The Lausanne Institutional Biobank: a new resource to catalyse research in personalised medicine and pharmaceutical sciences.

Breakthrough technologies which now enable the sequencing of individual genomes will irreversibly modify the way diseases are diagnosed, predicted, prevented and treated. For these technologies to reach their full potential requires, upstream, access to high-quality biomedical data and samples from large number of properly informed and consenting individuals and, downstream, the possibility to transform the emerging knowledge into a clinical utility. The Lausanne Institutional Biobank was designed as an integrated, highly versatile infrastructure to harness the power of these emerging technologies and catalyse the discovery and development of innovative therapeutics and biomarkers, and advance the field of personalised medicine. Described here are its rationale, design and governance, as well as parallel initiatives which have been launched locally to address the societal, ethical and technological issues associated with this new bio-resource. Since January 2013, inpatients admitted at Lausanne CHUV University Hospital have been systematically invited to provide a general consent for the use of their biomedical data and samples for research, to complete a standardised questionnaire, to donate a 10-ml sample of blood for future DNA extraction and to be re-contacted for future clinical trials. Over the first 18 months of operation, 14,459 patients were contacted, and 11,051 accepted to participate in the study. This initial 18-month experience illustrates that a systematic hospital-based biobank is feasible; it shows a strong engagement in research from the patient population in this University Hospital setting, and the need for a broad, integrated approach for the future of medicine to reach its full potential.

Religious coping in schizophrenia patients : spiritual support in medical care and pastoral counselling

Following an introduction focusing on the role of religion in the treatment of psychosis, the first part of this paper describes an initial study in which the role of spirituality and religiosity was assessed in 115 patients with schizophrenia in Geneva (Switzerland) and 126 in Trois-Rivières (Quebec). These themes have been shown to be highly prevalent for these patients, though their clinicians are often unaware of this prevalence. The following part of the paper presents a second study where religious supervision was offered to clinicians in Geneva. Comparison between forty patients who received spiritual assessment and opportunities to work on religious topics with their clinicians was made with thirty patients without religious intervention. In the supervisory sessions, six different types of religious interventions were suggested. Outcomes at three months show that patients of the intervention group maintain their interest for help in religious matters while clinicians' interest in integrating religious topics in discussions with their patients has decreased. The third and main part of the paper is devoted to an analysis of the suggested interventions from the viewpoint of the study of religions. Five aspects of religion are distinguished, and explanations of the reasons some of them are easier to manage for clinicians are proposed. The paper concludes with proposals for the education of clinicians to help them to differentiate different kinds of religious coping and to recognize when it could be helpful to refer the patient to a pastoral counsellor.

Development of pharmaceutical care services in nursing homes: practice and research in a Swiss canton.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess the implementation process and economic impact of a new pharmaceutical care service provided since 2002 by pharmacists in Swiss nursing homes. SETTING: The setting was 42 nursing homes located in the canton of Fribourg, Switzerland under the responsibility of 22 pharmacists. METHOD: We developed different facilitators, such as a monitoring system, a coaching program, and a research project, to help pharmacists change their practice and to improve implementation of this new service. We evaluated the implementation rate of the service delivered in nursing homes. We assessed the economic impact of the service since its start in 2002 using statistical evaluation (Chow test) with retrospective analysis of the annual drug costs per resident over an 8-year period (1998-2005). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The description of the facilitators and their implications in implementation of the service; the economic impact of the service since its start in 2002. RESULTS: In 2005, after a 4-year implementation period supported by the introduction of facilitators of practice change, all 42 nursing homes (2,214 residents) had implemented the pharmaceutical care service. The annual drug costs per resident decreased by about 16.4% between 2002 and 2005; this change proved to be highly significant. The performance of the pharmacists continuously improved using a specific coaching program including an annual expert comparative report, working groups, interdisciplinary continuing education symposia, and individual feedback. This research project also determined priorities to develop practice guidelines to prevent drug-related problems in nursing homes, especially in relation to the use of psychotropic drugs. CONCLUSION: The pharmaceutical care service was fully and successfully implemented in Fribourg's nursing homes within a period of 4 years. These findings highlight the importance of facilitators designed to assist pharmacists in the implementation of practice changes. The economic impact was confirmed on a large scale, and priorities for clinical and pharmacoeconomic research were identified in order to continue to improve the quality of integrated care for the elderly.

