Developmental care of neonates with CHD is essential for proper neurodevelopment. Measurement of developmental care specific to these neonates is needed to ensure consistent implementation within and across cardiac ICUs. The purpose of this study was to psychometrically test the Developmental Care Scale for Neonates with Congenital Heart Disease, which measures the quality of developmental care provided by bedside nurses to neonates in the cardiac ICU.

Psychometric testing was conducted with 119 cardiac ICU nurses to provide evidence of internal consistency reliability and construct validity. Participants were predominantly young (median = 32 years), white (90%) females (93%) with bachelor’s degrees (78%) and a median experience in the cardiac ICU of 7 years.

Evidence of internal consistency reliability (α =.89) was provided with corrected item-total correlations ranging from .31 to .77. Exploratory factor analysis provided evidence of construct validity as a unidimensional scale, as well as a multidimensional scale consisting of four subscales: creating the external environment, assessment of family well-being, caregiver activities toward the neonate, and basic human needs.

Evidence of reliability and validity of the 31-item Developmental Care Scale for Neonates with Congenital Heart Disease was established with nurses caring for neonates in the cardiac ICU. This instrument will serve as a valuable outcome measure tasked with improving developmental care performance and makes it possible to identify relationships between developmental care performance and neonatal neurodevelopmental outcomes in future research.

Neuroprotective developmental care is paramount for neonates with CHD. Although several developmental care scales exist, either they have not been psychometrically tested or were not designed for the needs of neonates with CHD. The purpose of this study is to describe item development and content validity testing of the developmental care scale for neonates with CHD, which measures five domains of the developmental care provided by bedside nurses to neonates in the cardiac ICU: sleep, pain and stress management, activities of daily living, family-centred care, and environment.

For this cross-sectional study, items were developed based on clinical expertise and the core measures for developmental care. In this study, seven experts provided content validity ratings of items for total scale and subscale fit and relevance. A content validity index was used to determine item retention. Item modifications and additions were based on expert feedback.

Expert ratings provided evidence of content validity on 24 of 53 items within the five domains of developmental care. A total of 24 items were deleted, and five items with low content validity ratings were retained, because of conceptual importance, and revised. An additional 11 items were added based on expert qualitative feedback.

This study provided evidence of content validity of the developmental care scale for neonates with CHD by researchers and bedside nurses caring for these neonates. Further psychometric testing is warranted to provide evidence of internal consistency reliability, construct validity, and to identify variables that influence quality of the developmental care.

Chylothorax after paediatric cardiac surgery incurs significant morbidity; however, a detailed understanding that does not rely on single-centre or administrative data is lacking. We described the present clinical epidemiology of postoperative chylothorax and evaluated variation in rates among centres with a multicentre cohort of patients treated in cardiac ICU.

This was a retrospective cohort study using prospectively collected clinical data from the Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium registry. All postoperative paediatric cardiac surgical patients admitted from October, 2013 to September, 2015 were included. Risk factors for chylothorax and association with outcomes were evaluated using multivariable logistic or linear regression models, as appropriate, accounting for within-centre clustering using generalised estimating equations.

A total of 4864 surgical hospitalisations from 15 centres were included. Chylothorax occurred in 3.8% (n=185) of hospitalisations. Case-mix-adjusted chylothorax rates varied from 1.5 to 7.6% and were not associated with centre volume. Independent risk factors for chylothorax included age <1 year, non-Caucasian race, single-ventricle physiology, extracardiac anomalies, longer cardiopulmonary bypass time, and thrombosis associated with an upper-extremity central venous line (all p<0.05). Chylothorax was associated with significantly longer duration of postoperative mechanical ventilation, cardiac ICU and hospital length of stay, and higher in-hospital mortality (all p<0.001).

Chylothorax after cardiac surgery in children is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. A five-fold variation in chylothorax rates was observed across centres. Future investigations should identify centres most adept at preventing and managing chylothorax and disseminate best practices.

