Category: Medicine and health

Critically Appraise the Evidence

Submission Type: 6-to-8-page paper that includes three appraisal appendices at the end.

Details:

Last week, you identified a few quantitative research studies to help answer your PICOT question. In this two-week assignment, you will critically appraise three of the studies to evaluate the evidence they offer. At least one study must be a randomized clinical trial (RCT). Examples of rapid critical appraisal checklists that can be used for different types of quantitative studies are linked at the bottom of this assignment. Each critical appraisal will address the (1) validity, (2) reliability, and (3) applicability of the study.

After appraising the three studies, write a paper addressing each study’s validity, reliability, and applicability. Use APA formatting and include an introduction and conclusion. Be sure to include a reference page and appendix with copies of the completed critical appraisal checklists for each of the three studies.

This assignment should be no more than 6-8 pages (not including the title or references pages) and include the following components:

1. Title Page
2. Introduction: include a summary of the primary intent of your paper
3. For each of the three studies, use the appropriate appraisal tool, address all items, and include detailed write-ups for:
4. The validity of the study,
5. The reliability of the study,
6. The applicability of the study.
7. Conclusion
8. Reference Page
9. Appendix

See the rubric for specific grading criteria.

i attached the checklist & paper from last week.

Critical appraise a cancer prevention leaflets Max 750 words and 15 references as the max

Critical appraise a cancer prevention leaflets Max 750 words and 15 references as the max

NP psychiatric clinical rotation with Social Worker, Need 20 patients with psychiatric diagnosis. medical is secondary

For this assignment, you will choose one disease/medical condition to research in detail. The information researched will be completed in essay format with an emphasis on utilizing medical terminology to demonstrate comprehension.

No instructions provided

Mrs. Julie is a widowed 77-year-old retired bank teller who has been brought to the emergency department by her son and daughter as they have been worried about her mood for the past couple of months. This afternoon, when they were both over for a visit, hoping to convince their mom to go out to dinner with the family, Mrs. Julie admitted to them that she felt so terrible that she wanted to die. Her family became very concerned and decided to bring her to the hospital for assessment.

Mrs. Julie was assessed by the emergency physician, who did not feel there were any acute systemic medical illnesses and referred her to the emergency psychiatric team to evaluate her suicidal risk. During her assessment with the on-call psychiatrist, Mrs. Julie admits that she has been feeling lonely and down for about the past 3 months. Her husband of 53 years had passed away 6 months ago suddenly from a massive heart attack. Mrs. Julie thought she managed quite well initially. Even though she was sad that he was gone, she could still do what was needed at the time making funeral arrangements and dealing with the lawyer and all the necessary paperwork. Then, about 3 months ago, it all just hit her. She was feeling very lonely, particularly at nighttime when she would lie in bed, staring at the ceiling and unable to fall asleep. She continued to feel worse as time passed, walking around the house aimlessly during the daytime, looking for something to do, and eventually ending up sleeping on the couch, so she would no longer have to think. She became increasingly withdrawn and stopped calling her family and friends as she did not feel like talking to anyone.

Mrs. Julie was still keeping up with her personal hygiene but stopped doing housework about a month ago. In the past 2 weeks, she has not felt much like cooking and is just eating crackers and peanut butter. In the past 2 days, she has thought that it would be easier if she could join her husband in death and be at peace.

Before the arrival of her family at her house today, she was looking at her medications and thinking it would be nice to take all of her sleeping pills at once. She became very scared by her thoughts. When her children arrived, she told them what she had been thinking. Currently, while she has no plans to kill herself, she is afraid those thoughts would come back when she goes home alone as she does not see any reason to live.

Mrs. Julie states that she has never felt like this before in her life. She has always been a very upbeat and energetic person. While she may have gone through some difficult periods in the past, she states that she has always managed to get through these times without help. She has never needed to see a psychiatrist for any reason. She denies ever drinking alcohol excessively and denies the use of any illicit drugs.

Medical history revealed that she had a left-side stroke about 10 years ago with full recovery. She has hypertension and hyperlipidemia; these conditions are treated and controlled. Her primary care physician recently told her she is borderline diabetic. She also had a significant gastrointestinal bleed about 5 years ago due to a peptic ulcer. She had a remote tonsillectomy and an appendectomy about 15 years ago. Mrs. Julie has a younger sister who went through a nervous breakdown after a miscarriage. Mrs. Julie thinks her sister may have been on medication for her nerves for a while but does not know of her specific diagnosis or the name of the medication.

