Need for universal acceptance of preprinting by editors of journals of health professional education

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Game-Based Quality Improvement Teaching: Using Taters in Nursing Education

BACKGROUND

Quality improvement (QI) is difficult to teach in the classroom; therefore, nursing students are often under-prepared to participate in such projects after graduation. The Plan-Do-Study-Act method is commonplace in QI instruction and is often used in nursing. This study proposed and evaluated a gameful learning approach to improve understanding and engagement of a QI process using Potato Head figures.

METHOD

An observational design was utilized. Following classroom activity, students self-selected to join focus groups to discuss gameful learning experiences in learning QI techniques. Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis.

RESULTS

Overall, learners found the activity was effective in teaching QI. Positive and negative themes were identified, including fun and competitive, interactive and communication, and teamwork; disconnection between QI topic and game, and unclear instruction, respectively.

CONCLUSION

Using gameful learning helped students understand and engage with QI projects that may translate to clinical practice for new graduate nurses. [J Nurs Educ. 2021;60(10):590-593.].

New nurses apply only basic source evaluation criteria but realize their skills are lacking: More sophisticated approaches to teaching evaluation skills are required

BACKGROUND

While information evaluation is an essential component of evidence based practice, it remains unclear how nurses perceive their own source evaluation skills and what evaluation criteria they typically apply.

OBJECTIVES

This study aims to determine nurses' self-reported confidence in their evaluation skills and their actual source evaluation ability. The findings will guide information literacy instruction.

METHODS

A questionnaire asked recently graduated nurses from four institutions in the Intermountain West (USA) to rate their confidence in evaluating information and to provide examples of evaluation criteria they typically applied. The quality of these criteria was rated by nursing librarians, then compared with reported confidence in evaluation, years employed as a nurse and highest degree level.

RESULTS

While nurses' self-reported confidence levels about source evaluation largely matched their ability, their evaluation criteria showed a low level of sophistication and did not match the recommended criteria by professional organizations. Graduate education, not years of work experience, was predictive of the quality of criteria used by nurses, suggesting the importance of more instruction on source evaluation for nursing students.

CONCLUSIONS

Nursing educators, including librarians, need to teach evaluation skills at the undergraduate level. Further investigation into building evaluation skills in nurses is warranted.

Social support and siblings of children with cancer: A scoping review

OBJECTIVE

Social support is essential in healthy adjustment to life stressors. This scoping review examines how social support has been conceptualized, operationalized, and studied among siblings of children with cancer. Gaps in the current literature are identified, and future research directions are proposed.

METHODS

A rigorous systematic scoping review framework guided our process. Medline, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Scopus were searched for literature regarding social support and siblings of children with cancer. After screening, 57 articles were identified (n = 26 quantitative, n = 21 qualitative, and n = 10 multi-method) and their content extracted for summarization.

RESULTS

The majority of studies (n = 43, 75.4%) were descriptive; 14 (24.6%) included interventions, and of those, four were experimental. Few studies used a clearly defined theoretical framework, or validated tools to measure social support. Studies explored perceived social support needs of siblings, the provision and availability of formal support through interventions and related outcomes, and informal family social supports. A variety of support types were found to be helpful to siblings in different ways.

CONCLUSIONS

Social support is a prevalent topic in the literature regarding siblings of children with cancer. It is unclear what types of support are most important due to how it has been conceptualized and measured. Despite some methodological limitations, greater levels of social support have been linked to better adaptation among siblings of children with cancer. Future work is warranted to identify the most beneficial types of support for siblings based on their age, developmental stage, and the cancer trajectory.

Aligning Information Literacy and Evidence-Based Dentistry Concepts in a Rubric to Improve Dental Education

Understanding of the alignment of key concepts in both evidence-based dentistry and information literacy could lead to greater collaboration between librarians and dental faculty. To identify these areas of partnership, a group of dental librarians from across North America created a rubric aligning information literacy concepts with competencies from dental education groups in the United States and Canada. The process included identifying relevant competencies, determining information literacy concepts for each competency, and adding learning outcomes scaled by Bloom's Taxonomy. The resulting rubric is useful for advocating librarian involvement in dental education curriculum, communication with dental faculty, and instruction planning.

Assessing the Psychological Impact of COVID-19 among College Students: An Evidence of 15 Countries

Mental health issues among college students is a leading public health concern, which seems to have been exacerbating during the COVID-19 pandemic. While previous estimates related to psychological burden among college students are available, quantitative synthesis of available data still needs to be performed. Therefore, this meta-analysis endeavors to present collective evidence discussing the psychological impact of COVID-19 among college students. Bibliographical library databases, including Embase, Medline, CINAHL, Scopus, and PsycINFO, were systematically searched for relevant studies. Titles, abstracts, and full articles were screened, and two reviewers extracted data. Heterogeneity was assessed by I² statistic. The random-effects model was utilized to obtain the pooled estimates of psychological indicators among college students. Location, gender, level of severity, and quality scores were used as moderator variables for subgroup analyses. Funnel plot and Egger linear regression test was used to assess publication bias. Twenty-seven studies constituting 90,879 college students met the inclusion criteria. The results indicated 39.4% anxiety (95% CI: 28.6, 51.3; I² = 99.8%; p-value < 0.0001) and 31.2% depression (95% CI: 19.7, 45.6; I²= 99.8%, p < 0.0001) among college students. The pooled prevalence of stress (26.0%), post-traumatic stress disorder (29.8%), and impaired sleep quality (50.5%) were also reported. College students bear a disproportionate burden of mental health problems worldwide, with females having higher anxiety and depression levels than males. This study‘’s findings underscore the need to develop appropriate public health interventions to address college students’ emotional and psychosocial needs. The policies should be reflective of demographic and socioeconomic differentials.

