Social Work Perspectives of Quality in Nursing Homes Compared to Minnesota Nursing Home Report Card and Nursing Home Compare

The number of older adults requiring nursing home level of care continues to rise and is expected to continue as the baby boom generation ages. The quality of nursing home care has been a significant policy issue for several years, as poor quality of care continues to be an endemic problem in many of the U.S nursing homes. The Nursing Home Reform Act passed in 1987 was designed to set quality standards to improve nursing home care quality. In 1998 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid responded by implementing Nursing Home Compare, which is a tool to inform consumers about nursing home quality. Social workers often play a key role in advocating for resident rights and ensuring residents’ psychosocial needs are being met. Care quality can have a large impact on the overall wellbeing of a resident. The purpose of this study was to learn about nursing home social workers perspectives of what quality care is and if their perspectives are similar to quality indictors identified on the Minnesota Nursing Home Report Card and Nursing Home Compare. Eight nursing home social workers participated in individual semi-structured interviews answering fourteen questions regarding their perspectives of quality care in the nursing home setting. The participants’ responses demonstrated similar quality care indicators compared to the Minnesota Nursing Home Report Card and Nursing Home Compare. Participants’ responses evolved into themes regarding resident centered care and quality of life, quality indicators and lack of response, staffing ratios, retention and burnout, leadership and empowerment, awareness and use of report cards and informed consumers. Developing an understanding of indicators that contribute towards good quality care in the nursing home setting will allow social workers to advocate for residents to ensure they experience the highest achievable quality of life possible

Social Work Perspectives of Quality in Nursing Homes Compared to Minnesota Nursing Home Report Card and Nursing Home Compare

The number of older adults requiring nursing home level of care continues to rise and is expected to continue as the baby boom generation ages. The quality of nursing home care has been a significant policy issue for several years, as poor quality of care continues to be an endemic problem in many of the U.S nursing homes. The Nursing Home Reform Act passed in 1987 was designed to set quality standards to improve nursing home care quality. In 1998 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid responded by implementing Nursing Home Compare, which is a tool to inform consumers about nursing home quality. Social workers often play a key role in advocating for resident rights and ensuring residents’ psychosocial needs are being met. Care quality can have a large impact on the overall wellbeing of a resident. The purpose of this study was to learn about nursing home social workers perspectives of what quality care is and if their perspectives are similar to quality indictors identified on the Minnesota Nursing Home Report Card and Nursing Home Compare. Eight nursing home social workers participated in individual semi-structured interviews answering fourteen questions regarding their perspectives of quality care in the nursing home setting. The participants’ responses demonstrated similar quality care indicators compared to the Minnesota Nursing Home Report Card and Nursing Home Compare. Participants’ responses evolved into themes regarding resident centered care and quality of life, quality indicators and lack of response, staffing ratios, retention and burnout, leadership and empowerment, awareness and use of report cards and informed consumers. Developing an understanding of indicators that contribute towards good quality care in the nursing home setting will allow social workers to advocate for residents to ensure they experience the highest achievable quality of life possible

Use of emotional freedom technique as a complementary pain management practice

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) has been used to reduce stress and anxiety in patients. Stress and anxiety contribute to physical changes in the body used to measure pain

Laser-controlled fluorescence in two-level systems

The ability to modify the character of fluorescent emission by a laser-controlled, optically nonlinear process has recently been shown theoretically feasible, and several possible applications have already been identified. In operation, a pulse of off-resonant probe laser beam, of sufficient intensity, is applied to a system exhibiting fluorescence, during the interval of excited- state decay following the initial excitation. The result is a rate of decay that can be controllably modified, the associated changes in fluorescence behavior affording new, chemically specific information. In this paper, a two-level emission model is employed in the further analysis of this all-optical process; the results should prove especially relevant to the analysis and imaging of physical systems employing fluorescent markers, these ranging from quantum dots to green fluorescence protein. Expressions are presented for the laser-controlled fluorescence anisotropy exhibited by samples in which the fluorophores are randomly oriented. It is also shown that, in systems with suitably configured electronic levels and symmetry properties, fluorescence emission can be produced from energy levels that would normally decay nonradiatively. © 2010 American Chemical Society

Formyl Peptide Receptor as a Novel Therapeutic Target for Anxiety-Related Disorders

Formyl peptide receptors (FPR) belong to a family of sensors of the immune system that detect microbe-associated molecules and inform various cellular and sensorial mechanisms to the presence of pathogens in the host. Here we demonstrate that Fpr2/3-deficient mice show a distinct profile of behaviour characterised by reduced anxiety in the marble burying and light-dark box paradigms, increased exploratory behaviour in an open-field, together with superior performance on a novel object recognition test. Pharmacological blockade with a formyl peptide receptor antagonist, Boc2, in wild type mice reproduced most of the behavioural changes observed in the Fpr2/3(-/-) mice, including a significant improvement in novel object discrimination and reduced anxiety in a light/dark shuttle test. These effects were associated with reduced FPR signalling in the gut as shown by the significant reduction in the levels of p-p38. Collectively, these findings suggest that homeostatic FPR signalling exerts a modulatory effect on anxiety-like behaviours. These findings thus suggest that therapies targeting FPRs may be a novel approach to ameliorate behavioural abnormalities present in neuropsychiatric disorders at the cognitive-emotional interface