Bridging the Gap: Mentoring as a Strategy to Prepare Graduate Nurse Educator Students for Academic Practice

The nursing profession is facing an eminent faculty shortage. Novice nurse educators and nurses transitioning from clinical practice to academia are often ill prepared for the faculty role. Mentoring has been used throughout nursing to prepare and advance nurses for a variety of roles. This paper discusses the vast literature surrounding the phenomenon of mentoring in nursing including the importance of mentoring as a strategy to socialize and prepare novice nurse educators for academia. Minimal research is available on the effect of mentoring graduate nurse educator students for socialization and preparation for the faculty role. This paper describes a novel approach to prepare graduate nurse educator students for academia. By incorporating a mentor program in graduate nurse educator programs, faculty mentors for graduate nurse educator students facilitate the socialization and preparation process for these novice nurse educators and their future roles in academia

ATTITUDINAL DIFFERENCES OF CHORAL MUSIC TEACHERS IN REGARDS TO VOCAL CHANGE TYPE

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether differences exist in secondary choral music teachers’ understandings and attitudes toward sex-specific vocal change and whether these differences vary by virtue of years of teaching experience. Participants (N = 405) were secondary choral music educators and current members on the National Association for Music Education who were surveyed using a researcher-designed attitudinal questionnaire. The survey instrument consisted of 20 questions related to teacher attitude towards sex-specific vocal change. Responses were recorded in using a 7-point Likert-type scale and included two anecdotal responses. Paired-samples t-tests were conducted and revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between choral director attitudes in regards to male adolescent vocal change and female adolescent vocal change: t (404)= 18.25, p \u3c 0.01. There was not a statistically significant difference for years of experience

Goal conflict, goal facilitation, and health professionals' provision of physical activity advice in primary care : An exploratory prospective study

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Response to letter regarding article, "patient-reported measures provide unique insights into motor function after stroke".

Background and PurposePatient-reported outcome measures have been found useful in many disciplines but have received limited evaluation after stroke. The current study investigated the relationship that patient-reported measures have with standard impairment and disability scales after stroke.MethodsPatients with motor deficits after stroke were scored on standard assessments including NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS), modified Rankin Scale (mRS), and Fugl-Meyer motor scale (FM), and on two patient-reported measures, the hand function domain of the Stroke Impact Scale (SIS), which documents difficulty of hand motor usage, and the amount of use portion of the Motor Activity Log (MAL), which records amount of arm motor usage.ResultsThe 43 participants had mild disability (median mRS=2), moderate motor deficits (FM=46 ± 22), and mild cognitive/language deficits. The two patient-reported outcome measures, SIS and MAL, were sensitive to the presence of arm motor deficits. Of 21 patients classified as having minimal or no impairment or disability by the NIHSS or mRS (score of 0-1), 15 (71%) reported difficulty with hand movements by the SIS score or reduced arm use by the MAL score. Furthermore, of 14 patients with a normal exam, 10 (71%) reported difficulty with hand movements or reduction in arm use.ConclusionsPatient-reported measures were a unique source of insight into clinical status in the current population. Motor deficits were revealed in a majority of patients classified by standard scales as having minimal or no disability, and in a majority of patients classified as having no deficits

Perceived Effectiveness of Study Skills Training for Division III College Athletes: A Pilot Program

College athletes experience high levels of stress and academics is one of the primary causes. This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a study skills training workshop designed around the theory of Multiple Intelligences. The pilot-workshop was developed with minimal resources, tailored to college athletes, and focused on helping them adopt personally meaningful active study strategies. An inductive, naturalistic evaluation approach was used to analyze the qualitative responses of 55 athletes who participated in the workshop. Findings showed that those who adopted active study strategies experienced benefits in the areas of decreased stress, perceived effectiveness, perceived efficiency, greater variety of options for how to study, and academic benefits. While benefits to active studying far outnumbered barriers, participants did identify some challenges including time, lack of applicability to all classes, and the challenge of learning something new. The results of this study provide support for utilizing individualized study skills training that empowers students to capitalize on their personal learning strengths. Such programs can be built into the academic support structures delivered by academic advisors and learning specialists, with potential benefits in the areas of both mental health and skill development to support academic success

