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At least 163 records · Page 9Linked to original sources

PubMed2006

Development and implementation of a risk assessment tool for chemotherapy-induced neutropenia.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: To evaluate a tool developed and implemented to help practitioners assess the risk of chemotherapy-induced neutropenia (CIN) and its complications in patients with nonleukemia cancer types. DESIGN: Retrospective survey of chart records. SETTING: Community-based oncology practice. SAMPLE: The medical records of 85 adult patients treated with new courses of chemotherapy, regardless of the cancer type or stage; 50 charts belonged to patients treated before the implementation of the tool and 35 to patients evaluated with the tool. METHODS: A risk assessment tool for CIN that was developed using risk factors from published studies and national guidelines was implemented. Patients who were found to be at increased risk for CIN were given colony-stimulating factor (CSF) support starting with the first chemotherapy cycle. The effectiveness of the tool was evaluated by comparing clinical outcomes before and after the implementation of the risk assessment tool. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES: Febrile neutropenia, IV antibiotic use, hospitalization for neutropenia, and chemotherapy dose reductions and delays. FINDINGS: Chemotherapy dose delays, febrile neutropenia, treatment with IV antibiotics, and hospitalization for neutropenia occurred less frequently in patients assessed with the tool and managed with the algorithm for CSF use than in those who were not assessed. CONCLUSIONS: The Risk Assessment for Neutropenic Complications Tool is effective in helping practitioners determine which patients are at high risk for CIN and its complications IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: By using the tool to identify patients treated with chemotherapy who need growth factor support, nurses can help to reduce the incidence of neutropenia and its complications.

Anti-Bacterial Agents↗

PubMed2006

Development and validation of the self-administration of medication tool.

BACKGROUND: Consumer participation in planning and implementing health care is actively encouraged as a means of improving patient outcomes. In assessing the ability of patients to self-medicate, health professionals can identify areas in which patients need assistance, education, and intervention to optimize their health outcomes after discharge. OBJECTIVE: To develop and validate a tool to quantify the ability of patients to administer their regularly scheduled medications while they are hospitalized. METHODS: Past research enabled us to develop the Self-Administration of Medication (SAM) tool. Using a Delphi technique of 3 rounds, a panel of expert health professionals established the content validity of the tool. For determining level of agreement in using the SAM tool, 56 patients were selected; for each patient, 2 randomly selected nurses completed an assessment. Construct validity and internal consistency were examined by testing the tool in 50 patients and comparing with other validated scales. RESULTS: The 29-item SAM tool had high content validity scores for clarity, representation, and comprehensiveness, with content validity index values ranging from 0.95-1.0. In testing the level of agreement between 2 nurses, out of 43 valid cases, 95.3% of nurses overwhelmingly agreed about the patients' competence to self-administer their drugs. The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.819 (95% CI 0.666 to 0.902). Internal consistency for the SAM tool was high, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.899. A moderate to strong correlation was obtained when comparing the SAM tool with other validated measures. CONCLUSIONS: The SAM tool is valid and reliable for quantifying patients' ability to manage their regularly scheduled medications in the hospital setting.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Promoting informed choice: evaluating a decision-making tool for family planning clients and providers in Mexico.

CONTEXT: The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a decision-making tool to be used by providers and clients during family planning visits to improve the quality of services. It is important to examine the tool's usability and its impact on counseling and decision-making processes during family planning consultations. METHODS: Thirteen providers in Mexico City were videotaped with family planning clients three months before and one month after attending a training session on the WHO decision-making tool. The videotapes were coded for client-provider communication and eye contact, and decision-making behaviors were rated. In-depth interviews and focus group discussions explored clients' and providers' opinions of the tool. RESULTS: After providers began using the decision-making tool, they gave clients more information on family planning, tailored that information more closely to clients' situations and more often discussed HIV/AIDS prevention, dual protection and condom use. Client involvement in the decision-making process and client active communication increased, contributing to a shift from provider-dominated to shared decision making. Clients reported that the tool helped them understand the provider's explanations and made them feel more comfortable talking and asking questions during consultations. After one month of practice with the decision-making tool, most providers felt comfortable with it and found it useful; however, they recommended some changes to the tool to help engage clients in the decision-making process. CONCLUSIONS: The decision-making tool was useful both as a job aid for providers and as a decision aid for clients.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Selection of pain measurement tools.

