Wellness Through Progressive Muscle Relaxation for Healthcare Workers

https://scholarlycommons.libraryinfo.bhs.org/nurs_presentations2023/1030/thumbnail.jp

Wellness Through Progressive Muscle Relaxation for Healthcare Workers

Nursing Scholarship Symposium Event Posters.https://scholarlycommons.libraryinfo.bhs.org/nurs_presentations/1012/thumbnail.jp

Improving Nursing Students’ Attitudes and Beliefs About Transgender Clients Through the Use of a Simulated Clinical Experience

Background: Negative healthcare experiences may lead to poor health outcomes for transgender individuals, but nursing curricula give little attention to transgender healthcare. This study engaged nursing students in a simulated clinical experience (SCE) which featured a young adult transgender male in an acute care setting to determine whether participation would have a significant impact on student nurses’ attitudes and beliefs about transgender individuals. Methods: The convergent parallel mixed-methods design used a one group pretest-posttest and a post-case debriefing interview to examine undergraduate nursing student attitudes and beliefs toward transgender individuals. Participants (N=27) reported their feelings via the Transgender Attitudes and Beliefs Survey (TABS), a 29-item inventory with three subscales: interpersonal comfort, sex/gender beliefs, and human value. Results: Paired-samples t-tests compared scores before and after the SCE. There were significant differences in the total pre (M=161.55, SD=19.95) and post (M=167.48, SD=23.25) SCE scores, t(26)=2.70, p=.01 and the sex/gender beliefs pre (M=46.40, SD=7.66) and post (M=52.33, SD=12.26) SCE subscale, t(26)=3.30, p\u3c.001. There were not significant differences for the interpersonal comfort and human value subscales. Four themes (discomfort recognition, avoidance rationalization, identity dismissal, and values divergence) emerged from the post-SCE debriefing interviews. Conclusions: These findings suggest that participation in a SCE can have a positive impact on students’ overall attitudes and beliefs about transgender individuals, particularly when examining rigid attitudes and beliefs regarding sex and gender. Additional research with larger groups of nursing students in different academic settings using other transgender SCE cases is needed to determine whether these results are generalizable

Magnetar outbursts: an observational review

Transient outbursts from magnetars have shown to be a key property of their emission, and one of the main way to discover new sources of this class. From the discovery of the first transient event around 2003, we now count about a dozen of outbursts, which increased the number of these strongly magnetic neutron stars by a third in six years. Magnetar outbursts might involve their multi-band emission resulting in an increased activity from radio to hard X-ray, usually with a soft X-ray flux increasing by a factor of 10-1000 with respect to the quiescent level. A connected X-ray spectral evolution is also often observed, with a spectral softening during the outburst decay. The flux decay times vary a lot from source to source, ranging from a few weeks to several years, as also the decay law which can be exponential-like, a power-law or even multiple power-laws can be required to model the flux decrease. We review here on the latest observational results on the multi-band emission of magnetars, and summarize one by one all the transient events which could be studied to date from these sources.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures. Chapter of the Springer Book ASSP 7395 "High-energy emission from pulsars and their systems", proceeding of the Sant Cugat Forum on Astrophysics (12-16 April 2010). Review updated to January 201

Entangled-State Cycles of Atomic Collective-Spin States

We study quantum trajectories of collective atomic spin states of $N$ effective two-level atoms driven with laser and cavity fields. We show that interesting ``entangled-state cycles'' arise probabilistically when the (Raman) transition rates between the two atomic levels are set equal. For odd (even) $N$, there are $(N+1)/2$ ($N/2$) possible cycles. During each cycle the $N$-qubit state switches, with each cavity photon emission, between the states $(|N/2,m>\pm |N/2,-m>)/\sqrt{2}$, where $|N/2,m>$ is a Dicke state in a rotated collective basis. The quantum number $m$ ($>0$), which distinguishes the particular cycle, is determined by the photon counting record and varies randomly from one trajectory to the next. For even $N$ it is also possible, under the same conditions, to prepare probabilistically (but in steady state) the Dicke state $|N/2,0>$, i.e., an $N$-qubit state with $N/2$ excitations, which is of particular interest in the context of multipartite entanglement.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Cognitive reserve in granulin-related frontotemporal dementia: from preclinical to clinical stages

OBJECTIVE Consistent with the cognitive reserve hypothesis, higher education and occupation attainments may help persons with neurodegenerative dementias to better withstand neuropathology before developing cognitive impairment. We tested here the cognitive reserve hypothesis in patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), with or without pathogenetic granulin mutations (GRN+ and GRN-), and in presymptomatic GRN mutation carriers (aGRN+). METHODS Education and occupation attainments were assessed and combined to define Reserve Index (RI) in 32 FTD patients, i.e. 12 GRN+ and 20 GRN-, and in 17 aGRN+. Changes in functional connectivity were estimated by resting state fMRI, focusing on the salience network (SN), executive network (EN) and bilateral frontoparietal networks (FPNs). Cognitive status was measured by FTD-modified Clinical Dementia Rating Scale. RESULTS In FTD patients higher level of premorbid cognitive reserve was associated with reduced connectivity within the SN and the EN. EN was more involved in FTD patients without GRN mutations, while SN was more affected in GRN pathology. In aGRN+, cognitive reserve was associated with reduced SN. CONCLUSIONS This study suggests that cognitive reserve modulates functional connectivity in patients with FTD, even in monogenic disease. In GRN inherited FTD, cognitive reserve mechanisms operate even in presymptomatic to clinical stages