A Quick Guide to the Management of Traumatic Upper Extremity Injuries: for Entry Level Occupational Therapists

According to Kasch, Greenberg, and Muenzen (2003), occupational therapists who are initiating their entry into hand therapy or upper extremity or1hopaedic specialization do not have the knowledge and skills of an experienced therapist. This is especially true for occupational and physical therapists who enter the workforce with a general overview of many treatments but have not trained or worked in a specialized upper extremity or1hopaedic practice. Upper extremity orthopaedics is a specialty area of the occupational therapy (OT) profession which requires not only a wide range of generalized knowledge and experience, but also an extended knowledge of specific diagnostic categories and treatment. Secondary to the need to prepare students for entry-level generalized practice, many OT programs are not designed to prepare students for areas of specialized practice, including upper extremity orthopaedic therapy. Despite the absence of specialty knowledge, many students obtain employment in OT hand therapy clinics or treat patients with upper extremity dysfunction in other practice settings. While comprehensive literature exists for treating patients with upper extremity injuries, there are limited resources designed to assist entry level therapists during their transition from an OT student to a clinician in a specialty area. A literature review was conducted to obtain information on the process of specializing in OT hand therapy. Informal discussions with practicing OTs and faculty members specializing in orthopaedic upper extremity therapy were also conducted to obtain more information about hand therapy and the process of becoming a competent therapist. The product portion of this project was created after gathering information about three common traumatic upper extremity injuries, distal radius fractures, traumatic tendon injuries, and traumatic nerve injuries, and the therapeutic approaches to treat these injuries. Information was gathered from materials produced by orthopedic surgeons, general physicians, hand therapists, occupational therapists, and other medical professionals specializing in the treatment of hand injuries. The information collected culminated in the creation of a manual designed for use by entry-level occupational therapists and is presented in three sections that are congruent with the three aforementioned diagnoses. Each of the three sections of the manual provides an overview of the diagnosis being discussed as well as conm10n problems associated with each diagnosis and treatment strategies that are commonly used in the hand therapy setting. Each section also includes pictures or diagrams representing the traumatic injury, explanations of common etiology of the injury and the general symptoms that may be present. The manual also includes a a resources section which includes helpful literature, websites and associations for occupational therapists who are treating patients with upper extremity orthopaedic dysfunction I believe this product can be used by students who are interested in entering the hand therapy setting but do not feel they have the\u27 knowledge and experience to do so. Further, I believe this product will be useful for practicing therapists who work in rural settings or other settings in which patients with hand injuries are not the primary population being treated

The effects of mass extinction on escalation of the naticid gastropod predator-prey system at the Eocene-Oligocene

In 1987, Vermeij proposed the hypothesis of escalation, which states that biological hazards, such as predation, have increased through the Phanerozoic. This hypothesis has been extremely controversial due to the fact that it assumes that biotic factors, such as predation, have had an important role in evolution. Several studies have focused on the validity of the hypothesis of escalation. Kelley and Hansen (1996) offered a modified exposition of the escalation hypothesis. The Kelley-Hansen hypothesis states that escalation cycles are punctuated by periods of mass extinction. The periods of mass extinction would preferentially eliminate the highly escalated prey and, therefore, a new cycle would be initiated. In this study the Kelley-Hansen hypothesis was tested at the Eocene Oligocene extinction boundary in central Mississippi. The levels of escalation of specimens from the Moodys Branch Formation, which lies below the extinction boundary, and the Red Bluff Formation, which lies above the extinction boundary, were compared. The comparison was conducted with several statistical analyses including chi-squared tests and Mann-Whitney U tests. These tests indicated that the Red Bluff Formation did not exhibit higher levels of escalation. In fact, they indicated that the fauna of the Moodys Branch Formation was more highly escalated. These results from the Eocene Oligocene did not support the Kelley-Hansen hypothesis. However, previous studies from the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary found support for this hypothesis. On the basis of these different results, it can be concluded that the extinctions at the Eocene-Oligocene and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundaries had fundamentally different effects on the mollusk faunas

Effects of agricultural land management changes on surface water quality: A review of meso-scale catchment research