BACKGROUND: Although pain measurement tools have been available for a number of years their reliability and validity cannot be presumed because none holds psychometric stability in every environment. To select the most appropriate tool for an individual patient, nurses need to be aware of those available and their limitations. This article discusses the use of selected tools with specific patient groups. CONCLUSION: A variety of tools are currently used for measuring pain, and each one has its merits and limitations. It is difficult to choose the most suitable tool for clinical settings in which a standard tool is to be used. Patient populations are diverse and can include adults of any age, with acute, chronic or malignant pain and cognitive or physical impairments of varying origin. There will be occasions when the tool used is inappropriate for an individual patient or a patient cannot complete the tool. Patients and nurses need to be educated about pain measurement tools to ensure their successful use.

Acute Disease↗

PubMed2001

Simple nutrition screening tools for healthcare facilities: development and validity assessment.

The purpose of nutrition screening is to identify individuals at high nutritional risk. Given that dietitians cannot always carry out screening in health-care facilities, tools should be simple and based on data obtained from the nursing admission questionnaire. This study was conducted to develop timely and valid tools for screening protein-energy malnutrition (PEM). A dietetic technician administered an initial screening tool to 160 subjects recruited from two settings. This tool comprised nine PEM risk factors. The sample included 54 adults in acute care, 57 elderly adults in acute care, and 49 elderly adults in long-term care. Dietitians performed comprehensive nutritional assessments to determine the validity of this screening tool. Stepwise regression analysis revealed significant risk factors among those included in the initial screening. These risk factors were considered during development of the first simple screening tool, which encompassed body mass index (BMI) and percentage of weight loss, and classified subjects as having low or high PEM risk levels. A second tool using BMI and albumin level was tested in cases where an albumin measurement was available upon admission. These simple tools had validity indices of 75.9% or higher, except in adults in acute care; sensitivity was low in this group. The tools proved helpful in establishing dietitians' priorities for involvement and in initiating early nutritional care.

Aged↗

PubMed2004

Modeling Hospital Information Systems (Part 2): using the 3LGM2 tool for modeling patient record management.

OBJECTIVES: We introduce the 3LGM(2) tool, a tool for modeling information systems, and describe the process of modeling parts of the hospital information system of the Leipzig University Hospital (UKL(a)). We modeled the sub information systems of five patient record archiving sections to support the creation of a proposal for governmental financial support for a new document management and archiving system. We explain the steps of identifying the model elements and their relations as well as the analyzing capabilities of the 3LGM(2) tool to answer questions about the information system. METHODS: The 3LGM(2) tool was developed on the basis of the meta model 3LGM(2) which is described in detail in [1]. 3LGM(2) defines an ontological basis, divided into three layers and their relationships. In addition to usual meta CASE tools, the 3LGM(2) tool meets certain requirements of information management in hospitals. The model described in this article was created on the base of on-site surveys in five archiving sections of the UKL. RESULTS: A prototype of the 3LGM(2) tool is available and is currently tested in some projects at the UKL and partner institutions. The model presented in this article is a structured documentation about the current state of patient record archiving at the UKL. The analyzing capabilities of the 3LGM(2) tool help to use the model and to answer questions about the information system. CONCLUSIONS: The 3LGM(2) tool can be used to model and analyze information systems. The presentation capabilities and the reliability of the prototype have to be improved. The initial modeling effort of an institution is only valuable if the model is maintained regularly and reused in other projects. Reference catalogues and reference models are needed to decrease this effort and to support the creation of comparable models.

Archives↗

PubMed2006

The tools of cooperation and change.

