Culture

New research from North Carolina State University finds that mental health courts are effective at reducing repeat offending, and limiting related jail time, for people with mental health problems - especially those who also have substance use problems.

PHILADELPHIA - Many Western countries including England and the United States have come to rely on nurses trained abroad in times of nurse shortages. Yet little is known about how such practices affect quality of care and patient satisfaction. A novel study published today by the prominent research and policy journal BMJ Open concluded that the employment of nurses trained abroad to substitute for professional nurses educated at home is not without risks to quality of care.

Washington D.C., 3 December, 2015 - A new report gives the first ever picture of global investment in Ebola research and development (R&D), reporting that this investment might have come at the expense of efforts to develop drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for other neglected diseases, which collectively cause more than six million deaths every year in developing countries.

Heart failure, the leading cause of hospitalization for Americans over the age of 65, accounts for more than one million hospitalizations in the US each year. Nearly six million Americans have heart failure, about half of whom have the reduced ejection fraction form, a reduced capability to pump blood from the heart. Heart failure patients with a reduced capability to pump blood from the heart have a marked increased risk for further cardiac events and death.

Investing in simple diagnostic tests could save lives and end disease epidemics in the developing world, say researchers in a supplement in Nature.

One of the studies found that wider use of a device that clips onto the finger to measure oxygen in the blood could prevent 148,000 pneumonia deaths in the under-fives, in countries where the disease is most prominent.

Routinely used in hospitals, pulse oximetry is a non-invasive technology that measures oxygen in the blood, and can help doctors diagnose conditions such as pneumonia which trigger low oxygen levels.

A new study on distracted walking released today by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) finds that more than three quarters (78 percent) of U.S. adults believe that distracted walking is a "serious" issue; however, 74 percent of Americans say "other people" are usually or always walking while distracted, while only 29 percent say the same about themselves.

Boston, Mass. -- Massachusetts Eye and Ear researchers surveyed 337 patients with hearing loss to better understand the language they use with communication partners to disclose their disability. Their findings, published online in the journal Ear and Hearing on October 28, 2015, may be used to develop resources for health care professionals to provide their patients with strategies to disclose hearing loss successfully and effectively in interactions with others.