Susan M Jack

McMaster University | McMaster · School of Nursing

Purpose To explore new parents' experiences with web-based videoconferencing as a mechanism of offering postpartum virtual support groups. Study Design and Methods Virtual support sessions and individual interviews were conducted to explore participants' experiences with virtual postpartum groups. Results Thirty-seven parents participated in seve...

Postpartum support for new parents can normalize experiences, increase confidence, and lead to positive health outcomes. While in-person gatherings may be the preferred choice, not all parents can or want to join parenting groups in person. Online asynchronous chat spaces for parents have increased over the past 10 years, especially during the COVI...

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has had a unique impact on the mental health and well-being of pregnant individuals and parents of young children. However, the impact of COVID-19-related stress during pregnancy on early child biopsychosocial development, remains unclear. The COVID-19 Wellbeing and Stress Study will: (1) investigate the impact of...

Purpose of Review To identify and map the characteristics and outcomes of programs designed to prepare siblings for their future roles with their sibling with a neurodevelopmental disability. Recent Findings Existing programs to support siblings of individuals with a neurodevelopmental disability often focus on providing information about neurodev...

http://hdl.handle.net/11375/28324

A well-recognized gap exists between findings from public health research and their use in public health practice to improve outcomes. The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified implementation research as vital to improving the adaptation and dissemination of public health interventions into real-world settings. Implementation research enco...

Aim Population-level prevention initiatives are the cornerstone of public health practice. However, despite this normative practice, sexual health programming within public health has not utilized this approach to the same extent as other public health programs. Understanding requirements to put a population-level approach into practice is needed....

Background: Understanding the impact of maternal health behaviours and social conditions on childhood nutrition is important to inform strategies to promote health during childhood. Objective: To describe how maternal health sociodemographic factors (e.g., socioeconomic status, education), health behaviours (e.g., diet), and traditional health c...

Pregnancy and parenting in adolescence and the transition home following the hospitalization of an infant in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are two relatively complex phenomena; and whilst each have been consistently explored within the relevant literature, little is understood about the care required when they intersect. Using interpretiv...

Training in research methods is important for improvement of healthcare delivery and population outcomes. Graduate programs of public health play a critical role in offering such education to current and future healthcare professionals as well as entry level learners with no experience in the field. A key skill across all fields of research methods...

Background Children of girls and young women experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage are at risk of maltreatment and associated health and developmental problems. Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) is an early intervention program designed to improve child and maternal health outcomes. The effectiveness of NFP is being evaluated in British Columbia (BC...

This invited review introduces the principles of qualitative health research (QHR) to the fields of developmental medicine and child neurology to facilitate the conduct of applied qualitative research. It provides practical guidance on how to write a study purpose statement aligned with the foci of QHR and then articulate an overarching research qu...

Applied health research methods are evolving to meet the demands of increasingly complex health research needs. Qualitative health research, focused on individual perspectives of health, wellness, illness, and recovery, has emerged as a unique sub-discipline of this field. With distinct foci, methods, and rules, qualitative health research has the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in elevated mental health problems for pregnant women. Effective coping strategies likely reduce the impact of COVID-19 on mental health. This study aimed to (1) understand how COVID-19 stressors are related to different coping strategies and (2) identify whether coping strategies act as mechanisms accounting for...

Background: As children and adolescents with a chronic health condition (CHC) age and transition to adulthood, many will increasingly assume responsibilities for the management of their healthcare. For individuals with CHCs, family members including siblings often provide significant and varied supports. There are a range of resources in Canada to...

Background Children and youth with neurodisabilities may experience different challenges during their transition to adulthood, such as pursuing postsecondary education, finding employment, and navigating a new adult health care system. Families, including siblings, have an important role in the process for when youth with neurodisabilities are tran...

Aims: To evaluate the effect of an intimate partner violence intervention education component on nurses' attitudes in addressing intimate partner violence; complementary aims included understanding nurses' perceptions of the education and how it influenced their attitudes and confidence to address intimate partner violence in practice. Design: A...

Thematic analysis is a widely cited method for analyzing qualitative data. As a team of graduate students, we sought to explore methods of data analysis that were grounded in qualitative philosophies and aligned with our orientation as applied health researchers. We identified reflexive thematic analysis, developed by Braun and Clarke, as an interp...

Introduction Siblings share a lifelong bond in their relationship, and they may choose to provide support to their brother or sister with a neurodisability. Previous reviews summarised programmes that only focused on the behavioural, emotional and psychological outcomes of the siblings. There is a need to synthesise existing evidence and enhance o...