Clinical databases in congenital and paediatric cardiac care provide a foundation for quality improvement, research, policy evaluations and public reporting. Structured audits verifying data integrity allow database users to be confident in these endeavours. We report on the initial audit of the Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium (PC4) clinical registry.

Participants reviewed the entire registry to determine key fields for audit, and defined major and minor discrepancies for the audited variables. In-person audits at the eight initial participating centres were conducted during a 12-month period. The data coordinating centre randomly selected intensive care encounters for review at each site. The audit consisted of source data verification and blinded chart abstraction, comparing findings by the auditors with those entered in the database. We also assessed completeness and timeliness of case submission. Quantitative evaluation of completeness, accuracy, and timeliness of case submission is reported.

We audited 434 encounters and 29,476 data fields. The aggregate overall accuracy was 99.1%, and the major discrepancy rate was 0.62%. Across hospitals, the overall accuracy ranged from 96.3 to 99.5%, and the major discrepancy rate ranged from 0.3 to 0.9%; seven of the eight hospitals submitted >90% of cases within 1 month of hospital discharge. There was no evidence for selective case omission.

Based on a rigorous audit process, data submitted to the PC4 clinical registry appear complete, accurate, and timely. The collaborative will maintain ongoing efforts to verify the integrity of the data to promote science that advances quality improvement efforts.

The depth and breadth of problems related to depressive symptomatology and optimal treatment outcomes, including medication treatment adherence, have long been documented in the literature. Missing are clear explanations as to what factors and patient characteristics may account for lack of medication treatment adherence.

The two objectives of the current study were to examine the predictive strength of depression, patient characteristics, and patient attachment style regarding medication treatment adherence and to consider the extent to which attachment styles mediate the relation between depression and medication treatment adherence.

Participants in the present study were 237 racially diverse American primary care patients with a diagnosis of hypertension who were participants in a clinical trial. Depression, patient characteristics, attachment style, and medication treatment adherence were assessed.

Partly consistent with our four hypotheses, the following results were found: (a) Black American, younger, never married, and poorer patients had lower medication treatment adherence (b) depression was significantly associated with lower self-reported medication adherence; (c) insecure–dismissing attachment style was related to lower medication adherence; and (d) insecure–dismissing attachment style mediates the relation between depression and medication treatment adherence by exacerbating the negative association.

Physicians and other primary care providers should consider how depressive symptomatology, patient characteristics, and attachment style may inform the treatment plans they put forward and the extent to which patients may adhere to those treatment plans.

Psychosocial interventions may contribute to reducing the burden of mental disorders in low- and middle-income (LAMI) countries by improving social functioning, but the evidence has not been systematically reviewed.

Systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect of psychosocial interventions on social functioning in people with depression and schizophrenia in LAMI countries.

Studies were identified through database searching up to March 2011. Randomised controlled trials were included if they compared the intervention group with a control group receiving placebo or treatment as usual. Random effects meta-analyses were performed separately for depressive disorders and schizophrenia and for each intervention type.

Of the studies that met the inclusion criteria (n=24), 21 had sufficient data to include in the meta-analysis. Eleven depression trials showed good evidence for a moderate positive effect of psychosocial interventions on social functioning (standardised mean difference (SMD)=0.46, 95% CI 0.24-0.69, n=4009) and ten schizophrenia trials showed a large positive effect on social functioning (SMD = 0.84, 95% CI 0.49-1.19, n=1671), although seven of these trials were of low quality. Excluding these did not substantially affect the size or direction of effect, although the precision of the estimate was substantially reduced (SMD = 0.89, 95% CI 0.05-1.72, n=863).

Psychosocial interventions delivered in out-patient and primary care settings are effective at improving social functioning in people with depression and should be incorporated into efforts to scale up services. For schizophrenia there is an absence of evidence from high-quality trials and the generalisabilty of the findings is limited by the over-representation of trials conducted in populations of hospital patients in China. More high-quality trials of psychosocial interventions for schizophrenia delivered in out-patient settings are needed.