Understanding dyslexia and nurse education in the clinical setting.

Clinical practice and dyslexia is becoming an important topic with the introduction of disability legislation and changes in nursing school entrance requirements. This paper considers the issues surrounding nursing and dyslexia, drawing on the available evidence. Firstly, the strengths dyslexics can bring to nursing are considered, along with difficulties they can experience, although the evidence is limited, with papers being anecdotal or speculative at times.

Guidelines to the United Kingdom Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) 2001 with regard to nurse education and dyslexia.

This paper concerns the impact of disability legislation on nurse education, nurse educators and student nurses, in relation to academic work and clinical placement, with regard to dyslexia. The two United Kingdom acts considered are the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), 1995 and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA), 2001, which is an amendment to the DDA. The paper examines and defines the main points of the acts, such as discrimination; less favourable treatment and its justification; reasonable adjustments; making adjustments in advance; disclosure and confidentiality requests; substantial disadvantage; current systems and regulations and concludes by raising issues which require clarification.

Sexual health and women with bipolar disorder.

Aim: The aim of this paper is to illustrate the importance of sexual health promotion strategies for women with bipolar disorder in order to stimulate interest and debate in this area of care.

Background: Sexual health promotion is an important aspect of holistic nursing care. However, the literature indicates that nurses are reluctant to discuss sexual health and sexual behaviour with their clients.

Attitudes towards future testing for bipolar disorder susceptibility genes: a preliminary investigation.

The discovery of susceptibility genes for the major psychiatric illnesses may lead to the development of presymptomatic and prenatal tests. In a preliminary study we assessed the attitudes of 147 bipolar patients, 90 attendees at their family doctor (GP) and 32 psychiatrists to the possible development of genetic tests for bipolar disorder susceptibility genes. Our results suggest that patients and the public will look favourably on the development of presymptomatic (but not prenatal) testing for bipolar disorder susceptibility genes.

Sibling pairs with affective disorders: resemblance of demographic and clinical features.

Background: As part of a collaborative linkage study, the authors obtained clinical and demographic data on 160 families in which more than one sibling was affected with a bipolar illness. The aim of the study was to identify clinical characteristics that had a high degree of familiality.

Method: Data on age at onset, gender, frequency of illness-episodes and proportion of manic to depressive episodes were examined to determine intra-pair correlations in affected sibling pairs.