A methodological approach to identify teacher's ICT competencies in online learning environments in Higher Education

Aquest article pretén descriure el procés metodològic d'identificació i mesurament de les competències TIC dels professors i com a formadors en les TIC en un entorn d'aprenentatge en línia en l'Educació Superior portat a terme en el marc del Projecte Europeu Elene-TLC.La revisió de la recerca en les competències en línia del professor demostra que, en primer lloc, el mètode més utilitzat per a identificar aquestes competències és el focus group. En segon lloc, la tècnica Delphi és la tècnica més utilitzada per reunir el consens d'experts sobre quines són les competències principals per al professor en línia entre els que s'indiquen.La proposta metodològica descrita en aquest document consisteix en la creació de 7 grups de discussió en línia, l'objectiu dels quals era identificar les competències formatives dels professors en línia i les dels professos en línia. La llista de competències obtingudes posteriorment es va oferir als experts europeus que participaven en l'aplicació de la tècnica Delphi. A aquests experts se'ls va demanar que ordenessin les competències d'acord amb el seu grau d'importància.Els resultats mostren que els grups de discussió en línia i el mètode Delphi són les metodologies apropiades per a identificar les competències TIC dels professors universitaris en els entorns d'aprenentatge en línia.

Urgences vitales au cabinet médical: implications pour la formation et l'equipement du médecin de premier recours [Life-threatening emergencies at the office: implications for medical education and equipment of the primary care physician].

Every medical practitioner is confronted on a daily basis with emergencies. Among these, life-threatening emergencies can have disastrous consequences in term of morbidity and mortality; 22 cardiac arrests and 10 deaths were reported among the 1,650 Swiss practices during a 5 year period. The occurrence of life-threatening emergencies at the office necessitates, according to the type and place of the practice, the skills of the practitioner and the organization of his practice, the implementation of procedures, equipments (for example room equipped with a defibrillator, respiratory nebulizer, splints, emergency drugs) and specific continuous education programs that should be encouraged and made available to the whole medical corporation.

Using a blog to create and support a Community of Inquiry in Secondary Education

Understanding how blogs can support collaborative learning is a vital concern for researchers and teachers. This paper explores how blogs may be used to support Secondary Education students’ collaborative interaction and how such an interaction process can promote the creation of a Community of Inquiry to enhance critical thinking and meaningful learning. We designed, implemented and evaluated a science case-based project in which fifteen secondary students participated. Students worked in the science blogging project during 4 months. We asked students to be collaboratively engaged in purposeful critical discourse and reflection in their blogs in order to solve collectively science challenges and construct meaning about topics related to Astronomy and Space Sciences. Through student comments posted in the blog, our findings showed that the blog environment afforded the construction of a Community of Inquiry and therefore the creation of an effective online collaborative learning community. In student blog comments, the three presences for collaborative learning took place: cognitive, social, and teaching presence. Moreover, our research found a positive correlation among the three presences –cognitive, social and teaching– of the Community of Inquiry model with the level of learning obtained by the students. We discuss a series of issues that instructors should consider when blogs are incorporated into teaching and learning. We claim that embedded scaffolds to help students to argue and reason their comments in the blog are required to foster blog-supported collaborative learning.

Diversity of the Quality Criteria in Qualitative Research in the Health Sciences: Lessons from a Lexicometric Analysis Composed of 133 Guidelines

A review of health sciences literature shows a substantial increase in qualitative publications. This work incorporates a certain number of research quality guidelines. We present the results of the Alceste® lexicometric analysis, which includes 133 quality grids for qualitative research covering five disciplinary fields of the health sciences: medicine and epidemiology, public health and health education, nursing, health sociology and anthropology, psychiatry and psychology. This analysis helped to cross-check the disciplinary fields with the various objectives assigned to the different criteria in the grids examined. The results obtained with Alceste® show the variability of the objectives sought by the authors of the guidelines. These discrepancies are not directly associated to disciplinary fields, and appear to be more closely linked to different qualitative research conceptualizations within the disciplines, and with essential qualitative research validation criteria. These conceptualizations must be clarified to help users better understand the objectives targeted by the grids, and promote more appreciation for qualitative research in the health sciences.

Quality of Qualitative Research in the Health Sciences : Analysis of the Common Criteria Present in 58 Assessment Guidelines by Expert Users

The number of qualitative research methods has grown substantially over the last twenty years, both in social sciences and, more recently, in the health sciences. This growth came with questions on the quality criteria needed to evaluate this work, and numerous guidelines were published. The latters include many discrepancies though, both in their vocabulary and construction. Many expert evaluators decry the absence of consensual and reliable evaluation tools. The authors present the results of an evaluation of 58 existing guidelines in 4 major health science fields (medicine and epidemiology; nursing and health education; social sciences and public health; psychology / psychiatry, research methods and organization) by expert users (article reviewers, experts allocating funds, editors, etc.). The results propose a toolbox containing 12 consensual criteria with the definitions given by expert users. They also indicate in which disciplinary field each type of criteria is known to be more or less essential. Nevertheless, the authors highlight the limitations of the criteria comparability, as soon as one focuses on their specific definitions. They conclude that each criterion in the toolbox must be explained to come to broader consensus and identify definitions that are consensual to all the fields examined and easily operational.

