Information needs of older people with heart failure： listening to their own voice

According to a large-scale census in 2000, there were approximately 4,000,000 patients with heart failure （HF） aged between 35 and 74 years in China. Patient education shows its importance and essentiality in controlling the disease by improving the self-care abilities of patients,t21 However, a shortened period of hospitalization compromises the effectiveness and efficacy of the education. It is therefore suggested that the information needs of patients with HF should be simultaneously addressed to make education more appropriate and tailored.

Information Needs and Self-Care Practices of Diabetic Patients in Mbala, Northern Province, Zambia

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic disease that occurs either when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin or when the body cannot effectively use the insulin it produces. It is “a group of metabolic diseases characterized by hyperglycemia resulting from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action or both” manifested by carbohydrates, fat and protein metabolism abnormality. If untreated high blood sugar can damage the nerves, eyes, kidneys, and other organs. The purpose of this study was to assess the information needs and self-care practice of Diabetic Patients in Mbala, Northern Province Zambia. Methods: This was an analytical cross-sectional study where 105 respondents aged 18 years and above participated in the study. Participants were randomly selected. A structured interview schedule and a check list were used to collect data. Statistics Package for Social Sciences computer software package version 23.0 was used to analyze data. Chi square and fisher’s exact tests were used to test the significance of the association between Knowledge of Diabetes Mellitus, attitude towards self-care practices, self-care practices among Diabetic patients and the need for information among Diabetic patients. A 95% confidence interval and P value of 0.05 were used to ascertain the degree of significance. Multi-variate binary logistic regression model to determine predictors of self-care practices and need for information was also used. Result: On analyzing the dependent variables, more than half (61.9%), had high need for information and three quarters (85.7%) of respondents had poor self-care practices. Slightly more than half (58.1%) had high knowledge levels majority (78.1%), had a negative attitude. Significant associations were found P Conclusion: Negative attitudes and lack of information among Diabetic patients were the main reasons associated with poor self-care practices. Particular attention should therefore be given to ensuring that Diabetic patients are given adequate information on Diabetes self-care in order to improve the quality of life.

A survey of the information needs of visually impaired library users

Purpose:The research aims to investigate the information needs of visually impaired library users in China in order to increase our understanding of these users and help the Chinese public libraries improve their services for them.Design/methodology/approach:A questionnaire survey was used to study the library users’ information needs.Eleven large public libraries in different areas of China,which were pioneers in implementing services for visually impaired people,were chosen to conduct the survey.Data analysis was based on 97 valid questionnaires retrieved.Findings:Radio and television were still the preferred sources of information for visually impaired users.In information seeking,they had a strong preference for obtaining information in the most convenient way,and accessing a vast amount of information,which was updated quickly.They paid more attention to the information closely related to their work and life.Their purposes of seeking information were mainly for learning,relaxation and intercommunication.Visually impaired users felt some barriers in their access to library services such as a lack of time or a sighted companion who can come along for the trip to the library.Moreover,it was difficult for them to use the Internet to search for information,because many websites do not support the auxiliary software designed especially for visually impaired users or the websites offer only a paid subscriber service.Research limitations:A majority of the respondents were young and middle-aged people and engaged in work.The sample size needs to be enlarged,and different groups of users such as old people and students should be included to yield more useful results.Practical implications:The survey results provide insights into the information needs of the Chinese visually impaired library users.Meanwhile,the research can serve as a reference source for the future studies of the service for visually impaired library users.Originality/value:So far,few studies were conducted to investigate the information needs of visually impaired library users in China.

Inflammatory bowel disease patient profiles are related to specific information needs: A nationwide survey