Employers can choose from lots of tools when they want to encourage employees to work together toward a new corporate goal. One of the rarest managerial skills is the ability to understand which tools will work in a given situation and which will misfire. Cooperation tools fall into four major categories: power, management, leadership, and culture. Choosing the right tool, say the authors, requires assessing the organization along two critical dimensions: the extent to which people agree on what they want and the extent to which they agree on cause and effect, or how to get what they want. The authors plot on a matrix where various organizations fall along these two dimensions. Employees represented in the lower-left quadrant of the model, for example, disagree strongly both about what they want and on what actions will produce which results. Those in the upper-right quadrant agree on both dimensions. Different quadrants call for different tools. When employees share little consensus on either dimension, for instance, the only methods that will elicit cooperation are "power tools" such as fiat, force, and threats. Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito wielded such devices effectively. So did Jamie Dimon, current CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, during the bank's integration with Bank One. For employees who agree on what they want but not on how to get it--think of Microsoft in 1995--leadership tools, such as vision statements, are more appropriate. Some leaders are blessed with an instinct for choosing the right tools--Continental Airlines' Gordon Bethune, General Electric's Jack Welch, and IBM's Lou Gerstner are all examples. Others can use this framework to help select the most appropriate tools for their circumstances.

Commerce↗

PubMed2004

Intra-and interpopulational differences in orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) activity and diet: implications for the invention of tool use.

Tool manufacture and use have been described for wild orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), with appreciable interpopulational differences in tool complexes. The ecological factors that contribute to these differences require investigation. Significant interpopulational differences in diet suggest that ecological factors contribute to variation in tool-based insect foraging. Using 4 years of behavioral data from the Suaq Balimbing Research Station (Sumatra, Indonesia), we tested predictions of two ecological hypotheses for the invention of tool use for insect foraging. We found limited evidence for inter- and intrasexual differences, as well as temporal variation, in activity budget and diet. However, differences did not correspond to variation in either rate of tool use or specialization on tool-based insectivory. Compared to other populations, orangutans at Suaq Balimbing ate significantly more insects. Low temporal variation in insectivory and an abundance of social insects at Suaq Balimbing suggest that insects formed a staple in the diet rather than a fallback food. Our findings do not support the hypothesis that tool use is a response to the low availability of primary food sources. Rather, greater opportunities for invention likely contributed to insect-extraction tool use at Suaq Balimbing.

Age Factors↗

PubMed1997

Premotor cortex activation during observation and naming of familiar tools.

Positron emission tomography was used to investigate whether observation of real objects (tools of common use) activates premotor areas in the absence of any overt motor demand. Silent naming of the presented tools and silent naming of their use were also studied. Right-handed normal subjects were employed. Tool observation strongly activated the left dorsal premotor cortex. In contrast, silent tool naming activated Broca's area without additional activity in the dorsal premotor cortex. Silent tool-use naming, in addition to activating Broca's area, increased the activity in the left dorsal premotor cortex and recruited the left ventral premotor cortex and the left supplementary motor area. These data indicate that, even in the absence of any subsequent movement, the left premotor cortex processes objects that, like tools, have a motor valence. This dorsal premotor activation, which further augments when the subject names the tool use, should reflect the neural activity related to motor schemata for object use. The presence of an activation of both dorsal premotor cortex and ventral premotor cortex during tool-use naming suggests a role for these two areas in understanding object semantics.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

Functional brain mapping of monkey tool use.

When using a tool, we can perceive a psychological association between the tool and the body parts-the tool is incorporated into our "body-image." During tool use, visual response properties of bimodal (tactile and visual) neurons in the intraparietal area of the monkey's cerebral cortex were modified to include the hand-held tool. Visual properties of the monkey intraparietal neurons may represent the body-image in the brain. We explored tool use-induced activation within the intraparietal area and elsewhere in alert monkey brain using positron emission tomography (PET). Tool use-related activities compared with the control condition (simple-stick manipulation) revealed a significant increase in cerebral blood flow in the corresponding intraparietal region, basal ganglia, presupplementary motor area, premotor cortex, and cerebellum. These tool use-specific areas may participate in maintaining and updating the body-image for the precise guidance of a hand-held rake onto a distant reward.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Design and validation of a medication assessment tool for cancer pain management.

