Level II Fieldwork in Hand Therapy: A Pilot Online Training Program to Strengthen Students\u27 Knowledge and Skills

Studies have shown that fieldwork coordinators are having a hard time finding enough fieldwork sites for their students. The shortage is due to the increasing number of occupational therapy students enrolled in programs and also because of increased productivity demands that have been established in response to healthcare changes in reimbursement. There have been studies done in which clinicians stated they would be more likely to accept students if the students were better prepared. As a result, one option academia has to increase the number of available sites would be to consider previously underutilized settings, such as hand therapy. Such a setting may require specialized training not normally covered in a general curriculum and, as a result, academia would need to insure that their students are prepared for those highly demanding settings by providing additional training for them. ELearning may very well be something that could work to everyone\u27s advantage. Training modules could be developed and used by both fieldwork sites and the universities to enhance students\u27 performances and knowledge. They could be easily adapted for the different settings\u27 caseloads and educational programs\u27 strengths and weaknesses. They are cost effective and do not require classroom time be taken from the current demands that already exist. Also, the cost of hiring additional faculty could be avoided. The primary purpose of this project was to develop training modules based on those areas of knowledge and specific skills that Level II fieldwork students were thought to be very weak in. In this way, if students received extra preparation for more challenging fieldwork experiences (i.e., hand therapy), it could result in more facilities accepting students as they began to realize the advantages of having students as opposed to focusing only on the demands and disadvantages. Secondarily, the project consisted of a survey to identify those skills and knowledge that therapists felt Level II students would benefit from if they were to receive additional training

Anomalous Spin Dynamics in Doped Quantum Antiferromagnets

Finite-temperature spin dynamics in planar t-J model is studied using the method based on the Lanczos diagonalization of small systems. Dynamical spin structure factor at moderate dopings shows the coexistence of free-fermion-like and spin-fluctuation timescales. At T<J, the low-frequency and static susceptibility show pronounced T dependence, supporting a scenario, related to the marginal Fermi-liquid one, for the explanation of neutron-scattering and NMR-relaxation experiments in cuprates. Calculated NMR relaxation rates reasonably reproduce experimental ones.Comment: 10 pages + 4 figures, Postscript in uuencoded compressed tar file, IJS-TP-94/2

Quantum Critical Scaling in a Moderately Doped Antiferromagnet

Using high temperature expansions for the equal time correlator $S(q)$ and static susceptibility $\chi(q)$ for the t-J model, we present evidence for quantum critical (QC), $z\!=\!1$, behavior at intermediate temperatures in a broad range of $t/J$ ratio, doping, and temperatures. We find that the dynamical susceptibility is very close to the universal scaling function computable for the asymptotic QC regime, and that the dominant energy scale is temperature. Our results are in excellent agreement with measurements of the spin-echo decay rate, $1/T_{\rm 2G}$, in La$_2$CuO$_4$, and provide qualitative understanding of both $1/T_1$ and $1/T_{\rm 2G}$ nuclear relaxation rates in doped cuprates.Comment: 11 pages, REVTeX v3.0, PostScript file for 3 figures is attached, UIUC-P-93-07-068. In this revised version, we calculate the scaling functions and thus present new and more direct evidence in favor of our original conclusion