Abstract Background: Little is known about which diversity characteristics if any, impact on nursing students' clinical placements or how these may affect the quality of their learning experiences. There is therefore a need to better understand these effects not only from the student's perspective but also from the perspective of the staff who supervise them, in order to ensure students obtain ...

BACKGROUND Biobanks increasingly presume long-term storage of biomaterials and data that shall be used for future research projects which are today unspecified. Appropriate consent documents for sample donors must therefore explain the breadth of consent and other elements of the biobank governance framework. Recent reviews demonstrated high variability in what issues these documents mention or...

While the number of clinical trials performed yearly is increasing, the application of these results to individual patients is quite difficult. This article reviews key portions of the process of applying research results to clinical practice. The first step involves defining the study population and determining whether these patients are similar to the patients seen in clinical practice in ter...

BACKGROUND Informed consent is the cornerstone for protection of human subjects in clinical trials. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that reform of the informed consent process in the United States is needed. METHODS The Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative conducted interviews with 25 experienced observers of the informed consent process to identify limitations and actionabl...

BACKGROUND Health researchers undertake studies which combine qualitative and quantitative methods. Little attention has been paid to the structural issues affecting this mixed methods approach. We explored the facilitators and barriers to undertaking mixed methods studies in health research. METHODS Face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 20 researchers experienced in mixed methods rese...

A clinical trial seeks information for the benefit of future patients and not necessarily for those who participate in the study. However, there are patients who believe that they will receive a direct therapeutic benefit by participating in a clinical trial, the so-called «therapeutic misconception». In this article, we describe the nature and extent of therapeutic misconception, which researc...

BACKGROUND Women have historically been under-represented in HIV research, partly due to ineffective recruitment strategies. OBJECTIVE To improve the existing understanding of recruitment for HIV-positive women based on a province-wide cross-sectional study. METHODS A survey was emailed to all site coordinators who recruited participants in a study involving 490 HIV-positive women living in...

Health informatics and information management (HIIM) is an applied research discipline that integrates health, computer science, and business. Researchers in an applied discipline answer the questions of why and how. Policy makers, who can be leaders of health systems, legislators, or regulators at governmental agencies, are often the sources of these questions. In this research model, data col...

This article reports the findings of a study undertaken to evaluate the etiological factors responsible for neonatal jaundice in a high-altitude population (2000 m above sea level) in India. 164 neonates were studied, of which 105 (64%) developed clinical jaundice. 68 (64.5%) were boys and 37 (35.2%) were girls. Serum hyperbilirubinemia was found in 38 cases (23.1%). In 12 cases (11.4%), no...