Measuring the environmental impacts of agricultural practice is critical for policy formulation and review, including policies implemented to improve water quality. Here, studies that measured such impacts in surface waters of hydrologically diverse meso-scale catchments (1–100 km2) were reviewed. Positive water quality effects were measured in 17 out of 25 reviewed studies. Successful farm practices included improved landscape engineering, improved crop management and reductions in farming intensity. Positive effects occurred from 1 to 10 years after the measures were implemented, with the response time broadly increasing with catchment size. However, it took from 4 to 20 years to confidently detect the effects. Policy makers and scientists should account for these hydrological and biogeochemical time lags when setting policy and planning monitoring in meso-scale catchments. To successfully measure policy effects, rates of practice change should also be measured with targeted water quality parameters

The environmental weed risk of revegetation and forestry plants

Concerns have been raised about the environmental weed risk of non-indigenous plants promoted for broad scale revegetation and farm forestry purposes in South Australia (SA). Environmental weeds are plant species that invade and dominate natural habitats beyond the species' native range. The wide scale planting of species for revegetation, forestry, agriculture and horticulture increases the likelihood that some species will naturalise (i.e., form a self-sustaining population) and invade native vegetation or other landuse systems. However, analyses of past invasions have shown that the majority of plant species introductions will be of negligible weed risk. In 2001 the PIRSA Revegetation Program and the State Revegetation Committee of South Australia commissioned the Animal and Plant Control Commission (APCC) to undertake a weed risk assessment of 20 plant species. Weed risk assessment is the use of standard, technical criteria to determine the relative weed threats posed by plant species ...repor

Grazing Management Impacts on the Riparian Zone and Water Quality

Inappropriate farm management activities such as stock access to creeks, and poor fertiliser and effluent management can negatively impact riparian zones and waterways, contributing to increased in-stream nutrient, sediment and microbiological loads and loss of riparian biodiversity, amongst other impacts. Nutrient budgets for dairy systems indicate that on-farm nutrient accumulation and redistribution is common (Gourley 2004), which in large part is due to the uneven distribution of dairy cow dung and the nutrients they contain (Aarons et al., 2004). The \u27Gippsland Dairy Riparian Project Environmental Monitoring module\u27 was established in Jan. 2003 to monitor the impact of dairy farm management and changed riparian zone management on the riparian zone and water quality

A comparison of rehabilitated coal mine soil and unmined soil supporting grazed pastures in south-east Queensland

Land that is disturbed by mining activities is required to undergo suitable rehabilitation. This study compared soils supporting grazed pasture on land that was rehabilitated after coal mining activity with that on unmined land. Pasture biomass, and soil physical and chemical properties important for pasture production and sustainability were intensively monitored on three sites that had completed rehabilitation at different times over the last 10 years, and one unmined control site. A further 18 unmined grazing sites were monitored for benchmarking purposes. Analysis of soil properties of plant available phosphorus and nitrogen, salinity and sodicity in the first year of the study suggested little difference in terms of benefits or constraints to pasture production between the rehabilitated and control sites. Plant-available phosphorus was sufficiently high in the two oldest rehabilitated sites that a fertiliser response would not be expected. Soil depth and the pasture rooting depth at the rehabilitated sites were at the shallow end of the wide range observed across the benchmark and control sites. Higher pasture biomass at the rehabilitated sites compared with the control at the initiation of the trial was attributed more to differences in grazing history than differences in soil attributes

The application of high temporal resolution data in river catchment modelling and management strategies

Modelling changes in river water quality, and by extension developing river management strategies, has historically been reliant on empirical data collected at relatively low temporal resolutions. With access to data collected at higher temporal resolutions, this study investigated how these new dataset types could be employed to assess the precision and accuracy of two phosphorus (P) load apportionment models (LAMs) developed on lower resolution empirical data. Predictions were made of point and diffuse sources of P across ten different sampling scenarios. Sampling resolution ranged from hourly to monthly through the use of 2000 newly created datasets from high frequency P and discharge data collected from a eutrophic river draining a 9.48 km2 catchment. Outputs from the two LAMs were found to differ significantly in the P load apportionment (51.4% versus 4.6% from point sources) with reducing precision and increasing bias as sampling frequency decreased. Residual analysis identified a large deviation from observed data at high flows. This deviation affected the apportionment of P from diffuse sources in particular. The study demonstrated the potential problems in developing empirical models such as LAMs based on temporally relatively poorly-resolved data (the level of resolution that is available for the majority of catchments). When these models are applied ad hoc and outside an expert modelling framework using extant datasets of lower resolution, interpretations of their outputs could potentially reduce the effectiveness of management decisions aimed at improving water quality

