Publications by authors named "Kristof Eeckloo"

Background: Head nurses have diverse job content, including operational management, human resources management, patient care, and unit-level policy development. They act as leaders, coordinators, managers, monitors, liaisons, and negotiators, and thus require broad competencies. Measuring these competencies is challenging because of the absence of integrated instruments that measure multiple intertwined competencies.

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Introduction: Patient participation and safety are pivotal in healthcare quality, internationally acknowledged for enhancing health services. This study examines the correlation between two assessment tools, the Patient Participation Culture Tool (PACT) and the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSPSC), using retrospective data from 2014 to 2021 METHOD: For the main analysis, dimensional scores of the HSPSC and domain scores of the PACT were aggregated according to hospital and specific wards. In a second step, we used aggregated scores by hospital and profession.

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Aim: To explore factors influencing the implementation of a nursing care delivery model in a hospital setting.

Design: A qualitative evidence synthesis with a thematic synthesis was conducted.

Methods: The search string consisted of four 'cluster topics': (1) nursing, (2) care delivery models, (3) hospital setting, (4) qualitative and mixed methods designs.

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Background: Head nurses face challenging job content while executing their roles as nurses, managers and leaders. However, no European compilation for portraying head nurses' job content within a hospital setting is available.

Objectives: This study aimed to develop and validate a compilation that portrays the job content of head nurses employed in European hospitals.

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Technology plays a growing role in allowing aging persons to live independently. However, it is often difficult to motivate aging persons to use these new technologies. Using 182 dyads of aging persons and their primary family caregiver, this study investigates how family members' beliefs about the capabilities of the aging person are associated with the aging person's engagement in using healthcare technology-a phenomenon known as the Pygmalion effect.

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Background: Palliative care is becoming an essential component of healthcare, but there is insufficient research on how integration across different levels of care (micro, meso, and macro) is realized in practice. Without such integration, care may become fragmented, leading to suboptimal patient outcomes. While many studies have explored palliative care models, there is a gap in understanding how priorities for integrated care align across these levels within healthcare ecosystems.

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Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic required a significant response from global healthcare systems. In Belgium, the crisis began in March 2020, prompting quick action in hospitals. This study assesses the effectiveness of Belgium's hospital emergency plans and compares them with global standards for potential enhancements.

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Introduction: Involving mental healthcare patients in nursing handover practices seems a promising method for increasing patient participation, empowerment, and shared decision-making but is hardly found in practice.

Method: An explorative review on bedside handovers in mental health care was conducted. Searched databases included CINHAHL, Web of Science, PubMed, and Embase.

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Aim: To synthesize and assess the effectiveness of different care delivery models in a hospital setting, taking into account patient- and nurse-related outcomes.

Design: A systematic review with narrative synthesis in which a comparison was made between different care delivery models.

Methods: The search string consisted of four clusters: 'nursing', 'care delivery models', 'hospital setting' and 'quantitative research designs'.

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Background: Critical care nurses (CCNs) around the globe face other health challenges compared to their peers in general hospital nursing. Moreover, the nursing workforce grapples with persistent staffing shortages. In light of these circumstances, developing a sustainable work environment is imperative to retain the current nursing workforce.

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To deal with the upcoming challenges and complexity of the nursing profession, it is deemed important to reflect on our current organization of care. However, before starting to rethink the organization of nursing care, an overview of important elements concerning nursing care organization, more specifically nursing models, is necessary. The aim of this study was to conduct a mapping review, accompanied by an evidence map to map the existing literature, to map the field of knowledge on a meta-level and to identify current research gaps concerning nursing models in a hospital setting.

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Top-down and externally imposed quality requirements can lead to improvement but do not seem as sustainable as intended. There is a need for a quality model that intrinsically motivates healthcare professionals to contribute to quality and safe care in hospitals. This study shows how a quality model that matches the identity and the quality vision of the organization was developed.

