Nurses working within a chronic care framework of ongoing advice and support can improve experiences for those living with hepatitis C. Practice aimed at reducing both the disruptive effect of the diagnosis and the uncertainties it creates can help facilitate a transition to life with the disease.

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Background: Medication can control the symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD). Despite this, non-adherence with medication is prevalent in PD. Treatments for improving adherence with medication have been investigated in many chronic conditions, including PD. However, few researchers have evaluated their interventions qualitatively. We investigated the acceptability and potential mechanism of action of adherence therapy (AT) in PD patients and their spouse/ carers who received the intervention as part of a randomized controlled trial. Methods: Sixteen participants (ten patients and six spouses/carers) who had recently completed the trial were purposely selected in order to cover a range of ages and disease severity. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in the participants' homes. Data were transcribed and analyzed using a thematic approach. A second researcher, naïve to PD and AT, analyzed the data independently to limit bias. Results: The trial showed that AT significantly improved both medication adherence and quality of life in people with PD. Specifically, patients who received AT reported improvements in mobility, activities of daily living, emotional wellbeing, cognition, communication, and body discomfort. General beliefs about medication also significantly improved in those who received AT compared with controls. In the current qualitative evaluation, a total of 175 codes were generated, which formed eleven subthemes. These could be grouped under three overarching themes, ie, perceptions prior to AT, positive effects of AT, and attributes of AT. Conclusion: This randomized controlled trial is the first to investigate AT in PD. The acceptability and underlying mechanism of the intervention suggest a new multidirectional model of AT in PD which future research should seek to confirm. The findings provide a deeper understanding of AT and will allow clinicians to modify the delivery of the intervention by acknowledging various pathways to improved outcomes.

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Occupational therapists determine the dosage when establishing the plan of care for their pediatric clients. A content analysis was conducted using 123 pediatric occupational therapy outcomes studies from 9 scholarly international occupational therapy journals. The parameters of dosage were calculated using descriptive statistics in order to obtain a representation of dosage available within the current collage of pediatric occupational therapy outcomes studies. The results revealed that most studies reported portions of dosage parameters within the published studies. The average findings for the subcomponents related to dosage were session length (minutes) M = 58.7, duration of plan of care (weeks) M = 12.1, session frequency (per week) M = 3.4, and total hours of therapy (hours) M = 18.1. This first attempt at describing and calculating dosage related to pediatric occupational therapy practice indicates that evidence is lacking within the published literature to adequately guide OT dosage decisions. Further research related to dosage in pediatric occupational therapy practice is needed.