The Role of Practicum and Intern Supervisees in Professional Identity Development

A strong professional counselor identity is vital for supervisees in training (Hansen, 2003). Supervision has been linked to enhancing the development of a professional identity in supervisees (Bernard & Goodyear, 2004). In a study of counselor interns, Weaks (2002) found supervisees require three core conditions in supervision necessary for developing a professional identity: equality, safety, and challenge. In a similar study, Howard, Inman, and Altman (2006) found beginning practicum supervisees experienced five critical incidents in their professional growth: professional identity, personal reactions, competence, supervision, and philosophy of counseling. The purpose of this study was to explore how practicum and internship supervisees across the two varying educational levels (practicum and internship) experience the development of a professional counselor identity in supervision. This study examined (a) whether internship supervisees experience the same five critical incidents in their development of a professional identity as practicum supervisees (Howard, Inman, & Altman; 2006), and (b) whether practicum supervisees require the same three core conditions (Weaks, 2002) necessary for developing a professional identity that internship supervisees experienced. My study found that internship supervisees experienced the same five critical incidents with fluctuation in their development of a professional identity as practicum supervisees in Howard et al.\u27s (2006) research. Conversely, practicum supervisees in my research did not require all three core conditions necessary for developing a professional identity that internship supervisees experienced in Weaks’ (2002) qualitative study. This study was significant in that it provided empirical research to assist supervisors and counselor educators in understanding the experiences of practicum and internship supervisees

The Role of Practicum and Intern Supervisees in Professional Identity Development

A strong professional counselor identity is vital for supervisees in training (Hansen, 2003). Supervision has been linked to enhancing the development of a professional identity in supervisees (Bernard & Goodyear, 2004). In a study of counselor interns, Weaks (2002) found supervisees require three core conditions in supervision necessary for developing a professional identity: equality, safety, and challenge. In a similar study, Howard, Inman, and Altman (2006) found beginning practicum supervisees experienced five critical incidents in their professional growth: professional identity, personal reactions, competence, supervision, and philosophy of counseling. The purpose of this study was to explore how practicum and internship supervisees across the two varying educational levels (practicum and internship) experience the development of a professional counselor identity in supervision. This study examined (a) whether internship supervisees experience the same five critical incidents in their development of a professional identity as practicum supervisees (Howard, Inman, & Altman; 2006), and (b) whether practicum supervisees require the same three core conditions (Weaks, 2002) necessary for developing a professional identity that internship supervisees experienced. My study found that internship supervisees experienced the same five critical incidents with fluctuation in their development of a professional identity as practicum supervisees in Howard et al.\u27s (2006) research. Conversely, practicum supervisees in my research did not require all three core conditions necessary for developing a professional identity that internship supervisees experienced in Weaks’ (2002) qualitative study. This study was significant in that it provided empirical research to assist supervisors and counselor educators in understanding the experiences of practicum and internship supervisees

Privacy and Security Concerns Associated with mHealth Technologies: A Computational Social Science Approach

mHealth technologies seek to improve personal wellness; however, there are still significant privacy and security challenges. The purpose of this study is to analyze tweets through social media mining to understand user-reported concerns associated with mHealth devices. Triangulation was conducted on a representative sample to confirm the results of the topic modeling using manual coding. The results of the emotion analysis showed 67% of the posts were largely associated with anger and fear, while 71% revealed an overall negative sentiment. The findings demonstrate the viability of leveraging computational techniques to understand the social phenomenon in question and confirm concerns such as accessibility of data, lack of data protection, surveillance, misuse of data, and unclear policies. Further, the results extend existing findings by highlighting critical concerns such as users’ distrust of these mHealth hosting companies and the inherent lack of data control

Privacy and Online Social Networks: A Systematic Literature Review of Concerns, Preservation, and Policies

