Suchergebnisse

Recent and widely publicized increases in client injuries and occasional deaths relating to the use of physical restraint in child care settings have administrators and practitioners searching for alternative methods of managing clients who present a danger to themselves, other clients, or staff. Many care facilities have responded to the problem by providing better crisis intervention training to direct care staff, both to help them defuse crisis episodes without the need for potentially dangerous interventions, and to equip them to use restraint tactics safely when those are required. Some have implemented and enforced vigorous and categorical zero restraint policies or have adopted sharply limited restraint practices. Others have combined these measures to comply with the recent federal mandate regulating the use of restraint and seclusion. This study explored an alternative possibility that definable, systematic, and skill-based treatment programming may inherently reduce the need for these interventions. Frequency of restraint, seclusion, and significant incident report data from two child care facilities before and after their transitions to such a program of care and treatment, the Teaching-Family Model, are examined. The data appear to support the potential for this and other skill-focused treatment programs to minimize the necessity of such interventions. Discussion includes implications of these preliminary results for professionalizing youth care policy and practice.

Introduction: An impactful clinical trial will have real-life benefits for patients and society beyond the academic environment. This study analyses case studies of cancer trials to understand how impact is evidenced for cancer trials and how impact evaluation can be more routinely adopted and improved. Methods: The United Kingdom (UK) Government allocates research funding to higher-education institutions based on an assessment of the institutions' previous research efforts, in an exercise known as the Research Excellence Framework (REF). In addition to each institution's journal publications and research environment, for the first time in 2014, allocation of funding was also dependent on an evaluation of the wider, societal impact of research conducted. In the REF2014, impact assessment was performed by evaluation of impact case studies. In this study, case studies (n = 6637) submitted by institutions for the REF2014 were accessed and those focussing on cancer trials were identified. Manual content analysis was then used to assess the characteristics of the cancer trials discussed in the case studies, the impact described and the methods used by institutions to demonstrate impact. Results: Forty-six case studies describing 106 individual cancer trials were identified. The majority were phase III randomised controlled trials and those recruiting patients with breast cancer. A list of indicators of cancer trial impact was generated using the previous literature and developed inductively using these case studies. The most common impact from a cancer trial identified in the case studies was on policy, in particular citation of trial findings in clinical guidelines. Impact on health outcomes and the economy were less frequent and health outcomes were often predicted rather than evidenced. There were few descriptions identified of trialists making efforts to maximise trial impact. Discussion: Cancer trial impact narratives for the next REF assessment exercise in 2021 can be improved by evidencing actual rather than predicted Impact, with a clearer identification of the beneficiaries of cancer trials and the processes through which trial results are used. Clarification of the individuals responsible for performing impact evaluations of cancer trials and the provision of resources to do so needs to be addressed if impact evaluation is to be sustainable.

This study widens the transferability of cost-utility results from the SCOT trial showing that administering 3 months of adjuvant, oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy is cost-effective and cost saving compared to 6 months from the perspective of all countries recruited to SCOT. The impact on healthcare budgets if the findings are implemented as predicted will amount to savings of at least US$150 million over 5 years. Background: The Short Course Oncology Treatment (SCOT) trial demonstrated non-inferiority, less toxicity, and cost-effectiveness from a UK perspective of 3 versus 6 months of oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy for patients with colorectal cancer. This study assessed the cost-effectiveness of shorter treatment and the budget impact of implementing trial findings from the perspectives of all countries recruited to SCOT: Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Patients and Methods: Individual cost-utility analyses were performed from the perspective of each country. Resource, quality of life, and survival estimates from the SCOT trial (N = 6065) were used. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis and subgroup analyses were undertaken. Using undiscounted costs from these cost-utility analyses, the impact on country-specific healthcare budgets of implementing the SCOT trial findings was calculated over a 5-year period. The currency used was US dollars (US$), and 2019 was the base year. One-way and scenario sensitivity analysis addressed uncertainty within the budget impact analysis. Results: Three months of treatment were cost saving and cost-effective compared to 6 months from the perspective of all countries. The incremental net monetary benefit per patient ranged from US$8972 (Spain) to US$13,884 (Denmark). The healthcare budget impact over 5 years for the base-case scenario ranged from US$3.6 million (New Zealand) to US$61.4 million (UK) and totaled over US$150 million across all countries. Conclusion: This study has widened the transferability of results from the SCOT trial, showing that shorter treatment is cost-effective from a multi-country perspective. The vast savings from implementation could fully justify the investment in conducting the SCOT trial.