Nurses assistance. Narrative of women victims of domestic violence

Background: Violence is a problem which affects society, and individual and collective health. Objective: To describe the victims’ experience on the nurses’ attendance in health units following an episode of violence. Method: Cross-sectional study with a qualitative approach, configuring an interpretative paradigm. Convenience sample of 27 women resident in a shelter-house. Age between 22-64 years (M=41.15; SD=11.7). The questionnaire collected demographic data, type of aggression and narrative on the nurses’ attendance on the health unit’s admission episode. The data was analysed using WebQDA software. The ethical procedures were complied. Results: The majority is of Portuguese nationality (n=21), cohabited with the aggressor (n=24). In 18 of the cases, the time between the admission in the health unit and the secure place ranged from 1 to 48 hours. All suffered psychological violence. In the narrative analysis, three major categories emerge: a) retelling the violence, b) deprivations in care and c) beneficence in care. In the first category the participants describe the victimization, in the second category they point the attendances’ frailties and in the third category the attendances’ favourable aspects. A fourth category emerges, resulting from the reflective attitude on the predecessors, denominated here by rebirth of losses and bereavements, on which some of the participants anticipate a positive future. Conclusion: Although sexism is identified by some participants, overall, they are gratified by nursing care

Collaboration in a peer response group / Sandra Sim Phek Lin

Writing is a complex task which students frequently encounter much difficulty in not knowing how and where to begin to write. Despite the paradigm shift, most teachers still cling to their traditional belief of assigning a topic and leaving students to write the composition on their own. They fail to understand that writing is a process in which 'scaffolding' is much needed from an adult and even peers to help student writers to explore and discover meanings. Collaboration between student-student helps to promote team co-operation through the sharing of ideas amongst students within the group. Learners play an active role throughout the learning process rather than depending on the traditional teacher evaluation of the end products(Alesandrini & Larson, 2002). This provides them the opportunity to take leadership of their own decisions through meaningful dialogue. According to Shor and Freire (1987), "[voice] is a means to transform social relations in the classroom and to raise awareness about relations in the society at large" (p. 11)

Undergraduates’ speaking anxiety in English as second language (ESL) classrooms / Kimberley Lau Yih Long ... [et al.]

Many students exhibit fear of speaking in English in the English as Second Language (ESL) classrooms. Additionally, there are limited studies in this area of concern among the undergraduates in Sarawak. Hence, this study aimed to identify the students‟ anxiety level towards speaking English based on four components, namely communication apprehension, test anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and comfort in using English in the classrooms. This study also examined whether there is any significant difference in the level of anxiety in terms of gender. A total of 592 undergraduates from two public institutions of higher learning in Sarawak were involved in this study. A Public Speaking Class Anxiety Scale (PSCAS) by Yaikhong and Usaha (2012) was adopted in this study to measure anxiety in the ESL speaking classes. The results gathered through the questionnaires were analysed using SPSS package to determine the students‟ speaking anxiety levels and the significant difference in the level of anxiety in speaking English in terms of gender. Thefindings revealed that undergraduates experienced an average level of speaking anxiety. T-test analysis of the findings in the study also portrayed that generally the female undergraduates experienced higher speaking anxiety as compared to the male undergraduates in all the four factors of ESL speaking anxiety. Among the four factors of speaking anxiety, only the factor of „comfort in using English‟ in the classrooms showed a statistically significant difference between male and female undergraduates. Findings of this study would be significant as knowing the level of anxiety among the undergraduates in ESL classrooms will provide the basis for educators to plan better strategies or techniques to help students in overcoming their English speaking anxiety and to improve their oral English proficiency. It will also help students to be aware of their own speaking anxiety level so that they can seek for measures to overcome their speaking anxiety

Preuve de la validité du score de la qualité de l’évaluation pour l’apprentissage : une mesure de qualité pour les commentaires des superviseurs dans la formation médicale fondée sur les compétences