Mrs. Julies medications included rosuvastatin 10 mg daily, metoprolol 12.5 mg twice daily, aspirin 81 mg daily, pantoprazole 40 mg daily, clopidogrel 75 mg daily, and lorazepam 1 mg every 2 hour as needed (started by her primary care physician after her husband passed away; she takes it about three times a week). Laboratory investigations ordered by the emergency physician included CBC, electrolytes, creatinine (Cr), estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), random glucose, and a urinalysis. Other than a slightly high random glucose of 13.4 mmol/L (241.2 mg/dl), all other blood test results were within normal limits.

Use the SOAP note template to complete the documentation with the information provided.

• Formulate appropriate diagnoses and design an appropriate treatment plan.
• Explain what further information you will explore to aid in forming an accurate diagnosis.
• What treatment management would you recommended for this patient?
• How would you predict Julies response to treatment?
• Discuss clinical judgment and interventions to enhance the clients safety

Biomechanics Research on the Knee

Format: The report must be typed and double-spaced except for the references (single spaced), have one-inch margins, and have normal font size (e.g. Times New Roman 12 point). It must be no more than two pages in length. Use headings for the Reference, Summary, Critique and Proposal. The summary, critique, and proposal should be written in a narrative style, not as an outline. You may use an additional cover page if you wish. Focus on using precise concise scientific language.

I. Reference: Properly identify the article as to authors, title and journal reference. Do not use the format given by each individual article, which varies between journals. Rather, always use the one format provided in class. You may use a PubMed or Google Scholar format as a guide.

II. Summary: Summarize, in your own words, the major points of the article, include key information about purpose, methods, results and conclusions. Do not quote from the article Do not simply paraphrase from the abstract.

III. Critique: Analyze any weaknesses in the article, with particular attention to the methods used and the authors interpretation of the results. The following are some of the things to look for, but you do not need to comment on them unless there is a criticism to be made. However always comment on the bolded questions/font. Be thorough and concise.

Please keep these questions in mind:

Introduction

Is there an explicit hypothesis?

Do the authors convince you that the study is needed?

Methods

Are the procedures described well enough to replicate the study?

Are there biases in the selection of the subjects that my prejudice the results?

Were the subjects affected by variables that were not controlled (e.g. environment)?

Were there appropriate control groups or control inside?

Were subject and investigator blinding used?

Were the techniques used in collecting the data appropriate to the task?

Were the tests of statistical significance properly used and reported?

Results

Were the data, figures and tables presented in a logical, concise, easy to follow format?

Were any of the tables or figures superfluous?

Discussion

Have non-significant trends in the data been promoted to findings?

Have the findings been overly generalized? Did they exceed scientific basis?

Have the authors adequately related the findings to the current knowledge in the field?

Have the authors provided plausible explanations as to the physiological mechanisms behind their findings?

Have the authors provided alternative explanations to their findings?

References

Have the authors failed to cite any relevant literature? (as undergraduates, you may not know the answer to this question, but make an attempt if you can)

Have the authors limited themselves to only pertinent citations? (depends on the article type)

IV. Proposal: First, present an explicit hypothesis for a new study, then a brief rationale for the hypothesis, and then a brief description of the methods. Your study should seek to advance our knowledge in the same field as the article you critiqued, but should not be a near copy of the article (i.e. do not simply fix the problems in the article or give it a missing hypothesis and present this as a new study). Be original.

Please attach the article

Assessment: Popular Science Article – Instructions

Imagine the following scenario: the UK government is threatening to cut the budget for medical science research by 40% next year and has asked funding bodies to make decisions on which areas of research should be prioritized or protected from cuts. As an expert on medical research, you are invited by ‘The Conversation’, an online news provider, to write an article making a case for the value of medical research and your opinion on which areas, if any, should be protected from cuts.

This is your opportunity to convince the public that medical research is important. The article must be understandable by a non-specialist audience. This assessment is an exercise in communicating specialised/complex information to an educated public.

Your article must be engaging, accessible, and free of unexplained jargon. A paper that a non- expert cannot understand will receive a low mark no matter how good you make the case for protecting medical research. You may use a maximum of three figures (e.g., graphs or diagrams) if they help illustrate a point more effectively than text but you must acknowledge the source of any published material. Figure legends are not included in the word count. However they must be directly relevant to the figure and not used as a means of increasing the text content of your article to overcome the word limit.