Rationale, aims and objectives The successful conduct of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) is often impeded by recruitment difficulties. Community hospitals see large volumes of patients but rarely participate in trials. The objective of this study was to explore how research stakeholders identify and understand the contextual, organizational, rese...

Given the significant health burden of childhood obesity, it is imperative that effect interventions be better understood. When evaluating obesity prevention efforts, one must recognize the contextual factors which drive the disproportionate risk of obesity between populations. This systematic review sought to understand if programs aimed at obesit...

Introduction Decision analysis is a quantitative approach to decision making that could bridge the gap between decisions based solely on evidence and the unique values and preferences of individual patients, a feature especially important when existing evidence cannot support clear recommendations and there is a close balance between harms and bene...

Background Despite a range of interventions available to treat mental health symptoms experienced by youth with a history of child sexual abuse (CSA), limited empirical work has examined practitioner delivery of these interventions in real-world practice. Objective This paper aimed to qualitatively explore the delivery of trauma-based intervention...

Qualitative research, in the methods employed and topics explored, is emotionally demanding. While it is common for ethics protocols to protect research participants from emotional distress, the personal impact of emotional work on the researcher can often go unaddressed. Qualitative researchers, in particular graduate student researchers studying...

The purpose of this analysis was to understand public health nurses’ experiences in preventing and addressing suspected child maltreatment within the context of home visiting. The principles of interpretive description guided study decisions and data were generated from interviews with 47 public health nurses. Data were analyzed using reflexive the...

Qualitative health research plays a central role in exploring individuals’ experiences and perceptions of wellness, illness, and healthcare services. Visual tools are increasingly used for data elicitation. An ecomap is a visual tool that applies ecosystems theory to human communities and relationships to provide an illustration of the quality of r...

Background : Pregnancy is a period of elevated risk for mental health difficulties, which are likely exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to understand the impact of COVID-19 on mental health and identify risk and protective factors during pregnancy. Methods : Participants were 303 pregnant individuals from Ontario, Canada. Depres...

Aims To synthesise the current, global evidence‐informed guidance that supports nurses and midwives to recognise and respond to intimate partner violence (IPV), and how these practices can be translated from face‐to‐face encounters to care that is delivered through telehealth. Background COVID‐19‐related social and physical distancing measures inc...

Background: Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) involves public health nurses providing frequent home visits from early pregnancy until children reach age 2 years, focusing on first-time parents experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage. Our aim was to evaluate NFP's effectiveness in improving child and maternal health. Methods: We conducted an analysi...

Quality care for individuals and families during periods of transition is one of the major issues facing health care systems and providers today. The transition-home from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) as experienced by adolescent mothers is poorly understood-placing young mothers and their infants at risk of poor outcomes following NICU d...

Background Nurse turnover is a significant issue and complex challenge for all healthcare sectors and is exacerbated by a global nursing shortage. Nurse-Family Partnership is a community health program for first-time pregnant and parenting girls and young women living in situations of social and economic disadvantage. In Canada, this program is del...

Background Youth with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often require additional supports during the period of transition to from high school to post‐secondary education or career paths. Peer mentorship programs create opportunities to support youth with ASD in identifying their personal, academic, and career goals after graduating from high school...

Generating rich data from interviews for a qualitative study can be difficult to operationalize; especially when difficulties establishing rapport, power imbalances, and participant factors threaten the interview process and quality of data. The aim of this methods article is to (a) discuss the value of incorporating visual elicitation tools or tas...

Background: Effective strategies for participant retention are critical in health research to ensure validity, generalizability and efficient use of resources. Yet standardized guidelines for planning and reporting on retention efforts have been lacking. As with randomized controlled trial (RCT) and systematic review (SR) protocols, retention prot...

Psychiatric disorders and substance use disorders commonly co-occur and are major public health concerns given the morbidity and mortality associated with them. Globally, cannabis is among the most commonly used drugs, and cannabis use frequently begins in adolescence or emerging adulthood, both important periods of development and periods in which...

Evidence-based nursing is a process that requires nurses to have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to critically reflect on their practice, articulate structured questions, and then reliably search for research evidence to address the questions posed. Many types of research evidence are used to inform decisions in health care and findings from...

Background: Nurse turnover is a significant issue and complex challenge for all sectors of healthcare and is exacerbated by a global nursing shortage. Nurse-Family Partnership is a community health program for first-time pregnant and parenting girls and young women living in situations of social and economic disadvantage, delivered exclusively by p...

Purpose: Although many young mothers (aged <21 years) are exposed to multiple adversities that increase their risk for mental illness, prevalence data are largely limited self-report questionnaires estimating only the prevalence of postpartum depression. Gaining a greater understanding of the burden of a broader range of common mental illnesses af...