OBJECTIVE: A clinical tool to examine prescribing in cancer pain management may provide a means to help establish acceptable standards of adherence to treatment guidelines. The study aim was to design and validate a Medication Assessment Tool for Cancer Pain Management (MAT-CP). SETTING: Hospitals in Northern Norway METHOD: The MAT-CP was designed from guideline criteria based on a previously developed method. The tool was validated by peer review before and during field-testing on a study sample of cancer patients experiencing pain. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Perceived relevance, utility, and clarity of individual criteria, and reliability of their application to clinical documentation. Frequency of adherence to agreed definitions of guideline criteria. RESULTS: The final tool comprised 36 criteria covering six different aspects of cancer pain management: (1) pain assessment and information transfer, (2) start of strong opioid therapy; (3) current continuous analgesia; (4) current intermittent analgesia; (5) follow-up of therapy, and; (6) other care issues. The tool was tested on 109 cancer patients experiencing pain (57 males), mean (SD) age 60.8 (11.5) years. Guideline adherence overall was 61% (n=1704 applicable criteria). The field-testing informed the modification of the MAT-CP to optimise its clarity and utility when applied to patients' clinical documentation. Good inter- and intra-rater reliability (Cohen's kappa kappa=0.86 and kappa=0.95, respectively) were demonstrated in the application. The preliminary application of the tool during field-testing has highlighted the following for further study: (a) Low adherence <50%) to 14 standards concerning start of opioid treatment and pain therapy follow-up, clinical assessment of risk of gastro-intestinal adverse effects among patients on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID), current treatment of breakthrough pain, management of nausea/vomiting; (b) High adherence (>75%) to standards of prescribing of continuous analgesia. CONCLUSION: A clinical tool to examine prescribing in cancer pain management has been designed. Face and content validity have been informed by field-testing. The tool requires further study among palliative care specialists as part of the validation required before it can be recommended for clinical use.

Adult↗

PubMed2026

Self-Report Health Screening Tools in Female Athletes: A Systematic Review of Domain Coverage, Validation, and Use Across Participation Levels.

BACKGROUND: Female athlete health encompasses multiple interconnected domains; however, the self-report screening tools used to assess these domains have not been comprehensively synthesised. OBJECTIVE: To systematically identify self-report health screening tools used to assess female athlete health, map domain coverage, determine validation reporting, and describe application across participation levels. METHODS: This systematic review was pre-registered with PROSPERO ( CRD420251056910 ) and conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. Four databases (PubMed, MEDLINE, SPORTDiscus and Web of Science) were searched from inception to January 2026 using female health and screening-related terms. Methodological quality was appraised using Joanna Briggs Institute and National Institutes of Health tools, and findings were synthesised descriptively. Eligible, peer-reviewed studies reported the use, development or validation of self-report health screening tools assessing one or more domains relevant to female health applied in female athlete populations, spanning recreational through elite participation levels. All sports and activities were included. The search was restricted to English language with no date limits. RESULTS: In total, 360 studies (1990-2026) representing 134,506 female participants spanning recreational to elite sport and 273 screening tools were included. Mental health (n = 77, 34.1%), disordered eating (n = 33, 14.6%) and body image (n = 30, 13.3%) predominated. Domains related to female health, including menstrual health, pelvic floor health, pregnancy/postpartum and breast health were comparatively underrepresented. Most studies reported tools were used for risk identification (n = 323, 80.3%). Validation reporting was inconsistent, with half (n = 180, 50%) reporting use of at least one validated tool. Tool use was concentrated in professional and elite sport, with limited inclusion of recreational, masters and disability athlete cohorts. Health literacy constructs were explicitly assessed in 12.5% of studies (n = 45). CONCLUSIONS: Health screening in female athlete populations remains fragmented and uneven in domain coverage, with inconsistent validation reporting. Development of integrated, multi-domain and contextually inclusive screening frameworks is warranted.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2006

Patient dependency in the emergency department (ED): reliability and validity of the Jones Dependency Tool (JDT).

