Study shows investing in engaging healthcare teams is essential for improving patient experience

A national survey of over 47,000 healthcare professionals evaluated different dimensions of patient care

D'Or Institute for Research and Education

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A study published in the Journal of Patient Experience, with the participation of the D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), analyzed the perceptions of over 47,000 healthcare professionals on institutional efforts to improve patient experience in private hospitals in Brazil. The research indicated that engaging care teams remains the biggest challenge for concrete improvements in the quality of care.

What Healthcare Professionals Think About Patient Experience

Patient experience, understood as how patients and their families perceive the care they receive, has gained prominence as a quality indicator in healthcare. However, while research often prioritizes the patient's perspective, this study focused on the other side of the relationship: the professionals who provide that care. Doctors, nurses, technicians, and other healthcare workers were asked to assess how they perceive the development of actions aimed at improving the patient experience in their workplaces.

Data collection was conducted through a validated, anonymous, online questionnaire administered between January and February 2024. A total of 47,711 healthcare professionals from 69 private hospitals across four regions of the country participated. Of this total, 13% were doctors, 54% were in nursing, and the rest belonged to other categories of the multidisciplinary team, such as physical therapists, psychologists, pharmacists, support technicians, and administrative professionals.

The questionnaire addressed six major areas related to patient experience: leadership and governance, infrastructure and access, care team involvement, patient and family participation, evaluation policies, and clinical quality. Each dimension received an average score and was classified according to its stage of development within the hospitals. The scale used ranged from "just starting" to "in progress" or "consolidated."

 

Results Indicate Moderate Progress, But a Still-Fragile Link

According to the results, all dimensions evaluated by the professionals were classified as "in progress," meaning that hospitals have ongoing initiatives but still face difficulties in achieving consistent results. The exception was "team and professional engagement," which scored lower than the other categories and was classified as "just starting." This suggests that healthcare workers feel there is a lack of structured and effective actions to involve them in care improvements.

The responses also revealed important differences between professional groups. Although everyone evaluated the same aspects of the hospital system, doctors gave higher average scores than nursing professionals, indicating a more positive perception of the institutions' efforts. The overall average for doctors was 147 points, while for nursing it was 138. This difference may reflect how different categories experience working conditions and whether they feel heard or valued in decision-making.

On the other hand, factors such as professional experience or time at the hospital did not significantly influence the evaluations. Professionals with less than a year of experience or training gave similar scores to those with more experience, suggesting that the perception of patient experience challenges is not limited to seniority but is instead tied to the organizational environment as a whole.

 

Practical Importance: Investing in Teams to Provide Better Patient Care

The main finding of the study is that promoting a good experience for patients must, by necessity, include promoting a good experience for healthcare professionals. This means it's not just about training to improve communication with patients or renovating physical structures, but also about ensuring that workers have proper conditions, are heard, are recognized, and are included in institutional strategies.

The evidence indicates that engaged leadership and healthy work environments are directly related to a lower incidence of errors, better teamwork, and greater patient satisfaction. Valuing teams is not just a humanitarian measure, but an effective strategy for quality management.

Written by Maria Eduarda Ledo de Abreu.

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Journal

Journal of Patient Experience

DOI

10.1177/23743735251325138 

 

New pika research finds troubling signs for the iconic Rocky Mountain animal

University of Colorado at Boulder

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Chris Ray makes notes during a survey of pikas in Colorado's Indian Peaks Wilderness.

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Credit: Credit: Gabe Allen/INSTAAR

A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder carries a warning for one of the Rocky Mountains’ most iconic animals—the American pika (Ochotona princeps), a small and fuzzy creature that often greets hikers in Colorado with loud squeaks.

The study draws on long-running surveys of pikas living in a single habitat about 10 miles south of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. 

The researchers discovered that the “recruitment “of juveniles to this site seems to have plummeted since the 1980s. In other words, these populations are becoming dominated by older adults, with fewer juvenile pikas being born, or migrating in, to take their place. 

The group published its findings recently in the journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research.

“It’s a fun encounter when you’re hiking on a trail in the Rockies and a pika yells at you,” said Chris Ray, lead author of the study and a research associate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at CU Boulder. “If you don’t have that anymore, your experience in the wild is degraded.”

She added that scientists have long predicted that climate change might threaten pikas in the American West.

One 2016 study predicted that pikas could disappear entirely from Rocky Mountain National Park by the end of the century.

Ray and her colleagues can’t yet pinpoint the reason pika recruitment may be declining at this one site. But summers have been growing warmer at sites in the Rocky Mountains—a concerning bellwether for ecosystems that humans depend on. 

