Intentions of Canadian health professionals towards recommending exercise for people living with ALS

Psychometric assessment of pharmacists' counseling in dementia

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to explore pharmacists' counseling for dementia by developing a measurement tool based on the Theory of Planned Behavior.

METHODS

A survey was applied online to community pharmacists; in total, 190 community pharmacists participated in the study. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and Mann-Whitney U test were performed.

RESULTS

A six-factor structure was obtained from the EFA, and the CFA confirmed the structure. These factors explained 71.294% of the total variance. The Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the factors ranged from 0.728 to 0.913. In addition, the pharmacists rated themselves as having positive attitudes and intentions toward counseling for dementia. Differences in these factors were found between the groups based on their participation in vocational training on dementia.

CONCLUSION

The developed measurement tool had a satisfactory construct and convergent and discriminant validities and reliabilities.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

The developed measurement tool can be used to investigate pharmacists' self-reported counseling for dementia and can also be applied to the counseling behavior of pharmacists in various health conditions.

I Want to Row Across the Atlantic. But You Have Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis!

ABSTRACT

We describe an individual with slowly progressive amyotrophic lateral sclerosis who decided to enter the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, a rowing event across the Atlantic Ocean, and completes it in 51 days in a 5-man boat.

Evaluation of a Clinical Platform to Promote Chronic Disease Management

Self-reported data suggest American adults with multiple chronic conditions account for 25.7% to 60% of the population. Despite emphasis on information technology to improve quality in health care, data addressing outcomes of clinically focused, provider-oriented dashboards are limited. To explore integrating performance platforms into clinical care, the authors designed a platform-based intervention to address 2 prevalent chronic conditions with significant long-term burden. This study used a performance platform to enhance clinicians' management of patients with diabetes and osteoporosis. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize patients' surveys and quality metrics, and to analyze clinicians' knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs in the pre and post time frames. The frequency of screening for osteoporosis in women improved post intervention (40% vs. 44%, P < 0.0001), whereas other quality metrics did not. Clinician respondents were primarily physicians (82%), white (73%), internal medicine specialists (58%), with an average of 18 years' experience, and nearly equally male and female. Their percent of correctly answered knowledge questions increased slightly in the postintervention phase for osteoporosis and hypoglycemia (0.53 and 1.74, respectively); however, results were not statistically significant (P > 0.4). Post intervention, clinicians reported that their attitudes and beliefs regarding disease management had changed in the past 6 months in a positive direction. Although few outcomes studied changed over time, results suggest that performance platforms may have a role to play in managing chronic conditions. However, their efficacy must continue to be evaluated in order to improve understanding of optimal approaches to integrating technology into patient care.