Background: It is reported that hospitalised adults require daily oral care to prevent respiratory infections and maintain oral health but patient oral health declines in hospital. Enhancing knowledge and attitudes has not proven effective for changing behaviours or improving oral health. Reports suggest that some nurses find providing oral care unpleasant, therefore, emotions may influence care provision. Aim: To understand how nurses’ and student nurses’ emotional experiences and reactions influence the provision of oral care for hospitalised adult patients. Methods: The initial study explored emotional experiences, reactions and oral care practices. Eight focus groups and ten one-to-one semi-structured interviews with 48 subjects were used to collect data. These were analysed with Grounded Theory. A second study developed and tested methods to measure student nurses’ emotions towards oral care. This used a self-report questionnaire, interviews and Stroop tests. In the final study, 248 student nurses completed a revised self-report questionnaire, a disgust sensitivity questionnaire and two oral care attitude measures; 41 participants additionally completed emotional Stroop tests, implicit association tests and interviews. Qualitative data were analysed with thematic analysis. Χ2 tests, correlations, and Principal Component Analysis were used to analyse quantitative data. Results: Nurses and student nurses experience emotions towards the social, moral and physical aspects of providing oral care; emotions vary with different situations. Unclean mouths are associated with unpleasantness. Failure to provide oral care evokes moral disgust and anxiety. Providing oral care can evoke anxiety and disgust in unpleasant situations, this leads to student nurses reporting altering oral care procedures. Conclusions: Nurses’ and student nurses’ emotions of disgust and anxiety influence oral care. Although these emotions can motivate nurses to provide care, anxiety and disgust can lead to the selection of procedures that avoid aspects of oral care thus reducing the quality of care provided. Nurses’ oral care training programmes need to address these emotions to improve the quality of oral care for patients in hospitals.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the diagnostic label ‘antisocial personality disorder’ on health care staff’s causal attributions of challenging behaviour, their emotional responses to that challenging behaviour, their optimism about treatment and behavioural change and their propensity to help. Of additional interest was how three aspects of burnout might impact on the above variables. This study employed a between subjects questionnaire methodology. There were 62 participants that comprised of healthcare staff working in low and medium secure mental health settings. Participants were given a case vignette describing a challenging behaviour. In one group, the character in the case vignette was described as having a diagnosis of ‘antisocial personality disorder’, in another group he was described as having a diagnosis of ‘schizophrenia’ and in the third group no diagnosis was provided. Participants then rated the causal attributions, emotional responses, optimism and helping behaviour. All ratings were taken on seven point bipolar scales. Finally they completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory (1996). Participants who were given the vignette with the ASPD diagnosis gave higher ratings for causal attributions of control. The no label group responded with the highest ratings of anger. On the sample as a whole, attributions of controllability and internality were correlated. Controllability was correlated with emotional responding and helping behaviour. Optimism was correlated with helping behaviour. Emotional exhaustion was associated with attributions of controllability and internality. Depersonalisation was also associated with attributions of controllability. Diminished personal accomplishment was associated with optimism. The label antisocial personality disorder may influence how staff make causal attributions of control. This may have implications for how staff respond to such patients. Attributions of control were associated with more anger, less sympathy and less helping behaviour. In addition staff that are experiencing high levels of stress may also have been more vulnerable to making attributions of control. This study found that qualified nursing staff were more likely to experience stress. These findings are discussed in relation to current literature and the clinical implications are described particularly in relation to the formulation of interventions for healthcare staff.

No description available.

The purpose of this thesis is to clarify different aspects of the nursing curriculum from lecturers' and students' points of view in Iran. The evaluation employed a triangulation technique in order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the nursing programme and to provide explanations for its successes and failures. In addition, it attempts to find whether there was any relationship between the characteristics of the respondents and their evaluation of the curriculum. The thesis begins with an introduction to the research. The general policy of The Ministry of Health in nursing education and also the main problems which the students and the teaching staff are confronted with, and the deficiencies of facilities are clarified as background to the research. After describing the main features of the nursing curriculum, some critical issues in nursing education are reviewed. At first, investigations on the nursing curriculum in general are analysed and then nursing research on a particular course of a component of the nursing curriculum is described. The conceptual framework of the research explores different concepts of curriculum and its evaluation. Methodological issues and the findings of the research are also presented in detail. In order to make inferences about the characteristics of the lecturer and student populations from the characteristics of the samples drawn from these populations, inferential statistics are applied. The most important findings of this study fall into three categories: The different components of the curriculum from viewpoints of the lecturers and students were: - Goal: ambiguous from the respondents' viewpoints; - Content: acceptable from the respondents' viewpoints: - Methodology: controversial. Lecturers were critical of the teaching methods. On the other hand, they were acceptable to the students; - Evaluation: controversial. Assessment approaches of the individuals were acceptable to the lecturers but not acceptable to the students; There was no common viewpoint among the respondents about the nursing components of the curriculum. None of the respondents' characteristics had a statistical significant relationship with their perceptions about evaluation of the nursing curriculum.

