August 29, 2007, 9:54 PM CT

Newly-licensed Rn Work Attitudes And Intentions

New York, NY (August 29, 2007) A study, reported in the recent issue of the American Journal of Nursing (AJN), provides new insight into the work experiences of newly-licensed RNs that may help reduce the turnover rate of hospital nurses. The national study is the first to explore attitudes and experiences among newly-licensed RNs (those who received their first or basic RN license by passing the NCLEX) in their first 18 months of employment.

A shortage of 340,000 RNs is projected by 2020, said Christine Kovner, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor at New York University College of Nursing and lead author of the study. Therefore, it is vital that we understand the factors that promote the retention of newly-licensed RNs as well as factors that lead to the high turnover rates among them. We plan to continue surveying these RNs for two more years and develop predictive models of turnover, based on our findings.

More than 84% of respondents worked in a hospital inpatient setting. Those whose first professional degree was an associates degree (58.1%) were more intent on leaving their jobs than those whose first professional degree was a bachelors degree (37.6%).

Among those newly-licensed RNs who had already left their first job (n=610), the most common reasons cited were poor management (41.8%), stressful work conditions (37.2%) and wanting to get experience in a different clinical area (34.1%)......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

August 28, 2007, 8:52 PM CT

Facial Transplantation May Be a Safer Option

Scientists in Cincinnati and Louisville report that immunosuppressive risks linked to facial transplantation may be lower than thought, possibly making the procedure a safer option for people who have suffered severe facial injuries.

Prior data on the immunosuppression risks involved in facial transplantation were misleading, as per Rita Alloway, PharmD, and Steve Woodle, MD, of the University of Cincinnati (UC), and a University of Louisville team led by John Barker, MD, PhD. Their findings are reported in the September edition of the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

The first recorded facial transplant waccording toformed in France in 2005 on a 38-year-old woman whose nose, lips and chin had been bitten off by a dog. Tissues, muscles, arteries and veins were taken from a brain-dead donor and successfully transplanted to the patient's lower face.

There have been only two similar attempts since.

In 2004, the British Royal College of Surgeons published a controversial report predicting a high occurence rate of immunological complications for facial transplants. This data became a benchmark for facial transplant teams and review boards and greatly influenced the facial transplantation debate.

As per Woodle, however, the report did not provide the best risk assessment......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

August 28, 2007, 8:44 PM CT

High-risk behaviors could lead to HIV epidemic

In a report that is among the first to describe the prevalence of HIV and Hepatitis B and C viruses in Afghanistan, a researcher from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine voiced concerns that increasing injection drug use and accompanying high-risk behavior could lead to an HIV epidemic in Afghanistan.

Our findings suggest that interventions to reduce high-risk behaviors among injection drug users are urgently needed in Afghanistan, said Catherine S. Todd, M.D., MPH, assistant professor in UCSDs Division of International Health and Cross-cultural Medicine, who is currently working in Kabul, Afghanistan. The findings appear in the recent issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Eventhough HIV prevalence is currently low among injection drug users in Kabul, Todd and his colleagues with the National HIV/AIDS Control Program of the Afghan Ministry of Public Health observed that risky injecting and sexual behaviors were alarmingly high. The occurence rate of Hepatitis C infection was also high, which could foreshadow an increase in HIV rates.

It is important to educate the public about this looming problem in Afghanistan, said Dr. Saifur Rehman, manager of the HIV/AIDS Control Program of the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, who added that one of the biggest obstacles to intervention programs is lack of funding. Afghanistan has received a $10 million grant from the HIV/AIDS programs of the World Bank for three years and has a pending proposal to the Global Fund. Programming for drug users, directed towards reducing or containing adverse health, social, and economic consequences, is a major component of these plans. The country continues to seek other support to help deal with the potential increase in HIV a problem which, Rehman says, is of unknown proportions. It is not clear how a number of cases we have, but there are probably a number of more than are reflected by available test results, he said......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

August 27, 2007, 9:06 PM CT

How Transcription Factor Controls Gene Expression?

The Conaway Lab - led by Joan Conaway, Ph.D., and Ron Conaway, Ph.D., Investigators - has published findings that shed light on the role of the much-studied transcription factor YY1 in gene expression. Yong Cai, Ph.D., Research Specialist I, and Jingji Jin, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, are the paper's coequal first authors.

The paper, "YY1 functions with INO80 to activate transcription," was posted to the Web site of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology on Aug. 26. It describes data showing that transcription factor YY1 works with a chromatin remodeling complex INO80.

