Search Results (4)

In the last few decades, the impact of chronic health conditions on health systems, as well as on the quality of life, frailty, and dependence of those affected, has been brought to light. The objective of this study was to describe the population care needs of highly complex chronic patients (HCCPs). Methods: An epidemiological observational study was conducted. Results: A total of 13,262 patients were identified, 51% of which were elderly women. Among all patients, 84.4% had received a nursing assessment related to health patterns. Three diagnoses were established in 25% of the sample: readiness for enhanced health management, impaired skin integrity, and risk for falls. There were significant differences according to age, most importantly in terms of impaired skin integrity (39% of patients under 80 years old). Risk for falls, social isolation, situational low self-esteem, chronic low self-esteem, impaired home maintenance, anxiety, ineffective health management, ineffective coping, impaired memory, insomnia, and self-care deficits were more common in those living alone. A total of 37 diagnoses featured differences according to frailty/dependence. Approximately 23% of HCCPs suffered from frail elderly syndrome. Conclusions: This study presents the most common care needs of HCCPs, describing the sociodemographic profile of this part of the population. The planning of HCCP care varies in nature. Factors such as the dependence level and frailty of these people should be taken into consideration. Full article

Background: Hospital health care workers are at high risk of developing COVID-19 and transmitting the disease to their family upon returning home; the aim here is to estimate the secondary attack rate of COVID-19 in household contacts of health care workers and their transmission risk factors. Material and Methods: COVID-19 cases in the health care workers of an academic hospital in Pamplona, Spain, from 2 March to 26 May 2020, were followed up. The secondary attack rate (SAR) was estimated from cases in household contacts of index cases and their risk factors by Poisson regression. Results: 89 index cases were studied from 99 notified cases in health care workers (89.0%), excluding secondary cases or those who lived alone. Forty-six secondary cases confirmed by the laboratory were found among 326 household contacts, a secondary attack rate of 14.11% (95% CI 10.75–18.31), and 33 household contacts with acute infection symptoms without microbiologic confirmation 10.12% (95% CI 7.30–13.87). Considering all the cases, the secondary attack rate was 27.3 (95% CI 22.75–32.38). Risk factors were the gender and profession of the index case, the number of people living in the household, and the number of persons per bedroom. When the index case health worker used a single room, it had a protective effect, with an incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 0.493 (95% CI 0.246–0.985); Conclusions: The secondary attack rate found among household contacts of health care workers is high. The preventive isolation of health care workers in individual rooms in their house may reduce the transmission in their families. Full article

Safety can be defined as the condition of being safe from undergoing or causing hurt, injury, or loss. It also includes assessing safety risks, including hazard prevention, control and management, a common requirement of occupational health and safety regulators and safety stakeholders around the world. Safety risk confronts us every day in almost every aspect of our lives; when we are at home, travelling to work, or school, or at the day care center or doing a bit of shopping, or going on vacation. Whether we work with others in an office or develop plans to build various forms of infrastructure or processing and manufacturing plants; whether we are the planners, designers and construction supervisors or one of the workers, we are all required to consider and implement the governing occupational health and safety (OH&S) requirements. There is also an implicit ‘duty of care’ expected from professionals who may be responsible, be it through planning, design or management, for the safety of others, whether directly or indirectly. Depending on the law of the land, the OH&S regulations set the legal safety criteria and benchmark of what is expected. [...] Full article

This article offers a brief overview of most current and potential uses and applications of robotics in health/care and social care, whether commercially ready and available on the market or still at the various stages of research and prototyping. We provide carefully hand-picked examples and pointers to on-going research for each set of identified robotics applications and then discuss the main ingredients for the success of these applications, as well as the main issues surrounding their adoption for everyday use, including sustainability in non-technical environments, patient/user safety and acceptance, ethical considerations such as patient/user privacy, and cost effectiveness. We examine how robotics could (partially) fill in some of the identified gaps in current telehealthcare and home care/self-care provisions. The article concludes with a brief glimpse at a couple of emerging developments and promising applications in the field (soft robots and robots for disaster response) that are expected to play important roles in the future. Full article