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Interventions to Minimize Medication Error by Nurses in Intensive Care: A Scoping Review Protocol
Publication . Coelho, Fábio; Furtado, Luís; Mendonça, Natália; Soares, Hélia; Duarte, Hugo; Costeira, Cristina; Santos, Cátia; Sousa, Joana Pereira
Medication errors represent a concern for healthcare organizations due to their negative consequences. In the nursing context, these errors represent a threat to the quality of care and patient safety. Many factors have been identified as potential causes for these errors in intensive care units. A scoping review will be developed to identify interventions/strategies to minimize the occurrence of medication errors by nurses, considering the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology. A search will be conducted in the EbscoHost (CINAHL Complete and MEDLINE), Embase and PubMed databases. Data analysis, extraction and synthesis will be carried out by two reviewers independently. This review will attempt to map which interventions are more specific to minimizing medication error by nurses in intensive care and to recognize which factors influence this type of error to mitigate practices that may lead to error. This protocol acts as the framework for a scoping review in the strategy to map the interventions and which factors contribute to the medication error by intensive care nurses. This study was prospectively registered with the Open Science Framework on 21 April 2023 with registration number DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/94KH3.
A 3D-Printed Ceramics Innovative Firing Technique: A Numerical and Experimental Study
Publication . Santos, Tiago; Ramani, Melinda; Devesa, Susana; Batista, Catarina; Franco, Margarida; Duarte, Isabel; Costa, Luís; Ferreira, Nelson; Alves, Nuno; Pascoal-Faria, Paula
Additive manufacturing (AM), also known as three-dimensional (3D) printing, allows the fabrication of complex parts, which are impossible or very expensive to produce using traditional processes. That is the case for dinnerware and artworks (stoneware, porcelain and clay-based products). After the piece is formed, the greenware is fired at high temperatures so that these pieces gain its mechanical strength and aesthetics. The conventional (gas or resistive heating elements) firing usually requires long heating cycles, presently requiring around 10 h to reach temperatures as high as 1200 °C. Searching for faster processes, 3D-printed stoneware were fired using microwave (MW) radiation. The pieces were fired within 10% of the conventional processing time. The temperature were controlled using a pyrometer and monitored using Process Temperature Control Rings (PTCRs). An error of 1.25% was calculated between the PTCR (1207 ± 15 °C) and the pyrometer (1200 °C). Microwave-fast-fired pieces show similar mechanical strength to the references and to the electrically fast-fired pieces (41, 46 and 34 (N/mm2), respectively), presenting aesthetic features closer to the reference. Total porosities of ~4%, ~5% and ~9% were determined for microwave, electrically fast-fired and reference samples. Numerical studies have shown to be essential to better understand and improve the firing process using microwave radiation. In summary, microwave heating can be employed as an alternative to stoneware conventional firing methods, not compromising the quality and features of the processed pieces, and with gains in the heating time.
How Do Professionals Regard Vulnerable People in a Portuguese Community Setting? A Qualitative Content Analysis
Publication . Laranjeira, Carlos; Coelho, Catarina; Ferreira, Catarina; Pereira, Margarida; Ribeiro, Maria Inês; Cordeiro, Lisete; Querido, Ana
The commitment to leave no one behind is at the core of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with special attention given to people in vulnerable situations. The present study aimed to explore the perceptions and experiences of professionals who have attended to vulnerable people in a community setting. Descriptive qualitative research was conducted using qualitative content analysis of interviews with fifteen Portuguese professionals from one community-based association, who were selected via purposive sampling. Data analysis revealed nine subcategories, which were grouped into three major categories, namely: (1) meanings of human vulnerability; (2) barriers to vulnerability mitigation; and (3) approaches to addressing vulnerability. Vulnerability manifests as a discrepancy between an individual’s needs and the available resources. With the accelerated pace of globalization and the exponential rise in complexity of systems and people’s needs, vulnerability is gaining visibility, but this only emphasizes the urgent need to find customized cultural, political, and institutional responses.
The influence of scaffold design in electrical field distribution for tissue engineering
Publication . Meneses, João; Moura, Carla; Datta, Abhishek; Amado, Sandra; Alves, Nuno; Pascoal-Faria, Paula
Regarding electric field stimulation in tissue engineering, namely in bone in vitro stimulation, we wonder if by introducing different scaffold geometries into the cell culture chamber environment, we are changing the externally applied electric field magnitude. Also, if we assume that the presence of the scaffold changes the magnitude of the surrounding electric field, can we just by picking a specific scaffold material be delivering electric fields outside the osteoinductive range for that specific cell line. To answer these questions, numerical models for three different scaffold geometries and for a capacitively coupled system were created. The models allow to understand that the presence of the scaffold impacts and interferes with its surrounding electric field, generating patterns that may increase the electric field magnitude in some regions inside the scaffod, and at the same time may block the electric field in other regions of the same scaffold. Another insigth from numerical models is that even keeping the same scaffold geometry, just by changing the scaffold material we are changing this interference pattern and delivering different electric fields in the scaffold region-of-interest.
An introduction to scaffold design using topology optimization methods
Publication . Marxen, Jan Esquível; Charters, T.; Lopes, Sérgio; Lopes, N. D.; Alves, Nuno Manuel Fernandes; Pascoal-Faria, Paula
In this text, the fundamentals of topology optimization (TO) are applied to trabecular bone's topology design, with the goal of then extrapolating their uses to bio-scaffold design for regenerative therapy. Total fragility bone fractures in the EU are estimated to increase from 2.7 million in 2017 to 3.3 million in 2030; a 23% increase. The resulting annual fracture-related costs (€37.5 billion in 2017) are expected to increase by 27%. An estimated 1.0 million quality-adjusted life years were lost in 2017 due to fragility fractures. The current disability-adjusted life years per 1000 individuals age 50 years or more were estimated at 21 years, which is higher than the estimates for stroke or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (see [1]). Healing of bone fractures and reconstruction of critical-sized bone defects represent a significant challenge. With bone graft and synthetic material reconstruction techniques having their unfortunate limitations, bio-scaffolds came into play to get the best of both. Since scaffolds require very high porosity levels for osteoconductivity and must simultaneously bear a great amount of force occurring from the daily loads a patient experiences, structural analysis is indispensable to optimize their mechanical properties. Also, materials used for scaffold design are not as nearly as stiff as native bone, making optimization even more crucial. The Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) method for TO is quickly discussed and a perimeter constraint is introduced to impose porous-like structures in the design. Then, a topology optimization analysis is performed to mimic the trabecular architecture of a human's proximal femur. The femur's boundary conditions when it's subjected to daily gait are talked through. Lastly, an application to scaffold design is discussed.