Search

Purpose The combination of trastuzumab and pertuzumab (HP) as part of a taxane-based regimen has shown benefit in the adjuvant and metastatic HER2+ breast cancer setting. In the CLEOPATRA trial, pruritus was reported in 11-17.6% of patients. The clinical phenotype and potential treatment strategies for this event have not been reported. Methods A retrospective review of 2583 patients receiving trastuzumab and pertuzumab for the treatment of HER2+ breast cancer from 11/23/2011 to 6/21/2021 was performed at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). Patient demographics, pruritus characteristics, and treatments as documented in the electronic medical record (EMR) were included in this analysis. Results Of 2583 pts treated with HP, 122 (4.72%) with pruritus were identified. On average, patients experienced pruritus 319.0 days (8-3171) after initiation of HP. The upper extremities (67.4%), back (29.3%), lower extremities (17.4%), and shoulders (14.1%) were the most commonly affected regions. Grade 1/2 pruritus (97.6%) occurred in most cases. Patients responded primarily to treatment with topical steroids (52.2%), antihistamines (29.9%), emollients (20.9%), and gabapentinoids (16.4%). Of those with pruritus, 4 patients (3.3%) required treatment interruption or discontinuation. Conclusions Pruritus is uncommon in patients on trastuzumab and pertuzumab, generally a chronic condition, with gabapentinoids or antihistamines representing effective therapies.

Hospitals across the world are experiencing a growing epidemic of aggressive, escalating, and violent patients and visitors. Despite the significant burden on health care organizations, there is a lack of evidence supporting effective management strategies. This article describes one hospital unit’s journey to implement behavioral standards and create a de-escalation algorithm that improved staff perceptions of safety by 25% and reduced events of escalation by 75%. Health care facilities can effectively improve safety through staff engagement in intervention design, development of an interprofessional response to escalation, and effective staff education for management of events of aggression/escalation.

Background Escalating and aggressive visitor behaviors have become increasingly common in healthcare settings nationally, negatively impacting staff and patients alike. Most healthcare providers do not innately possess the specific skills to manage such behaviors. Management of escalating and aggressive behaviors presents a particularly bedeviling challenge when staff safety must be balanced with the needs of parent-neonate bonding. Purpose In the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN), the frequency of aggressive and hostile incidents from visitors increased such that the staff felt frustrated by and uneasy about their work environment. Methods The ICN convened an interprofessional team to strategize interventions aimed at consistently managing aggressive behavior and supporting the staff after aggressive and/or hostile visitor encounters. Findings Following staff education and training, the unit launched a de-escalation management algorithm in July 2018 that assisted in identifying high-risk families at admission and drove consistent action and management of all visitor behaviors. In the 12 months following the intervention, the frequency of behavioral escalation decreased by 75% and staff perception of safety increased by 25%. Implications for practice Collaborating with staff to design consistent strategies to manage aggressive and escalating visitor behavior can improve safety and improve employee satisfaction in the ICN. Implications for research Additional research on the effectiveness of the algorithm in other ICNs and alternative areas of practice is needed. Furthermore, validation of a staff perception survey measuring the impact of escalating visitor behaviors on employees would be an important next step in this research.Video abstract available athttps://journals.lww.com/advancesinneonatalcare/Pages/videogallery.aspx?autoPlay=false&videoId=43.

Information Technology (IT) computing based curriculum is still a relatively new addition to the standard K-12 educational framework, especially at the middle school level. Many middle schools have not yet implemented tech curriculum to prepare students for their almost inevitable interactions with computers in the workplace, and give them a chance to explore technology careers at an early age. The work presented in this paper is a research case study conducted in the form of building a unique cell-bot learning framework (CLF) themed educational module and its usage in an effort to contribute towards the middle school IT computing curriculum. Existing literature on robotics based tech curriculum for young children indicate that there have been multiple instances of curriculum design and development work at the K-12 level, involving robotic kits like LEGO Mind-storm, Bee-bots, Sphero robots. However, to our knowledge, the BERO robotic device has never been used for producing robotic technology curriculum at the middle school level. In this paper, we propose a nifty workshop module, which utilizes the unique CLF themed BERO. Our lesson plan is specifically designed for introducing mobile robotics and functional programming to middle school youth using music, thereby providing a fun and interactive experience in tech computing education. We expose our young workshop participants to the tech skills of programming a BERO and making it dance to music using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The experiential learning process is aided by the use of an innovative visual aid program tool, which has been designed and developed by us. This paper describes our creative BERO middle school workshop module, which has been successfully implemented to conduct several hands-on workshop sessions for middle school students, as part of our Google IgniteCS outreach program. Our paper also presents the survey data collected from our workshop participants in an effort to evaluate our nifty CLF theme based experiential learning model. Our survey results are promising, and indicate the potential of our nifty module to teach introductory functional coding and to generate interest in robotic programming, thereby acting as a prospective educational interface for recruiting future tech students, leading to IT careers.

Sixty Harvard undergraduate students, paired up as 30 two-person teams, participated in a usability study where they were interviewed and asked to perform eight tasks using the Library Explorer software on the Microsoft PixelSense tabletop. This paper focuses exclusively on the collaboration aspect of the study results. During the research session, participants' verbal responses, their interaction on the table, their collaboration behavior, and task process were recorded. Using a typology of collaboration profiles and collaboration processes, each dyad was coded by their collaboration style and assessed by their collaboration quality. Results show that the majority of the dyads adopted the "turn taker" collaboration style in completing their tasks, and the "driver-passenger" style was also used frequently. Significant differences were found in team make-up in terms of the formation of their collaboration style and their likelihood to recommend the tool to others. Knowing their partner prior also influenced the formation of participants' collaboration style. There is a significant correlation between overall collaboration style and the quality of collaboration. The use of collaboration styles such as "turn taker," "driver passenger" and "independent," correlate significantly with various quality measures of collaboration. While the "turn taker" style is associated positively with percent of tasks completed successfully, the "driver-passenger" is inversely correlated with the success rate. There are some preliminary evidences from the results to support Klimoski and Mohammed's (1994) framework which suggests that team capacity leads to team process and then contributes to the team performance. Further analysis on participants' screen touch rate and problem solving strategies may help to examine the deep layer of participants' shared mental model construction and thus reveal the effect of the shared mental model on collaboration quality and task performance.

As presented at IASSIST 2015 conference

Carbon nanotube (CNT) membranes manufactured by a novel slurry compression process have been used to introduce self-sensing capability in glass fiber reinforced polymer matrix (GFRP) laminates. The CNT membranes were embedded in the interlaminar region of the laminates and piezoresistive characterization studies were conducted under monotonic and cyclic loading. High sensitivity to strain was observed. A measurement model, developed using the resistance measurements obtained under fatigue loading, was used to quantify fatigue crack length in real time. The fatigue crack growth rates and the nature of crack propagation in baseline and self-sensing GFRP (SGFRP) specimens were compared. The results show that the average crack growth rate reduced by an order of magnitude by the introduction of CNT membrane. The SGFRP laminates developed in this study exhibited crack tip blunting during fatigue, while facilitating real time strain and damage sensing. doi: 10.12783/SHM2015/213