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Individual Assessment (individual + assessment)
Selected AbstractsReliability of the assessment of preventable adverse drug events in daily clinical practice,PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGY AND DRUG SAFETY, Issue 7 2008Jasperien E. van Doormaal PharmD Abstract Purpose To determine the reliability of the assessment of preventable adverse drug events (ADEs) in daily practice and to explore the impact of the assessors' professional background and the case characteristics on reliability. Methods We used a combination of the simplified Yale algorithm and the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCC MERP) scheme to assess on the one hand the causal relationship between medication errors (MEs) and adverse events in hospitalised patients and on the other hand the severity of the clinical consequence of MEs. Five pharmacists and five physicians applied this algorithm to 30 potential MEs. After individual assessment, the pharmacists reached consensus and so did the physicians. Outcome was both MEs' severity (ordinal scale, NCC MERP categories A,I) and the occurrence of preventable harm (binary outcome, NCC MERP categories A,D vs. E,I). Kappa statistics was used to assess agreement. Results The overall agreement on MEs' severity was fair for the pharmacists (,,=,0.34) as well as for the physicians (,,=,0.25). Overall agreement for the 10 raters was fair (,,=,0.25) as well as the agreement between both consensus outcomes (,,=,0.30). Agreement on the occurrence of preventable harm was higher, ranging from ,,=,0.36 for the physicians through ,,=,0.49 for the pharmacists. Overall agreement for the 10 raters was fair (,,=,0.36). The agreement between both consensus outcomes was moderate (,,=,0.47). None of the included case characteristics had a significant impact on agreement. Conclusions Individual assessment of preventable ADEs in real patients is difficult, possibly because of the difficult assessment of contextual information. Best approach seems to be a consensus method including both pharmacists and physicians. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Adults with intellectual disabilities: prevalence, incidence and remission of self-injurious behaviour, and related factorsJOURNAL OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY RESEARCH, Issue 3 2009S.-A. Cooper Abstract Background Self-injurious behaviour (SIB) is a serious condition, with implications for the person, their family and financial costs to the state providing care. The previously reported prevalence of SIB has ranged from 1.7% to 41%, or 1.7%,23.7% in community studies. There has been little study of remission rate, and incidence has not previously been reported. SIB has been reported to be individually associated with lower ability, autism and communication impairments, but given the inter-relationships between these three factors, it is not known whether they are independently associated with SIB. This study investigates the point prevalence, incidence and remission rates of SIB among the adult population with intellectual disabilities (ID), and explores which factors are independently associated with SIB. Method A prospective cohort study design was used in a general community setting. The participants were all adults (16 years and over) with ID in a defined geographical area. Individual assessments were conducted with all participants. Results The point prevalence of SIB (as defined by DC-LD) was 4.9%, the two-year incidence was 0.6%, and two-year remission rate was 38.2%. Independently related to SIB were: lower ability level, not living with a family carer, having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, visual impairment, and not having Down syndrome. Other factors, including communication impairment, autism, and level of deprivation of the area resided within, were not related. Conclusions SIB is not as enduring and persistent as previously thought; a significant proportion gains remission in this time period. This should provide hope for families, paid carers and professionals, and reduce therapeutic nihilism. Our study is a first tentative step towards identifying risk-markers for SIB, and developing aetiological hypotheses for subsequent testing. The extent to which SIB may be a relapsing-remitting (episodic) condition requires further investigation, so does further hypothesis-based investigation of factors that might be predictive of incidence of, and remission from, SIB. [source] Clinical assessment and treatment of ADHD in childrenINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PRACTICE, Issue 10 2007L. C. Smoot Summary Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is a highly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in children. This widespread and complex condition requires extensive evaluation involving clinicians, parents and teachers. Proper management involves individual assessment and treatment. Psychostimulants remain the primary medication of choice as they have been shown to be efficacious for this condition. Newer, long-acting medications are providing expanded options for children and their