Helping a visually impaired student to improve her social interaction skills at Andrés Bello University, Viña del Mar, Chile : an action research

Tesis (Pedagogía en Inglés)During the last decade, inclusion that is “Something which cannot be done to people, it is something in which people are actively involved” (Norwich, 1999), has been used by different educational institutions to define or highlight their programs and as a matter of promoting a very comprehensive education. That is why an action research was conducted, whose aim is to study and improve the social interaction between a visually impaired student and her professors and peers within the English Pedagogy Program from a university in the city of Viña del Mar. In this thesis project, several people who are part of the daily life of the subject of the study contributed to this thesis project by providing relevant information. These people were professors, previous and current classmates and family members who decided to participate in a voluntarily and active form. In order to collect the information from a qualitative nature, focus groups, semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and observations were used as instruments. Moreover, more support and guidance were delivered by professionals from the educational and medical fields, i.e a psychology and a psychopedagogue. These experts provided techniques in order to reach the objective of this research. In terms of results, these were unexpected because they changed the researchers’ perspectives and helped them to understand a reality that was present but, was not taken into account. After analyzing the results obtained from the strategies applied in the action plan, the researchers came into the conclusion that the subject improved her social interaction skills thanks to the different techniques that we applied with her. However, it was found out that the context played a key role in the interaction between the classmates and the subject because the dysfunctional characteristics of the peers made the student to react different to them as she interacted with the researchers.Durante la última década, inclusión que se refiere a “Una acción la cual no puede ser realizada por personas, es algo en que las personas están activamente envueltas” (Norwich, 1999) (Traducido por Ivette Aguirre, Camila Fernández, Bárbara Melo y Bastián Mendoza), ha sido utilizado por diferentes instituciones educacionales para definir o destacar sus programas como una manera de promover una educación completa. Por esta razón se llevó a cabo una investigación acción la cual pretende investigar y mejorar la interacción social entre un estudiante con dificultades visuales y sus profesores y compañeros en un programa de pregrado de una universidad en la región de Viña del Mar. Varias personas los cuales forman parte activa en el quehacer diario del sujeto de estudio contribuyeron con información relevante para esta investigación. Estos fueron profesores, compañeros, ex compañeros y familiares, quienes aceptaron participar de forma voluntaria y activa. Para recolectar la información de naturaleza cualitativa, se utilizó focos grupales, entrevistas semi-estructuradas, cuestionarios y observaciones como instrumentos. Además, más apoyo y guía fue entregada por parte de profesionales en el área de la educación y la salud como una psicóloga y psicopedagoga. Estas personas aportaron técnicas para el desarrollo del objetivo de nuestra investigación. En tema de resultados, fueron sorprendentes porque cambiaron mucho la perspectiva de los investigadores y ayudaron a entender una realidad que estaba presente pero no se había tomado en cuenta. Después de analizar los resultados obtenidos por las estrategias aplicadas en el plan de acción, los investigadores llegaron a la conclusión de que el sujeto mejoró en sus habilidades de interacción social gracias a las diferentes técnicas que se trabajaron con ella. Aunque, se encontró que el contexto juega un rol principal en la interacción entre los compañeros y la estudiante debido a que las características disfuncionales de los compañeros hicieron que la estudiante reaccionara diferente con ellos as que como interactuó con los investigadores

International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortiu (INICC) report, data summary of 43 countries for 2007-2012. Device-associated module

We report the results of an International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) surveillance study from January 2007-December 2012 in 503 intensive care units (ICUs) in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. During the 6-year study using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) U.S. National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) definitions for device-associated health care–associated infection (DA-HAI), we collected prospective data from 605,310 patients hospitalized in the INICC's ICUs for an aggregate of 3,338,396 days. Although device utilization in the INICC's ICUs was similar to that reported from ICUs in the U.S. in the CDC's NHSN, rates of device-associated nosocomial infection were higher in the ICUs of the INICC hospitals: the pooled rate of central line–associated bloodstream infection in the INICC's ICUs, 4.9 per 1,000 central line days, is nearly 5-fold higher than the 0.9 per 1,000 central line days reported from comparable U.S. ICUs. The overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia was also higher (16.8 vs 1.1 per 1,000 ventilator days) as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (5.5 vs 1.3 per 1,000 catheter days). Frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas isolates to amikacin (42.8% vs 10%) and imipenem (42.4% vs 26.1%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (71.2% vs 28.8%) and imipenem (19.6% vs 12.8%) were also higher in the INICC's ICUs compared with the ICUs of the CDC's NHSN