Physical fitness assessment of older adults in the primary care setting.

Purpose: To explore the relationships between the physical fitness and the demographic characteristics, general health and well-being, social support, and physical activity in a group of community-dwelling older adults. This study also assessed the feasibility of obtaining physical fitness measures in the primary care setting.

Data Sources: Thirty-four persons older than 60 years completed self-report measures and the Senior Fitness Test (SFT), a battery of fitness measures normed for older adults.

Cultural competency of graduating US Bachelor of Science nursing students.

Cultural competence in the delivery of nursing care is an expectation of accreditation and approval boards for nursing in the United States. This study evaluated the effectiveness of four different nursing program curricula in developing culturally competent new graduates. Four methodologically and geographically diverse groups of graduating BSN students in the United States were given the Inventory for Assessing the Process of Cultural Competency Among Healthcare Professionals-Revised (IAPCC-R prior to graduation and after completion of course work.

Today's challenge, tomorrow's excellence: the practice of evidence-based education.

Nurse educators are being challenged to maintain quality in light of increasing numbers of students, declining numbers of experienced faculty, societal mandates, and rapid changes in health care. The scholarship underlying the practice of nursing education, or evidence-based education, must continue to be explored through the design, testing, and refinement of education strategies from nursing and other disciplines. The involvement of every educator in this process will help create institutional valuing that serves to retain inquisitive and reflective educators in academic settings, while expanding evidence-based education in nursing.

Evaluating a conceptual model-based assignment.

Although all faculty evaluate student assignments, fewer tackle the difficult issue of evaluating its actual usefulness. Wanting to know how their undergraduate community health nursing students were understanding and using a conceptual model in clinical practice, the authors used student journal assignments to evaluate learning and application of the model. They discuss the project's outcomes and subsequent strategies implemented to enhance their own understanding of the model and facilitate improved student learning.

The multiple benefits of minimally invasive spinal surgery: results comparing transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion and posterior lumbar fusion.

Minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) offers equivalent postoperative fusion rates compared to posterior lumbar fusion (PLF) and minimizes the amount of iatrogenic injury to the spinal muscles. The objective of this study was to examine the difference in pain perception, stress, mood disturbance, quality of life, and immunological indices throughout the perioperative course among patients undergoing TLIF and PLF. A prospective, nonrandomized descriptive design was used to evaluate these measures among patients undergoing TLIF (n = 17) or PLF (n = 18) at 1 week prior to surgery (T1), the day of surgery (T2), 24 hours postoperatively (T3), and 6 weeks postoperatively (T4).

Ethical issues in the qualitative researcher--participant relationship.

Qualitative research poses ethical issues and challenges unique to the study of human beings. In developing the interpersonal relationship that is critical to qualitative research, investigator and participant engage in a dialogic process that often evokes stories and memories that are remembered and reconstituted in ways that otherwise would not occur. Ethical issues are raised when this relationship not only provides qualitative research data, but also leads to some degree of therapeutic interaction for the participant.

Predictors of Papanicolaou testing in working women in Bangkok, Thailand.

Cervical cancer is the leading cause of death among women in Thailand. A significant number of Thai women have never received cervical cancer screening. This study examined the perceived susceptibility, benefits, and barriers that influence Papanicolaou testing and examined the relationships between socioeconomic factors and obtaining a Papanicolaou test among women working in 1 government agency and 3 private sector companies in Bangkok, Thailand.

Cultural competence of baccalaureate nursing faculty.

This randomized, stratified, descriptive, cross-sectional survey design used Campinha-Bacote's Inventory for Assessing the Process of Cultural Competence Among Healthcare Professionals-Revised (IAPCC-R) to assess the cultural competence of a convenience sample of 170 randomly selected baccalaureate nursing (BSN) program faculty. The mailed survey also assessed factors that were helpful in increasing comfort levels in caring for individuals from other cultures and gathered self-report data on cultural content in faculty academic preparation and current employing programs. Results indicated BSN faculty were culturally competent.

Native American high school students' perceptions of nursing.

A pilot study was conducted to determine changes in Native American high school students' knowledge and opinions about nursing after attending a 6-day residential summer nursing institute. To date, Native American high school students, particularly those interested in nursing, have not been well researched. Seventeen high school students affiliated with nine Northwest tribes participated in this study.

The Bindler-Ball Healthcare Model: a new paradigm for health promotion.