This thesis is a comparative and historical study of nursing in Britain and the USA from 1860 to 1970. The framework for the enquiry is drawn from the sociology of occupations and professions and the material is oriented specifically to the suggestion that occupational groups 'professionalise' and that professionalisation is a quest for power. There are four parts. Part one reviews the literature on professions which was available in the early 1970s, noting the strong consensus of what are called 'sceptical theorists' around the theme of professional power. It also examines a more substantive literature on nursing, for its bearing on this theme, and outlines a research design. The design involves the specification of areas of power and of indicators of the amount of power held. It sugges ways in which empirical materials might be, collected, largely from secondary sources. Part two presents data on control gained by nurses in both countries in relation to two areas of entry and training. Reasons are given why the research design needed to be modified to produce a much more exploratory and interpretative account than had been envisaged. Differences in the matrix of institutions surrounding the regulation of nursing and the ways they function in the two settings are covered, still in the context of asking questions about the locus of power. The weaknesses of this style of analysis prompt an approach in part 3 which departs further from the original specifications. Nursing is seen as engaged less in a direct quest for control and more in a struggle for meaning. Three chapters deal in turn with concepts of the nurse and her work, aspects of the formulation and presentation of nursing knowledge and some of the strategies and struggles in which nurses have collectively engaged. A deliberate effort is made to build on and use the crosscultural, comparative opportunities presented by these data. The concluding section assesses the relevance of these analyses for the sociology of occupations and professions, suggesting that although the sceptical theorists of the early 1970s performed an important service in highlighting the normative nature of the concept of profession, they did not suggest altogether satisfactory ways of coming to terms with it. Two appendices are included, one providing additional statistical material for chapters 3 and 4, the other discussing issues of theory and method which arise in an historical and sociological project such as this.

Postoperative pain is still poorly managed among surgical patients despite evidence-based approaches to its treatment being well established. Prompted by the persistence of this problem, many researchers have studied factors influencing postoperative pain management. Empirical clinical research has dominated this area and has presented a set of factors which, albeit important, have not taken into account the influence of contextual factors on the individual’s practices in pain management. This study is designed to examine the role of context on the practices and interactions of professionals and patients during postoperative pain management. Informed by the insights of post-structuralism, it uses nonparticipant observation, informal and semi-structured interviews with participants of both genders (29 staff nurses, 13 surgeons, 38 patients, and 20 patients’ family members), and a document review to construct a case study of four surgical patients’ wards in two Jordanian hospitals. Also included is a descriptive analysis of pain and distress scores, and a thematic analysis of the raw data The findings reveal both a significant problem with pain among Jordanian surgical patients, and limited engagement by nurses in postoperative pain management. It is found that a series of socio-cultural and organizational factors limit participants’ practices in respect of pain management. Influential socio-cultural factors include: sexual surveillance, an inferior public view of nurses, patriarchal ideas, and use of personal influence (wasta). Organisational factors include: hierarchical observations, fear of punishment, the subordination of nursing staff, perceptions of low staffing and high workload, and social hierarchies, such as rank. In combination these contextual factors operate as a set of disciplinary and power mechanisms that limit the ability of nurses to become involved in patients’ pain management; impede nursing professionalism by restricting autonomy and self-regulation; reduce some of the patients’ willingness to communicate pain and lead to a reluctance to be cared for by professionals of a different gender. It is concluded that in this area organisational policies are subservient to nurses’ culturally constructed approaches to pain management. As such, socio-cultural factors appeared to have a greater effect than organizational factors. Recommendations are made to address the situation and provide for appropriate pain relief after surgery.

The aim of the study was to discover the most suitable methods of psychologically preparing patients for modern day surgery and to formulate a pre-operative nursing plan which embraces such methods. Contemporary evidence suggests the level of information provided, individual coping style, anxiety and social cognitions may strongly influence the psychological status of patients undergoing surgery. However, the most crucial aspect within day surgery may concern the degree to which the level of information provided meets with individual requirements i.e. information matched with maximum (vigilant coper) and minimum (avoidant coper) levels of requirement. A convenience sample of 120 patients undergoing intermediate, non-life threatening, gynaecological laparoscopic day surgery were contacted prior to admission and randomly assigned into two groups. Group I received an extended information booklet and Group II a simple information booklet. All participants received a questionnaire pack pre-operatively which was utilised to determine coping style, anxiety, health locus of control and self-efficacy. Initially, the nurses rated participants in receipt of the extended information as less anxious, irrespective of coping style (F (1, 47) = 4.257, p = 0.45). However, irrespective of the information booklet received, participants with a vigilant coping style encountered greater external health locus of control (F (1, 47) = 4.249, p = 0.045). Again, irrespective of the information booklet received, participants with a vigilant coping style also experienced lower self-efficacy (F (1, 47) = 6.173, p = 0.017). As participants in receipt of the extended information booklet were observed to be less anxious, the ability of the booklet to alleviate anxiety is discussed. Additionally, regardless of information received, vigilant coping behaviour was associated with diminished health locus of control and lower self-efficacy. Such sub-optimal appraisals are equally explored. An innovative plan is proposed providing explicit psycho-educational guidance for intervention throughout modern elective day surgery. Incorporation of this strategy into nursing practice is outlined and techniques for implementation recommended.

Background: Over recent decades there has been increasing interest in the importance of spirituality and its impact on the well-being of mental health service users. Nurses have a professional obligation to care for patients holistically and this includes assessing and caring for spiritual needs. However, there is little research regarding the specific issues faced by many mental health nurses. The aim of this study was to explore mental health nurses’ understanding of the spiritual needs of service users and how they reported responding to these needs. Methods: This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews as the method of data collection. Seventeen participants took part which included ten female and seven male participants across a wide range of working-age brackets. The data were subsequently transcribed and analysed thematically using Template Analysis (King, 2012). Findings: Four key themes were identified from the data in relation to personal and professional influences on understanding spirituality and caring for spiritual need; different approaches to nursing spiritually; and ‘fear and anxiety’ which permeated participants’ talk on the research topic in many ways. The findings presented show the complex influences that affected participants’ reported understandings and subsequent responses. Conclusion and recommendations: Mental health nurses experienced anxieties around misinterpreting spiritual need as mental disorder, particularly in service users who experience psychosis and other complex mental health issues. Strategies for engaging with mental health service users who express spiritual and religious beliefs could therefore be a focus for future research. This thesis adds to the wider body of knowledge and may usefully contribute to the development of future practice and policy guidelines so that mental health nurses are better able to confidently and competently understand and respond to spiritual need in service users.

Orientador: Maria da Gloria Buzinaro / Resumo: A diarreia neonatal em bovinos é muito comum e resulta em importantes perdas econômicas. O rotavírus constitui um dos principais agentes relacionado à síndrome diarreica, que pode acometer também seres humanos. A ocorrência de rotavírus em bovinos leiteiros e de corte dos Estados de Minas Gerais, Goiás e Mato Grosso do Sul foi analisada por meio de dados epidemiológicos obtidos no período de 2006 a 2010, do Laboratório de Rotaviroses, da Faculdade de Ciências Agrárias e Veterinárias (FCAV/Unesp) de Jaboticabal, São Paulo. No período estudado, foram obtidas 851 amostras de fezes de bezerros, na faixa etária de um a 90 dias de idade, independentemente da manifestação de sinal clínico de diarreia. As amostras foram provenientes de 47 rebanhos leiteiros e 30 rebanhos de corte. A análise foi feita pela técnica de eletroforese em gel de poliacrilamida (PAGE) que indicou animais positivos em 29,9% (23/77) dos rebanhos e 7,1% (60/851) das amostras. Maior prevalência de animais positivos foi encontrada em amostras de bezerros de corte, com 12% (45/370). Dos casos de diarreia, 22,6% (45/199) dos bezerros foram positivos, enquanto 2,3% (15/642) foram detectados em bezerros sem diarreia. O Estado de Goiás apresentou maior prevalência de animais positivos (11,7%, 33/282), seguido por Mato Grosso do Sul (6,5%, 17/260) e Minas Gerais (3,2%, 10/309). A frequência da infecção por rotavírus foi maior em bezerros com idade inferior a 30 dias e nos meses mais chuvosos do ano. De acordo com a mig... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Doutor

No description available.