BACKGROUND Inflammatory bowel diseases(IBD) is a heterogenous, lifelong disease, with an unpredictable and potentially progressive course, that may impose negative psychosocial impact on patients.While informed patients with chronic illness have improved adherence and outcomes, previous research showed that the majority of IBD patients receive insufficient information regarding their disease.The large heterogeneity of IBD and the wide range of information topics makes a one-size fits all knowledge resource overwhelming and cumbersome.We hypothesized that different patient profiles may have different and specific information needs, the identification of which will allow building personalized computer-based information resources in the future.AIM To evaluate the scope of disease-related knowledge among IBD patients and determine whether different patient profiles drive unique information needs.METHODS We conducted a nationwide survey addressing hospital-based IBD clinics.A Total of 571 patients completed a 28-item questionnaire, rating the amount of information received at time of diagnosis and the importance of information, as perceived by participants, for a newly diagnosed patient, and for the participants themselves, at current time.We performed an exploratory factor analysis of the crude responses aiming to create a number of representative knowledge domains(factors), and analyzed the responses of a set of 15 real-life patient profiles generated by the study team.RESULTS Participants gave low ratings for the amount of information received at disease onset(averaging 0.9/5) and high ratings for importance, both for the newly diagnosed patients(mean 4.2/5) and for the participants themselves at current time(mean 3.5/5).Factor analysis grouped responses into six informationdomains.The responses of selected profiles, compared with the rest of the participants, yielded significant associations(defined as a difference in rating of >0.5 points with a P < 0.05).Patients with active disease showed a higher interest in work-disability, stress-coping, and therapy-complications.Patients newly diagnosed at age > 50, and patients with long-standing disease(> 10 years)showed less interest in work-disability.Patients in remission with mesalamine or no therapy showed less interest in all domains except for nutrition and long-term complications.CONCLUSION We demonstrate unmet patient information needs.Analysis of various patient profiles revealed associations with specific information topics, paving the way for building patient-tailored information resources.

Information Needs of Breast Cancer Patients at Cancer Diseases Hospital, Lusaka, Zambia

Background: Breast cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide and the second most common among Zambian women. Breast cancer diagnosis being a stressful experience, causes psychological and emotional disruption that can be abated by meeting information needs of the affected patients. In light of the escalating cases of Breast cancer among the Zambian women, the study examined a special aspect of cancer management which is usually neglected in most cases. Aim: The main objective of the study was to assess information needs of breast cancer patients at the Cancer Diseases Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia using a modified structured interview schedule adopted from the Toronto Information Needs Questionnaire-Breast Cancer (TINQ-BC). Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional design was used to elicit the information needs of breast cancer patients. One hundred and ten (97% response rate) participants were selected using simple random sampling method and data was collected using a modified structured interview schedule adopted from the Toronto Information Needs Questionnaire-Breast Cancer (TINQ-BC). Stata 10.0 (StataCorp, 2008) was employed for all quantitative data analysis and graphical presentation of data. Results: The overall score for information needs was obtained by adding the scores across all the five information needs categories which were further divided into three categories namely: low important scores, of less than 50%, moderately important scores of 50% - 70% and highly important scores ranged above 70% of the 200 total scores. Out of the 110 participants recruited, 88 (80%) indicated that the information across the five categories was moderately important. Logistic regression of information needs and posited determinants revealed that anxiety levels;education level;presence of co-morbidity;and being on treatment were significant determinants of patients’ informational needs (Effect’s p ≤ 0.05). Conclusion: The findings of this study support the idea that breast cancer patients are seeking more information on their illness, hence information provision is one of the most important factors for providing high quality cancer care across the whole cancer continuum. Therefore, appreciating the information needs of breast cancer patients is substantial in improving care.

A study of changing information needs of contemporary public library users in China

Public libraries should be vigilant and responsive to the ever changing information needs of their clientele functioning in a society undergoing through rapid change due to technological innovations. China is currently experiencing a social and technological transformation of great magnitude in terms of metamorphosing itself from a traditional society to one that is driven by information technologies. Our research study, taking this proposition into account, did a questionnaire survey on 954 library information users at five major public libraries. This research study has discovered that the information needs of public library users today reflect some of the peculiar characteristics of their society in changing times which is driven largely by the rapid development and application of new information technologies. It shows that there is a newly added demand emphasis on certain categories of library resources and services by the Chinese reading public. Our research findings have identified such needs basically in the following five functional areas of public libraries, namely, 1) Increased demands for economic resources, 2) rising expectations for more effective and efficient library services, 3) a convenient location and an amicable environment congenial to learning, 4) a suitable place for engaging in intellectual dialogues and in socialization, and 5) a few other technological amenities and information technology-based digital resources and facilities in addition to a rich repository of library materials in print format. Finally, our paper concludes its discussion with a few observation remarks about the changing trend of public libraries' visions, missions and operations vis-à-vis a contextual background of the ever heightened public expectations for getting quality information services in a timely manner in order for them to function effectively in an information-oriented society such as that of ours today.