Background: Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities, but with it comes privacy concerns due to how personal data are handled by these social networking sites. Prior literature aimed at identifying users’ privacy concerns as well as user behavior associated with privacy mitigation strategies and policies. However, OSN users continue to divulge private information online and privacy remains an issue. Accordingly, this review aims to present extant research on this topic, and to highlight any potential research gaps. Method: The paper presents a systematic literature review for the period 2006 - 2021, in which 33 full papers that explored privacy concerns in online social networks (OSN), users’ behavior associated with privacy preservation strategies and OSN privacy policies were examined. Results: The findings indicate that users are concerned about their identity being stolen, the disclosure of sensitive information by third-party applications and through data leakage and the degree of control users have over their data. Strategies such as encryption, authentication, and privacy settings configuration, can be used to address users’ concerns. Users generally do not leverage privacy settings available to them, or read the privacy policies, but will opt to share information based on the benefits to be derived from OSNs. Conclusion: OSN users have specific privacy concerns due primarily to the inherent way in which personal data are handled. Different preservation strategies are available to be used by OSN users. Policies are provided to inform users, however, these policies at times are difficult to read and understand, but studies show that there is no direct effect on the behavior of OSN users. Further research is needed to elucidate the correlation between the relative effectiveness of different privacy preservation strategies and the privacy concerns exhibited by users. Extending the research to comparatively assess different social media sites could help with better awareness of the true influence of privacy policies on user behavior

An electrochemical comparison of thiolated self‐assembled monolayer (SAM) formation and stability in solution on macro‐ and nanoelectrodes

Thiolated self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) formed on metal electrodes have been a topic of interest for many decades. One of the most common applications is in the field of biosensors, where this is a growing need for functionalising nanoelectrodes to realise more sensitive and implantable sensors. For all these applications the SAM functionalised nanoelectrodes will need to make reliable and interpretable electrochemical measurements. In this work, Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) is used to monitor both the formation and subsequent stability of 6-mercaptohexan-1-ol SAMs on macro and nanoelectrodes and compares the two. To develop effective devices, it is crucial to understand both SAM formation and the resulting signal stability on nanoscale surfaces and this is done by comparing to behaviours observed at the well understood macroscale. We report an initial stochastic binding event and subsequent re-arrangement of the SAMs for both electrode types. However, this re-arrangement takes hours on the macro scale electrodes but only seconds on the nanoelectrodes. This is proposed to be due to the different structure of the SAMs on the electrodes predominantly driven by their bulk to edge ratios. After formation, the SAMs formed on both macro and nanoelectrodes exhibit significant instability over time. The reported results have practical implications for the construction of SAM based biosensors on macro and nanoscale electrodes

Impedimetric measurement of DNA–DNA hybridisation using microelectrodes with different radii for detection of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

Due to their electroanalytical advantages, microelectrodes are a very attractive technology for sensing and monitoring applications. One highly important application is measurement of DNA hybridisation to detect a wide range of clinically important phenomena, including single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), mutations and drug resistance genes. The use of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) for measurement of DNA hybridisation is well established for large electrodes but as yet remains relatively unexplored for microelectrodes due to difficulties associated with electrode functionalisation and impedimetric response interpretation. To shed light on this, microelectrodes were initially fabricated using photolithography and characterised electrochemically to ensure their responses matched established theory. Electrodes with different radii (50, 25, 15 and 5 µm) were then functionalised with a mixed film of 6-mercapto-1-hexanol and a thiolated single stranded ssDNA capture probe for a specific gene from the antibiotic resistant bacterium MRSA. The complementary oligonucleotide target from the mecA MRSA gene was hybridised with the surface tethered ssDNA probe. The EIS response was evaluated as a function of electrode radius and it was found that charge-transfer (RCT) was more significantly affected by hybridisation of the mecA gene than the non-linear resistance (RNL) which is associated with the steady state current. The discrimination of mecA hybridisation improved as electrode radius reduced with the RCT component of the response becoming increasingly dominant for smaller radii. It was possible to utilise these findings to produce a real time measurement of oligonucleotide binding where changes in RCT were evident one minute after nanomolar target addition. These data provide a systematic account of the effect of microelectrode radius on the measurement of hybridisation, providing insight into critical aspects of sensor design and implementation for the measurement of clinically important DNA sequences. The findings open up the possibility of developing rapid, sensitive DNA based measurements using microelectrodes

Accelerating the development of implantable neurochemical biosensors by using existing clinically applied depth electrodes