Assessing the roles and challenges of librarians in dental systematic and scoping reviews

Objective:

The objective of this study was to determine the scope of experience, roles, and challenges that librarians face in participating in dental and oral health systematic and scoping reviews to inform outreach efforts to researchers and identify areas for librarian professional development.

Methods:

The authors developed a twenty-three-item survey based on the findings of two recent articles about health sciences librarians' roles and challenges in conducting systematic and scoping reviews. The survey was distributed via electronic mailing lists to librarians who were likely to have participated in conducting dental systematic and scoping reviews.

Results:

While survey respondents reported participating in many dental reviews, they participated more commonly in systematic reviews than in scoping reviews. Also, they worked less commonly on dental and oral health reviews than on non-dental reviews. Librarian roles in dental reviews tended to follow traditional librarian roles: all respondents had participated in planning and information retrieval stages, whereas fewer respondents had participated in screening and assessing articles. The most frequently reported challenges involved the lead reviewer or review team rather than the librarians themselves, with time- and methodology-related challenges being most common.

Conclusions:

Although librarians might not be highly involved in dental and oral health systematic and scoping reviews, more librarian participation in these reviews, either as methodologists or information experts, may improve their reviews' overall quality.

Investigating the Psychological Impact of COVID-19 among Healthcare Workers: A Meta-Analysis

Previous meta-analyses were conducted during the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, which utilized a smaller pool of data. The current meta-analysis aims to provide additional (and updated) evidence related to the psychological impact among healthcare workers. The search strategy was developed by a medical librarian and bibliographical databases, including Medline, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Scopus were searched for studies examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological health of healthcare workers. Articles were screened by three reviewers. Heterogeneity among studies was assessed by I2 statistic. The random-effects model was utilized to obtain the pooled prevalence. A subgroup analysis by region, gender, quality of study, assessment methods, healthcare profession, and exposure was performed. Publication bias was assessed by Funnel plot and Egger linear regression test. Sixty-five studies met the inclusion criteria and the total sample constituted 79,437 participants. The pooled prevalence of anxiety, depression, stress, post-traumatic stress syndrome, insomnia, psychological distress, and burnout was 34.4%, 31.8%, 40.3%, 11.4%, 27.8%, 46.1%, and 37.4% respectively. The subgroup analysis indicated higher anxiety and depression prevalence among females, nurses, and frontline responders than males, doctors, and second-line healthcare workers. This study highlights the need for designing a targeted intervention to improve resilience and foster post-traumatic growth among frontline responders.

Using Information Practices of Nurses to Reform Information Literacy Instruction in Baccalaureate Nursing Programs

Abstract Objective - Seeking information is a key element of evidence based practice and successful healthcare delivery. Significant literature exists on both the information seeking behaviour of professional nurses and information literacy teaching methods, but scarce evidence connects nurses’ information behaviour and environments with their education. This study sought to use data from nursing alumni to answer the following research questions: What are the current information practices of professional bachelor’s-prepared nurses? How do recently-graduated nurses suggest that their education could have better prepared them to find and evaluate information in the workplace? Methods - The researchers conducted a descriptive study using a 59-item survey instrument with a variety of question formats including short-answer, multiple choice, Likert, and open response. The researchers distributed the survey to baccalaureate nursing alumni who graduated in 2012-2017 from four universities in the state of Utah in the United States. Results - Nurses seek practical information primarily to provide informed patient care, while also clarifying medical situations and expanding their health care knowledge. They frequently consult nursing colleagues and physicians when seeking information. The majority of nurses consult electronic health records daily. Respondents described time as the biggest barrier to accessing information. They requested authentic, clinically-focused scenarios, training on freely-accessible resources, and more explicit teaching of lifelong learning skills, such as critical thinking. Conclusion - Information literacy education should prepare student nurses for the fast-paced information environment they will face in the workplace. This means incorporating more patient-focused scenarios, freely available quality resources, and time-based activities in their education. The researchers suggest areas to prepare nurses for information seeking, including problem-based clinical scenarios, building guides with databases accessible for free or little cost, and added emphasis on critical thinking and self-motivated learning.

A scoping review exploring the opioid prescribing practices of US dental professionals

BACKGROUND

The prescribing practices of dental professionals may play an important role in the opioid epidemic. The authors performed a scoping review of the current original research literature on dental professionals' prescribing practices for opioid analgesics published from 2000 through 2017.

TYPES OF STUDIES REVIEWED

With the use of a modified Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses approach, the inclusion criteria entailed published articles written in English that had an opioid focus, had a dental health care professional prescriber, entailed a US setting, were peer reviewed, had an identified data source, were not review articles, and were not opinion articles. Five databases were searched to identify relevant literature.

RESULTS

Of 221 articles, 18 met the inclusion criteria. Eight distinct and mutually exclusive themes emerged from these studies: impact of patient demographic characteristics on opioid prescribing, comparison of opioid prescribing by different provider type, quantity of opioids prescribed and consumed, types of opioids prescribed by dental professionals, assessment of self-reported opioid prescribing, opioid prescriptions by procedure, impact of pharmacy integration into dental practice, and implementation of risk mitigation strategies.

CONCLUSIONS AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

There is a surprising paucity of research that investigated the prescribing patterns of dentists. Available research suggests that dental practice does not always align with proposed guidelines for opioid prescribing. Some studies that explored interventions found changes in prescribing, suggesting the potential benefit of developing practical strategies targeted to dental providers who prescribed opioids.