1.Construct validity test of evaluation tool for professional behaviors of entry-level occupational therapy students in the United States.
Hon K YUEN ; Andres AZUERO ; Kaitlin W LACKEY ; Nicole S BROWN ; Sangita SHRESTHA
Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions 2016;13(1):22-
PURPOSE: This study aimed to test the construct validity of an instrument to measure student professional behaviors in entry-level occupational therapy (OT) students in the academic setting. METHODS: A total of 718 students from 37 OT programs across the United States answered a self-assessment survey of professional behavior that we developed. The survey consisted of ranking 28 attributes, each on a 5-point Likert scale. A split-sample approach was used for exploratory and then confirmatory factor analysis. RESULTS: A three-factor solution with nine items was extracted using exploratory factor analysis [EFA] (n=430, 60%). The factors were ‘Commitment to Learning' (2 items), ‘Skills for Learning' (4 items), and ‘Cultural Competence' (3 items). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the validation split (n=288, 40%) indicated fair fit for this three-factor model (fit indices: CFI=0.96, RMSEA=0.06, and SRMR=0.05). Internal consistency reliability estimates of each factor and the instrument ranged from 0.63 to 0.79. CONCLUSION: Results of the CFA in a separate validation dataset provided robust measures of goodness-of-fit for the three-factor solution developed in the EFA, and indicated that the three-factor model fitted the data well enough. Therefore, we can conclude that this student professional behavior evaluation instrument is a structurally validated tool to measure professional behaviors reported by entry-level OT students. The internal consistency reliability of each individual factor and the whole instrument was considered to be adequate to good.
Dataset
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Factor Analysis, Statistical
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Humans
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Occupational Therapy*
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Professionalism
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Self-Assessment
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Surveys and Questionnaires
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United States*
2.Post-mortem assessment of vimentin expression as a biomarker for renal tubular regeneration following acute kidney injury
Juan Carlos Alvarez MORENO ; Hisham F. BAHMAD ; Christopher A. FEBRES-ALDANA ; Andrés PIRELA ; Andres AZUERO ; Ali SALAMI ; Robert POPPITI
Journal of Pathology and Translational Medicine 2021;55(6):369-379
Background:
Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common cause of morbidity and mortality. It mainly targets the renal tubular epithelium with pathological changes, referred to as acute tubular injury. The latter is followed by a regenerative response that is difficult to visualize on routine hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stains. In this study, we examined the regenerative capacity of renal tubules by correlating vimentin (VIM) immunohistochemical (IHC) expression and pathological findings of AKI and renal tubular regeneration (RTR) on H&E.
Methods:
We reviewed 23 autopsies performed in the clinical setting of AKI and RTR. VIM expression was scored in the renal cortical tubular epithelium using a statistical cutoff ≥ 3% for high expression and < 3% for low expression.
Results:
Of the 23 kidney tissues examined, seven (30.4%) had low VIM expression, and 16 (69.6%) had high VIM expression. Kidney tissues with evidence of AKI and RTR had significantly higher VIM expression. Renal peritubular microenvironment features showing regenerative changes on H&E were associated with high VIM expression. In the univariate model, kidney tissues with RTR were 18-fold more likely to have high VIM expression.
Conclusions
In conclusion, our findings suggest that VIM could serve as an IHC marker for RTR following AKI. However, correlation with H&E findings remains critical to excluding chronic tubular damage. Collectively, our preliminary results pave the way for future studies including a larger sample size to validate the use of VIM as a reliable biomarker for RTR.