Perspectives on Conducting Research in Indian Country.

Background: Certain research principles, framed within an indigenous context, are helpful guideposts to practice ethical, relevant, and sensitive inquiries. It is essential to further adapt research approaches based on the unique geographical, sociopolitical, and cultural attributes of partnering tribal communities. These adaptations are largely shaped by trial and error.

Survey of knowledge, attitudes and practices surrounding the intrauterine device in South Africa.

Background: The Copper T intrauterine device (IUD) is a safe, effective, reversible contraceptive that is used widely worldwide but little in South Africa. This study assesses the knowledge, attitudes and practices of potential IUD users and health care providers to inform strategies for expanding IUD use in South Africa.

Study Design: A descriptive, cross-sectional survey was conducted among 205 clients and 32 health care providers at 12 public sector clinics in two provinces.

Voices of faculty of second-degree baccalaureate nursing students.

The limited research related to accelerated second-degree baccalaureate nursing programs primarily focuses on curricular issues or student experiences. The purpose of this study was to focus on the experiences of faculty teaching these students. Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, 14 second-degree faculty from the East Coast region of the United States were interviewed to understand their experiences teaching accelerated second-degree baccalaureate nursing students and how these experiences helped or hindered their teaching and learning practices with these students.

An audit of nutritional care in a health board in Scotland.

This article's aim is to describe the processes used and results found when conducting an audit of nutritional care within a health board area in Scotland. Nutritional standards and an audit tool were developed by a multidisciplinary team and all in-patient clinical areas took part. The results demonstrate that there is still a considerable amount of work that needs to be undertaken to ensure that patients are getting the most effective and efficient nutritional care and this article denotes some of the initiatives instilled to address areas of identified challenges.

Disability among older American Indians and Alaska Natives: an analysis of the 2000 Census Public Use Microdata Sample.

Purpose: We compared the prevalence of disability among older American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) with that among their African American and White peers, then examined sociodemographic characteristics associated with disability among AI/ANs.

Design And Methods: We analyzed the 5% 2000 Census Public Use Microdata Sample. We assessed disability by functional limitation, mobility disability, and self-care disability for four age groups (55-64, 65-74, 75-84, and 85 years or older).

Predictors of success for Saudi Arabian students enrolled in an accelerated baccalaureate degree program in nursing in the United States.

In the mid 1980s, a professional nursing education program was initiated between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States. Based on a perceived and documented need, a collaborative education and research program was established with George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, to begin building a community of new scholars to assist in the advancement of professional nursing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Four cohorts of Saudi citizens from three institutions (King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, Saudi Arabia National Guard Hospital, and Ministry of Aviation and Defense Hospital), who held a degree in science or a related field, were enrolled in an accelerated baccalaureate program leading to a bachelor of science in nursing degree.

Using GIS in a first national mapping of functional disability among older American Indians and Alaska Natives from the 2000 census.

Background: Geographical information systems (GIS) have been used mainly in understanding infectious diseases and environmental threats in health research. Here, GIS was used to examine patterns of functional disability as one impact of chronic disease in American Indians and Alaska Natives. The study purpose was to create the first national mapping of functional disability for AIANs using the 2000 U.

Preferences between injectable contraceptive methods among South African women.

Objective: To examine South African women's preferences between depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) and norethisterone enanthate (NET-EN), as well as the reasons for and correlates of these preferences.

Study Design: A cross-sectional study among women attending 26 primary health care clinics across the Western Cape Province.

Results: Of 893 women participating in the survey, 57% (n=511) and 45% (n=399) had ever used DMPA and NET-EN, respectively.

Strengthening American Indian nurse scientist training through tradition: partnering with elders.

American Indian elders have long been the grandparents to not only their own relatives but also other 'grandchildren' in their tribes, clans and extended families. This worldview demands an elder-youth connection and has been integral to the success of the "American Indian MS to PhD Nursing Science Bridge" at the University of Minnesota, School of Nursing. Elders support the program mission to increase the number (from 12) of doctorally prepared Native nurses.

TOLERATED ILLNESS concept and theory for chronically ill and elderly patients as exemplified in American Indians.

Background: The TOLERATED ILLNESS phenomenon refers to a noted discordance between subjective and objective health measures in the chronically ill patient. The TOLERATED ILLNESS theory of care helps explain why some patients will report good to excellent health in spite of their having low functional ability.

Methods: TI facilitates provider recognition of this largely unrecognized phenomenon and is instructive as to the why's for the patient tolerating illness.

GIS(c): a scientific framework and methodological tool for nursing research.

The purpose of this article was to bring to nursing science a theoretical framework and technology that can transport with it new ways of knowing by exploiting microperspectives and macroperspectives, both from "within the map" and globally. Nursing continues to find its voice, but it also must lend its voice to the forming of Geographic Information Systems and Science in a pan-disciplinary partnership with geography, cartography, sociology, public health, and information technology. It is proposed that nursing take advantage of the latest databases that hold "person" information and layer these over geographical maps holding "environment" and "health" information as a new way of seeing and applying the metaparadigms of nursing.

Functional disability and associated factors among older Zuni Indians.

Few studies have focused on American Indian elderly and functional disability, and none have explored potential moderating or mediating factors that may lend themselves to subsequent intervention. The purpose of this study was to describe the extent of functional disability in elders and to determine which factors were associated with a higher number of Activities of Daily Living (ADL) limitations. The study was a secondary data analysis of an existing survey of American Indian elders in one southwest tribe.

The cow and the coronary: epidemiology, biochemistry and immunology.

Background: Certified death rates from coronary heart disease (CHD) are positively correlated country-by-country with milk consumption, particularly with that of the non-fat portion of milk. CHD death is also associated with circulating antibodies against milk fat-globule membrane (MFGM), raising the possibility that milk intake might be a specific risk factor for CHD. We studied the epidemiology and immunology of milk to see if the association is causal.