No abstract

Suicide occurs in a cultural context, but that context, especially in terms of community attitudes, has not been explored fully. This study presents a 100‐item questionnaire (the Suicide Opinion Questionnaire; SOQ) and a factor analysis of 285 respondents. The results, 15 factors that accounted for 76.6% of the total variance, underscore the complexities of such attitudes.

Objective-Few patients take inhaled corticosteroids as recommended. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of school-based supervised asthma therapy in improving asthma control. The primary hypothesis was that the supervised asthma therapy group would have a lower proportion of children experiencing an episode of poor asthma control (EPAC) each month compared to the usual care group.Patients and Methods-Children were eligible if they had physician-diagnosed persistent asthma, the need for daily controller medication, and the ability to use a dry-powder inhaler and a PFM. The trial used a two-group randomized longitudinal design with 15 month follow-up. 290 children from 36 schools were randomly assigned to either: school-based supervised asthma therapy or usual care. Ninety-one percent of children were African American and 57% were male. Mean age was 11 years (SD = 2.1). An EPAC was defined as one or more of the following each month: 1) an absence from school due to respiratory illness/asthma; 2) average use of rescue medication more than two times per week (not including pre-exercise treatment); or 3) at least one red or yellow PFM reading.Results-240 children completed the study. There were no differences in the likelihood of an EPAC between the baseline and follow-up period in the usual care group (p=0.77); however, among those in the supervised therapy group, the odds of experiencing an EPAC during the baseline period were 1.57 times the odds of experiencing an EPAC during the follow-up period (90% CI: 1.20, 2.06, p=0.006). GEE modeling revealed a marginally significant interaction between the intervention and time period (p=0.065) indicating that children in the supervised therapy group showed greater improvement in asthma control.Conclusions-Supervised asthma therapy improves asthma control. Clinicians who have pediatric asthma patients with poor outcomes that may be due to non-adherence should consider supervised therapy.

Improved patient outcomes, reduced liability and higher retention/satisfaction are all potential benefits of reducing the errors made by novice nurses. Simply being aware of the type of problems may be an important first step in improving the care by novice nurses.

Informal settlements remain a public health problem as they lack basic infrastructure. Furthermore, it is challenging to enforce public health regulations and protocols to prevent the spread of infection during a pandemic. This paper was set out to explore the impact of lockdown during COVID-19 among people living in informal settlements. An exploratory qualitative design was utilised. Purposive sampling was used to select research participants. In-depth one-to-one interviews were held involving 30 research participants through a WhatsApp online telephone platform. A thematic approach underpinned by the four stages of data analysis in interpretive phenomenological analysis was utilised to analyse the data. The study found that during the the research participants were affected by lack of space to practice social distancing, over-burdened infrastructure, lack of savings, loss of income and shortage of food, hunger and diseases, anxiety and depression and poor access to education. There is a need to prioritise the needs of informal settlers and endeavour to establish permanent homes. Health promotion and communication initiatives and pandemic awareness programmes are needed to mitigate the impact of lockdown during a pandemic in informal settlements.