Unsupervised Meteorological Downscaling Based on Dual Learning and Subgrid-scale Auxiliary Information

Climate downscaling is used to transform large-scale meteorological data into small-scale data with enhanced detail,which finds wide applications in climate modeling,numerical weather forecasting,and renewable energy.Although deeplearning-based downscaling methods effectively capture the complex nonlinear mapping between meteorological data of varying scales,the supervised deep-learning-based downscaling methods suffer from insufficient high-resolution data in practice,and unsupervised methods struggle with accurately inferring small-scale specifics from limited large-scale inputs due to small-scale uncertainty.This article presents DualDS,a dual-learning framework utilizing a Generative Adversarial Network–based neural network and subgrid-scale auxiliary information for climate downscaling.Such a learning method is unified in a two-stream framework through up-and downsamplers,where the downsampler is used to simulate the information loss process during the upscaling,and the upsampler is used to reconstruct lost details and correct errors incurred during the upscaling.This dual learning strategy can eliminate the dependence on high-resolution ground truth data in the training process and refine the downscaling results by constraining the mapping process.Experimental findings demonstrate that DualDS is comparable to several state-of-the-art deep learning downscaling approaches,both qualitatively and quantitatively.Specifically,for a single surface-temperature data downscaling task,our method is comparable with other unsupervised algorithms with the same dataset,and we can achieve a 0.469 dB higher peak signal-to-noise ratio,0.017 higher structural similarity,0.08 lower RMSE,and the best correlation coefficient.In summary,this paper presents a novel approach to addressing small-scale uncertainty issues in unsupervised downscaling processes.

Digital Economy and Corporate Innovation-Washing--An Empirical Study on How Information Mitigates Policy Distortion

As stated in the Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China(CPC),innovation remains at the heart of China’s modernization drive,and it is vital to optimize the allocation of innovation resources,deepen structural scientific and technological reforms,and enhance the overall performance of China’s innovation system.Government incentives have boosted firm R&D and innovation efforts;however,they have also triggered an innovation dilemma where enterprises,capitalizing on their informational advantages,resort to innovation-washing behaviors that undermine the intended purpose of the policies.Based on the information asymmetry theory,this paper conducts an empirical study on how the digital economy affects firms’innovation-washing behavior.The development of the regional digital economy could suppress firm innovation-washing behavior in the region,and such a mitigation effect is primarily caused by an increase in the number of digital industry professionals.According to our heterogeneity analysis,the digital economy has a greater impact on firm innovation-washing behavior for certain types of enterprises,including non-state-owned enterprises(non-SOEs),small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs),enterprises in less competitive industries,and enterprises in unfavorable business environments.Our mechanism analysis revealed that the digital economy may restrain innovation-washing behavior by reducing information asymmetry between enterprises and external stakeholders.In terms of economic outcomes,the digital economy has the potential to directly influence firm innovation output while also indirectly mitigating the subsequent decline in innovation output by discouraging innovation-washing.This paper enriches the research findings on how the digital economy breaks down“information silos”and offers a potential solution to the“emphasis on input and quantity over quality and efficiency”phenomenon in science and technology innovation practices.

Silent information regulator sirtuin 1 ameliorates acute liver failure via the p53/glutathione peroxidase 4/gasdermin D axis

BACKGROUND Acute liver failure(ALF)has a high mortality with widespread hepatocyte death involving ferroptosis and pyroptosis.The silent information regulator sirtuin 1(SIRT1)-mediated deacetylation affects multiple biological processes,including cellular senescence,apoptosis,sugar and lipid metabolism,oxidative stress,and inflammation.AIM To investigate the association between ferroptosis and pyroptosis and the upstream regulatory mechanisms.METHODS This study included 30 patients with ALF and 30 healthy individuals who underwent serum alanine aminotransferase(ALT)and aspartate aminotransferase(AST)testing.C57BL/6 mice were also intraperitoneally pretreated with SIRT1,p53,or glutathione peroxidase 4(GPX4)inducers and inhibitors and injected with lipopolysaccharide(LPS)/D-galactosamine(D-GalN)to induce ALF.Gasdermin D(GSDMD)^(-/-)mice were used as an experimental group.Histological changes in liver tissue were monitored by hematoxylin and eosin staining.ALT,AST,glutathione,reactive oxygen species,and iron levels were measured using commercial kits.Ferroptosis-and pyroptosis-related protein and mRNA expression was detected by western blot and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction.SIRT1,p53,and GSDMD were assessed by immunofluorescence analysis.RESULTS Serum AST and ALT levels were elevated in patients with ALF.SIRT1,solute carrier family 7a member 11(SLC7A11),and GPX4 protein expression was decreased and acetylated p5,p53,GSDMD,and acyl-CoA synthetase long-chain family member 4(ACSL4)protein levels were elevated in human ALF liver tissue.In the p53 and ferroptosis inhibitor-treated and GSDMD^(-/-)groups,serum interleukin(IL)-1β,tumour necrosis factor alpha,IL-6,IL-2 and C-C motif ligand 2 levels were decreased and hepatic impairment was mitigated.In mice with GSDMD knockout,p53 was reduced,GPX4 was increased,and ferroptotic events(depletion of SLC7A11,elevation of ACSL4,and iron accumulation)were detected.In vitro,knockdown of p53 and overexpression of GPX4 reduced AST and ALT levels,the cytostatic rate,and GSDMD expression,restoring SLC7A11 depletion.Moreover,SIRT1 agonist and overexpression of SIRT1 alleviated acute liver injury and decreased iron deposition compared with results in the model group,accompanied by reduced p53,GSDMD,and ACSL4,and increased SLC7A11 and GPX4.Inactivation of SIRT1 exacerbated ferroptotic and pyroptotic cell death and aggravated liver injury in LPS/D-GalNinduced in vitro and in vivo models.CONCLUSION SIRT1 activation attenuates LPS/D-GalN-induced ferroptosis and pyroptosis by inhibiting the p53/GPX4/GSDMD signaling pathway in ALF.

Influence of initial check, information exchange, final accuracy check, reaction information nursing on the psychology of elderly with lung cancer

BACKGROUND As one of the fatal diseases with high incidence,lung cancer has seriously endangered public health and safety.Elderly patients usually have poor self-care and are more likely to show a series of psychological problems.AIM To investigate the effectiveness of the initial check,information exchange,final accuracy check,reaction(IIFAR)information care model on the mental health status of elderly patients with lung cancer.METHODS This study is a single-centre study.We randomly recruited 60 elderly patients with lung cancer who attended our hospital from January 2021 to January 2022.These elderly patients with lung cancer were randomly divided into two groups,with the control group taking the conventional propaganda and education and the observation group taking the IIFAR information care model based on the conventional care protocol.The differences in psychological distress,anxiety and depression,life quality,fatigue,and the locus of control in psychology were compared between these two groups,and the causes of psychological distress were analyzed.RESULTS After the intervention,Distress Thermometer,Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale(HADS)for anxiety and the HADS for depression,Revised Piper’s Fatigue Scale,and Chance Health Locus of Control scores were lower in the observation group compared to the pre-intervention period in the same group and were significantly lower in the observation group compared to those of the control group(P<0.05).After the intervention,Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30(QLQ-C30),Internal Health Locus of Control,and Powerful Others Health Locus of Control scores were significantly higher in the observation and the control groups compared to the pre-intervention period in their same group,and QLQ-C30 scores were significantly higher in the observation group compared to those of the control group(P<0.05).CONCLUSION The IIFAR information care model can help elderly patients with lung cancer by reducing their anxiety and depression,psychological distress,and fatigue,improving their tendencies on the locus of control in psychology,and enhancing their life qualities.

Attribute Reduction of Hybrid Decision Information Systems Based on Fuzzy Conditional Information Entropy

The presence of numerous uncertainties in hybrid decision information systems(HDISs)renders attribute reduction a formidable task.Currently available attribute reduction algorithms,including those based on Pawlak attribute importance,Skowron discernibility matrix,and information entropy,struggle to effectively manages multiple uncertainties simultaneously in HDISs like the precise measurement of disparities between nominal attribute values,and attributes with fuzzy boundaries and abnormal values.In order to address the aforementioned issues,this paper delves into the study of attribute reduction withinHDISs.First of all,a novel metric based on the decision attribute is introduced to solve the problem of accurately measuring the differences between nominal attribute values.The newly introduced distance metric has been christened the supervised distance that can effectively quantify the differences between the nominal attribute values.Then,based on the newly developed metric,a novel fuzzy relationship is defined from the perspective of“feedback on parity of attribute values to attribute sets”.This new fuzzy relationship serves as a valuable tool in addressing the challenges posed by abnormal attribute values.Furthermore,leveraging the newly introduced fuzzy relationship,the fuzzy conditional information entropy is defined as a solution to the challenges posed by fuzzy attributes.It effectively quantifies the uncertainty associated with fuzzy attribute values,thereby providing a robust framework for handling fuzzy information in hybrid information systems.Finally,an algorithm for attribute reduction utilizing the fuzzy conditional information entropy is presented.The experimental results on 12 datasets show that the average reduction rate of our algorithm reaches 84.04%,and the classification accuracy is improved by 3.91%compared to the original dataset,and by an average of 11.25%compared to the other 9 state-of-the-art reduction algorithms.The comprehensive analysis of these research results clearly indicates that our algorithm is highly effective in managing the intricate uncertainties inherent in hybrid data.

A guidance and control design with reduced information for a dual-spin stabilized projectile

In this paper,an integrated guidance and control method based on an adaptive path-following controller is proposed to control a spin-stabilized projectile with only translational motion information under the constraint of an actuator,uncertainties in aerodynamic parameters and measurements,and control system complexity.Owing to the fairly high rotation speed,the dynamic model of this missile is strongly nonlinear,uncertain and coupled in pitch,yaw and roll channels.A theoretical equivalent resultant force and uncertainty compensation method are comprehensively used to realize decoupling of pitch and yaw.In response to the strong nonlinear and time-varying characteristics of the dynamic system,the quasi-linear model whose parameters are obtained by interpolation of points selected as the segmentation points in the trajectory envelope,is used for calculation in each step.To cope with the system uncertainty caused by model approximation,parameter uncertainty and ballistic interference,an extended state estimator is used to compensate the output feedback according to the test ballistic angle.In order to improve the tracking efficiency and ensure the tracking error convergence with only translational motion information,the virtual guide point,whose derivative is deduced according to the Lyapunov principle,is calculated in real time according to the projection relationship between the real-time position and the reference trajectory,and a virtual line-of-sight angle and the backstepping method are used for the design of the guidance and control system.In order to avoid the influence of control input saturation on the guidance and control performance due to the actuator limitation and improve the robustness of the system,an anti-saturation compensator is designed according to the two-step method.The feasibility and effectiveness of the path-following controller is verified through closed-loop flight simulations with measurement,control,and condition uncertainties.The results indicate that the designed controller can converge to the reference path and evidently decrease the distance between the impact point and target under different uncertainties.

Cross-Modal Consistency with Aesthetic Similarity for Multimodal False Information Detection

With the explosive growth of false information on social media platforms, the automatic detection of multimodalfalse information has received increasing attention. Recent research has significantly contributed to multimodalinformation exchange and fusion, with many methods attempting to integrate unimodal features to generatemultimodal news representations. However, they still need to fully explore the hierarchical and complex semanticcorrelations between different modal contents, severely limiting their performance detecting multimodal falseinformation. This work proposes a two-stage detection framework for multimodal false information detection,called ASMFD, which is based on image aesthetic similarity to segment and explores the consistency andinconsistency features of images and texts. Specifically, we first use the Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training(CLIP) model to learn the relationship between text and images through label awareness and train an imageaesthetic attribute scorer using an aesthetic attribute dataset. Then, we calculate the aesthetic similarity betweenthe image and related images and use this similarity as a threshold to divide the multimodal correlation matrixinto consistency and inconsistencymatrices. Finally, the fusionmodule is designed to identify essential features fordetectingmultimodal false information. In extensive experiments on four datasets, the performance of the ASMFDis superior to state-of-the-art baseline methods.

Robust Information Hiding Based on Neural Style Transfer with Artificial Intelligence

This paper proposes an artificial intelligence-based robust information hiding algorithm to address the issue of confidential information being susceptible to noise attacks during transmission.The algorithm we designed aims to mitigate the impact of various noise attacks on the integrity of secret information during transmission.The method we propose involves encoding secret images into stylized encrypted images and applies adversarial transfer to both the style and content features of the original and embedded data.This process effectively enhances the concealment and imperceptibility of confidential information,thereby improving the security of such information during transmission and reducing security risks.Furthermore,we have designed a specialized attack layer to simulate real-world attacks and common noise scenarios encountered in practical environments.Through adversarial training,the algorithm is strengthened to enhance its resilience against attacks and overall robustness,ensuring better protection against potential threats.Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm successfully enhances the concealment and unknowability of secret information while maintaining embedding capacity.Additionally,it ensures the quality and fidelity of the stego image.The method we propose not only improves the security and robustness of information hiding technology but also holds practical application value in protecting sensitive data and ensuring the invisibility of confidential information.

Media Preference, Information Needs, and the Language Proficiency of Foreigners in Japan after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake

After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the Japanese government identified the lack of proficiency in the Japanese language as one characteristic of foreigners that should be considered in disaster prevention planning.This article seeks to understand how proficiency in a local language affects disaster information gathering behavior by using the results of a questionnaire survey conducted after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Respondents were categorized based on their Japanese and English language abilities. Their media mode, language preferences, information importance, and information-gathering difficulties also were examined. It was found that foreigners skilled in Japanese demonstrated similar information gathering behavior as Japanese respondents, but foreigners unskilled in Japanese showed little usage of Japanese-language media. This group also encountered difficulties due to a lack of Japanese proficiency, but many members were able to acquire some level of Japanese-language information through Internet-based methods. To address language proficiency in disaster prevention planning, information provision in languages other than Japanese should be increased, and Japanese information should be shared in a way that facilitates translation. Although this survey wassignificant in its scope, the results should be considered within the limitations of the Internet-based response collection and focus only on the less-affected area of Japan.

Analysis of Farmers' Needs for Forestry Information and Technology in Yunnan's Hot Zone: Based on Empirical Survey in Menglian County

Lack of public forestry information and techniques has restricted the development of forestry management and the income increase of rural farmers in hot region of Yunnan province. Therefore it is necessary to provide forestry information and techniques to rural areas so as to compensate for the information gap between urban and rural areas. Based on the survey about farmer demand for information and technique in Menglian County,the paper analyzed the supply methods and demand characteristics of forestry information and techniques. The results showed that the farmers had very strong demands for forestry information and techniques with diversified trend. But the farmers got the information with backward method and single service supply approach,and it lacked effective expression mechanism for their demands.

Problems and Instruction Needed in Relation to Nursing Students’ Handling of Patient Information—From a Survey of Nurses Coordinating Clinical Practicums in Japan

The purpose of this study was to clarify and consider the instruction that is needed in relation to nursing students’ handling of patient information, as felt by the people in charge of student clinical practicums in hospitals. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 7 people in charge of organizing practicums at hospitals where they are carried out. These subjects were asked about problems they had experienced in relation to nursing students’ handling of patient information and the instruction that is needed so that problems related to nursing students’ handling of information do not occur. Various problems were shown to occur in relation to nursing students’ handling of patient information, such as handling the information outside of the practicum setting. Many students receive no instruction with regard to the ethics of handling patient information in their classroom work, and their awareness regarding information is cannot be considered high, indicating the need for more consistent and reliable education in this area. The findings also suggest that instruction is needed with regard to the handling of sensitive information in accordance with the circumstances of individual patients.