“The habitats where pikas live are our water tower,” Ray said. “The permafrost, or seasonal ice, that’s underground here melts later in the summer and helps replenish our water supplies at a time when reservoirs are draining.”

Rock piles

The research takes a close look at the Niwot Ridge Long Term Ecological Research site north of Nederland, Colorado. 

Niwot Ridge is home to sweeping tundra meadows and steep hillsides dotted with boulders. It’s also home to pikas. These animals have round ears and are about the size of your fist, although they’re more closely related to rabbits and hares.

From 1981 to 1990, Charles Southwick, a former professor at CU Boulder, set out to follow the pika populations at Niwot Ridge. His team trapped and tagged pikas, which tend to stick close to taluses, or piles of rocks.

Ray has studied these animals in the American West, from Montana south to Colorado, for more than 35 years.

At Niwot Ridge, she took up Southwick’s mantle by using similar methods to survey pikas at this location in 2004 and from 2008 to 2020. The team takes rigorous precautions to ensure the health and safety of the animals.

“Pikas are useful as a study system because they're so visible and conspicuous, and they’re one way to get a handle on what changes are happening in alpine ecosystems,” Ray said.

In the current study, she and Jasmine Vidrio, a former undergraduate at CU Boulder, compared their findings to what Southwick saw decades earlier.

The results were disturbing.

Quiet hillsides

Based on their calculations, the proportion of pikas the team trapped that were juveniles fell by roughly 50% from the 1980s to today—suggesting that younger pikas could be growing rarer on Niwot Ridge.

Ray explained that pikas may be especially vulnerable to climate change, in large part because they can only survive in a narrow range of temperatures. 

“Pikas don’t pant like a dog. They don’t sweat,” she said. “The only way they can release their metabolic heat is to get into a nice, cool space and just let it dissipate.”

The researchers can’t conclusively link the possible decline of pikas on Niwot Ridge to warming temperatures. They also aren’t sure how widespread this trend is in the West.

But Ray noted that her results support previous predictions that juvenile pikas may have trouble migrating through the Rockies as temperatures continue to warm. To cross from one mountain habitat to another, pikas first have to descend in elevation, facing hot conditions in the process.

She recalls one pika she encountered at the start of her career in the 1990s. She nicknamed the male Mr. Mustard because he had yellow tags on his ears. 

“He was an adult when I trapped him, and he lived for nine more years,” Ray said. “I don’t see that anymore, so I do think things are changing.”

Graduate student Rachel Mae Billings releases a pika after collecting data in Colorado's Indian Peaks Wilderness,

Credit

Credit: Gabe Allen/INSTAAR

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Journal

Arctic Antarctic and Alpine Research

DOI

10.1080/15230430.2025.2570526 

Article Title

Long-term data suggest a severe decline in recruitment of the American pika on Niwot Ridge, Boulder County, Colorado

 

National team works to curb costly infrastructure corrosion

University of Florida

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The University of Florida is part of a multi-university, interdisciplinary research team that will tackle the global challenge of halting corrosion of infrastructure, like bridges.  

Mitigating corrosion is a global challenge that costs the United States nearly half a trillion dollars annually.  

Current corrosion mitigation measures require costly chemical coatings, such as primers and top-coat layers, that cause human and environmental health risks. This project seeks to develop a coating system that uses naturally existing microbial biofilms growing on metal surfaces that appear to slow down or inhibit corrosion.

In phase 2 of this project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, researchers will establish manufacturing requirements to effectively apply the biological coating system for corrosion control by either spraying or 3D bioprinting.  

Led by Kaoru Ikuma, associate professor with the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at  Iowa State University, the team is investigating this biological solution. At the University of Florida, efforts led by Iris Rivero, Paul and Heidi Brown Preeminent Chair and Department Chair of Industrial and Systems Engineering, emphasize defining application of the biological coating via 3D printing. Although 3D bioprinting is not new, using the technology at large-scale to strategically combat corrosion is a groundbreaking application.  

"Our goal is to revolutionize how we think about infrastructure maintenance, moving from reactive, chemical-based methods to proactive, biologically inspired systems," said Rivero. "This kind of interdisciplinary innovation is exactly what’s needed to solve complex challenges like corrosion on a global scale." 

Ikuma is focused on the broader societal impact. 

“If you can come up with a sustainable and self-healing system for corrosion control, it can become more accessible to disadvantaged communities. A biological process that maintains the safety of the structures in those communities is what I’m hoping to do,” said Ikuma. 

