Stepping across the line: Information sharing, truth-telling and the role of the personal carer in the Australian Nursing Home

The author draws on an Australian study using multiple qualitative methods to investigate truth telling in aged care. Thematic analysis of data from five nursing homes involving 23 personal care assistants revealed participants’ role understanding as influencing their perceptions about truth telling in practice. Five themes emerged: role as the happy comfort carer, division of labor, division of disclosure, role tension and frustration, and managing the division of disclosure. Role emphasis on comfort and happiness and a dominant perception that telling the truth can cause harm mean that disclosure will be withheld, edited, or partial. Participants’ role understanding divides labor and disclosure responsibility between the personal carer and registered nurse. Personal carers’ strategies for managing the division of disclosure include game playing, obfuscation, lying (denial), and the use of nonverbals. These perceptions about personal carer role, information sharing, and truth telling are paramount for understanding and improving nursing home eldercare

Longer sleep durations are positively associated with finishing place during a national multiday netball competition

Sleep is often regarded as the single best recovery strategy available to an athlete, yet little is known about the quality and quantity of sleep in athletes during multiday competitions. This study objectively evaluated sleep characteristics of athletes during a national netball tournament. Using wrist actigraphy monitors and sleep diaries, 42 netballers from 4 state teams were monitored for the duration of a tournament (6 days) and 12 days before in home environments. Significant differences were found between teams based on final competition standings, suggesting enhanced sleep characteristics in athlete's whose team finished higher in the tournament standings. The top 2 placed teams when compared with the lower 2 placed teams slept longer (8:02 ± 36:43; 7:01 ± 27:33), had greater time in bed (9:03 ± 0:52; 7:59 ± 0:54) and reported enhanced subjective sleep ratings (2.6 ± 0.5; 2.3 ± 0.6). Sleep efficiency was no different between teams. A strong correlation (r = -0.68) was found indicating longer sleep durations during competition were associated with higher final tournament positions. Encouraging athletes to aim for longer sleep durations in competition, where possible, may influence the outcome in tournament style competitions

Optimal jumping strategies from compliant surfaces : a simple model of springboard standing jumps

Chronic pain, including chronic non-specific low back pain (CNSLBP), is often associated with body perception disturbances, but these have generally been assessed under static conditions. The objective of this study was to use a "virtual mirror" that scaled visual movement feedback to assess body perception during active movement in military personnel with CNSLBP (n = 15) as compared to military healthy control subjects (n = 15). Subjects performed a trunk flexion task while sitting and standing in front of a large screen displaying a full-body virtual mirror-image (avatar) in real-time. Avatar movements were scaled to appear greater, identical, or smaller than the subjects' actual movements. A total of 126 trials with 11 different scaling factors were pseudo-randomized across 6 blocks. After each trial, subjects had to decide whether the avatar's movements were "greater" or "smaller" than their own movements. Based on this two-alternative forced choice paradigm, a psychophysical curve was fitted to the data for each subject, and several metrics were derived from this curve. In addition, task adherence (kinematics) and virtual reality immersion were assessed. Groups displayed a similar ability to discriminate between different levels of movement scaling. Still, subjects with CNSLBP showed an abnormal performance and tended to overestimate their own movements (a right-shifted psychophysical curve). Subjects showed adequate task adherence, and on average virtual reality immersion was reported to be very good. In conclusion, these results extend previous work in patients with CNSLBP, and denote an important relationship between body perception, movement and pain. As such, the assessment of body perception during active movement can offer new avenues for understanding and managing body perception disturbances and abnormal movement patterns in patients with pain

The Changes in The Compressive and Tensile Yield Strengths During Uniaxial Cyclic Loading

80 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1983.Many of the multiaxial unified-creep plasticity theories which have been proposed as a means to improve design at elevated temperatures have suffered from the drawback that the manner in which the state variables change is difficult to measure. A unified creep-plasticity theory for uniaxial loading which uses the yield strengths in tension, Y(,1), and compression, Y(,2), as the state variables is investigated as the means of improving the formulation of such theories. The yield strengths are easily measured and can be readily transformed to the state variables commonly used in the multiaxial theories.The yield strengths were measured during a completely reversed cyclic strain amplitude history for 304 stainless steel at 23(DEGREES)C and 600(DEGREES)C, and for Inconel 751 at 788(DEGREES)C and 927(DEGREES)C. The data from these experiments were then plotted in the (Y(,1),Y(,2)) plane and a geometric model of how the state variables change during loading was constructed.The model clearly demonstrates that on each loading reversal kinematic hardening is the predominate type of hardening. The observed limit cycle behavior of the state variables requires that there be an isotropic softening, or decrease in the elastic range, at the beginning of each reversal. This is followed by a rapid isotropic hardening at the end of the reversal. However, this behavior was obscured by the scatter in the data which was on the order of 10 percent of the elastic range.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

How people with motor neurone disease talk about living with their illness: a narrative study

Aim. This paper is a report of a study which explores patients' experiences and how they talk about living and coping with motor neurone disease.Background. Living with motor neurone disease is challenging, frightening and disabling. It leads to progressive physical decline, normally with a prognosis of 3–5 years. Patients have to deal with many problems, including loss of mobility and the inability to communicate. There is little evidence about how people manage these problems or live with this illness.Method. Narrative case studies were used, the unit of analysis being a patient living in their own home or a care home. Thirteen adults were recruited through purposeful sampling. Longitudinal narrative interviews were conducted at three-monthly intervals over an 18-month period in 2005–06. Interviews were analysed focusing on the form and content of the patients' narratives.Findings. Four types of narrative, or storyline were identified. The sustaining storyline is about living life as well as possible through keeping active and engaged in life. In contrast, the enduring storyline concerns living in an insurmountable situation leaving the person feeling disempowered, unable to fight for life or against death. Survival is the essence of the preserving storyline, while the fracturing storyline concerns loss and fear of what is to come.Conclusion. Storylines help make sense of complex narratives by encouraging closer attention and active listening to the stories and serve as organizing threads to help patients, families and healthcare professionals better understand living with motor neurone disease