Fostering PT-PTA Student Relationships, Pilot Study

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess physical therapist (PT) and physical therapist assistant (PTA) students\u27 attitudes toward working in a team, direction and supervision, preparation for effective communication, and respect for and the value of physical therapist/physical therapist assistant (PT/PTA) teams following an interactive classroom session via a brief online questionnaire. Methods: PT students in the second year of their doctor of physical therapy graduate studies in St Louis, MO and PTA students in the second year of their associate’s degree program in St Louis, MO were involved. A questionnaire was completed prior to and after attending an interactive classroom session. The interactive session included four stations; curriculum and education, communication and documentation, PT/PTA teamwork scenarios in different practice settings, and social interaction. The questionnaire consisted of six questions asking students to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement. Results: Attendance status at the interactive session was related to student responses on the questionnaire for both PT and PTA students. Among PTA students, responses on three of six questionnaire items were found not to be independent of attendance status. PTA students indicated they felt more prepared for PT/PTA communication, had more respect for the similarities in roles of PTs and PTAs, and felt more strongly that effective PT/PTA teams were essential to optimal patient care. Among the PT student population, the only questionnaire item found to be independent of interactive session attendance status was the belief in effective PT/PTA teams. Generally, students’ responses tended to be more positive after attending the interactive session, with “Strongly agree” responses increasing by as much as 24 percent on some questionnaire items. Increases in weighted means for PTA students were not found to be statistically significant; however, among PT students these increases were significant across three questionnaire items. Conclusions: The findings suggest that both PT and PTA students experienced increased comfort with the idea of working as part of a PT/PTA team after the interactive event where communication was the focus. The affective behavior of “comfort” in working as part of a PT/PTA team increased in our study among both PT and PTA students. The interactive session was easy to implement and had no cost associated with it. Follow-up study or methodologies could provide more robust results to further support these findings. This activity could also be replicated across healthcare professions that utilize professional and paraprofessional assistant relationships

‘Its Something You Do Bro’: Language and Identity on a Male Erotic Hypnosis Messageboard

Drawing on a seven-year corpus of data (total words N = 86,881) on a publicly-accessible messageboard on which self-identified gay men discuss their experiences undergoing erotic hypnosis, this study applies Critical Discourse Analysis methods to understand how posters understand their sexual identities and those of others. This study identifies the emergence of two main identity-types at-play on OnYourKnees: the jock and the coach. Jocks are generally characterized by a focus on sports and body-consciousness, a disinterest or inability to engage in scholarly/academic pursuits, and a desire to be submissive to others to achieve sexual pleasure. Coaches, on the other hand, are characterized by wisdom, dominance, and a desire to hypnotize others. Using Fairclough’s (1992) three-axis methodology for analyzing the relationships among language, ideology, and power, this study analyzes how participants on OnYourKnees simultaneously overlap numerous ideological frames, each with their own conceptions of power, onto their senses of Self and Other. On one level, jocks and coaches engage in identity practices largely congruent with ideologies of Americanized hegemonic masculinity, which stress the development of a single type of masculinity that is seen as paramount to all others. Through this framework, self-identified jocks and coaches create and maintain a binary-structure system that places some men (coaches) in positions of power, and others (jocks) in positions of willing subordination. This is demonstrated through an in-depth qualitative analysis of posts on OnYourKnees, the development of a specific ‘direct’ style of hypnotic trance that places listeners in positions of limited agency, and the deployment of orthographic tools that index self-identified jocks and coaches (analyzed using Halliday and Mathiessen’s [2004] Systemic-Function Linguistics). On the other hand, participants simultaneously align with a bondage/discipline/sadism/masochism (BDSM) ideology that stresses the importance of consent among all participants involved, and places both jocks and coaches on ideologically equal footing. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how Critical Discourse Analysis-inspired methodologies can be used to identify how multiple ideologies can be interwoven with identity construction to create and maintain complex subject positions

Principles of Biology I (Valdosta State University)

This Grants Collection uses the grant-supported lecture slides to Principles of Biology I from Valdosta State University: http://oer.galileo.usg.edu/biology-ancillary/1/ This Grants Collection for Principles of Biology I was created under a Round Two ALG Textbook Transformation Grant. Affordable Learning Georgia Grants Collections are intended to provide faculty with the frameworks to quickly implement or revise the same materials as a Textbook Transformation Grants team, along with the aims and lessons learned from project teams during the implementation process. Documents are in .pdf format, with a separate .docx (Word) version available for download. Each collection contains the following materials: Linked Syllabus Initial Proposal Final Reporthttps://oer.galileo.usg.edu/biology-collections/1007/thumbnail.jp

Polysubstance addiction vulnerability in mental illness: Concurrent alcohol and nicotine self‐administration in the neurodevelopmental hippocampal lesion rat model of schizophrenia

Multiple addictions frequently occur in patients with mental illness. However, basic research on the brain‐based linkages between these comorbidities is extremely limited. Toward characterizing the first animal modeling of polysubstance use and addiction vulnerability in schizophrenia, adolescent rats with neonatal ventral hippocampal lesions (NVHLs) and controls had 19 weekdays of 1 hour/day free access to alcohol/sucrose solutions (fading from 10% sucrose to 10% alcohol/2% sucrose on day 10) during postnatal days (PD 35‐60). Starting in adulthood (PD 63), rats acquired lever pressing for concurrent oral alcohol (10% with 2% sucrose) and iv nicotine (0.015 mg/kg/injection) across 15 sessions. Subsequently, 10 operant extinction sessions and 3 reinstatement sessions examined drug seeking upon withholding of nicotine, then both nicotine and alcohol, then reintroduction. Adolescent alcohol consumption did not differ between NVHLs and controls. However, in adulthood, NVHLs showed increased lever pressing at alcohol and nicotine levers that progressed more strongly at the nicotine lever, even as most pressing by both groups was at the alcohol lever. In extinction, both groups showed expected declines in effort as drugs were withheld, but NVHLs persisted with greater pressing at both alcohol and nicotine levers. In reinstatement, alcohol reaccess increased pressing, with NVHLs showing greater nicotine lever activity overall. Developmental temporal‐limbic abnormalities that produce mental illness can thus generate adult polydrug addiction vulnerability as a mechanism independent from putative cross‐sensitization effects between addictive drugs. Further preclinical modeling of third‐order (and higher) addiction‐mental illness comorbidities may advance our understanding and treatment of these complex, yet common brain illnesses

Health Researchers' Use of Social Media: Scoping Review.

BackgroundHealth researchers are increasingly using social media in a professional capacity, and the applications of social media for health researchers are vast. However, there is currently no published evidence synthesis of the ways in which health researchers use social media professionally, and uncertainty remains as to how best to harness its potential.ObjectiveThis scoping review aimed to explore how social media is used by health researchers professionally, as reported in the literature.MethodsThe scoping review methodology guided by Arksey and O'Malley and Levac et al was used. Comprehensive searches based on the concepts of health research and social media were conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, ERIC, and Web of Science databases, with no limitations applied. Articles were screened at the title and abstract level and at full text by two reviewers. One reviewer extracted data that were analyzed descriptively to map the available evidence.ResultsA total of 8359 articles were screened at the title and abstract level, of which 719 were also assessed at full text for eligibility. The 414 articles identified for inclusion were published in 278 different journals. Studies originated from 31 different countries, with the most prevalent being the United States (52.7% [218/414]). The health discipline of the first authors varied, with medicine (33.3% [138/414]) being the most common. A third of the articles covered health generally, with 61 health-specific topics. Papers used a range of social media platforms (mean 1.33 [SD 0.7]). A quarter of the articles screened reported on social media use for participant recruitment (25.1% [104/414]), followed by practical ways to use social media (15.5% [64/414]), and use of social media for content analysis research (13.3% [55/414]). Articles were categorized as celebratory (ie, opportunities for engagement, 72.2% [299/414]), contingent (ie, opportunities and possible limitations, 22.7% [94/414]) and concerned (ie, potentially harmful, 5.1% [21/414]).ConclusionsHealth researchers are increasingly publishing on their use of social media for a range of professional purposes. Although most of the sentiment around the use of social media in health research was celebratory, the uses of social media varied widely. Future research is needed to support health researchers to optimize their social media use

Nicotine is more addictive, not more cognitively therapeutic in a neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia produced by neonatal ventral hippocampal lesions

Nicotine dependence is the leading cause of death in the United States. However, research on high rates of nicotine use in mental illness has primarily explained this co-morbidity as reflecting nicotine's therapeutic benefits, especially for cognitive symptoms, equating smoking with 'self-medication'. We used a leading neurodevelopmental model of mental illness in rats to prospectively test the alternative possibility that nicotine dependence pervades mental illness because nicotine is simply more addictive in mentally ill brains that involve developmental hippocampal dysfunction. Neonatal ventral hippocampal lesions (NVHL) have previously been demonstrated to produce post-adolescent-onset, pharmacological, neurobiological and cognitive-deficit features of schizophrenia. Here, we show that NVHLs increase adult nicotine self-administration, potentiating acquisition-intake, total nicotine consumed and drug seeking. Behavioral sensitization to nicotine in adolescence prior to self-administration is not accentuated by NVHLs in contrast to increased nicotine self-administration and behavioral sensitization documented in adult NVHL rats, suggesting periadolescent neurodevelopmental onset of nicotine addiction vulnerability in the NVHL model. Delivering a nicotine regimen approximating the exposure used in the sensitization and self-administration experiments (i.e. as a treatment) to adult rats did not specifically reverse NVHL-induced cortical-hippocampal-dependent cognitive deficits and actually worsened cognitive efficiency after nicotine treatment stopped, generating deficits that resemble those due to NVHLs. These findings represent the first prospective evidence demonstrating a causal link between disease processes in schizophrenia and nicotine addiction. Developmental cortical-temporal limbic dysfunction in mental illness may thus amplify nicotine's reinforcing effects and addiction risk and severity, even while producing cognitive deficits that are not specifically or substantially reversible with nicotine

Rhombomere-specific analysis reveals the repertoire of genetic cues expressed across the developing hindbrain

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Hox family of homeodomain transcription factors comprises pivotal regulators of cell specification and identity during animal development. However, despite their well-defined roles in the establishment of anteroposterior pattern and considerable research into their mechanism of action, relatively few target genes have been identified in the downstream regulatory network. We have sought to investigate this issue, focussing on the developing hindbrain and the cranial motor neurons that arise from this region. The reiterated anteroposterior compartments of the developing hindbrain (rhombomeres (r)) are normally patterned by the combinatorial action of distinct Hox genes. Alteration in the normal pattern of Hox cues in this region results in a transformation of cellular identity to match the remaining Hox profile, similar to that observed in <it>Drosophila </it>homeotic transformations.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To define the repertoire of genes regulated in each rhombomere, we have analysed the transcriptome of each rhombomere from wild-type mouse embryos and not those where pattern is perturbed by gain or loss of Hox gene function. Using microarray and bioinformatic methodologies in conjunction with other confirmatory techniques, we report here a detailed and comprehensive set of potential Hox target genes in r2, r3, r4 and r5. We have demonstrated that the data produced are both fully reflective and predictive of rhombomere identity and, thus, may represent some the of Hox targets. These data have been interrogated to generate a list of candidate genes whose function may contribute to the generation of neuronal subtypes characteristic of each rhombomere. Interestingly, the data can also be classified into genetic motifs that are predicted by the specific combinations of Hox genes and other regulators of hindbrain anteroposterior identity. The sets of genes described in each or combinations of rhombomeres span a wide functional range and suggest that the Hox genes, as well as other regulatory inputs, exert their influence across the full spectrum of molecular machinery.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We have performed a systematic survey of the transcriptional status of individual segments of the developing mouse hindbrain and identified hundreds of previously undescribed genes expressed in this region. The functional range of the potential candidate effectors or upstream modulators of Hox activity suggest multiple unexplored mechanisms. In particular, we present evidence of a potential new retinoic acid signalling system in ventral r4 and propose a model for the refinement of identity in this region. Furthermore, the rhombomeres demonstrate a molecular relationship to each other that is consistent with known observations about neurogenesis in the hindbrain. These findings give the first genome-wide insight into the complexity of gene expression during patterning of the developing hindbrain.</p

Nicotine effects in adolescence and adulthood on cognition and α₄β₂-nicotinic receptors in the neonatal ventral hippocampal lesion rat model of schizophrenia

Rational Nicotine use in schizophrenia has traditionally been explained as ‘self-medication’ of cognitive and/or nicotinic acetylcholinergic receptor (nAChR) abnormalities. Objectives We test this hypothesis in a neurodevelopmental rat model of schizophrenia that shows increased addiction behaviors including enhanced nicotine reinforcement and drug-seeking. Methods Nicotine transdermal patch (5 mg/kg/day vs. placebo × 10 days in adolescence or adulthood) effects on subsequent radial-arm maze learning (15 sessions) and frontal-cortical-striatal nAChR densities (α4β2; [3H]-epibatidine binding) were examined in neonatal ventral hippocampal lesion (NVHL) and SHAM-operated rats. Results NVHL cognitive deficits were not differentially affected by nicotine history compared to SHAMs. Nicotine history produced minimal cognitive effects while increasing food–reward consumption on the maze, compounding with NVHL-induced overconsumption. Acute nicotine (0.5 mg/kg) delivered before the final maze sessions produced modest improvements in maze performance in rats with nicotine patch histories only, but not differentially so in NVHLs. Consistent with in vivo neuroimaging of β2 nAChR binding in schizophrenia smokers vs. non-smokers and healthy controls, adult NVHLs showed 12% reductions in nAChR binding in MPFC (p.40), whereas nicotine history elevated nAChRs across both regions (>30%, p<0.001) without interacting with NVHLs. Adolescent vs. adult nicotine exposure did not alter nAChRs differentially. Conclusions Although replicating nicotine-induced up-regulation of nAChRs in human smokers and demonstrating NVHL validity in terms of schizophrenia-associated nAChR density patterns, these findings do not support hypotheses explaining increased nicotine use in schizophrenia as reflecting illness-specific effects of nicotine to therapeutically alter cognition or nAChR densities

Prescription drug monitoring program data tracking of opioid addiction treatment outcomes in integrated dual diagnosis care involving injectable naltrexone

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Fourfold increases in opioid prescribing and dispensations over 2 decades in the U.S. has paralleled increases in opioid addictions and overdoses, requiring new preventative, diagnostic, and treatment strategies. This study examines Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) tracking as a novel measure of opioid addiction treatment outcomes in a university-affiliated integrated mental health-addiction treatment clinic. METHODS: Repeated measure parametrics examined PDMP and urine drug screening (UDS) data before and after first injection for all patients (N = 68) who received at least one long-acting naltrexone injection (380 mg/IM) according to diagnostic groupings of having either (i) alcohol (control); (ii) opioid; or (iii) combined alcohol and opioid use disorders. RESULTS: There were no group differences post-injection in treatment days, injections delivered, or treatment service encounters. UDS and PDMP measures of opioid exposures were greater in opioid compared to alcohol-only patients. Post-first injection, UDS's positive for opioids declined (p < .05) along with PDMP measures of opioid prescriptions (p < .001), doses (p < .01), types (p < .001), numbers of dispensing prescribers (p < .001) and pharmacies (p < .001). Opioid patients without alcohol disorders showed the best outcomes with 50% to 80% reductions in PDMP-measures of opioids, down to levels of alcohol-only patients. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows PDMP utility for measuring opioid addiction treatment outcomes, supporting the routine use of PDMPs in clinical and research settings. SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE: These findings demonstrate that opioid addiction in patients with complex addictions and mental illnesses comorbidities can show effective treatment responses as measured by PDMP tracking of decreases in opioid prescriptions to those patients. (Am J Addict 2016;25:557-564)