Helping Nurses Manage Their Stress by Integrating Health Promotion: An Ecological Approach

In the United States registered nurses constitute the largest health care occupation; with about three out of five jobs being located in hospitals Everyday more and more nurses describe their profession as increasingly hectic and stressful. The purpose of this study is to design and implement how nurses at the Cayuga Community Health Network Center can reduce stress by using an Ecological Approach on health promotion programs. Two-hundred and seventy five nurses agreed to attend the Stress Management for Professional Caregivers workshop. All of the participants were female, with the majority being Caucasian. A majority of the nurses stated the workshop made them think about how they handle stress. Nearly all of the nurses stated that the information in the stress management workshop was valuable to them professionally. The success of this stress workshop demonstrates that implementing health promotion programs from an ecological perspective has the potential to reduce stress among nurses

Sleep habits of high school students: An intervention to improve them

Adolescence is a time of tremendous growth: physically, cognitively, socially, and emotionally. Many experts state that good sleep habits are very important for adolescents and emotional well-being. The few studies of adolescents\u27 sleep habits have reported that many high school-age students sleep less than eight hours when their bodies actually need nine hours a night. Research has found a relationship between shortened sleep duration and chaotic sleep patterns to overall poor school performance. Sleep problems among adolescents have been found to be associated with anxiety, depression, inattentive behavior, social problems, aggressive behavior, and delinquency. Additional studies indicate that adolescents who regularly get insufficient sleep experience reduced functioning in such areas as school performance, safety issues, and interpersonal relationships. Furthermore, most adolescents do not realize the importance of sleep or simple actions they can practice to improve the quantity and/or quality of their sleep. The purposes of this study were to investigate the relationship between high school students\u27 sleep habits, their knowledge of sleep hygiene, and to evaluate the effects of a psychoeducational intervention on students\u27 sleep habits. This study consisted of two parts. Part A gathered survey information from a sample of the total school population to explore relationships among sleep duration, sleep quality, grade point average, general physical health, general mental health, and attendance. Part B examined the affect of a thirty-minute psychoeducational presentation on sleep duration, sleep quality, sleep hygiene knowledge, and sleep hygiene practices. This study found that students did not sleep enough hours, experienced poor sleep quality, and experienced negative consequences for these behaviors. It was also found that a thirty-minute psychoeducational presentation was not effective in increasing sleep amounts, improving sleep quality, increasing sleep hygiene knowledge, or improving sleep hygiene practices. The results suggest that students who sleep for short amounts and have poor sleep quality may expect to experience decreased physical health, poorer mental health, and more school absences. This also demonstrated that a single, short presentation was not effective in changing the sleep length, sleep quality, sleep hygiene knowledge, or sleep hygiene practices. This finding indicates that different strategies should be tested and used to improve sleep among high school students. Additional implications of the findings for school counselors are also delineated

Epidemic of Obesity in African American Communities and the Need for a Culturally Sensitive After School Childhood Obesity Prevention Program

An after-school obesity prevention program for African American children is proposed in this paper. The prevention program is a behavioral education program designed to facilitate healthy behavior changes in obesity self-care and provide culturally sensitive interventions specifically for obese African American children. The self-care concepts addressed involve: knowledge of obesity, exercise, and nutrition. The culturally sensitive interventions address the problems of low self-esteem, communication, and ineffective family coping. The implementation of the after-school obesity program included four phases: needs assessment, planning and goal setting, implementation, and monitoring for progress. This afterschool education program is designed to promote self-care, family support, and improve the quality of life for obese African American children

General William Jenkins Worth: the American Murat

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University, 1948. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive