No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Burn victims are treated using the exposure method in a specially designed intensive care room in which sterile air at a controlled temperature (25-38^oC) is blown down on to the open wounds allowing them to dry and form an eschar. During this treatment, the patient's heat loss has to be maintained as low as possible to minimise thermal stress. This work involved the creation of an automated system to monitor patient heat loss, along with the development of a mathematical model to predict the optimum conditions for treatment. The monitoring system consists of a micro processor controlled interface board connected to an IBM PC which operates a multitasking operating system. The interface repetitively collects data from the monitoring equipment including an infra red camera, while the computer controls the rate of collection, calibration, storage and display of various environmental and physiological factors as well as the images obtained from the camera. The temperature distributions across burn wounds are complex and dependent on the depth and position of the wound as well as the time after injury The monitoring system allows the automatic collection of image data at regular intervals, with the sequence of images produced together with the environmental data recorded, being used in the calculation of body heat loss, and in the study of temperature changes during wound healing. A mathematical model has been developed, programmed and adapted to accurately model the responses of a group of 22 healthy subjects in the intensive care room over the range of ambient temperatures available. Further development was then made to enable the modelling of burned patients, with application to six patients studied in the room.

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No description available.

This study investigated the effect of a two week intensive narrative intervention program on the narrative abilities of four inner-city children, using an interrupted time-series with removed treatment design. The intervention program focused on teaching five specific story grammar units. The variables of interest in this study were: improvement in story macrostructure, microstructure and language quantity, as well as improvement of scores on standardized narrative tools. All participants showed an improvement in at least one of the narrative skills examined in this study; one of four participants showed an improvement in all of the narrative skills examined in the study. The results of this study indicate that intensive narrative intervention is a viable treatment approach and should be further investigated. / Speech-Language Pathology

This study, drawing on the work of van Manen and based on hermeneutic phenomenological principles, sets out to lay open an ontological substance of emergency nursing-as-caring work by exploring the experiences and lived realities of eleven emergency nurses engaged in nursing practice in emergency departments within South Australia. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 1998

Thesis (MHlthSc(OccTh))--University of South Australia, 1999

Making the transition to an area of specialist nursing practice is challenging for both the learner and staff who are responsible for education and skill development. This study uses grounded theory methodology to explore the question: "How do nurses learn critical care nursing?"The eight registered nurses who participated in this study were recruited from a range of intensive care settings. The criteria for inclusion in the study included the participant having attained competency within the critical care setting. Data was collected from individual interviews. The findings of this study developed during the coding and comparative analysis process, and subsequently theoretical sampling was used to further explore the identified concepts.This study found that nurses' focus on two main areas during their orientation and induction into critical care nursing practice. These are learning to do (skill acquisition) and learning to be (professional socialisation). The process of transition involves two stages: that of learning to do the tasks related to critical care nursing practice, and the ongoing development of competence and confidence in practice ability. The relationship of the learner with the critical care team is a vital part of the transition to competency within the specialist area.This study identifies factors that influence the learner during transition and also provides an understanding of the strategies used by the learners to attain competency. These findings are applicable to educators and leaders responsible for the education and ongoing learning of nurses within critical care practice. The use of strategies such as simulated learning and repetition are significant in skill acquisition. However attention must also be paid to issues which influence the professional socialisation process, such as the quality of preceptor input during orientation and the use of ongoing mentoring of the learner.