Background: Increasingly, there is a trend toward the use of left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) for treating advanced heart failure, as both bridge-to-transplant therapy and destination therapy. Living with an LVAD profoundly influences patients' lives. Only a few study authors investigated the experience of people with abdominal LVADs, and n...

Nurse-Family Partnership is a targeted public health intervention program designed to improve child and maternal health through nurse home visiting. In the context of a process evaluation, we posed the question: “In what ways do Canadian public health nurses explain their experiences with delivering this program across different geographical enviro...

In the first part of this article, we introduced methodological issues associated with study design, research questions, contexts, sampling, and recruiting for qualitative health research studies. Here, in this second part of the article, we continue providing health researchers with information on how to design a qualitative health research study...

Background: Indigenous people in Canada carry a disproportionate burden of obesity and obesity-related diseases compared with non-Indigenous Canadians, which could be related to intergenerational trauma exposures. Implementing effective health promotion strategies to improve nutrition and physical activity behaviors during early childhood could be...

Background: Nurse turnover is a significant issue and complex challenge for all sectors of healthcare and is exacerbated by a global nursing shortage. Nurse-Family Partnership is a community health program for first-time pregnant and parenting girls and young women living in situations of social and economic disadvantage, delivered exclusively by p...

Although incorporating cost-considerations during healthcare decision-making is increasingly important to American patients and physicians, content related to these constructs is not routinely included in medical education. As a result, physicians are ill-equipped to consider costs. This study sought input from practicing physicians on perceived de...

In Reply The IPV intervention evaluated¹ was complex; it combined multiple evidence-informed IPV strategies, followed by guidance for nurse home visitors to implement individually tailored plans of care that were informed by women’s health needs and that took into consideration their level of danger and readiness to address safety. As noted by Drs...

Lay abstract: What is already known about the topic? Parents of children with autism often learn about their child's autism before diagnosis and can spend long periods seeking care (including assessment) before receiving a diagnosis. Meanwhile, parents' readiness to engage in care at this early stage can vary from parent to parent. What this paper...

In this first part of the article, we aim to provide health researchers with an understanding of how to design a qualitative health research study, including: topic identification, design selection, and engagement in reflexivity. We offer practical guidance for writing an overarching question using a novel framework that helps develop a clearly art...

Background: Maternal exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage increases the risk of child injuries and subsequent child developmental and mental health problems - particularly for young mothers. To inform early intervention planning, this research therefore aimed to describe the health and social adversities experienced by a cohort of girls and youn...

Background The Two-Eyed Seeing approach has been advocated for use in research with Indigenous people as it creates a space for Western and Indigenous ways of knowing to come together using the best of both worldviews to aid understanding and solve problems. Foundational literature presents its use as a promising way to promote ethical exchanges be...

Aims and objectives: To develop an understanding of how Indigenous mothers experience selecting and using health services for their infants can assist nurses in improving their access to care. This understanding may ultimately lead to improved health outcomes for Indigenous infants and their families. Background: Access to acute care services is...

Background: The shift in postgraduate medical training towards a competency-based medical education framework has inspired research focused on medical educator competencies. This research has rarely considered the importance of the learning environment in terms of both setting and specialty-specific factors. The current study attempted to fill thi...

Background: With the recent legalization of nonmedical cannabis in Canada, it is important to document previous associations between cannabis use and major depressive episode and suicidal ideation, as well as the extent to which these associations have changed over time. Methods: This study uses pooled data from the 2002 and 2012 Canadian Commun...

Within the context of evidence-informed decision making, health care professionals are critical consumers of research evidence. Clinician scientists, including nurse researchers, play a central role in producing this research evidence to inform and improve health practice, education, and policy. Health research is commonly conducted within one of t...

Objectives: The aim of the study was to develop a Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) summary of findings (SoF) table format that displays the critical information from a network meta-analysis (NMA). Study design and setting: We applied a user experience model for data analysis based on four rounds of semis...

Background Pregnant girls/young women and new mothers living in situations of social and economic disadvantage are at increased risk for poor health. Rural living may compound marginalization and create additional challenges for young mothers. Public health nurses (PHNs) delivering the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) to mothers living in rural commu...

Purpose: Access to primary care can help mitigate the negative impacts of social inequity that disproportionately affect Indigenous people in Canada. Despite this, however, Indigenous people cite difficulties accessing care. This study seeks to understand how Indigenous mothers—typically responsible for the health of their infants—living in urban a...

