Faith and Pedagogy: Five Voices from Japan

Despite a recent increase in research into the relationship between faith and practice in ELT, the ways in which actual Christian teachers make meaning of their faith through pedagogy remains largely unexplored. There is little empirical data about the ways in which witnessing and evangelism are (or are not) conducted through English classes. The present study is an analysis of interview data collected from five evangelical Christian teachers living and working in Japan. The participants vary considerably in age and teaching context, yet all share a strong religious faith and a desire to express it through their profession. Each participant was interviewed twice, for approximately one hour each time. The interviews were then fully transcribed and analyzed. The study found that these teachers did not make meaning of their faith and pedagogy in a way that necessitates overt evangelism in the classroom. Rather, they prefer to express their beliefs through personal virtues of love and respect, holding to a high standard of professionalism, and encouraging exploration of deeper life issues in class

Integrating nursing informatics into undergraduate nursing education in Africa: a scoping review

Background: Information and communication technologies have become omnipresent in healthcare systems globally, and since nurses comprise the majority of the health sector workforce, they are expected to be adequately skilled to work in a technology-mediated environment. Integrating nursing informatics into undergraduate nursing education is a cornerstone to nursing education and practice in Africa. Aim: This scoping review aimed to evidence the integration of nursing informatics into undergraduate nursing education in Africa. Methods: A scoping review of the literature used electronic databases including CINAHL Plus databases; EmCare; MEDLINE Ovid; Scopus; ERIC ProQuest; Web of Science; Google; and Google Scholar to locate papers specific to the African context. From a total of 8723 articles, 19 were selected for critique and synthesis. Results: Selected studies indicated that nursing students used several information and communication technologies tools primarily for academic purposes, and rarely for clinical practice. In Africa, the challenges for teaching informatics in nursing education included: limited information and communication technologies skills among faculty and students; poor teaching strategies; and a lack of standardization of nursing informatics competencies. Successful integration of nursing informatics into undergraduate nursing education in African countries depends on restructuring nursing informatics content and teaching strategies, capacity building of the faculty and students in information and communication technologies, political commitment, and collaborative partnership. Conclusion: Nursing informatics is scarce in undergraduate nursing education in Africa due to the implementation and adoption challenges. Responding to these challenges requires a multi-sectoral approach in the revision of undergraduate nursing curricula. Implication for nursing education, practice, policy and research: This study highlights the importance of nursing informatics in undergraduate nursing education, with its challenges and success. Nursing education policies should support the development of well-standardized nursing informatics content and appropriate teaching strategies to deliver it. Further research is needed to establish which aspects of nursing informatics are integrated into undergraduate nursing education and nursing practice, implementation process, challenges and possible solutions. Collaborative partnerships are vital to developing nursing informatics policies to better prepare graduate nurses for the African healthcare workforce in the digital era

Profiling risk factors of patients diagnosed with type 2 diabetes awaiting outpatient diabetes specialist consultant appointment, a narrative review

Background: Entry to seek health care services in Australia is based on a person's acuity rating as stipulated in legislation, standards and policy. In the context of diabetes Specialist Outpatient Departments, access involves a referral that is triaged by a clinician into a categorised waitlist. However, within categories, access to health care is queue based only, which omits patient centric factors determining the order of appointment allocation. Aim: The purpose of the literature review undertaken June to December 2019 was to identify which patient centric factors influence the risk of deterioration in a type 2 diabetes population waiting for an appointment. Methods: Databases searched included CINAHL, Medline and Scopus from 2011 to 2019. The first search focussed on key words, the second search focussed on a revised expression of key words emerging from the first search. The third search identified articles sourced from reference lists. Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) and Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) critical appraisal tools were used to appraise the rigour of the studies. Findings: Four key themes emerged from 29 selected articles. Duration of diabetes, comorbidity, age of patient and prescribed medication therapy significantly influenced the level of risk associated with deterioration. Discussion: Further research is needed to evidence if duration of type 2 diabetes, comorbidities, age of patient and medication therapy influence the risk of deterioration in an Australian cohort. Conclusion: The aim of this review was to discover which patient centric factors influence the risk of deterioration in a type 2 diabetes population

What challenges and enablers elicit job satisfaction in rural and remote nursing in Australia: An Integrative review

