Reflections of an Accidental Political Scientist

I’ve spent most of my adult life studying and teaching politics, but, as the title of this talk suggests, I did not set out to be a political scientist. I’ve actually had a few students approach me after seeing the poster, puzzled and maybe even slightly alarmed: What exactly do I mean by “accidental”? The only way I can explain it is to provide a little bit of my personal background, so maybe that’s where we should start

Communication During Palliative Care and End of Life: Perceptions of Experienced Pediatric Oncology Nurses

Advances in cancer and supportive therapy have led to improved outcomes for children with cancer. Despite progress, children still die from complications of cancer therapy or their disease. Communication during palliative care and end of life is essential to successful navigation through the end of life continuum. Nurse communication during palliative care and end of life is a phenomenon with limited research, and it is unclear how the level of nursing experience influences the perspectives of nurses communicating during end of life. The purpose of this dissertation study was to describe the commonalities of nurses\u27 experiences of communicating palliative care and end of life perspectives when caring for dying pediatric oncology patients, and perceptions of barriers and facilitators to effective communication. This study was part of a larger multi-site qualitative study. The framework that guided this study is based on empirical phenomenology as a research philosophy and approach, and on group-as-a-whole theory. This study represented focus group data gathered from 27 pediatric oncology nurses who had greater than five years of experience or who were advanced practice nurses not involved in the direct evaluation of other nurses. The overall finding was characterized as the Essence of Experience , which reflected how the concept of experience transcended the core themes and provided nurses the know-how to optimize nurse PC/EOL communication. Five core themes with corresponding themes and subthemes surfaced from rich focus group discussions and supported the overall finding. The core themes included (a) evolution of PC/EOL, (b) skill of knowing, (c) expanded essence of caring, (d) experienced nurse as committed advocate, and (e) valuing individual response to grief. Enhancing nurse communication skills during palliative care and end of life requires opportunities to gain experience coupled with clinical strategies, such as standardized curricula, simulation, competency-based orientation programs, mentorship and peer support. Future research is needed to better understand outcomes associated with strategies aimed at improving nurse communication skills during palliative care and end of life in pediatric oncology

Do Masculinity and Perceived Condom Barriers Predict Heterosexual HIV Risk Behaviors Among Black Substance Abusing Men?

Although HIV prevention during substance abuse treatment is ideal, existing HIV risk-reduction interventions are less effective among Black and other ethnic minority substance abusers. The Sexual Health Model (SHM) and the Person, Extended Family and Neighborhood-3 model (PEN-3) both highlight the importance of increasing our understanding of the relationship of sociocultural factors to sexual-decision making as a step towards developing more HIV prevention interventions for ethnic minorities. However, few studies examine sociocultural factors in the sexual decision-making process of Black substance abusing men. This secondary analysis of data collected in an evaluation of Real Men Are Safe (REMAS), a HIV prevention intervention, in the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) addressed this gap by examining the relation of two specific sociocultural factors (i.e., masculinity and perceived barriers to condom use) to the self-reported sexual behaviors of Black substance abusing men with their main and casual female partners. Analyses of the baseline data of 126 Black men entering substance abuse treatment revealed that the endorsement of both personal and social masculinity predicted more unprotected sexual occasions (USO) with casual partners. The perception that condoms decreased sexual pleasure also predicted higher USO rates with casual partners. However, fewer partner barriers was not associated with USO among casual partners as expected. Neither the endorsement of social or personal masculinity or perceived condom barriers predicted USO with main partners. The findings suggest that interventions that depict condom use as both pleasurable and congruent with Black male perceptions of masculinity may be more effective with Black substance abusing men