BACKGROUND: Rising patient demand in emergency departments is an international problem. Patient dependency (the degree of nursing care required) has major implications for nursing. Nurse skill mix and staffing levels can be addressed more effectively when dependency can be measured. A valid and reliable method of determining patient dependency in the emergency department in the United Kingdom is required. AIM: To test the validity, reliability and generalisability of the Jones Dependency Tool. METHODS: Six emergency departments across England were included. The sample was 140 adult patients from each site (n=840). Information was collected by nurses on: demographics, triage, chief complaint, vital clinical signs, nurse's own subjective rating of patient dependency, Jones Dependency Tool ratings and a comparative tool ratings. For a sub-sample of 40 patients, observation data were collected. RESULTS: There was a highly significant correlation between the Jones Dependency Tool scores and the nurses' subjective ratings of patient dependency (R=0.786,P<0.001). There was a significant correlation between triage rating and Jones Dependency Tool scores (R=0.58,P<0.001). The higher the dependency, the higher the proportion of patients with abnormal pulse rates (chi2=7.45,df=1,P=0.006), abnormal respiratory rates (chi2=15.683,df=1,P<0.001) and abnormal oxygen saturation (chi2=15.583,df=1,P<0.001). The higher the amount of time spent by nurses in direct care of patients the higher the patient's level of dependency (R=0,72,P<0.001). Length of time spent by nurses with patients was also significantly and positively correlated with the nurses' subjective ratings of patient dependency (R=0.49,P=0.001). There was a positive and significant correlation between Jones Dependency Tool scores and comparator scores (R=0.726,P<0.001). There was a good correlation between JDT scores measured over time (kappa=0.68) and good inter-rater reliability (kappa=0.75). CONCLUSIONS: The Jones Dependency Tool can be recommended as a valid and reliable tool for the measurement of patient dependency in the emergency department.

Activities of Daily Living↗

PubMed2004

Identifying factors of comfort in using hand tools.

To design comfortable hand tools, knowledge about comfort/discomfort in using hand tools is required. We investigated which factors determine comfort/discomfort in using hand tools according to users. Therefore, descriptors of comfort/discomfort in using hand tools were collected from literature and interviews. After that, the relatedness of a selection of the descriptors to comfort in using hand tools was investigated. Six comfort factors could be distinguished (functionality, posture and muscles, irritation and pain of hand and fingers, irritation of hand surface, handle characteristics, aesthetics). These six factors can be classified into three meaningful groups: functionality, physical interaction and appearance. The main conclusions were that (1) the same descriptors were related to comfort and discomfort in using hand tools, (2) descriptors of functionality are most related to comfort in using hand tools followed by descriptors of physical interaction and (3) descriptors of appearance become secondary in comfort in using hand tools.

Consumer Behavior↗

PubMed2004

Interactive 3D editing tools for image segmentation.

Segmentation is an important part of image processing, which often has a large impact on quantitative image analysis results. Fully automated operator independent segmentation procedures that successfully work in a population with a larger biological variation are extremely difficult to design and usually some kind of operator intervention is required, at least in pathological cases. We developed a variety of 3D editing tools that can be used to correct or improve results of initial automatic segmentation procedures. Specifically we will discuss and show examples for three types of editing tools that we termed: hole-filling (tool 1), point-bridging (tool 2), and surface-dragging (tool 3). Each tool comes in a number of flavors, all of which are implemented in a truly 3D manner. We describe the principles, evaluate efficiency and flexibility, and discuss advantages and disadvantages of each tool. We further demonstrate the superiority of the 3D approach over the time-consuming slice-by-slice editing of 3D datasets, which is still widely used in medical image processing today. We conclude that performance criteria for automatic segmentation algorithms may be eased significantly by including 3D editing tools early in the design process.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2005

Psychometric and cognitive validation of a social capital measurement tool in Peru and Vietnam.

