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Biomedical subjects

L Higgins

Publications and source records attributed to L Higgins.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1986

The innovative rehabilitation team: an experiment in team building.

This article describes an effort by one rehabilitation team to create innovative approaches to team care in a medical rehabilitation hospital. The major arena for implementing change was the weekly patient rounds. We worked to increase patient involvement, developed a rounds coordinator role, used a structured format, and tried to integrate research findings into team decision making. Other innovations included use of a preadmission questionnaire, a discharge check list, and a rounds evaluation questionnaire. The impact of these changes was evaluated using the Group Environment Scale and by analyzing participation in rounds based on verbatim transcripts obtained prior to and 20 months after formation of the Innovative Rehabilitation Team (IRT). The results showed decreased participation by medical personnel during rounds, and increased participation by patients. The rounds coordinator role increased participation rates of staff from all disciplines and the group environment improved within the IRT. These data are compared with similar evaluations made of two other groups, which served as control teams. The problems inherent in making effective, lasting changes in interdisciplinary rehabilitation teams are reviewed, and a plea is made for other teams to explore additional ways to use the collective creativity and resources latent in the team membership.

Decision Making↗
PubMed1979

Fractionation of antibodies to L-cell colony-stimulating factor by affinity chromatography.

Purified L-cell colony-stimulating factor (CSF) was coupled to cyanogen-bromide-activated Sepharose and used to selectively fractionate antibodies to this factor. With the use of a simplified two-step washing and elution technique, there was 50%--70% binding of the anti-CSF, with recovery of 60%--100% of the bound material. Both the native antiserum and purified anti-CSF fractions were inhibitory to murine granulocyte-macrophage colony formation. The purified antibodies contained only IgG and were reduced in protein concentration to 0.1% of the serum IgG values. These fractions should prove useful tools for the study of granulocyte and macrophage differentiation.

Animals↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Cataract patients' post-op eye-care: development and evaluation of a teaching program.

A project was undertaken to develop and trial an eye care education program for use in routine nursing care. It was initiated in response to research findings that suggested patients may have been discharged from a particular hospital inadequately prepared to perform their own eye care following cataract surgery. The trial assessed the program's effectiveness in relation to predetermined standards of eye care behaviour; its practicability and its performance relative to a conventional teaching approach. Outcomes of the trial indicated that neither the program nor the conventional teaching approach provided adequate preparation for the self delivery of eye care. This is believed to relate to the limited time nurses had for face-to-face teaching and, hence, for facilitating the consolidation and application of learning. The study concludes that the provision of effective eye care education in an inpatient context lies in approaches which reduce the amount to be taught in the limited teaching time that is available. It is suggested that the relevance may not be confined to eye care education.

Cataract Extraction↗
PubMedDate not supplied

How adequately are nurses being prepared for their health teaching role?

Forty-five Australian faculties and schools of nursing were surveyed by questionnaire to gain information about the health education component of undergraduate and postgraduate programs, and about current research activity relating to the educational role of nurses. Response rate achieved was 69%. Almost all institutions indicated involvement in preparing nursing students for an educational role, yet only five respondents described research activity relating to this. Most preparation was provided in an integrated context rather than in separate course units and the length of time allocated varied substantially. Responses to questions about content and clinical experiences were often omitted or were very general, with those involved in providing separate courses being much more likely to supply detailed or specific information. It is hypothesised that in general nurses are graduating from Australian colleges and universities inadequately prepared for the health educator role.

Australia↗