Impaired work functioning due to common mental disorders in nurses and allied health professionals: the Nurses Work Functioning Questionnaire.

PURPOSE: Common mental disorders (CMD) negatively affect work functioning. In the health service sector not only the prevalence of CMDs is high, but work functioning problems are associated with a risk of serious consequences for patients and healthcare providers. If work functioning problems due to CMDs are detected early, timely help can be provided. Therefore, the aim of this study is to develop a detection questionnaire for impaired work functioning due to CMDs in nurses and allied health professionals working in hospitals. METHODS: First, an item pool was developed by a systematic literature study and five focus group interviews with employees and experts. To evaluate the content validity, additional interviews were held. Second, a cross-sectional assessment of the item pool in 314 nurses and allied health professionals was used for item selection and for identification and corroboration of subscales by explorative and confirmatory factor analysis. RESULTS: The study results in the Nurses Work Functioning Questionnaire (NWFQ), a 50-item self-report questionnaire consisting of seven subscales: cognitive aspects of task execution, impaired decision making, causing incidents at work, avoidance behavior, conflicts and irritations with colleagues, impaired contact with patients and their family, and lack of energy and motivation. The questionnaire has a proven high content validity. All subscales have good or acceptable internal consistency. CONCLUSION: The Nurses Work Functioning Questionnaire gives insight into precise and concrete aspects of impaired work functioning of nurses and allied health professionals. The scores can be used as a starting point for purposeful interventions.

Immunohistochemical expression of vascular endothelial growth factor in canine mammary tumours.

The histopathological and clinical aspects of canine mammary tumours (CMTs) have been widely studied, but the variation in the biological behaviour of these neoplasms hampers the identification of prognostic factors. Sustained angiogenesis has been suggested to be one of the most important factors underlying tumour growth and invasion. This process involves the action of several growth factors including vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). The present study characterizes the relationship between immunohistochemical expression of VEGF and gross (e.g. size and tissue fixation) and microscopical (e.g. type, growth, necrosis, lymphoid infiltration, lymph node metastasis, histological grade and proliferation index) features of CMTs. Forty-eight benign and 64 malignant CMTs were evaluated. Statistical analysis failed to show a significant relationship between VEGF expression and the pathological features, suggesting that VEGF expression occurs in both benign and malignant tumours and is independent of histological type, proliferation, tissue invasion or local metastatic capacity.

[Type and frequency of cardiac arrhythmias dependent on age, therapeutic aspects (author's transl)]. / Art und Häufigkeit von Herzrhythmusstörungen in Abhängigkeit vom Patientenalter, therapeutische Aspekte.

Resting-, exercise and 24-h-ECG tracings of outpatients were examined for cardiac arrhythmias and were analyzed for age-dependent phenomena in the range between 20 and 100 years. Typical of higher age was especially the combination of different arrhythmias, in particular the simultaneous occurrence of slow and fast disturbances, which, of course, makes medical therapy difficult. Since ventricular arrhythmias, when classified according to Lown, have a better prognosis in the age group above 70 than between 40 and 70 years, antiarrhythmic drugs should be prescribed with extreme caution to older people and should be limited to exceptions which are detailed in this study.