Social capital is a relatively new concept which has attracted significant attention in recent years. No consensus has yet been reached on how to measure social capital, resulting in a large number of different tools available. While psychometric validation methods such as factor analysis have been used by a few studies to assess the internal validity of some tools, these techniques rely on data already collected by the tool and are therefore not capable of eliciting what the questions are actually measuring. The Young Lives (YL) study includes quantitative measures of caregiver's social capital in four countries (Vietnam, Peru, Ethiopia, and India) using a short version of the Adapted Social Capital Assessment Tool (SASCAT). A range of different psychometric methods including factor analysis were used to evaluate the construct validity of SASCAT in Peru and Vietnam. In addition, qualitative cognitive interviews with 20 respondents from Peru and 24 respondents from Vietnam were conducted to explore what each question is actually measuring. We argue that psychometric validation techniques alone are not sufficient to adequately validate multi-faceted social capital tools for use in different cultural settings. Psychometric techniques show SASCAT to be a valid tool reflecting known constructs and displaying postulated links with other variables. However, results from the cognitive interviews present a more mixed picture with some questions being appropriately interpreted by respondents, and others displaying significant differences between what the researchers intended them to measure and what they actually do. Using evidence from a range of methods of assessing validity has enabled the modification of an existing instrument into a valid and low cost tool designed to measure social capital within larger surveys in Peru and Vietnam, with the potential for use in other developing countries following local piloting and cultural adaptation of the tool.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Motor-iconicity of sign language does not alter the neural systems underlying tool and action naming.

Positron emission tomography was used to investigate whether the motor-iconic basis of certain forms in American Sign Language (ASL) partially alters the neural systems engaged during lexical retrieval. Most ASL nouns denoting tools and ASL verbs referring to tool-based actions are produced with a handshape representing the human hand holding a tool and with an iconic movement depicting canonical tool use, whereas the visual iconicity of animal signs is more idiosyncratic and inconsistent across signs. We investigated whether the motor-iconic relation between a sign and its referent alters the neural substrate for lexical retrieval in ASL. Ten deaf native ASL signers viewed photographs of tools/utensils or of actions performed with or without an implement and were asked to overtly produce the ASL sign for each object or action. The control task required subjects to judge the orientation of unknown faces. Compared to the control task, naming tools engaged left inferior and middle frontal gyri, bilateral parietal lobe, and posterior inferotemporal cortex. Naming actions performed with or without a tool engaged left inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral parietal lobe, and posterior middle temporal gyrus at the temporo-occipital junction (area MT). When motor-iconic verbs were compared with non-iconic verbs, no differences in neural activation were found. Overall, the results indicate that even when the form of a sign is indistinguishable from a pantomimic gesture, the neural systems underlying its production mirror those engaged when hearing speakers name tools or tool-based actions with speech.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Flexible ureterorenoscopy for the treatment of lower pole calyx stones: influence of different lithotripsy probes and stone extraction tools on scope deflection and irrigation flow.

The 7.5 and 9.0 F flexible ureterorenoscopes are used widely in endourology. These scopes, along with new available tools and probes, enable intrarenal ureteroscopic access to renal stones in the lower pole. Following individual clinical experiences the infundibulopelvic angle has to be respected for the selection of different scopes, tools and probes. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of different scopes, tools and probes on the angle of the active and passive flexion of the flexible ureterorenoscope. The angles of the active and passive flexion and maximum irrigation flow of different flexible ureterorenoscope (9.0 F Wolf, 7.5 F Olympus, 7.5 F Storz) were measured repeatedly in vitro using nine different inserted tools and/or probes. In addition, the maximum allowing for easy passage of the nine different tools/probes through the channel of the scope were measured. The Olympus scope without working instrument present, allows for the greatest deflection. The flexible Lithoclast, the non-nitinol baskets, and the 365 microns laser probes significantly inhibit the deflection of all scopes. The greatest deflection with inserted working tool was possible using the Wolf and Storz scopes. Both nitinol tools as well as the 200 microns laser probe had only minimal influence on the deflection. The 200 microns laser probe reduces the irrigation flow from 50 to 28 ml/min. In contrast, the baskets reduce the irrigation flow from 50 to 2 ml/min. There are significant differences of the active and passive flexion depending on the ureterorenoscopes itself and the different tools. In order to perform a successful flexible ureterorenoscopic stone treatment in the lower pole, the inhibition of the flexion of the different scopes together with the individual infundibulopelvic angle must be respected when selecting different tools and probes.

Alloys↗