Patient-Centered Innovations, Education and Technology for Cancer Care and Cancer Research

Background: Mental illnesses are increasing in the population; consequently, the number of psychiatric emergencies handled by the emergency medical services (EMS) has also increased. Alternative response systems have been developed and evaluated, but there is still a lack of knowledge concerning the patients' experiences of being cared for in the EMS by a psychiatric emergency response unit (In Swedish: Psykiatrisk Akut Mobilitet [PAM]).Objective: The aim of this study was to explore patients' experiences of the caring encounter with the PAM team.Design: A qualitative study design with 14 patients' interviews and content analysis was used.Results: The patients expressed that the PAM team created a safe environment and actively involved the patient in their care by creating an open and safe place for dialogue. In this safe environment, the patients described how they participated in the decision making and received care without fear of being dismissed, ignored or judged.Discussion and Conclusion: The patients' experiences of being cared for by the PAM team show that person‐centred care was achieved by involving the patients in their own care. This participation was possible because mutual trust and confidence existed, and the patients acknowledged the specialist response unit to be a valuable part of the EMS. However, further studies are needed to explore whether the PAM as a response unit in the EMS decreases the risk of suicide and to examine different health economic aspects of using PAM in the EMS.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the worldwide need for simple remotely delivered (digital) scalable interventions that can also be used preventatively to protect the mental health of health care staff exposed to psychologically traumatic events during their COVID-19–related work. We have developed a brief behavioral intervention that aims to reduce the number of intrusive memories of traumatic events but has only been delivered face-to-face so far. After digitalizing the intervention materials, the intervention was delivered digitally to target users (health care staff) for the first time. The adaption for staff’s working context in a hospital setting used a co-design approach. Objective: The aims of this mixed method exploratory pilot study with health care staff who experienced working in the pandemic were to pilot the intervention that we have digitalized (for remote delivery and with remote support) and adapted for this target population (health care staff working clinically during a pandemic) to explore its ability to reduce the number of intrusive memories of traumatic events and improve related symptoms (eg, posttraumatic stress) and participant’s perception of their functioning, and to explore the feasibility and acceptability of both the digitalized intervention and digitalized data collection. Methods: We worked closely with target users with lived experience of working clinically during the COVID-19 pandemic in a hospital context (registered nurses who experienced intrusive memories from traumatic events at work; N=3). We used a mixed method design and exploratory quantitative and qualitative analysis. Results: After completing the digitalized intervention once with remote researcher support (approximately 25 minutes) and a brief follow-up check-in, participants learned to use the intervention independently. All 3 participants reported zero intrusive memories during week 5 (primary outcome: 100% digital data capture). Prior to study inclusion, two or more intrusions in the week were reported preintervention (assessed retrospectively). There was a general pattern of symptom reduction and improvement in perceived functioning (eg, concentration) at follow-up. The digitalized intervention and data collection were perceived as feasible and rated as acceptable (eg, all 3 participants would recommend it to a colleague). Participants were positive toward the digital intervention as a useful tool that could readily be incorporated into work life and repeated in the face of ongoing or repeated trauma exposure. Conclusions: The intervention when delivered remotely and adapted for this population during the pandemic was well received by participants. Since it could be tailored around work and daily life and used preventatively, the intervention may hold promise for health care staff pending future evaluations of efficacy. Limitations include the small sample size, lack of daily intrusion frequency data in the week before the intervention, and lack of a control condition. Following this co-design process in adapting and improving intervention delivery and evaluation, the next step is to investigate the efficacy of the digitalized intervention in a randomized controlled trial.

Hand hygiene (HH), a cornerstone in infection prevention and control, lacks quality in emergency medical services (EMS). HH improvement includes both individual and institutional aspects, but little is known about EMS providers’ HH perception and motivations related to HH quality. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the HH perception and assess potential factors related to self-reported HH compliance among the EMS cohort. A cross-sectional, self-administered questionnaire consisting of 24 items (developed from the WHOs Perception Survey for Health-Care Workers) provided information on demographics, HH perceptions and self-reported HH compliance among EMS providers from Denmark. Overall, 457 questionnaires were answered (response rate 52%). Most respondents were advanced-care providers, males, had > 5 years of experience, and had received HH training < 3 years ago. HH was perceived a daily routine, and the majority rated their HH compliance rate ≥ 80%. Both infection severity and the preventive effect of HH were acknowledged. HH quality was perceived important to colleagues and patients, but not as much to managers. Access to supplies, simple instructions and having or being “a good example” were perceived most effective to improve HH compliance. Self-reported HH compliance was associated with years of experience and perceptions of HCAI’s impact on patient outcome, HH’s preventive effect, organizational priority, HH’s importance to colleagues and patients, and the effort HH requires (p ≤ 0.05). Danish EMS providers acknowledged the impact of infections and the preventive effect of HH, and perceived access to HH supplies at the point of care, having or being “a good example” and simple instructions effective to improve HH compliance. Moreover, several behavioral-, normative- and control beliefs were associated with self-reported HH compliance, and thus future improvement strategies should be multimodal.