Sting of passion

A new exhibition of contemporary jewellery by 12 up-and-coming international jewellery artists opens at Manchester Art Gallery this July. Curated by Manchester-based jewellery artist Jo Bloxham, the exhibition features new conceptual works of jewellery by artists from as far afield as the USA and Mexico. All the works on display have been inspired by Pre-Raphaelite paintings from Manchester Art Gallery’s prestigious collections. The paintings have all been selected by the exhibition curator, Jo Bloxham and include Pre-Raphaelite favourites such as Arthur Hughes’ Ophelia and Rossetti’s The Bower Meadow and Astarte Syriaca. The works portray women as a femme fatale, a seductress, and in some cases, purely as an object of beauty. Bloxham comments that each of the jewellers has responded individually, the works have provoked some strong reactions, and astonishing results: “The jewellers have created an exciting body of work using a diverse selection of materials, from gold and garnets to concrete and broken glass. The Sting of Passion is an opportunity to explore an area of jewellery design rarely seen in the UK.” Polish jeweller, Arek Wolski has added modern irony to his work for Eve Tempted by John Stanhope. Playing on words, Wolski has created a t-shirt brooch, changing the phrase ‘Last Forever’ to a more cynical ‘Lust Forever’. French jeweller, Benjamin Lignel found The Bower Meadow by Dante Gabriel Rossetti deeply unsettling. Lignel says “Here are the real desperate housewives: typecast for maximum excitement. Rossetti’s dancing beauties live the test-tube lives of neutered she-monsters in a tree-lined water-tank.” Nanna Melland from Germany has created a fine, gold chain, to sit around the waist of Rossetti’s Astarte Syriaca in the form of a new girdle

Changes in Hutterite House Types: the Material Expression of the Contradiction Between Being-On-The-Colony and Being-In-The-World (Communitarian, Utopias, Marxism, Interactionism).

In Hutterite society, tradition has dictated what ought to be. This view of reality emphasizes simple living and avoidance of the world and is reflected in ascetic colony housing. However, as more areas of Hutterite life change in response to attempts to increase economic production, it is difficult to maintain avoidance as an ideal. As the gap between idea and reality increases, tradition is undermined, and on many colonies, normative validity claims are no longer unquestionable. Consequently, colony leaders are now confronted with demands for participation and collective consumption, especially for modern and more-private housing. This study explains how Hutterite housing has changed and why recent changes have been so dramatic. Housing data, collected in historical and field work research on eighty-eight colonies, are incorporated into rules based on methodology developed by Henry Glassie. These rules illustrate genetic relationships among Hutterite house types and identify the transition from folk to modern housing. Concepts from symbolic interactionism and three interpretations of Marxist theory--technical determinist, broad mode of production, and critical theory--are used to explain why colony housing has changed. This theoretical synthesis indicates that the introduction of modern and more-private housing mirrors fundamental change in Hutterite society, change that is brought about by developments that have increased the tension in the contradiction between being-on-the-colony and being-in-the-world. This increase in tension and attempts at reconciliation are considered the driving mechanism of change on Hutterite colonies. Although change in colony housing mirrors change in Hutterite society, the introduction of modern housing allows colony members to move offstage where they can improvise on group norms. This explains, in part, how individual Hutterites have become more autonomous, a development that was largely unforeseen and which is significant for two reasons. Firstly, the desire for more autonomy indicates that colony members are attempting to satisfy their own expectations of themselves, not just social expectations. Secondly, although housing has been defined by the colony, the unforeseen consequences of the changes made possible by more-private housing have acted back on the original definition and reshaped it