Aim: To explore challenges and stressors experienced by rural and remote area nurses and identify any interventions that aided in decreasing stress and increasing job satisfaction. Background: Demand for a generalist nursing workforce in rural and remote locations exposes nurses to the same conditions as people residing there: higher mortality rates and higher incidence of chronic diseases and inadequacies in accessing health services. Design: Christmals and Gross’s integrative review framework was used with specified inclusion and exclusion criteria. Four databases were searched with no date limits. Only Australian studies were searched as international scope of practice differences for nurses could have distorted findings. Findings: Eighteen studies identified three broad themes: access to education; isolation (geographical, professional and personal) and recognition of role. Discussion: Interlinked themes showed positives and negatives from differing viewpoints. Ambivalence to education stemmed from inadequate exposure to learning and was linked with geographical isolation. Isolation was found to be less of a challenge to nurses who had an existing emotional connection with the community. Conclusion: The themes identified were recurrent and interconnecting. The benefits of working in small rural and remote communities are being used as a driver for recruitment. These benefits include higher wages, providing a sense of belonging and allowing nurses to work to their full scope and develop generalist nursing skills. The geographical isolation generates challenges through inequality in access to education and professional support, working outside their scope of practice, safety and vulnerability that comes with living remotely and adapting to extreme weather conditions

Contextual Modulation of Associative Learning and the Role of Resting State Brain Activity in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

In the present dissertation we addressed neuronal changes in PTSD using an activationbasedand a resting state-based approach with a special focus on brain areas involved in abnormal activation in PTSD such as amygdala, hippocampus, ventromedial prefrontalcortex (vmPFC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and insula. Our attention was directed to the mechanisms mediating increased return of fear and the association of PTSD symptoms with aberrant brain activity as well as aberrant resting state connectivity. In both studies we compared PTSD patients with trauma-exposed but unaffected controls (non-PTSD) and trauma-naïve healthy controls (HC). In the first study, subjects underwent an ABC fear conditioning and extinction procedure, where two CSs were presented in front of virtual reality scenes. One of them (CS+) was paired with a slightly painful electrical stimulation (US) during acquisition, whereas the other one was never paired with the US (CS-). During extinction, there were no CS-US pairings. After acquisition (context A) and extinction (context B), the participants were brought to a novel context C and again confronted with the CSs. Selfreports, skin conductance responses (SCR) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) were measured simultaneously. We found elevated return of fear in the PTSD patients indicated by larger differential SCR compared to non-PTSD and HC and larger differential amygdala and hippocampus activity compared to HC. Increased amygdala activation was positively correlated with numbing and vmPFC activity was positively correlated with behavioral avoidance even though there were no functional group differences in this region of interest. Additionally, PTSD patients failed to appropriately reduce subjective arousal to the CS- over the course of the experiment and to the CS+ during extinction. Taken together, the results of study 1 support the hypothesis that PTSD is characterized by aberrant activity within regions of the neurocircuitry model, which leads to deficient extinction maintenance. Furthermore, our data confirm a general inability of PTSD patients to correctly identify safety signals and modulate fear responses based on this information. Such dysfunctional mechanisms seem to contribute to PTSD symptoms and represent a probable cause for relapse, whereas resilient subjects appear to benefit from protective mechanisms. In the second study, subjects underwent a resting state scan and functional connectivity was analyzed using an amygdala seed and independent component analysis (ICA) as well as correlations with symptom severity. The seed-based approach revealed increased left amygdala – the left insula coupling in PTSD versus nonPTSD, which positively correlated with re-experiencing intensity. Compared to HC, both trauma experienced groups showed higher positive correlations of the left amygdala and the right putamen as well as the right insula. The ICA did not reveal any group differences, i.e. in DMN connectivity. In summary, study 2 indicates that altered amygdala-insula coupling and decreased amygdala-putamen coupling, but not DMN connectivity, contribute to the pathophysiology of PTSD. Hyperconnectivity between the left amygdala and the left insula differentiated patients from resilient subjects and was linked to re-experiencing intensity. This result suggests that a stronger functional link between somatic sensations and emotional appraisal might lead to increased anticipation of negative events in PTSD, which potentially explains characteristic symptoms such as hyperarousal and negative alterations in mood and cognition

How do people with diabetes learn about their disease? Doing it my own way

Research Background - Diabetes mellitus has been a concern in Indonesia since the 1980s. It is one of the four major non-communicable diseases in Indonesia with the prevalence rate predicted to rise. - Research has found that diabetes education improves glycaemiccontrol, increases the person's knowledge and positively changes their attitudes towards self-care management, which results in improved health outcomes. - Several studies examined formal diabetes educational programs in Indonesia. The educational programs provided support and advice for people living with diabetes, as well as increasing their knowledge about diabetes and improving self-care management. - Despite these achievements, none of these studies adequately provided a deep understanding of the process of providing health education to people living with diabetes in the Indonesian context. Moreover, there is very little evidence to describe and explain who provides the health education in Indonesia