Globally, guideline-recommended antenatal care for smoking cessation is not routinely delivered by antenatal care providers. Implementation strategies have been shown to improve the delivery of clinical practices across a variety of clinical services but there is an absence of evidence in applying such strategies to support improvements to antenatal care for smoking cessation in pregnancy. This study aims to determine the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of implementation strategies in increasing the routine provision of recommended antenatal care for smoking cessation in public maternity services.
A non-randomised stepped-wedge cluster-controlled trial will be conducted in maternity services across three health sectors in New South Wales, Australia. Implementation strategies including guidelines and procedures, reminders and prompts, leadership support, champions, training and monitoring and feedback will be delivered sequentially to each sector over 4 months. Primary outcome measures will be the proportion of: (1) pregnant women who report receiving a carbon monoxide breath test; (2) smokers or recent quitters who report receiving quit/relapse advice; and (3) smokers who report offer of help to quit smoking (Quitline referral or nicotine replacement therapy). Outcomes will be measured via cross-sectional telephone surveys with a random sample of women who attend antenatal appointments each week. Economic analyses will be undertaken to assess the cost effectiveness of the implementation intervention. Process measures including acceptability, adoption, fidelity and reach will be reported.
Ethics approval was obtained through the Hunter New England Human Research Ethics Committee (16/11/16/4.07; 16/10/19/5.15) and the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council (1236/16). Trial findings will be disseminated to health policy-makers and health services to inform best practice processes for effective guideline implementation. Findings will also be disseminated at scientific conferences and in peer-reviewed journals.
Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry—ACTRN12622001010785.
Commentary on: Gustafson CM, Higgins M, Wood KA, Song MK. Place of death for young adults with chronic illness. Nurs Res. 2023 Jul 11. doi: 10.1097/NNR.0000000000000681. Epub ahead of print.
Clinicians must communicate with young adults (YAs) throughout their disease course about end-of-life care preferences, including place-of-death. Future research must explore YAs’ preferences for place-of-death.
Young adults (YAs) with serious illnesses report wanting choices in their end-of-life care.
In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, health systems implemented programmes to manage outpatients with COVID-19. The goal was to expedite patients’ referral to acute care and prevent overcrowding of medical centres. We sought to evaluate the impact of such a programme, the COVID-19 Home Care Team (CHCT) programme.
Retrospective cohort.
Kaiser Permanente Northern California.
Adult members before COVID-19 vaccine availability (1 February 2020–31 January 2021) with positive SARS-CoV-2 tests.
Virtual programme to track and treat patients with ‘CHCT programme’.
The outcomes were (1) COVID-19-related emergency department visit, (2) COVID-19-related hospitalisation and (3) inpatient mortality or 30-day hospice referral.
We estimated the average effect comparing patients who were and were not treated by CHCT. We estimated propensity scores using an ensemble super learner (random forest, XGBoost, generalised additive model and multivariate adaptive regression splines) and augmented inverse probability weighting.
There were 98 585 patients with COVID-19. The majority were followed by CHCT (n=80 067, 81.2%). Patients followed by CHCT were older (mean age 43.9 vs 41.6 years, p
Despite CHCT following older patients with higher comorbidity burden, there appeared to be a protective effect. Patients followed by CHCT were more likely to present to acute care and less likely to die inpatient.
by Petek Eylul Taneri, Jamie J. Kirkham, Eleanor J. Molloy, Linda Biesty, Richard A. Polin, James L. Wynn, Barbara J. Stoll, Niranjan Kissoon, Kondwani Kawaza, Mandy Daly, Aoife Branagan, Lívia Nagy Bonnard, Eric Giannoni, Tobias Strunk, Magdalena Ohaja, Kenneth Mugabe, Denise Suguitani, Fiona Quirke, Declan Devane
Neonatal sepsis is a serious public health problem; however, there is substantial heterogeneity in the outcomes measured and reported in research evaluating the effectiveness of the treatments. Therefore, we aim to develop a Core Outcome Set (COS) for studies evaluating the effectiveness of treatments for neonatal sepsis. Since a systematic review of key outcomes from randomised trials of therapeutic interventions in neonatal sepsis was published recently, we will complement this with a qualitative systematic review of the key outcomes of neonatal sepsis identified by parents, other family members, parent representatives, healthcare providers, policymakers, and researchers. We will interpret the outcomes of both studies using a previously established framework. Stakeholders across three different groups i.e., (1) researchers, (2) healthcare providers, and (3) patients’ parents/family members and parent representatives will rate the importance of the outcomes in an online Real-Time Delphi Survey. Afterwards, consensus meetings will be held to agree on the final COS through online discussions with key stakeholders. This COS is expected to minimize outcome heterogeneity in measurements and publications, improve comparability and synthesis, and decrease research waste.