In this study, an implantable stereo-electroencephalography (sEEG) depth electrode was functionalised with an enzyme coating for enzyme-based biosensing of glucose and L-glutamate. This was done because personalised medicine could benefit from active real-time neurochemical monitoring on small spatial and temporal scales to further understand and treat neurological disorders. To achieve this, the sEEG depth electrode was characterised using cyclic voltammetry (CV), differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), square wave voltammetry (SWV), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) using several electrochemical redox mediators (potassium ferri/ferrocyanide, ruthenium hexamine chloride, and dopamine). To improve performance, the Pt sensors on the sEEG depth electrode were coated with platinum black and a crosslinked gelatin-enzyme film to enable enzymatic biosensing. This characterisation work showed that producing a useable electrode with a good electrochemical response showing the expected behaviour for a platinum electrode was possible. Coating with Pt black improved the sensitivity to H2O2 over unmodified electrodes and approached that of well-defined Pt macro disc electrodes. Measured current showed good dependence on concentration, and the calibration curves report good sensitivity of 29.65 nA/cm2/μM for glucose and 8.05 nA/cm2/μM for L-glutamate with a stable, repeatable, and linear response. These findings demonstrate that existing clinical electrode devices can be adapted for combined electrochemical and electrophysiological measurement in patients and obviate the need to develop new electrodes when existing clinically approved devices and the associated knowledge can be reused. This accelerates the time to use and application of in vivo and wearable biosensing for diagnosis, treatment, and personalised medicine

Integrated multi-material portable 3D-printed platform for electrochemical detection of dopamine and glucose

3D-printing has become a fundamental part of research in many areas of investigation since it provides rapid and personalized production of parts that meet very specific user needs. Biosensing is not an exception, and production of electrochemical sensors that can detect a variety of redox mediators and biologically relevant molecules has been widely reported. However, most 3D-printed electrochemical sensors detailed in the literature rely on big, individual, single-material electrodes that require large sample volumes to perform effectively. Our work exploits multi-material fused filament fabrication 3D-printing to produce a compact electrochemical sensor able to operate with only 100 μL of sample. We report cyclic voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry, and chronoamperometry results to assess sensor performance and sensitivity. We investigated the influence of layer print orientation and layer thickness on the electrochemical performance of the sensor, and used the optimal parameters to produce the final device. The integrated 3D-printed platform successfully detects electrochemical activity for hexaammineruthenium(III) chloride and potassium ferricyanide (0.1 mM to 2 mM in 100 mM KCl), dopamine (50 μM to 1 mM in 1×PBS), and glucose via mediated amperometric glucose oxidase enzyme-based sensing (1 mM to 12 mM in 1×PBS), indicating good acceptance of biological modification. These results reveal the exciting potential of multi-material 3D-printing and how it can be used for the rapid development of efficient, small, integrated, personalized electrochemical biosensors

Test structure and measurement system for characterising the electrochemical performance of nanoelectrode structures

This paper presents a complete test structure and characterisation system for the evaluation of nanoelectrode technology. It integrates microfabricated nanoelectrodes for electrochemical measurements, 3D printing and surface tensionconfined microfluidics. This system exploits the inherent analytical advantages of nanoelectrodes that enables their operation with small volume samples, which has potential applications for onwafer measurements

Combining hyperspectral imaging and electrochemical sensing for detection of Pseudomonas aeruginosa through pyocyanin production

Despite bacterial biofilms representing a common form of infection, notably on medical devices post implantation, their detection and characterisation with existing methods is not sufficient to inform clinicians about biofilm presence or treatment response in affected patients. This study reports the development and use of a combined hyperspectral imaging (HSI) and electrochemical platform to monitor biofilm formation optically and electrochemically. Firstly, production of pyocyanin, a common pigmented and redox active secondary metabolite produced by P. aeruginosa, is monitored by combined HSI and square-wave voltammetry. Secondly, P. aeruginosa biofilm formation is characterised directly using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. This suite of optical and electrochemical measurements allows for combined monitoring of secondary metabolite/virulence factor production along with direct monitoring of biofilm formation on the sensor surface. Crucially, the easy to deploy and low-cost nature of the selected sensing technologies means the approach can be developed for enhanced study of biofilms and/or at the point of care