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Objectives: Bedside handovers have the potential to provide opportunities to increase patient involvement in mental health care. However, limited research has been conducted on this subject.

Methods: In this study, we investigate the suitability of experience-based co-design as a method for designing bedside handover in mental health care.

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Objective: To evaluate the agreement between nurse and dietician nutritional risk assessments when using the Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS2002) protocol, and to explore the relations of falsely labeling patients 'not at risk' for malnutrition and the screening time difference (STD) between nurse and dietician with the length of stay (LoS).

Methods: Included are all patients hospitalized in a tertiary care center between January 2017 and December 2019 and screened for malnutrition by both a nurse and a dietician. The inter-rater reliability is evaluated using Cohen's Kappa.

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Background: The last decade has seen a considerable increase in the number of mobile health (mHealth) apps in everyday life. These mHealth apps have the potential to significantly improve the well-being of chronically ill patients. However, behavioral engagement with mHealth apps remains low.

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Background: National initiatives launched to improve the quality of care have grown exponentially over the last decade. Public reporting, accreditation and governmental inspection form the basis for quality in Flemish (Belgian) hospitals. Due to the lack of evidence for these national initiatives and the questions concerning their sustainability, our research aims to identify cornerstones of a sustainable national quality policy for acute-care hospitals based on international expert opinion.

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Background: Hospital accreditation is a popular and widely used quality control and improvement instrument. Despite potential benefits, ques-tions are raised whether it constitutes appropriate use of hospitals' limited financial resources.

Objective: This study aims to calculate the cost of preparing for and undergoing a first and second accreditation by the Joint Commission International or Qualicor Europe in acute-care hospitals.

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Purpose: As more complex surgery is performed in 1-day admissions there is a growing demand for appropriate postoperative follow-up. A digital patient portal (DPP) is a promising tool to support this and increase patients' quality of recovery. However, both patients and health care professionals have not fully embraced this eHealth technology.

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Article Synopsis
  • Malnutrition is a significant yet often overlooked issue in hospitals, with studies showing that 23.6% of patients are at risk, which leads to longer hospital stays and increased mortality rates.
  • The research evaluated data from over 55,000 patients to analyze the effects of malnutrition on patient outcomes and the financial impact of improved screening and coding processes.
  • Optimizing the management of malnutrition can lead to better patient care and increase hospital reimbursements by better documenting malnutrition severity and related diagnoses.
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The growing complexity of cancer care necessitates collaboration among different professionals. This interprofessional collaboration improves cancer care delivery and outcomes. Treatment decision-making within the context of a multidisciplinaire team meeting (MDTMs) may be seen as a particular form of interprofessional collaboration.

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Background: Collaboration between policymakers, patients and healthcare workers in hospital quality of care policy setting can improve the integration of new initiatives. The aim of this study was to quantify preferences for various characteristics of a future quality policy in a broad group of stakeholders.

Materials And Methods: 450 policymakers, clinicians, nurses, patient representatives and hospital board members in Flanders (Belgium) participated in five discrete choice experiments (DCE) on quality control, quality improvement, inspection, patient incidents and transparency.

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Background: Quality improvement (QI) initiatives such as accreditation, public reporting, inspection and pay-for-performance are increasingly being implemented globally. In Flanders, Belgium, a government policy for acute-care hospitals incorporates aforementioned initiatives. Currently, questions are raised on the sustainability of the present policy.

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Handovers between nurses are a significant cause of communication problems and possible consumer safety issues. A potential solution for both problems is the nursing handover involving consumers, in which the consumer is present at the time of handover. This practice invites consumers to be more involved in their care process and supports a recovery-oriented practice.

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Background: Patient-centred care has been recognised as vital for today's healthcare quality. This type of care puts patients at the centre, contributing to positive patient outcomes such as patient autonomy. Empirical research comparing nurses' and patients' perceptions of the support and provision of patient-centred care is limited and focuses solely on nurses and patients working and staying on surgical wards.

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