Background: Competency based medical education (CBME) relies on supervisor narrative comments contained within entrustable professional activities (EPA) for programmatic assessment, but the quality of these supervisor comments is unassessed. There is validity evidence supporting the QuAL (Quality of Assessment for Learning) score for rating the usefulness of short narrative comments in direct observation. Objective: We sought to establish validity evidence for the QuAL score to rate the quality of supervisor narrative comments contained within an EPA by surveying the key end-users of EPA narrative comments: residents, academic advisors, and competence committee members. Methods: In 2020, the authors randomly selected 52 de-identified narrative comments from two emergency medicine EPA databases using purposeful sampling. Six collaborators (two residents, two academic advisors, and two competence committee members) were recruited from each of four EM Residency Programs (Saskatchewan, McMaster, Ottawa, and Calgary) to rate these comments with a utility score and the QuAL score.  Correlation between utility and QuAL score were calculated using Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Sources of variance and reliability were calculated using a generalizability study. Results: All collaborators (n = 24) completed the full study.  The QuAL score had a high positive correlation with the utility score amongst the residents (r = 0.80) and academic advisors (r = 0.75) and a moderately high correlation amongst competence committee members (r = 0.68).  The generalizability study found that the major source of variance was the comment indicating the tool performs well across raters. Conclusion: The QuAL score may serve as an outcome measure for program evaluation of supervisors, and as a resource for faculty development.Contexte : Dans la formation médicale fondée sur les compétences (FMFC), l’évaluation programmatique s’appuie sur les commentaires narratifs des superviseurs en lien avec les activités professionnelles confiables (EPA). En revanche, la qualité de ces commentaires n’est pas évaluée. Il existe des preuves de la validité du score QuAL (qualité de l’évaluation pour l’apprentissage, Quality of Assessment for Learning en anglais) pour l’évaluation de l’utilité des commentaires de rétroaction courts lors de la supervision par observation directe. Objectif : Nous avons tenté de démontrer la validité du score QuAL aux fins de l’évaluation de la qualité des commentaires narratifs des superviseurs pour une APC en interrogeant les principaux utilisateurs finaux des rétroactions : les résidents, les conseillers pédagogiques et les membres du comité de compétence. Méthodes : En 2020, les auteurs ont sélectionné au hasard 52 commentaires narratifs anonymisés dans deux bases de données d’APC en médecine d’urgence au moyen d’un échantillonnage intentionnel. Six collaborateurs (deux résidents, deux conseillers pédagogiques et deux membres de comités de compétence) ont été recrutés dans chacun des quatre programmes de résidence en médecine d’urgence (Saskatchewan, McMaster, Ottawa et Calgary) pour évaluer ces commentaires à l’aide d’un score d’utilité et du score QuAL.  La corrélation entre l’utilité et le score QuAL a été calculée à l’aide du coefficient de corrélation de Pearson. Les sources de variance et la fiabilité ont été calculées à l’aide d’une étude de généralisabilité. Résultats : Tous les collaborateurs (n=24) ont réalisé l’étude complète.  Le score QuAL présentait une corrélation positive élevée avec le score d’utilité parmi les résidents (r=0,80) et les conseillers pédagogiques (r=0,75) et une corrélation modérément élevée parmi les membres du comité de compétence (r=0,68).  L’étude de généralisation a révélé que la principale source de variance était le commentaire, ce qui indique que l’outil a fonctionné avec une efficacité égale pour tous les évaluateurs. Conclusion : Le score QuAL peut servir de mesure des résultats pour l’évaluation des superviseurs par les programmes, et de ressource pour le perfectionnement du corps professoral

Reflections on the Doctoral Consortium

This paper provides a reflective commentary on the British HCI Doctoral Consortium from the perspective of the Organising Committee. We discuss the approach to holding a Human Computer Interaction Doctoral Consortium in July 2020 and the outcomes. We reflect on our lived experience pre, during and post event, flagging issues and perspectives that emerged from the day, and possible implications for doctoral consortiums and training for HCI