Aside from UF and ISU, the other research institutions are the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology. 

The NSF Convergence Accelerator program funded the project at nearly $5 million as part of the Bio-Inspired Design Innovations track. Launched in 2019, the NSF Convergence Accelerator builds upon NSF investment in research and discovery to accelerate use-inspired research into practical application. 

 

Biochar boosts clean energy output from food waste in novel two-stage digestion system

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University

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Enhancing H2 and CH4 production with biochar addition in two-phase anaerobic digestion of food waste

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Credit: Yusron Sugiarto, Nimas M.S. Sunyoto, Hendrix Yulis Setyawan & Dongke Zhang

A new study from researchers at the University of Western Australia and Universitas Brawijaya has found that adding biochar to advanced food waste recycling systems can significantly increase the clean energy yields of hydrogen and methane. This breakthrough offers promising strategies for municipalities and industries aiming to turn food scraps into valuable renewable fuels while reducing environmental impacts.

Turning Waste Into Energy

Food waste generated by households, restaurants, and processing plants is a growing environmental challenge around the world. Innovative recycling solutions are urgently needed to keep this waste out of landfills and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Anaerobic digestion, a method that uses naturally occurring microbes to break down organic matter without oxygen, is among the most effective ways to convert food scraps into biogas for heating and power.

This research focused on a state-of-the-art variation called two-phase anaerobic digestion. The system works in two consecutive steps: first, a group of specialized bacteria creates hydrogen as they digest food waste; then, another set of microbes converts the leftover material into methane. Splitting the process enables each phase to operate under ideal conditions, resulting in more efficient biogas production.

The Biochar Advantage

The research team was especially interested in how biochar—a porous, carbon-rich material produced by heating wood waste—affects these digestion systems. Biochar has shown promise in small-scale trials for stabilizing microbial communities, improving pH balance, and boosting gas yields, but its impact under real-world, continuous conditions remained unclear.

In laboratory experiments, the scientists ran two identical sets of digestion reactors fed with simulated food waste. One set received regular doses of biochar, while the other did not. Over a 100-day testing period, researchers closely monitored the daily output of hydrogen and methane, the chemical environment inside the tanks, and the types of microbes present.

The results were striking. Across all levels of organic waste loading, reactors with biochar produced more hydrogen and methane than those without. At higher waste inputs, reactors without biochar suffered drops in gas output and unstable microbial activity. In contrast, biochar-amended systems maintained steady performance and resisted acid build-up—a common barrier to efficient digestion.

Microbial Insights

The addition of biochar was linked to beneficial changes in the microbial ecosystem. In hydrogen-producing reactors, biochar boosted populations of Clostridiaceae, a group of bacteria known for breaking down food waste into energy-rich acids. In methane-producing stages, biochar favored methanogenic microbes, including Methanosarcinaceae and Methanobacteriaceae, which drive the conversion of organic matter into methane fuel.

The biochar also acted as a natural buffer, keeping pH levels in an optimal range for these microbes, and provided surfaces that supported robust microbial communities. Notably, this positive effect was maintained even when reactors ran at higher organic loading rates, which are typically challenging for such systems.

Implications for Waste Management and Renewable Energy

The study suggests that using biochar in two-phase anaerobic digestion can make food-waste-to-energy systems more reliable and productive, particularly at the large scales required for municipal or industrial use. By allowing higher waste inputs and sustaining biogas yields, biochar-amended systems could lower the cost and raise the appeal of clean energy production from unavoidable food waste.

Lead author Yusron Sugiarto highlights the broad potential of this approach: “Our findings show that biochar is not only a cost-effective and sustainable additive but also a key enabler for scaling up renewable gas production from food waste. These insights can inform practical solutions for energy recovery and environmental protection.”

The research is published in Energy Environment Nexus and was supported by grants from the Australian Research Council and the Future Energy Export Cooperative Research Centre.

 

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Journal reference: Sugiarto Y, Sunyoto NMS, Setyawan HY, Zhang D. 2025. Enhancing H2 and CH4 production with biochar addition in two-phase anaerobic digestion of food waste. Energy & Environment Nexus 1: e010  

https://www.maxapress.com/article/doi/10.48130/een-0025-0010 

 

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About Energy & Environment Nexus:
Energy & Environment Nexus is an open-access journal publishing high-quality research on the interplay between energy systems and environmental sustainability, including renewable energy, carbon mitigation, and green technologies.

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DOI

10.48130/een-0025-0010 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Enhancing H2 and CH4 production with biochar addition in two-phase anaerobic digestion of food waste