published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Dentistry / Master / Master of Dental Surgery

published_or_final_version / abstract / Geography / Master / Master of Philosophy

Section A explores capacity to consent to healthcare in adults with an intellectual disability in a broad context. It examines the legal understanding of capacity to consent as defined by the Mental Capacity Act (2005), before going on to use decision-making theory as a framework for exploring the psychological understanding of capacity to consent. It then examines the empirical literature on what influences capacity to consent to healthcare interventions and research in people with an intellectual disability, highlighting what further research is needed. Section B reports an empirical study, which follows up on some of the further research suggested by Section A. Background: Capacity to consent has been identified as one of the significant barriers to healthcare faced by people with intellectual disabilities. In order to improve understanding, the literature has attempted to investigate factors that influence capacity to consent to healthcare. Materials and Method: This study had 32 participants with learning disabilities, 22 carers and 3 nurse participants. It examined the correlations between verbal ability, decision-making opportunities and previous health experience, with capacity to consent to healthcare in people with learning disabilities, before exploring a regression model to show how the factors interacted. Results: Previous health experience and verbal ability significantly positively correlated with capacity to consent, whilst the correlation with decision-making opportunities was almost significant. However, the regression model showed that only verbal ability was a significant predictor. Conclusion: The study reveals the importance of looking at how factors that influence capacity to consent to healthcare interact with each other, rather than just acting individually. Further research is required to expand this model to include other variables. Section C provides a critical appraisal for the whole project, exploring what was learnt and what could have been improved on, as well as considering the implications for clinical practice and further research.

Rehabilitation and education are faced with the growing need for adequate and appropriate assessment tools for over 9,000 congenitally deaf-blind persons in this country. These tools are needed to help form the basis for evaluation of these clients/students so that programs appropriate to their specific needs can be determined. In the past, assessment of the functional development of this population has been based on tests standardized on populations of non-handicapped individuals. These measuring primarily language abilities, and experiential factors. Observational procedures can examine the spontaneous behavior of subjects over a long period of time. This is an alternative to standardized instruments. One of these in current use is the Basic Life Skills Screening Inventory. This instrument was developed in 1982 for the purpose of assisting educators and counselors in establishing the readiness of deaf-blind, developmentally disabled clients/students for vocational and life skills training. Though useful in its original form, this instrument has two major limitations. One is the fact that the rater is given only limited choices, resulting in a ceiling effect and a pronounced skew of many of its scales. Another limitation is its lengthy 283 item format, requiring too much administration time to be practical on a daily basis. The present study focused on making needed modifications in this instrument that would help alleviate these limitations, and continue to maintain high psychometric properties within the instrument. In doing this, rater choices were expanded from three (3) to five (5) column headings, and the instrument was reduced from 283 items to 145 items. This study was designed to answer the following questions: (1) Can the Basic Life Skills Screening Inventory be modified in such a way as to give the rater a greater response choice, thus allowing for a more refined assessment? (2) Can the 283 item, Basic Life Skills Screening Inventory be shortened by approximately 50%, to allow for an easier and more practical administration, and continue to maintain high psychometric properties? Results indicate that, despite the modifications, a very high overall consistency among the items was maintained with a total average alpha of 9935.5.

No description available.

Clinical research has shown that patients experience difficulty in adjusting to their pre-morbid worker roles after they have been through a back rehabilitation programme. The pressure and competitiveness of modern day society to achieve competence and to survive has proven to be stressful, both for the injured and uninjured, the unemployed and employed. Back rehabilitation and the successful return of the injured worker to the workplace have been of great interest to industry for the last decade, due to the ever-increasing support of legislature for the injured. There is a range of medical interventions available but few of these achieve successful outcomes due in part to the fact that many intervention strategies do not take the patients perspectives into consideration. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to explore back rehabilitated clients perceptions and experiences of the challenges they face in adapting to their worker roles.

No description available.