The Development of a Well-Being Program for Occupational Therapy Graduate Students

High levels of stress among occupational therapy graduate students have led to the adoption of unhealthy coping habits such as poor nutrition, little exercise, and disrupted sleep. In response, many institutions have explored programming and even curricular changes to support student well-being. However, very few are built upon a strong theoretical foundation to address holistic well-being. Therefore, this paper describes how logic modeling was used to develop a student well-being program based on Facilitating Learning and Occupational Well-Being Using Research-Based Initiatives for Student Health (FLOURISH), a theoretical approach rooted in the Person-Environment-Occupation Performance Model. A well-being program delivered via a virtual community of practice for entry-level students at a Midwestern occupational therapy program was created to decrease stress and enhance overall well-being for the performance of learning. The program consisted of eight 50-minute sessions that met once per week and included topics of physical, mental, sociocultural, environmental, and occupational well-being. The student well-being program is one viable option that shows promise to empower students with a theoretical approach to address personal and professional well-being, which has the potential to translate into professional practice. In this article, we describe the well-being program and the theoretical approach in detail and illustrate how it can be used to improve occupational therapy student well-being

The Development of a Well-Being Program for Occupational Therapy Graduate Students

High levels of stress among occupational therapy graduate students have led to the adoption of unhealthy coping habits such as poor nutrition, little exercise, and disrupted sleep. In response, many institutions have explored programming and even curricular changes to support student well-being. However, very few are built upon a strong theoretical foundation to address holistic well-being. Therefore, this paper describes how logic modeling was used to develop a student well-being program based on Facilitating Learning and Occupational Well-Being Using Research-Based Initiatives for Student Health (FLOURISH), a theoretical approach rooted in the Person-Environment-Occupation Performance Model. A well-being program delivered via a virtual community of practice for entry-level students at a Midwestern occupational therapy program was created to decrease stress and enhance overall well-being for the performance of learning. The program consisted of eight 50-minute sessions that met once per week and included topics of physical, mental, sociocultural, environmental, and occupational well-being. The student well-being program is one viable option that shows promise to empower students with a theoretical approach to address personal and professional well-being, which has the potential to translate into professional practice. In this article, we describe the well-being program and the theoretical approach in detail and illustrate how it can be used to improve occupational therapy student well-being

Prostate-specific markers to identify rare prostate cancer cells in liquid biopsies

Despite improvements in early detection and advances in treatment, patients with prostate cancer continue to die from their disease. Minimal residual disease after primary definitive treatment can lead to relapse and distant metastases, and increasing evidence suggests that circulating tumour cells (CTCs) and bone marrow-derived disseminated tumour cells (BM-DTCs) can offer clinically relevant biological insights into prostate cancer dissemination and metastasis. Using epithelial markers to accurately detect CTCs and BM-DTCs is associated with difficulties, and prostate-specific markers are needed for the detection of these cells using rare cell assays. Putative prostate-specific markers have been identified, and an optimized strategy for staining rare cancer cells from liquid biopsies using these markers is required. The ideal prostate-specific marker will be expressed on every CTC or BM-DTC throughout disease progression (giving high sensitivity) and will not be expressed on non-prostate-cancer cells in the sample (giving high specificity). Some markers might not be specific enough to the prostate to be used as individual markers of prostate cancer cells, whereas others could be truly prostate-specific and would make ideal markers for use in rare cell assays. The goal of future studies is to use sensitive and specific prostate markers to consistently and reliably identify rare cancer cells