Needs and Opportunities for Information in Patients with Metastatic Breast Cancer Attending a Tertiary Hospital in Tanzania—A Qualitative Study

Background: The majority of breast cancer patients in Tanzania present with advanced disease, and a significant proportion has metastatic breast cancer (MBC) on presentation or develops it during the course of their follow-up. With few treatment options to choose from, such patients often benefit from empathic support and access to information to help them make treatment decisions based on their individual circumstances and needs. Patients with MBC have been shown to present with unique physical, social and psychological needs that require additional time, counselling and availability of health care providers in addition to the routine options available to other patients. In resource-limited settings, the needs of such patients are often unknown and unaddressed, which adds to the anxiety associated with the diagnosis and its treatment. Materials and methods: This descriptive qualitative study was conducted using 3 focus group discussions with a total of 17 participants with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) attending Ocean Road Cancer Institute in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Participants were purposively selected for the study from outpatient clinics and inpatient wards. A semi-structured FGD guide was used to moderate discussions and analysis was done using a thematic approach. Results: The median age of participants was 51 (range 33 - 81 years) with an average of 4 months (range 1 - 12 months) from diagnosis of BC to the interview. 4 (24%) were diagnosed with MBC on first presentation (denovo). Participants spoke about the importance of accurate BC-related information in allowing timely referral and treatment both in the community and within the health system. They recognized the role of mass and social media in increasing awareness about BC and identified myths surrounding cancer treatment especially mastectomy. Correct and timely information at points of care, through media platforms and via ambassadors/patient support groups was perceived as a means to avoiding delays and securing early and effective treatment. Conclusion: Patients with MBC in Tanzania have many unmet informational needs in relation to their disease. Accurate BC-related information is important in allowing early detection and diagnosis. At the community level, provision of information through established media platforms and the use of patient advocates may help to enable early referral and treatment of patients.

Survey and Research on Health Information Assistance Needs of Junior Middle School Students in Different Regions of Guangdong Province

Objective:To study the health information assistance needs of junior high school students in 8 different regions of Guangdong Province in a cluster,to understand the current situation of junior high school students'health information assistance needs,and to collect feasibility data for hospitals and schools to jointly promote the healthy development of students.Methods:In June 2019,a group of junior high school students from 8 different regions in Guangdong Province[678 students(in 2 towns),352 students(in 2 counties and prefecture-level cities),and 1098 students(in 4 provincial-level cities)]were selected in a group.A questionnaire survey was conducted by 2128 people,the results of the questionnaire survey were collected,and statistical analysis was performed.Results:Of the 2128 junior high school students in 8 different regions,only 52.07% had confidence in their health,and there were no regional differences.Health information for students seeking professional medical assistance includes:1578 person-times(74.15%)of nutritional diets,1084 person-times(50.94%)to eliminate tiredness,1190 person-times(55.92%)to improve sleep quality,1002 person-times(47.09%)to reduce anxiety,making him happier and stronger 1164 person-times(54.70%).Students in different regions asked for help on how to make their hearts happier and stronger.The results suggest that provincial and county-level students have greater needs than urban students.Conclusion:The results of this research show that junior high school students in different regions of Guangdong Province have insufficient awareness of health,and there is a large demand for various health help information,and the focus is on prevention.It is of practical significance to strengthen and meet the health information needs of junior high school students.

Informational Needs in Women Undergoing Multifraction High Dose-Rate Brachytherapy for Cervical Cancer: A Prospective Qualitative Study

Objective: To identify the informational needs of Moroccan women receiving intracavitary brachytherapy for locally advanced cervical cancer as part of a process to develop guidelines for quality patient-centered care. Methodology: A prospective, qualitative study with a phenomenological approach was carried out at the Brachytherapy unit of the National Institute of Oncology in Rabat, Morocco. Purposive sampling was used to recruit 31 patients undergoing high dose-rate brachytherapy for cervical cancer from July 2020 to August 2020. Semi-structured, one-to-one interviews were conducted by a female radiation oncologist in Arabic, guided by a theme list. The interviews were translated and a thematic analysis was performed. Results: Data saturation was achieved having interviewing 31 participants, aged 27 - 70 years. Findings on patients’ informational needs were the overarching theme and form the focus of this article. The informational needs included: providing patients with disease- and treatment-related information in their home language;adequate information concerning pre-treatment preparation, possible side-effects, and sexual intercourse;and providing patients with informative material adapted to their needs as standard procedure. Conclusion: This study has identified unmet women’s informational needs during brachytherapy for cervical cancer. Providing patients with sufficient and understandable information, adequate preparation before the procedure, more sensitive support during the procedure, and debriefing afterward could lessen feelings of fear and anxiety towards treatment delivery. Guidelines with a patient-centered approach could thus be developed to be used as a tool to assist members of multidisciplinary teams in providing quality care to this group of women.