies to alleviate symptoms. Therapies include the delivery of music and familial pictures for reminiscing, the use of light therapy to enhance wellbeing and the provision of mental tasks to stimulate the brain and maintain activity levels.

Cognitive performance effects of subcutaneous nicotine in smokers and never-smokers

In a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover study the effects of two doses of subcutaneous nicotine and saline were compared on a range of performance measures in 18 abstaining smokers and 18 never-smokers. Each subject received two injections (40 min apart) of saline, 0.3 mg nicotine, or 0.6 mg nicotine in a balanced order over three sessions. Performance was assessed before and after the injections on nine tests [news recall, Sternberg memory task, finger tapping, logical reasoning, rapid visual information processing (RVIP), long-term word recognition, digit recall, Stroop test, and critical flicker fusion threshold]. In the abstinent smokers, nicotine produced significantly faster correct responses on the logical reasoning test, more target hits, faster reaction times and improved sensitivity on the RVIP task, and more correct responses on word recognition. In never-smokers, nicotine produced faster reaction times on the RVIP and digit-recall tasks, although in the latter case this was at the expense of fewer correct responses. There were no significant differences between the two groups' responses to nicotine but smokers performed worse than never-smokers prior to injections, even controlling for background characteristics. These results are consistent with other recent research suggesting a primary effect of nicotine in enhancing cognitive performance.

The relationship between cardiovascular reactivity in the laboratory and heart rate response in real life: active coping and beta blockade

Earlier studies suggest that cardiovascular responses in the laboratory and in the field are likely to be related when the laboratory tasks involve active coping, when the field measure is taken continuously, and when there is allowance for the effects of autocorrelation and physical activity on the ambulant cardiovascular measure. These studies lead to the hypothesis that the hyperreactivity common to the laboratory and to the field has a beta-adrenergic basis. We examined the heart rate variability of 16 hyperreactive and 16 hyporeactive subjects over an 8-hour period while they were receiving either a placebo or a cardio-selective beta-blocking drug (Bisoprolol) in a double-blind crossover design. Subjects were classified on the basis of their heart rate and systolic blood pressure responses to a complex self-paced, reaction-time task. Response in the field was assessed from the standard deviation of the raw heart rate series, after allowance for the serial dependency in the data using autoregressive methods and, when allowance was made for physical activity, assessed from the muscle activity of the thigh. As predicted, on placebo hyperreactive subjects had markedly more variable heart rates, particularly when allowance was made for physical activity. Although not confirmed by a significant interaction effect, this difference largely disappeared under beta-blockade.

Effect of subcutaneous nicotine injections of EEG alpha frequency in non-smokers: a placebo-controlled pilot study

The effect of two subcutaneous injections of 0.6 mg nicotine, administered 40 min apart, was compared with placebo in four non-smoking subjects in a counter-balanced double-blind crossover design. The nicotine injections produced mean peak plasma nicotine concentrations of 5.3 ng/ml 10 min after the first injection and 8.5 ng/ml 10 min after the second injection. The nicotine injections produced an increase in mean dominant alpha frequency on the electroencephalogram (EEG) which was 2 Hz greater than the effect of placebo (P = 0.049) and also produced a heart-rate boost which was 8 beats per minute greater than that produced by placebo (P = 0.022). These effects on dominant alpha frequency and heart rate were most apparent in the 10 min following each nicotine injection. The increase in dominant alpha frequency found in non-smokers in this study was similar to that following nicotine inhalation in abstinent smokers in previous studies, and suggests that this is a primary effect of nicotine, rather than simply a reversal of withdrawal-induced EEG slowing.