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Claudia K Y Lai

Publications and source records attributed to Claudia K Y Lai.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Evaluation of the Morse Fall Scale: applicability in Chinese hospital populations.

BACKGROUND: Patient falls have been identified as a significant health problem in the general hospital patient population. The Morse Fall Scale (MFS) is an individualized criterion-referenced assessment tool designed for measuring the likelihood of patient falls in hospitals. Despite the scale has demonstrated high validity and reliability in the previous researches, this study is to provide additional validity tests to determine the applicability in the Chinese hospital population. OBJECTIVES: To examine the predictive power of the MFS to predict patient falls. To conduct reliability tests on internal consistency, item analysis, inter-rater and test-retest reliability. DESIGN: The study was a cross-sectional study. SETTINGS: The medical and geriatric units of three rehabilitation hospitals in Hong Kong participated in the study. PARTICIPANTS: A convenience sample of 954 Chinese patients was recruited sequentially upon admission in the hospital ward units. They ranged in age from 17 to 100 years, with a mean of 70.2 years. METHODS: The patients were assessed for fall risk using the MFS on admission. Data was collected on the number of patients who fell rather than the number of falls. RESULTS: The scale had a sensitivity of 31% and a specificity of 83% when the cut-off point was determined at 45. The field test demonstrated excellent inter-rater reliability with an ICC value of 0.97 (95%CI 0.94-0.98). Repeatability was high with an ICC of 0.98 (95% CI 0.98-0.99). The evaluation revealed a low Cronbach's alpha coefficient and a low to moderate item-to-scale correlation. CONCLUSIONS: The evidence collected in this study has shown both the positive and negative aspects of using the MFS in assessing the fall risk of Chinese patients during rehabilitation. The discriminative validity and internal consistency reliability provide researchers and clinicians with a major step in further developing or modifying the scale.

Accidental Falls↗
PubMed2004

A randomized controlled trial of a specific reminiscence approach to promote the well-being of nursing home residents with dementia.

BACKGROUND: To date, no firm conclusions can be reached regarding the effectiveness of reminiscence for dementia. Researchers have emphasized that there is an urgent need for more systematic research in the area. OBJECTIVE AND METHOD: A single-blinded, parallel-groups (one intervention, one comparison, and one no-intervention group) randomized controlled trial (RCT) was adopted to investigate whether a specific reminiscence program leads to higher levels of psychosocial well-being in nursing home residents with dementia. The intervention adopted a life-story approach, while the comparison group provided friendly discussions to control for any changes in outcome as a result of social contacts and attention. The Social Engagement Scale (SES) and Well-being/Ill-being Scale (WIB) were the outcome measures used. The outcomes of the groups were examined with reference to the baseline (T0), immediately (T1), and six weeks (T2) after intervention. The final sample had 101 subjects (control group: n=30; comparison group: n=35; intervention group: n = 36). Using multivariate analysis with repeated measures, no significant differences in outcome were found between groups at either T1 or T2. Wilcoxon signed rank tests were performed for each group comparing outcomes between T1 and T0, T2 and T1, and T2 and T0. Significant differences were observed in the intervention group when comparing T1 and T0 WIB (p = .014), but not for the other groups. CONCLUSION: Although the intervention did not lead to significant differences between the three groups over time, there was a significant improvement in psychosocial well-being for the intervention group.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

Rapid assessment of a helpdesk service supporting severe acute respiratory syndrome patients and their relatives.

BACKGROUND: To contain severe acute respiratory syndrome, the Hong Kong Hospital Authority set a policy that stipulated there should be no visitors to hospital wards. A helpdesk service was established with the goal of providing immediate emotional and communication support to relatives while severe acute respiratory syndrome patients were isolated during the acute phase of the illness. AIM: This study describes the results of a rapid assessment of the effectiveness of a helpdesk service designed to meet the immediate needs of relatives of severe acute respiratory syndrome patients in Hong Kong. DESIGN: Survey. METHOD: Eighty-three respondents, representing about 46.3% of relatives (179), attending the helpdesk on the day of the study were recruited. Service evaluation data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire completed by respondents. RESULTS: Nearly 100% of respondents who used the service found the delivery service with on-site counselling useful for alleviating their anxiety. However, about half of these relatives complained of insufficient information regarding the patient's condition and progress. The majority of respondents were satisfied with the service. In describing the most important traits of the service providers, caring and enthusiasm were mentioned most frequently by respondents who stated that they were very satisfied with the service. CONCLUSION: The results support the value of the service, and demonstrate that the service is effective in meeting relatives' immediate needs. These needs include information, aid in fulfilling their role as caretaker for the patient (delivering prepared soup) and psychological support. The results suggest that facilitation of visitation of patients by relatives via video conferencing and education of the public on the nature and course of severe acute respiratory syndrome to reduce the social stigma of having a potentially life-threatening disease should be introduced in Hong Kong. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: The results highlight important attributes that helpers (nurses) should have in order to alleviate the suffering of severe acute respiratory syndrome patients and their relatives.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Implication of Internet growth on enhancing health of disadvantaged groups in China: a global perspective.