"The paper offers the first demonstration of several interesting principles," said Dr. Joan Conaway. "We learned that there is a role of the INO80 complex in gene regulation; that a chromatin remodeling complex plays a role as a coactivator for YY1; and that a transcription factor may travel with the remodeling complex mandatory for it to gain access to promoters - suggesting that an initiating event in YY1-dependent gene activation is the corecruitment of YY1 and the human INO80 chromatin remodeling complex."

YY1 is known to be important for turning "on" and "off" a significant number of genes, including genes that control cell division, cell differentiation, and development. Because of these contributions to cell cycle control, YY1 may eventually prove to be a good target for cancer treatment - but only if more can be learned about its functional mechanism......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

August 27, 2007, 8:19 PM CT

New Molecule To Explain Circadian Clock

The internal clock in living beings that regulates sleeping and waking patterns -- commonly called the circadian clock -- has often befuddled researchers due to its mysterious time delays. Molecular interactions that regulate the circadian clock happen within milliseconds, yet the body clock resets about every 24 hours. What, then, stretches the expression of the clock over such a relatively long period?.

Cornell scientists have contributed to the answer, thanks to new mathematical models recently published.

In the August online edition of Public Library of Science (PLOS) Computational Biology, Cornell biomolecular engineer Kelvin Lee, in collaboration with graduate student Robert S. Kuczenski, Kevin C. Hong '05 and Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo of Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain, hypothesize that the accepted model of circadian rhythmicity may be missing a key link, based on a mathematical model of what happens during the sleeping/waking cycle in fruit flies.

"We didn't discover any new proteins or genes," Lee said. "We took all the existing knowledge, and we tried to organize it."

Using mathematical models initially created by Hong, who has since graduated, the team set out to map the molecular interactions of proteins called period and timeless -- widely known to be correlation to the circadian clock......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 18:11:43 GMT

Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs

I've already presented some famous medical bloggers to you. My aim is to get my readers closer to these quality blogs and the bloggers as well. I'd like to convince more and more health professionals/people interested in medicine to create their own blogs by providing interesting "behind-the-scenes" interviews. The seventh blogger in this series is already presented who runs already presented on the web, already presented.

• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

I read Google News and BBC news along with all the major journals and press releases from the FDA, CDC and NIH. I check in on around 50 health and science blogs and I also follow roughly 100 other blogs (politics, web, tech, marketing, writing, philosophy, personal development, etc.).

• You’re not a medical specialist but you can cover a wide range of medical topics. How can you do it?

I am a sponge. Most of my inspiration comes from observation of everything around me. I tear stuff out of magazines, I go out with friends, I surf the web. While I'm not an "expert", I have learned a lot about health. Beyond that I'm a very curious person, which helps.

• Was it hard to follow Wade Meredith’s job? (Actually, it seems you have no problem with that.)

Healthbolt is the house that Wade Meredith built. I followed the blog for Wade's entire run and really dug it. I edit and write for a popular alternative health blog (already presented), and I'd had the itch to further satisfy my blog bug with my own digs, so it couldn't have worked out better.

• Healthbolt is No. 1 on this list, and No. 8 on that one. It must be a little bit frustrating that so many people are watching! How can you handle it?

Hey, thanks for bringing that up! I'm just myself. If it works, it works!

• Are the most of your readers patients/laymen? Or medical specialists?

My readers are generally college-educated but not health professionals. They skew male, they're Gen X-ers, they're interested in entertainment, politics, psychology, sex, and science. They like learning about health and how the body works, but they aren't really too nutty about it. That's what the other blog is for!

• Do you plan to write more about web 2.0 or genetics? I personally miss these topics.

I am just as obsessed with Web 2.0 as any other blogger, and I follow all the major web and tech blogs, but that's not really the purview of Healthbolt. Genetics? Duly noted!

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

Well, one goal is to continue to make Healthbolt very interactive. The first thing I did was to open up comments. Other than that, I'm just curious and focused on learning, so I appreciate that others take the time to learn along with me. And it's a riot! 

Thank you, Sara, for the answers. Follow already presented for many interesting posts on popular medicine and health! Posted by: Bertalan      Read more     Source

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:39:27 GMT

SciFoo lives on in Second Life (27 August)

I’ve already written about the SciFoo lives on session in Second Life on the Second Nature island. I’m a co-organizer of the next session (Medicine and web 2.0) with already written about the SciFoo lives on session. I’ll present a short slideshow about medical blogs/wikis/search engines/virtual educational opportunities, etc. I’ve also invited several famous medical sites and communities. Some have accepted my invitation and will be there, some asked me to talk about them.