Adolescents’ Writing in the Content Areas: National Study Results

While many adolescents in US school settings do not achieve basic levels of writing proficiency, new standards and assessments hold all students, regardless of academic performance history and language background, to higher standards for disciplinary writing. In response to calls for research that can characterize a range of adolescents’ writing experiences, this study investigated the amount and kinds of writing adolescents with different academic performance histories and language backgrounds produced in math, science, social studies, and English language arts classes in schools with local reputations of excellence. By applying categories of type and length, we analyzed the writing of 66 students from California, Kentucky, New York, and Texas: 26 English learners (L2) and 40 native English speakers (L1), of whom 19 were identified by school norms as lower performing and 21 were identified as higher performing. We found the majority of writing tasks adolescents completed did not require composing more than a paragraph. Exceptions were essays in English language arts and persuasive essays and reports in social studies—almost half of which were source-based tasks. In addition, considerable differences were noted in the range of genres and amount of extended writing produced among L1 writers with histories of higher performance in contrast with L1 writers with histories of lower performance and L2 writers. These findings are discussed in light of Common Core State Standards shifts and the implications they hold for content area teachers who teach adolescents with different achievement histories and language backgrounds

Biomarkers of Rehabilitation Therapy Vary According To Stroke Severity

Biomarkers that capture treatment effects could improve the precision of clinical decision making for restorative therapies. We examined the performance of candidate structural, functional,and angiogenesis-related MRI biomarkers before and after a 3-week course of standardized robotic therapy in 18 patients with chronic stroke and hypothesized that results vary significantly according to stroke severity. Patients were 4.1 ± 1 months poststroke, with baseline arm Fugl-Meyer scores of 20–60. When all patients were examined together, no imaging measure changed over time in a manner that correlated with treatment-induced motor gains. However, when also considering the interaction with baseline motor status, treatment-induced motor gains were significantly related to change in three functional connectivity measures: ipsilesional motor cortex connectivity with (1) contralesional motor cortex (p = 0 003), (2) contralesional dorsal premotor cortex (p = 0 005), and (3) ipsilesional dorsal premotor cortex (p = 0 004). In more impaired patients, larger treatment gains were associated with greater increases in functional connectivity, whereas in less impaired patients larger treatment gains were associated with greater decreases in functional connectivity. Functional connectivity measures performed best as biomarkers of treatment effects after stroke. The relationship between changes in functional connectivity and treatment gains varied according to baseline stroke severity. Biomarkers of restorative therapy effects are not one-size-fits-all after stroke

Seat 20D

When artist Suse Lowenstein’s son Alex was murdered in the 1988 bombing of Pan AM Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, to combat her grief, she spent 15 years creating 75 life-sized sculptures of mothers’ of the victims naked and posed in mourning. Now she needs to find them a home

Incontinence-associated dermatitis in the acute care setting: An exploration of the phenomenon

Incontinence-associated dermatitis (IAD) is a common, painful and costly threat to skin integrity and quality of life in older hospital patients. Through an exploration of this multidimensional phenomenon, this thesis has advanced understanding of the prevalence of IAD and associated Candida colonisation and infection in the acute care setting. The novel Skin Safety Model integrates the multi-factorial influences of patient, hospital environment and situational stressors, and proposes a re-conceptualisation away from the historical focus on discrete skin injury; pioneering a new framework to guide a unified understanding of maintaining skin integrity that can be applied across the broad range of skin injuries

Camp Rainbow Gold: New Design

Camp Rainbow Gold is a summer camp for children diagnosed with cancer. The camp has experienced substantial growth since its inception, reaching the capacity of its current site, and is exploring alternative sites. Awesome Engineering was tasked to design a new resident camp facility to meet the needs of a growing Camp Rainbow Gold as a Civil Engineering Design project. We were given a 77-acre site located two miles south of Bellevue, Idaho, and a list of facility requirements for the camp. Our job is to design the facilities as well as investigate the required permits and codes. We will design floor plans for a dining hall, an administration building, a medical facility, a multipurpose meeting facility, and recreation facilities, along with sleeping accommodations for 300 people. We will perform a detailed structural design for an arts and crafts building, drinking water and wastewater systems, and the roads and walkways throughout the camp. During the design, an emphasis will be placed on American’s Disability Act (ADA) compliance because many of the affected children have limited mobility due to their condition and its treatment