Professional career development for male nurses.

Aim: The aim of this paper is to report a study to: (a) explore Taiwanese male nurses' motivations for becoming a nurse; (b) reveal their professional developmental process in nursing; (c) understand the difficulties hindering their professional development from both professional and gender aspects; and (d) identify the strategies they use to cope with these difficulties.

Background: Hindered by historical, cultural, economic and warfare factors, the proportion of male nurses in Taiwan remains low. Taiwanese male nurses' career development process has not been well investigated yet.

A double-blind, randomized, group-comparative study of the tolerability and efficacy of 6 weeks' treatment with mirtazapine or fluoxetine in depressed Chinese patients.

Aim: To compare the efficacy and tolerability of mirtazapine and fluoxetine treatment in a sample population consisting of Chinese patients suffering moderate-to-severe depression.

Method: 133 patients with a diagnosis of major depressive episode (DSM-IV) and scoring 15 or more on the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D) were randomly assigned to receive 6 weeks of treatment with either mirtazapine (15-45 mg/day) or fluoxetine (20-40 mg/day). Efficacy was assessed using the HAM-D and Clinical Global Impressions scale, with analyses performed on the intent-to-treat sample using the last-observation-carried-forward method.

Prevalence of psychiatric disorders among bereaved survivors of a disastrous earthquake in taiwan.

This study investigated the prevalence of psychiatric disorders and risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder among bereaved survivors of a severe earthquake in Taiwan. A total of 120 survivors received a psychiatric interview conducted by board-certified psychiatrists. The two most prevalent disorders were PTSD (37 percent) and major depressive disorder (16 percent).