caregivers. Failure to assess and treat can lead to serious long-term effects later in life. [source] ASSESSING THE CANDIDATE AS A WHOLE: A HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT FOR PERSONNEL DECISION MAKINGPERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2002SCOTT HIGHHOUSEArticle first published online: 7 DEC 200 Although individual assessment is a thriving area of professional practice in industry, it receives little, if any, attention from textbooks on industrial psychology or personnel management. This article is an attempt to establish individual assessment's place in the history of personnel selection, and to examine why the practice has survived despite receiving little attention in research and graduate training. It is argued that the clinical, holistic approach that has characterized individual-assessment practice has survived primarily because the "elementalistic" testing approach, focusing on traits and abilities, has often been dismissed as inadequate for addressing the complexities of the executive profile. Moreover, public displeasure with standard paper-and-pencil testing in the 1960s and 1970s made the holistic approach to assessment an attractive, alternative. The article contrasts individual assessment practice with the current state of knowledge on psychological assessment and personnel decision making. Like psychotherapy in the 1950s, individual psychological assessment appears to have achieved the status of functional autonomy within psychology. [source] Reliability of the assessment of preventable adverse drug events in daily clinical practice,PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGY AND DRUG SAFETY, Issue 7 2008Jasperien E. van Doormaal PharmD Abstract Purpose To determine the reliability of the assessment of preventable adverse drug events (ADEs) in daily practice and to explore the impact of the assessors' professional background and the case characteristics on reliability. Methods We used a combination of the simplified Yale algorithm and the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCC MERP) scheme to assess on the one hand the causal relationship between medication errors (MEs) and adverse events in hospitalised patients and on the other hand the severity of the clinical consequence of MEs. Five pharmacists and five physicians applied this algorithm to 30 potential MEs. After individual assessment, the pharmacists reached consensus and so did the physicians. Outcome was both MEs' severity (ordinal scale, NCC MERP categories A,I) and the occurrence of preventable harm (binary outcome, NCC MERP categories A,D vs. E,I). Kappa statistics was used to assess agreement. Results The overall agreement on MEs' severity was fair for the pharmacists (,,=,0.34) as well as for the physicians (,,=,0.25). Overall agreement for the 10 raters was fair (,,=,0.25) as well as the agreement between both consensus outcomes (,,=,0.30). Agreement on the occurrence of preventable harm was higher, ranging from ,,=,0.36 for the physicians through ,,=,0.49 for the pharmacists. Overall agreement for the 10 raters was fair (,,=,0.36). The agreement between both consensus outcomes was moderate (,,=,0.47). None of the included case characteristics had a significant impact on agreement. Conclusions Individual assessment of preventable ADEs in real patients is difficult, possibly because of the difficult assessment of contextual information. Best approach seems to be a consensus method including both pharmacists and physicians. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Cognitive hypothesis testing and response to intervention for children with reading problemsPSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS, Issue 8 2006Catherine A. Fiorello Response to intervention (RTI) must be combined with comprehensive cognitive assessment to identify children with learning disabilities. This article presents the Cognitive Hypothesis Testing (CHT) model for integrating RTI and comprehensive evaluation practices in the identification of children with reading disabilities. The CHT model utilizes a scientific method approach for interpreting cognitive and neuropsychological processes together with evaluation of ecological and treatment validity data to develop targeted interventions for students who do not respond to standard academic interventions. A case study highlights how CHT practices can lead to effective interventions for a child who did not respond to a phonologically based reading intervention. In addition, discriminant analyses of 128 children with reading disabilities revealed the presence of Global, Phonemic, Fluency-Comprehension, and Orthographic subtypes. Results suggest subtypes show disparate cognitive profiles that differentially impact their reading achievement, supporting our contention that individual assessment of cognitive processing strengths and weaknesses is not only necessary for identifying children with reading disabilities but also can lead to individualized interventions designed to meet their unique learning needs. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 835,853, 2006. [source] Combining social axioms with values in predicting social behavioursEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 3 2004Michael Harris Bond Recently, Leung et al. (2002) have identified a pan-cultural set of five dimensions tapping beliefs about the world in which each individual functions. These general axioms may be conceptualized as individual assessments of the social context constraining one's behavioural choices. As such, we hypothesize that these beliefs about the world may be combined with measures of motivation to predict an individual's actions. To test this model, the present research examined the usefulness of these social axioms as predictors of behavioural tendencies in conjunction with four comprehensive dimensions of values (Schwartz, 1992). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that social axioms added moderate predictive power over and above that provided by values to vocational choices, methods of conflict resolution, and coping styles. Specifically, reward for application was related to preference for conventional jobs and accommodation in conflict resolution; religiosity was related to accommodation and to competition in conflict resolution; social cynicism was related negatively to collaboration and to compromise in conflict resolution, and positively to wishful thinking in coping; fate control was related positively to wishful thinking and distancing in coping; and social complexity was related to compromise and to collaboration in conflict resolution, and to problem-solving as a coping strategy. It thus seems as if measures of respondents' beliefs about the external, social world supplement measures of their internal motivations to achieve various goals. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] With a little help from my friends?: Self-regulation in groups of young childrenINFANT MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL, Issue 6 2007Lisa A. Mccabe This study examined self-regulation in preschool children (mean age=51 months; 47% boys) using three situational assessments tapping delay of gratification and motor control. Assessments represented a novel adaptation for use with both individual (N=116) and groups (N=44) of four familiar peers in ecologically valid settings. Results suggest that preschoolers demonstrate an increasing ability to self-regulate with age, as well as some evidence for girls performing better than boys on the Gift Wrap situational assessment. Children were less able to demonstrate self-regulation in the peer group context as compared to individual assessments. Differences between age groups and gender were not significant when children were assessed with their peers. The influence of peers on self-regulation behavior is a complex relationship with no clear patterns identified in this research. Implications for future research and assessment efforts are discussed. [source] EVALUATION OF IDEAL WINE AND CHEESE PAIRS USING A DEVIATION-FROM-IDEAL SCALE WITH FOOD AND WINE EXPERTSJOURNAL OF FOOD QUALITY, Issue 3 2005MARJORIE KING ABSTRACT Most information regarding the suitability of wine and cheese pairs is anecdotal information. The objective of this research was to provide recommendations based on scientific research for the most desirable "wine & cheese pairs" using nine award-winning Canadian cheeses and 18 BC wines (six white, six red and six specialty wines). Twenty-seven wine and food professionals rated the wine and cheese pairs using a bipolar structured line scale (12 cm). The "ideal pair," scored at the midpoint of the scale, was defined as a wine and cheese combination where neither the wine nor the cheese dominated. For each cheese, mean deviation-from-ideal scores were determined and evaluated by analysis of variance. Scores closest to six were considered "ideal," while higher or lower scores represented pairs where the "wine" or the "cheese" dominated, respectively. In general, white wines had mean scores closer to six ("ideal") than either the red or specialty wines. The late harvest, ice and port-type wines were more difficult to pair . Judges varied considerably in their individual assessments reflecting a high degree of personal expectation and preference. [source] Posttraumatic stress reactions in siblings after mutual disaster: Relevance of family factorsJOURNAL OF TRAUMATIC STRESS, Issue 2 2010Egil Nygaard In this study, the importance of family factors in the development of posttraumatic stress reactions in children after trauma is studied by comparing siblings and nonsiblings who experienced the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004 as tourists. Thirty-eight sibling pairs aged 6,17 years were interviewed using the UCLA Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Reaction Index. The sibling differences were similar to differences found in randomly selected children in the same sample, indicating that family influences may not be as important as anticipated. The results are an important contribution to our understanding of what contributes to and influences the development of posttrauma reactions in children. They also suggest the importance of conducting individual assessments even after mutually experienced trauma. [source] | ||||||||||||||||