Nursing of children requires integration of components from many knowledge areas, and nurses must consistently plan and carry out interventions to promote health and prevent disease and injury for children and adolescents. A new healthcare model is applied to child health nursing within all healthcare contexts, from acute care settings to chronic care services to well child focused care. Health promotion and health maintenance are defined and explored, along with application of these concepts in major types of care along the healthcare continuum.

Evaluation research as academic scholarship.

In nursing, the ability of educators to progress successfully toward promotion and tenure may be hampered by heavy teaching or practice workloads and an inability to complete the research mission of the institution. In a 1990 report, Boyer noted that the scholarship of teaching, integration, and application can be embraced in the same manner as the scholarship of discovery and research. One source of data that is often neglected as integral to scholarship is evaluation data that results from teaching, service, and practice.

Design and testing of classroom and clinical teaching evaluation tools for nursing education.

Student evaluations of teaching provide administrators an overall picture of the effectiveness of personnel and contribute data for promotion and merit decisions. These evaluations must be assessed for their relevance, validity, and reliability. This paper describes the development process and psychometric testing for clinical (n = 149) and didactic (n = 148) student evaluation of teaching forms for undergraduate and graduate courses in one college of nursing.

Native Hawaiian women and the experience of breast cancer.

This article describes a qualitative inquiry into the experiences of Native Hawaiian women living through and beyond a diagnosis of breast cancer. Native Hawaiian women have increased incidence and mortality breast cancer rates compared with other ethnic groups in Hawaii. Health promotion programs targeted at Native Hawaiians have often failed because of cultural inappropriateness.

A cascade of events -- obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes mellitus in youth.

Increased rates of obesity among youth in the last several decades also have led to the emergence of several health problems. Insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome are direct outcomes of increasing obesity rates, which, in turn, lead to the emergence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in youth. Nurses are well positioned to intervene with individual youth and populations at risk to interrupt the cascade of events that lead from obesity to severe health problems.

The effects of exercise on perceived stress and IL-6 levels among older adults.

Biochemical markers of inflammation have been used in recent physical activity intervention studies. However, these same biochemical markers, mainly proinflammatory cytokines, may also be influenced by the individual's level of stress and mood. Accordingly, this pilot study was implemented to determine the effect of a physical activity intervention on perceived stress, mood, quality of life, serum interleukin-6 (IL-6), and cortisol among 10 older adults, age 60 to 90.

Immune function, pain, and psychological stress in patients undergoing spinal surgery.

Study Design: This study was an exploratory repeated measures design comparing patients undergoing two magnitudes of surgery in the lumbar spine: lumbar herniated disc repair and posterior lumbar fusion.

Objective: The present study evaluated and compared the effect of perceived pain, perceived stress, anxiety, and mood on natural killer cell activity (NKCA) and IL-6 production among adult patients undergoing lumbar surgery.

Summary Of Background Data: Presurgical stress and anxiety can lead to detrimental patient outcomes after surgery, such as increased infection rates.

Comparison of the traits of physically active and inactive women.

Purpose: To explore the determinants of physical activity for working women and to compare traits of active with inactive women.

Data Sources: Original research articles, books, government reports, and self-report survey data from 373 university employees who attended an employer-sponsored health screening.

Conclusions: Active women had lower body mass indexes and more beneficial high-density lipoprotein cholesterol when compared to inactive women.

The Population-Focused Analysis Project for teaching community health.

New instructional methodologies that foster student inquiry, critical thinking, accountability, group work, and self-mastery skills must be created to meet the challenges of modern community health nursing. Bold steps need to be taken to examine current nursing curricula and institute innovative teaching-learning methods to achieve these outcomes. Designing a unique way of providing clinical practice in community assessment is one step toward achieving these goals.

Posterior lumbar interbody fusion: an old concept with new techniques.

The estimated cumulative cost of health care attributable to back pain exceeds 25 billion dollars per year in the United States, and more than 200,000 spine fusion procedures are performed each year in an effort to relieve discogenic back pain and instability. These numbers are projected to rise in the face of our aging population. As new interbody grafting sources have been developed, posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) is being used with increasing frequency.

Cardiac response rate variability in physically abused women of childbearing age.

Physical abuse directly affects maternal and fetal/infant health, with documented reports of higher rates of pregnancy termination, neonatal death, and lower birth weights. Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend repeated interviews of women of childbearing age to screen for abuse, the paper-and-pencil instruments available for such screening are adversely affected by the hesitancy of women to disclose physical abuse. Biophysical measures of physiological stress adaptations may hold potential for identifying physically abused childbearing women.