Focusing on feedback: how nurse practitioners can use focus group interviews to build a patient-centered practice.

Purpose: The success or failure of clinical interventions often rests upon the degree of insight nurse practitioners (NPs) have into their patients' preferences for receiving their care. Therefore, NPs have a vested interest in understanding the perspective of their patients, which can be derived by conducting practice-specific focus groups. This article offers NPs practice guidelines for conducting focus groups to improve practice and quality and making practice-related decisions.

Blending genetics and sociocultural historical inquiry: ethics, culture, and human subjects protection in international cross cultural research.

In this paper, we examine the implementation and difficulties when conducting genetics research in a rural, traditional West African culture within the frame of the United States' grounded research ethics. Research challenges are highlighted by Western researchers following U.S.

Effects of parity on blood pressure among West African Dogon women.

Objective: This study examined the effect of parity on blood pressure (BP) readings and BMI among rural West African Dogon women.

Design: Correlational research design.

Setting: Sangha, West Africa

Participants: 133 West African Dogon Women

Methods: Demographic survey including age, number of children, history of hypertension, and village affiliation.

A literature review on community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in the United States: clinical information for primary care nurse practitioners.

Purpose: To analyze the state of the science of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) in the United States to support the integration of current knowledge for primary care nurse practitioners' (PCNP) practice.

Data Sources: Published research limited to U.S.

Alliances of cooperation: negotiating New Hampshire nurse practitioners' prescribing practice.

Nurse practitioner legislation varies among states, particularly in relation to practice without physician oversight, altering the legal environment within which nurse practitioners can use knowledge and skills to meet patient needs. Using New Hampshire as a case study, this historical analysis of nurse practitioners' negotiations over time for independent practice, defined in state practice acts, illuminates the complex social and economic factors affecting nurses' struggle to gain legal rights over their own professional practice without supervision and intervention from another profession. In New Hampshire, not only did organized medicine oppose nurses rights to practice, but pharmacists demanded the right to control all aspects of medication management, including who could prescribe and under what circumstances prescribing could occur.

Origin of the old testament plagues: explications and implications.

Analyses of past disasters may supply insights to mitigate the impact of recurrences. In this context, we offer a unifying causative theory of Old Testament plagues, which has present day public health implications. We propose the root cause to have been an aberrant El Niño-Southern Oscillation teleconnection that brought unseasonable and progressive climate warming along the ancient Mediterranean littoral, including the coast of biblical Egypt, which, in turn, initiated the serial catastrophes of biblical sequence - in particular arthropod-borne and arthropod-caused diseases.

Neuroblastoma survival and death: an in vitro model of hypoxia and metabolic stress.

Heterogeneous oxygen tension and access to metabolites in solid tumors may produce variability in response to adjuvant therapy. To better understand these microenvironmental features, we examined survival and proliferation of neuroblastoma (NB) cells in an in vitro model of hypoxia and metabolite deprivation. Human NB cells (SH-SY5Y) were subjected to a "self-generated" diffusion gradient of nutrient and oxygen deprivation in a modified in vitro "sandwich model.

Structural basis for E2-mediated SUMO conjugation revealed by a complex between ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme Ubc9 and RanGAP1.

E2 enzymes catalyze attachment of ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like proteins to lysine residues directly or through E3-mediated reactions. The small ubiquitin-like modifier SUMO regulates nuclear transport, stress response, and signal transduction in eukaryotes and is essential for cell-cycle progression in yeast. In contrast to most ubiquitin conjugation, the SUMO E2 enzyme Ubc9 is sufficient for substrate recognition and lysine modification of known SUMO targets.