METHODS: An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) study design was used to recruit a purposive sample of foster carers in Tower Hamlets, United Kingdom, from a range of backgrounds (maximum variation sampling). Participants were aged 21 years and older and provided full-time foster care for children for a minimum of 1 year. The foster carers took part in focus groups that were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data analysis followed a five-step IPA process, which included reading the transcripts, note taking, identifying emerging themes, connecting related themes and writing up the final themes. Iterative data gathering and analysis continued to reach thematic saturation.
RESULTS: Three focus groups were conducted, involving a total of 12 foster carers. Eight of the 12 participants had fostered children for more than 10 years and they were currently fostering 22 children aged five to 18 years old. Four themes emerged from within the context of the supportive and nurturing foster family environment that described how foster carers' responded to and managed the oral health of their foster children. Foster carers had adopted an oral health caregiving role, "in loco parentis" responding to the poor oral health of their vulnerable foster children. They were hypervigilant about establishing and monitoring children's oral health routines and taking their children to see a dentist; these were seen as an integral part of being good foster carers. They were knowledgeable about the causes of children's oral ill health, gained from their own dental experiences and from looking after their own children. Foster carers had experienced tensions while adopting this oral health caregiving role with dentists who had refused to see younger children. Foster carers had also experienced tensions with teenage foster children who questioned their parental authority and legitimate right to set rules about smoking and healthy eating.
CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to explore foster carers' oral health perspectives and the foster family environment within the oral health context. It highlights the unrecognized and important role that foster carers have in improving the oral health of vulnerable children. Further research is needed to explore the relationship between foster carers and dentists and to support the development of health and social care interventions to improve foster children's oral health.
METHODS: Twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted among medical, dentistry, and pharmacy students in a Malaysian University. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analyzed to understand the students' perspectives of QA in education.
RESULTS: The participants recognized the importance of QA towards ensuring the quality of their training, which will consequently impact their work readiness, employability, and quality of healthcare services. Academic governance, curriculum structure, content and delivery, faculty and student quality, teaching facilities, and learning resources were indicated as the QA areas. The challenges for students' involvement included students' attitude, maturity, and cultural barrier. To enhance their buy-in, clear objectives and impact, efficient QA mechanism, and recognition of students' contribution had been suggested.
CONCLUSION: The findings of this study support student-faculty partnership in QA processes and decision making.
METHODOLOGY: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) checklist was used to perform this review. Health-related databases including PubMed, Ovid, and Google Scholar were searched for relevant studies. A consolidated framework with five domains was developed after undertaking a six-phase reflective thematic assessment of the data.
RESULTS: Thirteen studies were identified, spanning eight low-and middle-income countries of the Indo-Pacific region including Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. The studies in this review covered the period from 2002 to 2021. A broad range of study designs and objectives were revealed across these 13 studies. An array of communities such as the local government, project-related health staff, local health services staff, community leaders, local communities/residences/general public, heads of households, community health volunteers, school teachers, and schoolchildren participated in these dengue related studies. The five Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) domains of 'intervention characteristics', 'inner setting', 'outer setting',' individual characteristics', and 'program implementations' were used to identify and describe barriers and facilitators.
CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate a range of barriers and facilitators to community engagement in dengue control in the selected LMIC in the Indo-Pacific countries. Future health services research on dengue control approaches should be carefully planned, methodologically constructed, aligned with community engagement principles, and involve considerable community participation at all stages of the research.
METHODS: Guided by the UK Medical Research Council Framework, this seminal study adopted a qualitative, descriptive approach with content analysis. Data were obtained through 16 semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Themes emerged based on an inductive process using constant comparison (Graneheim and Lundman 2004). The COREQ checklist was used in ensuring rigour.
RESULTS: Three main themes emerged includes: (1) nurses' experiences with current diabetes care practices, (2) stakeholders' views on the development of a NLFB approach, and (3) merging the nurse-led family aspects into the diabetes care. The key challenges are the dominant medical model, lack of specialist nurses, and time. The key facilitators are knowledge and social support.
CONCLUSION: The study recommends stakeholders embrace nursing empowerment strategies and involve families to enhance the nurses' advanced roles and family inclusion in healthcare.
DESIGN: This qualitative study employed an interpretive descriptive approach. Two trained researchers conducted in-depth interviews (IDIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs) using a semi-structured topic guide, which was developed based on literature review and behavioural theories. All IDIs and FGDs were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Two researchers analysed the data independently using a thematic approach.
PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Men working in a banking institution in Kuala Lumpur were recruited to the study. They were purposively sampled according to their ethnicity, job position, age and screening status in order to achieve maximal variation.
RESULTS: Eight IDIs and five FGDs were conducted (n=31) and six themes emerged from the analysis. (1) Young men did not consider screening as part of prevention and had low risk perception. (2) The younger generation was more receptive to health screening due to their exposure to health information through the internet. (3) Health screening was not a priority in young men except for those who were married. (4) Young men had limited income and would rather invest in health insurance than screening. (5) Young men tended to follow doctors' advice when it comes to screening and preferred doctors of the same gender and ethnicity. (6) Medical overuse was also raised where young men wanted more screening tests while doctors tended to promote unnecessary screening tests to them.
CONCLUSIONS: This study identified important factors that influenced young men's screening behaviour. Health authorities should address young men's misperceptions, promote the importance of early detection and develop a reasonable health screening strategy for them. Appropriate measures must be put in place to reduce low value screening practices.