Importance Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a public health problem with significant adverse consequences for women and children. Past evaluations of a nurse home visitation program for pregnant women and first-time mothers experiencing social and economic disadvantage have not consistently shown reductions in IPV. Objective To determine the eff...

Purpose: Promoting a child’s healthy growth and development in the first six years of life is critical to their later health and well-being. Indigenous infants experience poorer health outcomes than non-Indigenous infants, yet little is understood about how parents access and use health services to optimize their infants’ growth and development. Ex...

Purpose: Parents’ attendance, participation and engagement are thought to be critical components of children’s rehabilitation services; however, these elements of therapy are typically under-investigated. The purpose of this study was to develop a substantive theory of parents’ attendance, participation and engagement in children’s rehabilitation s...

Purpose: A family-centered approach to developmental rehabilitation services emphasizes that children grow and develop in their family environment, and that parents are an integral part of therapy. The purpose of this study was to develop a theory of how parents attend, participate and engage in their child’s developmental rehabilitation services....

Background Healthcare costs are increasing in the USA and Canada and a substantial portion of health spending is devoted to services that do not improve health outcomes. Efforts to reduce waste by adopting evidence-based clinical practice guideline recommendations have had limited success. We sought insight into improving health system efficiency t...

Objective: We studied decision making regarding inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) in preterm infants with Pulmonary Hypertension (PH). Study design: We asked members of the AAP-Society of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine and Division-Chiefs to select from three management options- initiate iNO, engage parents in shared decision making or not consider iNO in...

Parents of children with autism assume substantial responsibility for navigating intervention to address autism-related concerns, including involvement in therapy. Little is known, from the perspective of these parents, regarding how to best engage and support them in this navigating process as it evolves over the child’s development. In this artic...

Purpose: To identify and synthesise patient-identified factors that influence satisfaction with outpatient musculoskeletal physiotherapy (O-MSK). Methods: A systematic, qualitative meta-summary and meta-synthesis was conducted by accessing six electronic databases: CINAHL, Embase, MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and Wiley Online Library, from i...

Background: Practice variation is common and may represent variation in values and preferences in the setting of limited evidence regarding optimal care or indicate deficiencies in care. Methods: We administered a case-based survey to cardiologists in the United States and Canada. Participants selected their preferred management option and then rat...

Abstract Background: Depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders are leading causes of morbidity worldwide. The most commonly used illicit substance is cannabis and there is some evidence that the association between cannabis use and poor mental health is more pronounced among females compared with males. This analysis examines sex differences...

Background: Despite soaring healthcare costs, patient outcomes are suboptimal in the USA. Efforts to limit healthcare costs and improve quality of care have had limited success. An improved understanding of factors that influence clinical decision-making may provide insight into optimizing the quality and costs of care. The process of healthcare de...

Purpose: To develop a descriptive system for a glaucoma-specific preference-based health-related quality of life (HRQoL) instrument: the Health Utility for Glaucoma (HUG-5). Methods: The descriptive system was developed in two stages: item identification and item selection. A systematic literature review of HRQoL assessment of glaucoma was condu...

In Canada, Indigenous infants experience significant health disparities when compared to non-Indigenous infants, including significantly higher rates of birth complications and infant mortality rates. The use of primary health care is one way to improve health outcomes; however, Indigenous children may use health services less often than non-Indige...

Introduction Adverse early experiences are associated with long-lasting disruptions in physiology, development and health. These experiences may be ‘biologically embedded’ into molecular and genomic systems that determine later expressions of vulnerability. Most studies to date have not examined whether preventive interventions can potentially reve...

Infertility and its associated treatments, including in vitro fertilization (IVF), can have a profound impact on the emotional health and well-being of women desiring to become mothers. Researchers have measured the impact of infertility and described the experience of infertility and its treatment, leaving the rich descriptions of the IVF experien...

Children exposed to intimate partner violence (CE-IPV) are at increased risk for later health and social difficulties. To date, studies have primarily focused on CE-IPV as a unitary construct; this may lead to the mistaken assumption that all subtypes of CE-IPV (i.e., exposure to direct or indirect physical abuse, or exposure to emotional abuse) ar...

Historically, health research involving Indigenous peoples has been fraught with problems, including researchers not addressing Indigenous research priorities and then subsequently often failing to utilize culturally appropriate methods. Given this historical precedence, some Indigenous populations may be reluctant to participate in research projec...

Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive qualitative study was to understand the range of adult patients' views on whether and how to discuss the issue of SUDEP with patients with epilepsy and to clarify the optimal timing and formulation of this information. Method: The principles of fundamental qualitative description informed all design decis...