The Adolescent Female\u27s Lived-Experience of Obesity

For adolescent girls, negative messages about obesity and body image from society, media, school, family, and peers are plentiful. Yet the lived-experience of obese adolescent girls has rarely been reported in scientific literature. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived-experience of the obese adolescent female and understand the impact of the messages received. A descriptive phenomenological approach was used to conduct face-to-face interviews with eight adolescent girls, age 11-18. Participants were recruited through network sampling and had a body mass index of 30 or more. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of embodied perception guided interpretation and data analysis. Seven themes describe their lived experience and reflect the internal and external messages perceived including, false assumptions, myth of perfection, nonculpable diversity, nobody’s perfect, beauty is not skin deep, disengagement, and society’s misplaced focus. Awareness of the livedexperience described in these themes, may guide health care providers to formulate a holistic plan of care that will positively impact both the physical and psychosocial health of the adolescent female who is obese

Primary Care Depression Screening: Relationship to Chronic Pain and Gender

Depression is a subjective illness that often goes undiagnosed and untreated. As the first point of contact for patients, primary care clinics should screen patients regularly for depression. This study evaluated annual depression screening in a rural primary care clinic and relationships among depression, chronic pain, and gender. Using the Patient Health Questionnaire—9 (PHQ-9), a convenience sample of 53 men and 49 women were screened for depression. Twenty-eight percent of patients scored positively for depression. Relationships among depression, chronic pain management, and gender surfaced in the results

Student Learning With Concept Mapping of Care Plans in Community-Based Education

Concept mapping, a learning strategy used to understand key concepts and relationships between concepts, has been suggested as a method to plan and evaluate nursing care. The purpose of this study was to empirically test the effectiveness of concept mapping for student learning and the students\u27 satisfaction with the strategy. A quasi-experimental pre- and posttest design was used to examine the content of concept maps of care plans constructed by junior-level baccalaureate students (n = 23) at the beginning and end of a community-based mental health course. Additionally, students completed a questionnaire to self-evaluate their learning and report their satisfaction with concept mapping. Findings indicated that concept mapping significantly improved students\u27 abilities to see patterns and relationships to plan and evaluate nursing care, and most students (21/23) expressed satisfaction in using the strategy. This study supported concept mapping as an additional learning strategy and has extended knowledge in community-based nursing education