The Internet is promising to play a prominent role in health care in the future, but there is an imbalance in its use between the East and the West, between genders, the rich and poor, the educated and uneducated and the urban and rural. This paper looks at the use of the Internet from the perspective of these subgroups across the world, and outlines some of the problems facing disadvantaged groups in particular older people and their caregivers in China. Older people and their predominantly family caregivers have limited access to computers which is compounded by lack of access to good health care. However, it is suggested that this will become a growth area as older people and their caregivers may well bypass traditional care for telehealth care and Internet information-based systems.

Access to Information↗
PubMed2003

Wandering behaviour in people with dementia.

BACKGROUND: Wandering has been described as one of the most challenging behaviours to manage and yet a search of the literature in the last two decades yields only a limited number of papers that specifically studied wandering. AIM: This paper reviews the current literature on wandering in relation to the nature of the phenomenon, attempts to classify the behaviour, the extent of the problem, the profile of those who wander, postulations about its aetiology, and intervention strategies being employed. METHOD: Eight literature databases were searched for the last 40 years up to February 2003 using 'wandering' and 'dementia' as combined keywords. A total of 133 articles was included in the review. FINDINGS: The prevalence of wandering behaviour was difficult to assess and no conclusions could be reached. The typical wanderer depicted in the literature was relatively young in the older population, more cognitively impaired, more likely to be a man, might have experienced sleep problems, had a more active premorbid lifestyle, and used more psychotropic medications. While studies agreed that wanderers are more cognitively impaired, their findings did not necessarily agree on other attributes. Three major approaches, namely the biomedical, psychosocial and person-environment interaction perspectives, in conceptualizing wandering behaviour can be identified from the literature. Medications, activity programmes, behavioural modification and environmental manipulation have been used as interventions but none has so far demonstrated unequivocal effectiveness. CONCLUSION: Knowledge generated through research remains insufficient to explain fully why and when wandering occurs. Variability in how the phenomenon was defined and studied, and the small size of the samples made generalizability of findings difficult. Future research should incorporate a clearer definition of wandering; a specific targeted population with representative sample size; appropriate subject identification strategies; focussed interventions, and better control conditions.

Dementia↗
PubMed2002

Evaluating the use of developmental action inquiry in constructing a problem-based learning curriculum for pre-registration nursing education in Hong Kong: a student perspective.

BACKGROUND: Developmental action inquiry (DAI) was chosen as the change strategy for introducing problem-based learning (PBL) in a pre-registration nursing programme. The central task was to transform the tutor and student participants to become collaborators in this curriculum reconstruction project. AIM: This paper expounds the way in which the action inquiry was constructed and in light of students' feedback analysis, the way in which PBL has made a difference in student learning was evaluated. DESIGN: Taking into consideration the change context and different group characteristics, the DAI was conducted in terms of two dynamically interlinked circles that formed partnerships between PBL core group members and tutors, and between tutors and students in coconstructing knowledge useful for PBL curriculum development. FINDINGS: The findings of the student evaluation questionnaire reveal that the majority of students felt PBL made a difference to their expectations of self, the student group and the teacher role in creating a facilitative environment to enhance learning. However, there was a significant difference among individual student group responses. The students' positive and negative PBL experience in self-learning, tutor-student interaction, and group-learning were identified as crucial factors contributing to these group variations. CONCLUSION: The evaluation findings show that a paradigm shift from teacher-centred to student-centred learning, from valuing self-learning to co-operative group-learning, and from theory-based to practice-based learning occurred among the students. DAI was found to be an effective change strategy for transforming participants to become collaborators in searching for useful knowledge and coconstructing the PBL learning context.

Attitude↗