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New Plans To Improve Eating Disorder Services In Wales
Two new specialist teams will be set up to improve diagnosis, care and support for people with eating disorders in Wales, Health Minister Edwina Hart officially announced.

Lawmakers Address Nurse And Primary Care Physician Shortages
A pending House bill would aim to address the nursing shortage by allowing "20,000 additional nurses to enter the U.S. each year for the next three years as a temporary measure to fill the gap," Business Week reports. The bill was introduced by Representative Robert Wexler, D-Fla., in May. If it doesn"t "pass on its own, lawmakers may include it in a comprehensive immigration reform package." Hospital administrators in some areas that face nursing shortages support the bill as "temporary relief," but "Wexler"s bill is opposed by labor unions, whose leaders say it would undermine efforts to produce a steady domestic workforce while sapping other nations" nurses. [President Barack] Obama has also expressed skepticism about the idea that the U.S. needs to import nurses, in particular because the U.S. unemployment rate continues to rise." Instead, Obama has said, the focus should be on improving the res to fund education for new American-born nurses. "The $787 billion economic stimulus bill included $500 million to address shortages of health workers in the U.S., with about $100 million to promote nursing and increase capacity at U.S. nurse-training schools."
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Big Disparities In The Treatment Of Arrhythmias Across Europe
The latest statistics regarding the use of pacemakers and implantable cardiac devices in Europe was presented on Sunday 21 June, at EUROPACE 2009, the meeting of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA)1 which takes place in Berlin, Germany from 21 to 24 June.
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Group Health Research Editor Shares Toolkit To Boost Health Literacy

The doctor"s mouth opens, and "medicalese" pours forth: words like "pyrosis" and "myocardial infarction." The patient"s eyes glaze over. If only the doctor said "heartburn" or "heart attack," the patient could learn what caused the chest pain. This failure to communicate is all too familiar. In 2005, Jessica Ridpath noticed it happening when health care researchers asked people to consider taking part in studies. "Informed consent means people understand what they"re agreeing to," said Ridpath. "But most consent forms are too complex for the reading abilities of the people they"re supposed to inform." A slam poet and language lover, Ridpath is the research communications coordinator at Group Health Center for Health Studies. She just published her first article in the July/August American Journal of Health Promotion. Ridpath worried that unreadable consent forms were hindering informed decision making - and raising risks for participants and research institutions alike. So four years ago she created the Project to Review and Improve Study Materials, or PRISM. Her article describes how PRISM evolved. First it was a short-term internal training initiative to boost consent form readability. Since then, PRISM has expanded into an enduring suite of hands-on res. It includes a customizable training workshop and an editing service. Its centerpiece is a Toolkit that illustrates strategies for communicating clearly in written materials for study participants, such as informed consent documents, study invitations, letters, and information sheets. The Toolkit is based on plain language - a communication style centered on the audience"s needs and abilities. Researchers can see how to use plain language in study materials through the Toolkit"s many concrete examples, including an alternative word list. Here"s a brief excerpt: Instead of: Try this: Abdomen: Stomach, tummy, belly Abrasion: Scrape, scratch Absorb: Take in fluids, soak up Abstain from: Don"t, don"t use, don"t have, go without Accomplish: Carry out, do Accrue: Add, build up, collect, gather You can download a free PDF of the Toolkit at http://www.centerforhealthstudies.org/capabilities/ readability/readability_home.html. PRISM swiftly drew interest from U.S. researchers and other health care professionals. They downloaded the Toolkit 2,000 times in its first year on CHS" Web site. Ridpath and colleagues have presented PRISM res at more than 10 professional conferences nationwide. She has led training workshops for external and non-research audiences, including Public Health - Seattle & King County. Her training of Group Health patient education writers sparked an organization-wide plain language initiative, resulting in revisions to dozens of patient letters, brochures, and consent forms. Efforts to give health information a plain language makeover have been gaining steam across health care since the Institute of Medicine"s Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion in 2004. This report concluded traditional health information is too complex for roughly 93 million Americans - half the adult population - to understand. Since then, the American Medical Association and federal government have also focused on health literacy. Many plain language res aimed at improving health literacy have sprung up online. Most focus on specific populations or illnesses. The PRISM Toolkit fills a gap in the range of tools already available: practical guidance addressing special challenges that researchers face when communicating with study participants. "The Toolkit is unique for its emphasis on research," said article co-author Sarah M. Greene, MPH, a research associate at Group Health Center for Health Studies. "But it can also be extended for use in health care and education." PRISM may help meet the Healthy People 2020 objectives: For the first time, they"ll include health literacy targets and measures. "Centering research materials on patients is simply the right thing to do," said co-author Cheryl J. Wiese, MA, manager of the Survey Research Program at Group Health Center for Health Studies. "Anecdotally, we think using plain language has helped us recruit study participants." As part of the PRISM editing service, Ridpath tracks readability improvements to study consent forms and other participant materials. To date, her readability editing has dropped reading level by an average of at least 2 grades, with most research materials now between 6th- and 8th-grade reading levels. And these scores don"t account for additional improvements from designing and reorganizing the documents. Rebecca Hughes Group Health Cooperative Center for Health Studies


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