Effects of Short-Term Service Ministry Trips on the Development of Social Responsibility in College Students

This study investigated the impact of service ministry trips on the development of social responsibility in college students at a small Quaker liberal arts university in the Pacific Northwest. Students (50 female, 14 male) who participated on 5 different short-term service ministry trips served as the service ministry group, while students (23 females, 13 males) in a general psychology class served as the control group. Over three administrations of the Global Social Responsibility Inventory, (Starrett 1996) students provided responses that offered support for service ministry trips as a method of increasing a sense of social responsibility in college students. Analysis revealed that the students who participated in the service ministry trips demonstrated a stronger sense of social responsibility at the end of the trip than did the control group, and that the increase maintained itself at the four week follow-up test. Further analysis was mixed regarding whether service ministry trips to locations that provided interpersonal interaction with marginal groups demonstrated a stronger sense of social responsibility than either the control group or a service ministry trip that were primarily devotional in nature

Key emerging issues in frontotemporal dementia.

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) encompasses the syndromes of behavioural variant FTD (bvFTD) and primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and refers to those neurodegenerative diseases characterised by predominant pathological involvement of the frontal and temporal lobes. Recent years have witnessed major advances in the clinical characterisation of FTD, reflected in the publication of updated diagnostic criteria for bvFTD and PPA, and the discovery of new pathogenic mutations has added to the understanding of genotype-phenotype interactions and of disease mechanisms. Emerging results from longitudinal studies of familial FTD show that imaging and cognitive changes occur years before symptom onset and such studies may yield biomarkers of early disease that in turn will facilitate earlier diagnosis. The hope and (guarded) expectation is that these advances may together herald the beginning of the end of the chapter in which FTD is considered an inexorably progressive and untreatable condition.Dr Chan is funded by the Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and receives grant income from the UK Medical Research Council, Technology Strategy Board and the Cambridge Isaac Newton Trust.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00415-015-7880-

The difference an End of Life diagnosis makes: a qualitative study of community care providers’ perspectives

Background Increasing numbers of people die of the frailty and multimorbidity associated with old age, often without receiving an End-of-Life diagnosis. Compared to those with a single life-limiting condition such as cancer, frail older people are less likely to access adequate community care. To address this inequality, guidance for professional providers of community healthcare encourages them to make End-of-Life diagnoses in more such people. These diagnoses centre on prognosis, making them difficult to establish given the inherent unpredictability of age-related decline. This difficulty makes it important to ask how care provision is affected by not having an End-of-Life diagnosis. Aim To explore the role of an End-of-Life diagnosis in shaping the provision of healthcare outside acute hospitals. Design and Setting Qualitative interviews with nineteen healthcare providers from community-based settings including nursing homes and nursing services. Method Semi-structured interviews (nine individual, three small group). Data were analysed thematically and using constant comparison. Results In our participants’ accounts, it was unusual and problematic to consider frail older people as candidates for End-of-Life diagnosis. Participants talked of this diagnosis as useful to them as care providers, helping them prioritise caring for people diagnosed as “End-of-Life” and enabling them to offer additional services. This prioritisation and additional help were identified as excluding people who die without an End-of-Life diagnosis. Conclusion End-of-Life diagnosis is a first-class ticket to community care; people who die without such a diagnosis are potentially disadvantaged as regards care provision. Recognising this inequity should help policy-makers and practitioners to mitigate it