Creating and organizing an "English class" in primary education: The role of teacher talk in the EFL amd CLIL Classes

Catalonia is a bilingual country where the presence of English in the social context is small; the amount of input received by the primary education pupils is very little and this input mainly comes from the English lessons at school. Consequently, this situation combined with the increasing demand for English and the fact that the new generations want to become communicatively competent in English place the role of English teachers in a relevant position. This research project analyses the role of the English teacher talk; in particular, the study focuses on the teacher’s oral productions in foreign language lessons (EFL) and in content-based lessons (CLIL).

Use of drama techniques as a methodology to teach english in infant education by teachers in Catalonia

L’aprenentatge de la llengua anglesa com a llengua estrangera és una oportunitat que cada vegada més escoles de Catalunya presenten a l’etapa d’educació Infantil. La metodologia utilitzada per introduir aquesta llengua és variada en cada cas. Aquesta recerca es centra en l’estudi de l’ús de tècniques dramàtiques com a metodologia per ensenyar anglès a infantil. A partir d’un qüestionari contestat per 129 professors d’anglès de Catalunya s’ha analitzat la percepció que tenen sobre les tècniques dramàtiques i la seva utilització. Els resultats mostren una manca de coneixement general sobre la metodologia.

Profiles of Second Language Learners in Bilingual Education: A Comparative Study of the Characteristics of Finnish and American Students

The purpose of this comparative study is to profile second language learners by exploring the factors which have an impact on their learning. The subjects come from two different countries: one group comes from Milwaukee, US, and the other from Turku, Finland. The subjects have attended bilingual classes from elementary school to senior high school in their respective countries. In the United States, the subjects (N = 57) started in one elementary school from where they moved on to two high schools in the district. The Finnish subjects (N = 39) attended the same school from elementary to high school. The longitudinal study was conducted during 1994-2004 and combines both qualitative and quantitative research methods. A Pilot Study carried out in 1990-1991 preceded the two subsequent studies that form the core material of this research. The theoretical part of the study focuses first on language policies in the United States and Finland: special emphasis is given to the history, development and current state of bilingual education, and the factors that have affected policy-making in the provision of language instruction. Current language learning theories and models form the theoretical foundation of the research, and underpin the empirical studies. Cognitively-labeled theories are at the forefront, but sociocultural theory and the ecological approach are also accounted for. The research methods consist of questionnaires, compositions and interviews. A combination of statistical methods as well as content analysis were used in the analysis. The attitude of the bilingual learners toward L1 and L2 was generally positive: the subjects enjoyed learning through two languages and were motivated to learn both. The knowledge of L1 and parental support, along with early literacy in L1, facilitated the learning of L2. This was particularly evident in the American subject group. The American subjects’ L2 learning was affected by the attitudes of the learners to the L1 culture and its speakers. Furthermore, the negative attitudes taken by L1 speakers toward L2 speakers and the lack of opportunities to engage in activities in the L1 culture affected the American subjects’ learning of L2, English. The research showed that many American L2 learners were isolated from the L1 culture and were even afraid to use English in everyday communication situations. In light of the research results, a politically neutral linguistic environment, which the Finnish subjects inhabited, was seen to be more favorable for learning. The Finnish subjects were learning L2, English, in a neutral zone where their own attitudes and motivation dictated their learning. The role of L2 as a means of international communication in Finland, as opposed to a means of exercising linguistic power, provided a neutral atmosphere for learning English. In both the American and Finnish groups, the learning of other languages was facilitated when the learner had a good foundation in their L1, and the learning of L1 and L2 were in balance. Learning was also fostered when the learners drew positive experiences from their surroundings and were provided with opportunities to engage in activities where L2 was used.

The use of mixed methods research in interdisciplinary educational journals

Mixed methods research is becoming increasingly important in several scientific areas. The analysis of prevalence rates is a new line of research that has emerged in mixed methods research, and this methodological approach has only been applied carefully in a handful of journals. The purpose of this article was to analyse the prevalence of mixed methods research in interdisciplinary educational journals. Moreover, the main characteristics of the mixed methods articles identified were examined. This study used a mixed methods approach to analyse these aspects. Specifically, a partially mixed sequential equal status multiple-case study design was applied with a development mixed methods purpose. Three educational journals in different disciplines were reviewed from 2005 to 2010 (Academy of Management Learning and Education, Educational Psychology Review, Journal of the Learning Sciences). The findings show differences among the journals in the prevalence rates and characteristics of the mixed methods studies

Las habilidades motrices básicas en educación primaria: aspectos de su desarrollo = Key motor skills in primary education: developmental aspects

The physical education curriculum stresses the importance of improving students’ key motor skills. This idea agrees with the contributions of research into motor development concerning the important role these skills play in child development. In order to facilitate this improvement is essential to know the different basic aspects of how these key motor skills evolve as well as the essential factors related to the characteristics and conditions of educational practice