Your article must address the following core points to build your case::

What proportion of funding for medical research comes from the government?

How is the funding used?

How does medical research return economic and societal benefit?

What are the possible consequences of budget cuts? You may suggest an area of medical research to spare from the cuts and justifywhy.

This is an opportunity to use your knowledge to generate a convincing case that properly funded, good quality medical research is a worthwhile investment for the UK governmentand that cuts are a mistake. Although articles in ‘The Conversation’ usually show citations as links within the text, for the purposes of this assessment, you should provide a bibliography. Use numbers in the body of the text and a full citation in the reference list.

1500 (+/- 10%) words. References are not included in the word count.

JOURNAL ANALYSIS: MACRONUTRIENTS ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS

OVERVIEW

Brief Description: Summary Report

The purpose of this assignment to examine and analyze food records for the macronutrient

content (carbohydrate, fat, protein, and subcategories) as they relate to adequacy, deficiency and

health benefits. This fulfills Learning Outcomes 1 and 4.

INSTRUCTIONS

Details:

1. For this assessment, you are analyzing the average intakes of carbohydrate, fat and protein

with identified subcategories:

Carbohydrate, Total

Sugar, Total

Dietary Fiber, Total

Fat, Total

Saturated Fat

Trans Fatty Acids

Linolenic Fatty Acid (Omega-3)

Linoleic Fatty Acid (Omega-6)

Cholesterol

Protein, Total [NOTE: There are two recommendations for Protein found on the

Intake Compared to DRI Report. Please refer to the textbook to understand the

purposes for and the differences between these recommendations.]

2. Enter iProfile and click on REPORTS.

3. Select the date range that includes your food record.

The calendar on the LEFT is your Start Date. The calendar on the RIGHT is your End Date.

NOTE: iProfile will only calculate days for which food is recorded. It does not matter how

many days are selected in this date range, as long as it includes your 3-day record.

4. View the following Reports: (If you need to review how to read these reports, return to

Reading Reports in iProfile that was completed at the beginning of the semester.)

Intake Compared to DRI

Macronutrient Distribution

Intake Spreadsheet or Single Nutrient

MyPlate

5. Writing your Summary:

HLTH 330

Page 2 of 3

Write a 2-3 page analysis of your findings (double space preferred). As long as your

writing is pertinent (i.e. your diet needs a lot of improvement, thus you needed more

discussion) no points will be reduced for going over the 3 page limit.

In general, this paper focuses on your macronutrient intake: carbohydrate, fat, protein,

and identified subcategories. This includes evaluating whether or not you met the

Average Macronutrient Distribution Recommendations (AMDR) as well as the individual

Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) for each individual nutrient.

Macronutrient Distribution Report: You will use this report to assess whether or not

you met the Average Macronutrient Distribution Recommendations (AMDR). The

AMDR is a unique evaluation as it looks at the ratio of calories consumed between total

carbohydrates, total fat, and total protein. The AMDR does not look at the gram amount

consumed; it simply displays the percentage distribution of where you calories came

from.

Intake Compared to DRI Report: This is the primary report used for this Summary.

For this assignment, the goal is to meet the DRI. Depending upon the nutrient, the

average intake will be within the recommended range or meet 100% of the DRI.

o If you met the DRI, simply state this in your paper and briefly discuss why or

how you meet the DRI (i.e. what foods contributed to your intake of that specific

nutrient).

o If you were below the DRI, briefly discuss the potential health risks and concerns

of falling short. Next, make clear recommendations for improvement to eating

patterns (see paragraph below).

o If you were over the DRI, briefly discuss the potential health risks and concerns

of going above the DRI. Determine whether or not you are at risk for these. If

need be, make clear recommendations for improvement to eating patterns (see

paragraph below).

When making recommendations for improvement to your eating patterns provide

SPECIFIC FOOD EXAMPLES of things you will actually do (i.e. increase/decrease

specific food items or number of servings of specific food items).

Points are earned by accurately evaluating your intake against the DRI and demonstrating

a thorough understanding of what can remain the same and/or what needs to change.

NOTE: stating that your plan is to add a supplement will NOT be acceptable for this

assignment, unless you have severe food allergies or explained food avoidances.

NOTE: Viewing not determinable in a column means an established DRI is not

established.

o For Sugar, please use the MyPlate Report – Empty Calorie Allotment as an aid in

evaluating your intake.

o For Cholesterol, please refer to Chapter 5-Section 6: Meeting Lipid Needs to

evaluate your intake.