To describe and analyse 75-year-old persons' health conditions and how they were associated with socio-demographic status and sense of coherence to produce a knowledge base for district nurse's preventive home visits.
Action plans are needed to promote health and to prevent diseases amongst older people. One action plan is preventive home visits to 75-year-old persons by the district nurse. Though the district nurse has a broad knowledge in the field of preventive health work, preventive home visits to 75-year-old persons was a new responsibility. Although aging and older persons health have been investigated in many varied studies, it was difficult to find a comprehensive view, in general and from a district nursing perspective, of 75-year olds' health conditions.
Cross-sectional.
In total 583, 75-year-olds (74%) answered a questionnaire regarding health and well-being, health problems, health behaviour and sense of coherence.
Most 75-year-old persons reported their health as good or very good, but they also reported health problems such as: pain, sleeping problems, memory failure, fatigue, poor understanding of their own health and illnesses, problems with elimination patterns and underweight and overweight. 75-year-old persons living alone, those with elementary school education and women reported worse health and well-being than other groups.
This study contributes to the knowledge about health issues that concern persons of 75 years of age. It gives a suggestion as to what the district nurses should be aware of when performing preventive home visits.
This study raises the importance of preventive health work regarding 75-year-old persons. It suggests how to educate district nurses in how to perform preventive home visits to older persons.
Addiction Research Centres and the Nurturing of Creativity. Substance abuse research in a modern health care centre: the case of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health is one of the premier centres for research related to substance use and addiction. This research began more than 50 years ago with the Addiction Research Foundation (ARF), an organization that contributed significantly to knowledge about the aetiology, treatment and prevention of substance use, addiction and related harm. After the merger of the ARF with three other institutions in 1998, research on substance use continued, with an additional focus on comorbid substance use and other mental health disorders. In the present paper, we describe the structure of funding and organization and selected current foci of research. We argue for the continuation of this successful model of integrating basic, epidemiological, clinical, health service and prevention research under the roof of a health centre.
Many of the world's life threatening diseases (e.g. cancer, heart disease, stroke) could be prevented by eliminating life-style habits such as tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and excessive alcohol use. Incorporating evidence-based research on methods to change unhealthy lifestyle habits in clinical practice would be equally valuable. However gaps between guideline development and implementation are well documented, with implications for health care quality, safety and effectiveness. The development phase of guidelines has been shown to be important both for the quality in guideline content and for the success of implementation. There are, however, indications that guidelines related to general disease prevention methods encounter specific barriers compared to guidelines that are diagnosis-specific. In 2011 the Swedish National board for Health and Welfare launched guidelines with a preventive scope. The aim of this study was to investigate how implementation challenges were addressed during the development process of these disease preventive guidelines.
Seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the guideline development management group. Archival data detailing the guideline development process were also collected and used in the analysis. Qualitative data were analysed using content analysis as the analytical framework.
The study identified several strategies and approaches that were used to address implementation challenges during guideline development. Four themes emerged from the analysis: broad agreements and consensus about scope and purpose; a formalized and structured development procedure; systematic and active involvement of stakeholders; and openness and transparency in the specific guideline development procedure. Additional factors concerning the scope of prevention and the work environment of guideline developers were perceived to influence the possibilities to address implementation issues.
This case study provides examples of how guideline developers perceive and approach the issue of implementation during the development and early launch of prevention guidelines. Models for guideline development could benefit from an initial assessment of how the guideline topic, its target context and stakeholders will affect the upcoming implementation.
The article deals with contemporary prophylactic methods for occupational dermatoses. The authors stress importance of etiologic approach to creation of prophylactic measures complex at various industrial enterprises.
Although HIV/AIDS prevention has presented challenges over the past 25 years, prevention does work! To be most effective, however, prevention must be specific to the culture and the nature of the community. Building the capacity of a community for prevention efforts is not an easy process. If capacity is to be sustained, it must be practical and utilize the resources that already exist in the community. Attitudes vary across communities; resources vary, political climates are constantly varied and changing. Communities are fluid-always changing, adapting, growing. They are "ready" for different things at different times. Readiness is a key issue! This article presents a model that has experienced a high level of success in building community capacity for effective prevention/intervention for HIV/AIDS and offers case studies for review. The Community Readiness Model provides both quantitative and qualitative information in a user-friendly structure that guides a community through the process of understanding the importance of the measure of readiness. The model identifies readiness- appropriate strategies, provides readiness scores for evaluation, and most important, involves community stakeholders in the process. The article will demonstrate the importance of developing strategies consistent with readiness levels for more cost-effective and successful prevention efforts.
Community-health nursing practice is a pivotal aspect of present-day health reforms. In Quebec, Canada, the recent introduction of a population-based approach has entailed increasing the resources allocated to health promotion and disease prevention. Semistructured interviews were conducted with nurses and managers (N = 69) in an effort to understand how these new resources are reflected in nursing practice. Three classes of factors emerged as key conditions for change: contextual and historical, training and professional-development, and work-organization factors. The authors propose courses of action respecting these conditions to provide support for community-health nursing practices that incorporate a contemporary population-based approach.
