Nursing EDGE: evaluating delegation guidelines in education.

Delegation, an important concept for nursing students to learn and practice, is central to registered nurse (RN) performance, and important on the NCLEX-RN examination. Nursing faculty members from an ADN program designed a descriptive study to evaluate planned versus actual delegation in the curriculum, and a second study to evaluate an intervention on delegation. Study One assessed the presence of delegation in each nursing course.

Changes in children's stressors over the past 30 years.

Social and political changes have introduced new sources of stressors for children. Two studies of 7- to 12-year-old children (n=194; n=402) identified stressors from their perspective, compared them to items in existing instruments, analyzed changes in stressors over the past 30 years, and determined the need for a new instrument. The children named 908 stressors that were inductively sorted into 54 mutually exclusive categories of stressors.

A longitudinal study of age and gender differences of stressors and coping strategies in school-aged children.

This 2-year longitudinal study examines age and gender differences and changes in stressors and coping strategies of school-aged children. The sample consisted of children aged 8 to 13 years, from an elementary parochial school in a small, rural Appalachian town. The severity of stressors decreased significantly with age over a 2-year period, although the frequency of occurrence did not change.

Measurements of stress and coping among school-aged children with and without recurrent abdominal pain.

Theoretical support, but little empirical evidence confirms recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) as a psychosomatic response of children to stressors in their environment. The differences between children with and without RAP in appraising their own stressors and coping abilities were examined. Of 250 8-12 year olds, 25 (10%) experienced recurrent abdominal pain.