The Psychotropic Education and Knowledge test for nurses in nursing homes: striving for PEAK performance

Objectives: The psychotropic education and knowledge test for nurses in acute geriatric care (PEAK-AC) measures knowledge of psychotropic indications, doses and adverse drug reactions in older inpatients. Given the low internal consistency and poor discrimination of certain items, this study aims to adapt the PEAK-AC, validate it in the nursing home setting and identify factors related to nurses’ knowledge of psychotropics. Method: This study included nurses and nurse assistants employed by nursing homes (n = 13) and nursing students at educational institutions (n = 5) in Belgium. A Delphi technique was used to establish content validity, the known groups technique for construct validity (n respondents = 550) and the test-retest procedure for reliability (n respondents = 42). Internal consistency and item analysis were determined. Results: The psychotropic education and knowledge test for nurses in nursing homes (PEAK-NH) (n items = 19) demonstrated reliability (k = 0.641) and internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.773). Significant differences between group median scores were observed by function (p < 0.001), gender (p = 0.019), educational background (p < 0.001), work experience (p = 0.008) and continuing education (p < 0.001) for depression, delirium and pharmacotherapy topics. Items were acceptably difficult (n items = 15) and well-functioning discriminators (n items = 17). Median PEAK-NH score was 9/19 points (interquartile range 6-11 points). Respondents’ own estimated knowledge was related to their PEAK-NH performance (p < 0.001). Conclusion: The PEAK-NH is a valid and reliable instrument to measure nurses’ knowledge of psychotropics. These results suggest that nurses have limited knowledge of psychotropic use in nursing homes and are aware of their knowledge deficits. The PEAK-NH enables educational initiatives to be targeted and their impact on nurses’ knowledge to be tracked

The Factor Inhibiting HIF Asparaginyl Hydroxylase Regulates Oxidative Metabolism and Accelerates Metabolic Adaptation to Hypoxia.

Animals require an immediate response to oxygen availability to allow rapid shifts between oxidative and glycolytic metabolism. These metabolic shifts are highly regulated by the HIF transcription factor. The factor inhibiting HIF (FIH) is an asparaginyl hydroxylase that controls HIF transcriptional activity in an oxygen-dependent manner. We show here that FIH loss increases oxidative metabolism, while also increasing glycolytic capacity, and that this gives rise to an increase in oxygen consumption. We further show that the loss of FIH acts to accelerate the cellular metabolic response to hypoxia. Skeletal muscle expresses 50-fold higher levels of FIH than other tissues: we analyzed skeletal muscle FIH mutants and found a decreased metabolic efficiency, correlated with an increased oxidative rate and an increased rate of hypoxic response. We find that FIH, through its regulation of oxidation, acts in concert with the PHD/vHL pathway to accelerate HIF-mediated metabolic responses to hypoxia

Using interpretative phenomenological analysis to inform physiotherapy practice: An introduction with reference to the lived experience of cerebellar ataxia

The attached file is a pre-published version of the full and final paper which can be found at the link below.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Qualitative research methods that focus on the lived experience of people with health conditions are relatively underutilised in physiotherapy research. This article aims to introduce interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), a research methodology oriented toward exploring and understanding the experience of a particular phenomenon (e.g., living with spinal cord injury or chronic pain, or being the carer of someone with a particular health condition). Researchers using IPA try to find out how people make sense of their experiences and the meanings they attach to them. The findings from IPA research are highly nuanced and offer a fine grained understanding that can be used to contextualise existing quantitative research, to inform understanding of novel or underresearched topics or, in their own right, to provoke a reappraisal of what is considered known about a specified phenomenon. We advocate IPA as a useful and accessible approach to qualitative research that can be used in the clinical setting to inform physiotherapy practice and the development of services from the perspective of individuals with particular health conditions.This article is available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund