Self-Care Behaviors of Rural Women Post-Invasive Coronary Interventions

Purpose: To describe self-care behavior experiences of rural women with coronary artery disease (CAD) post-invasive coronary interventions defined as percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI -- balloon angioplasty with or without stent placement), and coronary artery bypass graft (CABG). Design: Qualitative descriptive methods were used to elicit descriptions of self-care behavior experiences, barriers to and facilitators of self-care behavior change. Sample/Setting: Ten rural Arizona (Cochise and Pinal counties) women with CAD post-invasive coronary interventions. Three specific aims were addressed: Aim 1. Identify and describe self-care behaviors initiated by these women post intervention. Aim 2. Identify and describe barriers to and facilitators of self-care behavior changes. Aim 3. Compare and contrast self-care behaviors in subgroups of rural women based on type of procedure and age. Method: Purposeful sampling was used. Data were collected using semi-structured voice-recorded interviews. Atlas.ti Mac Version 1.5.2 (462) software was used for data analysis. Findings: Aim 1: Self-care for this study was defined as the ability of rural women to independently and purposefully initiate and adopt the following behaviors to promote and maintain cardiovascular health: cease smoking; adhere to heart healthy diet; incorporate physical activity to their daily routines; monitor their blood pressure and blood glucose regularly; adhere to medical regimens; follow-up with their doctors as required or access health care in case symptoms recur. Although participants in this study talked about each of these self-care behaviors, adhering to a heart healthy diet and physical activity were their main self-care behaviors. Participants did not mention performing self-care behaviors for their heart health, but for the overall health and happiness. They ate healthy, low-fat, low-salt diets. They walked and performed housework as their most common physical activities. Aim 2: Barriers for participants in this study were residential environment, health and physical ailments, family conditions and personal characteristics. Facilitators were relationships, available resources, and personal outcomes. Aim 3: Participants who had PCI rested for a few days before resuming their physical activity, whereas those who had CABG were restricted for a period of six weeks to three months. Most participants were above the age of 70 years and reported they returned home after their procedures and did what they have done to move on with their lives. The only participant who was below 60 years reported a life changing experience when she returned home after the procedure. Implications: Returning to normal housework and routine was of major importance to participants, therefore, cardiac practices and cardiac rehabilitation programs must fit within these aspects. Rural living was not viewed as a barrier to self-care or a disadvantage. Appropriate strategies must be implemented, and rural health policies must be developed for equal distribution of resources. Different approaches are needed to determine what affect rural behavioral change, beyond appealing to people’s motivation to perform behaviors. Conclusions: Self-care is an essential component of secondary prevention of CAD for rural women post-ICI. Rural women relate health to feelings. If they feel happy they feel healthy; these feelings are not related to their heart health, but overall health

Problems Of Conducting Educational Research In Zambia

This study was an attempt to identify factors hindering the carrying out of educational research in Zambia. Further, it sought to provide solutions to the identified problems. Seven of the 18 respondents returned completed questionnaires. The respondents identified the following as factors hindering research activities in Zambia; lack of research funds, lack of adequate number of publishing houses, ignorance of the uses of research results by the majority of individuals in the country, unwilling or unhelpful respondents, lack of transport and lack of research skills by the majority of professionals with first degrees. The following were suggested as possible solutions to the identified problems; allocation of more funds for research purposes, setting up of more publishing houses, authorities should be more supportive of research activities, publicizing the importance and value of research findings and creating school based transport pools for research purposes

A Rapid Review of the Literature: Cardiovascular Disease Preventive Practices and Rural Black Women

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death among Black/African American women. Rural Black women have the highest CVD prevalence and are more likely to have modifiable risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity than any other race. Accessible evidence-based culture-appropriate self-care programs for risk reduction and CVD prevention can address these disparities. This rapid review aims to provide a comprehensive collection of such programs. Methods. Searches were performed in PubMed, CINAHL, Web of Science, Psychinfo-Embase, and Scopus for studies reporting CVD prevention programs for rural Black women. Three articles met the inclusion criteria, with two promising but not meeting all criteria. Findings. Rural Black women\u27s perceptions, cultural beliefs, and poor access to culturally sensitive health-promoting interventions contribute to the CVD disparities. Partnering with the community to develop self-care and health-promoting interventions that use appropriate language contributed to the acceptability and effectiveness of the interventions. Conclusions. Rural Black women\u27s self-care is inadequately represented in the conventional scholarly literature. Community partnership from the beginning of the problem and intervention identification, development research proposal, and program adaptation until the testing stage was proven to positively impact rural Black women\u27s self-care

TEACHING SUBJECTS MATTER THROUGH ENGLISH AS THE MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION IN THE NAMIBIAN ENGLISH SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS

Many Namibians haveindicated that both teachers and learners were not conversant enough to teach and learn schools subjects through the English medium. Furthermore, they have attributed learners’ poor performance in examinations to the use of English as the medium. Nonetheless, English has remained as the official medium of instruction in Namibian schools.This study sought to find out why the Namibian government had stuck to the use of English as medium of instruction in Namibian classrooms in view of the concerns raised by the teachers, learners and other stakeholders. The sample comprised 12 teachers at 12 schools in the Caprivi Educational Region.The results showed that English Second Language (ESL) teachers were of the view that the use of English as medium of instruction affected learners’ participation in English lesson and that it impacted negatively on learners’ end of year results

TEACHING SUBJECTS MATTER THROUGH ENGLISH AS THE MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION IN THE NAMIBIAN ENGLISH SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS

Many Namibians haveindicated that both teachers and learners were not conversant enough to teach and learn schools subjects through the English medium. Furthermore, they have attributed learners’ poor performance in examinations to the use of English as the medium. Nonetheless, English has remained as the official medium of instruction in Namibian schools.This study sought to find out why the Namibian government had stuck to the use of English as medium of instruction in Namibian classrooms in view of the concerns raised by the teachers, learners and other stakeholders. The sample comprised 12 teachers at 12 schools in the Caprivi Educational Region.The results showed that English Second Language (ESL) teachers were of the view that the use of English as medium of instruction affected learners’ participation in English lesson and that it impacted negatively on learners’ end of year results

Motor learning as an ill-posed problem

A solução de problemas na aprendizagem motora apresenta as seguintes características: não possuem uma solução a priori, há várias soluções para o mesmo problema e as mudanças nas soluções são descontínuas. Isso toma a aprendizagem motora um problema mal-definido. A aprendizagem como um problema mal-definido têm três níveis numa organização hierárquica: controle por “feedback” negativo, controle adaptativo e auto-organizacional. Como as condições iniciais não são conhecidas, é importante adotar o pensamento de controle adaptativo na aprendizagem. Com esse “background” foi realizado um experimento com uma tarefa seriada de rastreamento com quatro medidas: respostas omissas (OR), respostas erradas (ER), repostas corretas (CR) e respostas antecipatórias (AR). Quando submetidos a uma perturbação que requeria adaptação, os sujeitos voltaram um nível na organização hierárquica, o que mostra a importância de investigar como a auto-referência ou restrição mental é utilizadaProblem solving in motor learning presents the following features: there is no “a priori” solution; there are many solutions to the same problem and the changes in solutions are discontinuous. This makes motor learning as an ill-posed problem with three levels of hierarchical organization: negative “feedback” control; adaptive control and self-organization. Since initial conditions are not known, it’s is important to adopt adaptive control as a way of thinking in motor learning. With this background, an experiment was carried out using a serial tracking task with four measures: omission response, error response, correct response and anticipatory response. When the subjects were under perturbation, they returned one level in the hierarchical organization which shows the importance of investigating how self-reference or mental constraint are utilize

Religion Education and Critical Education: The Case of Barnato Park High School in South Africa

Received 8 August 2018. Accepted 20 September 2018. Published online 30 September 2018.This paper uses a case of a South African public school, Barnato Park High, to reflect on if there is a space for religion education and, more specifically, a critical pedagogical approach to teaching the subject at a school that promotes a Christian ethos. I will first define the concepts of critical education and religion education in South Africa, and then move onto providing a brief historical background of the school. The paper will reveal that with the school promoting a Christian character, it may be challenging for it to create an open and inclusive educational environment that exposes learners to religious diversity

Investigation of neuron T cell interaction in central nervous system tuberculosis

Tuberculosis of the central nervous system (CNS TB) is the severest form of tuberculosis. It is classified as extra-pulmonary tuberculosis due to dissemination of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) bacilli from the lung to the brain. It affects mostly children and immune suppressed individuals and high incidents of death occur as a result of missed diagnosis and delayed treatment. Therefore, the is a need for improved therapeutic strategy and a better understanding of the CNS immunity; investigate cells targeted for infection, their respective response to infection and interaction with different cell types to the overall protection of the CNS - as accumulating evidence indicates a dynamic neuronal lymphocyte interplay that defines outcomes of diseases. A novel observation was previously made, that neurons are infected by Mtb during in vitro and in vivo infection. The aim of this study was to further characterize neural responses induced by mycobacteria using hippocampal primary neuron cultures, infected with H37RV and BCG. Secondly, this study investigated the importance of interaction between neurons and immune cells in immunity against mycobacterial challenge using an optimised neuron T cell co-culture model. Investigation included identifying the production levels of neuronal cell surface markers and cytokines induced by Mtb. In flowcytometry and ELISA analyses, infection exhibited a robust inflammatory response with increased neuronal production of cytokines such as IL1β, IL6, TNF and regulatory cytokine IL10 in vitro and in vivo. Neuronal MHC class I expression was upregulated by infection, suggesting possible antigen dependent interactions between neuron and CD8+ T cells. In co-cultures, neurons induced expression of Tbet, RorγT and Gata3 T cell transcription factors through direct contact with T cells. These data highlighted the likelihood of neurons activating T cells upon mycobacterial stimulations. It may potentially be utilised to broaden the understanding of CNS immunity under pathological conditions and possibly lead to identification of novel immunomodulatory targets that could be exploited for new rapid sensitive diagnostics and early opportune intervention against CNS TB – reducing morbidity and mortality associated with the disease

Surgery Outcomes for Pulmonary Metastases from Renal Cell Carcinoma

Pulmonary metastatic resection is a standard therapy for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Although patients with pulmonary metastases who do not undergo any treatment have poor prognoses, it has been reported that resection for pulmonary metastases yields good clinical outcomes. We investigated the prognoses of the 10 Japanese patients (eight males, two females) who underwent a surgical resection of pulmonary metastasectomy from RCC at our institution between April 1, 2012 and March 31, 2020 and analyzed the prognostic factors. We determined the prognoses and calculated the 5-year overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) rates. To identify prognostic factors, we compared the median DFS duration for each factor. Elderly patients (median age, 75.5 years) were more predominant compared to previous studies, and all 10 patients underwent a complete resection. The 5-year DFS rate was 30.5% (95%CI: 0.045-0.63) and the 5-year OS rate was 80% (95%CI: 0.20-0.97). The following factors were associated with better prognosis: female, disease-free interval≥36 months, and metastases size<12 mm. These results indicate that complete resection for pulmonary metastases from RCC resulted in good clinical outcomes, particularly for patients with better prognostic factors