So, if you’re interested, let’s meet on the already written about the SciFoo lives on session at 16:00 GMT on Monday.


I’m staring at myself… Posted by: Bertalan      Read more     Source

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 02:37:41 GMT

NEJM: Image Challenge

The New England Journal of Medicine is a pioneer in the field of web 2.0 and medicine among other medical journals. On its beta page, the site mentions several great features. Here are some examples:

• Google Gadgets
• NEJM Full-Screen Video Player
• NEJM Full-Screen Video Player
• Most popular at NEJM.org: list of the most blogged/cited articles

What I’ve recently come across is the NEJM Full-Screen Video Player:

You can think and vote with others (there are images with more than 12,000 votes!) about possible diagnoses. This is a perfect example of how to create an interactive site. Creativity is an essential attitude in medical journalism! Posted by: Bertalan      Read more     Source

August 23, 2007, 10:24 PM CT

New Fda Labeling Decision For Warfarin

On August 16, the Food and Drug Administration approved new labeling information for the blood-thinner warfarin, sold under the brand name Coumadin. The new label suggests that one can prescribe higher or lower doses that may be safer for patients with variations in two genes, CYP2C9 or VKORC1. These variations can be learned through genetic testing, which may be a useful tool in determining appropriate dosing levels for individual patients and lower risks of bleeding complications.

The FDA labeling change for warfarin is the next step in the pathway toward incorporating genetics into the care of patients who need anticoagulation. The FDA has said that physicians should be aware of the role of genetics in warfarin dosing, but now the hard part is doing the necessary groundwork to determine how best to use genetic testing to improve care, said Marc S. Williams, MD, FACMG, ACMG Board Member and a co-chair of the expert group on Pharmacogenetic Testing of CYP2C9 and VKORC1 Alleles for Warfarin Use. This group is completing a report on the use of pharmacogenomic testing for warfarin and is based on a rapid-ACCE (Analytic validity, Clinical validity, Clinical utility and Ethical, legal and social implications) Review on Genetic Testing and Warfarin Dosing.

Available online at www.acmg.net, this 74-page report is the most thorough review of the scientific and clinical evidence surrounding the use of genetic testing to guide dosing of warfarin and was undertaken by a multidisciplinary group convened in 2006 of clinical pharmacologists, doctors of pharmacy, clinical geneticists, physicians with expertise in the use of warfarin, pharmacoeconomists, and experts in evidence-based medicine. The purpose of the rapid-ACCE review was to provide an independent, systematic review of the evidence and to develop recommendations based on this evidence. The review indicated that the test itself is as accurate as most genetic tests and that there is good evidence to support the relationship between the genetic variant(s) and the final dose of warfarin in patients. Further, The report states that there are situations in which one should perform genetic tests when prescribing warfarin. In particular, it states in the conclusion that CYP2C9 and VKORC1 genotypes can reasonably be used as part of diagnostic efforts to determine the cause of an uncommonly low maintenance dose of warfarin or an uncommonly high INR (the test used to monitor warfarin) during standard dosing, said Michael S. Watson, PhD, FACMG, Executive Director of the American College of Medical Genetics who commissioned the study in 2006 with funding provided by the American College of Medical Genetics Foundation. However, the ACCE review and the work group noted that there are still significant gaps in our knowledge of the clinical utility and the balance between harm, benefit and cost. Resolving this is necessary before genetic testing becomes the standard of care for all patients undergoing anticoagulation with warfarin. There are also insufficient data about the impact of this testing on adverse events......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

August 23, 2007, 10:17 PM CT

Struggling male readers respond better to female teachers

Boys with difficulty reading actually respond better to female teachers, as per a new Canadian study. Research shows that boys develop higher positive self-perceptions as readers when they worked with female research assistants in comparison to working with male research assistants.

The study focused on 175 third- and fourth-grade boys who were identified as struggling readers by their teachers. The boys participated in a 10-week reading intervention to determine the effect of the reading teachers gender on boys reading performance, self-perception as readers, and view of reading as a masculine, feminine or gender-neutral activity.

As competent reading is the strongest predictor of school success, its crucial to find ways to engage boys to become stronger readers, says University of Alberta professor Herb Katz. Eventhough boys and girls enter kindergarten with similar performance in reading, by the spring of third grade, boys have lower reading scores, which makes this an opportune time for reading intervention.

Over the 10-week period, the research assistants visited children at school to conduct 30-minute reading sessions, reading books that hold high interest for boys. The process included duet reading during which student and tutor read simultaneously and solo reading in which the student read independently......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source