Assessment of Veterans Affairs Case Managers Using a Leadership Conceptual Framework.

Purpose/objectives: Case management in Veterans Affairs (VA) depends on leadership skills such as effective communication, excellent resource management, self-governance, patient advocacy, and a distinctly professional attitude. VA registered nurses (RNs) and social workers (SWs) also provide case management services, a role and service, which is pivotal to veteran satisfaction and effective health care coordination.The leader-follower framework (LF2) was used to assess and compare the responses of RNs, SWs, and case managers (CMs) on the annual VA All Employee Survey (AES) to provide insight regarding VA case management performance, which has influenced veteran satisfaction.

Assessment of Veterans Affairs Case Management Leadership.

Purpose/objectives: The critical work of Veterans Affairs (VA) case managers is to assist and advocate for veterans navigating the VA and civilian health care systems, aligning services, developing integrated care plans, and supporting team-based care (Hunt & Burgo-Black, 2011). The article reviews publications regarding VA case management leadership because case managers who function as leaders are likely to better coordinate health care services for veterans.

Primary Practice Setting: VA case managers adhere to the Commission for Case Managers (CCM) scope of practice through patient advocacy, education, and resource management, while ensuring the care is safe, effective, and equitable.

Contextual Fear Memory Maintenance Changes Expression of pMAPK, BDNF and IBA-1 in the Pre-limbic Cortex in a Layer-Specific Manner.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating and chronic fear-based disorder. Pavlovian fear conditioning protocols have long been utilised to manipulate and study these fear-based disorders. Contextual fear conditioning (CFC) is a particular Pavlovian conditioning procedure that pairs fear with a particular context.

Microtopography of fear memory consolidation and extinction retrieval within prefrontal cortex and amygdala.

Rationale: The precise neural circuitry that encodes fear memory and its extinction within the brain are not yet fully understood. Fearful memories can be persistent, resistant to extinction, and associated with psychiatric disorders, especially post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Here, we investigated the microtopography of neurons activated during the recall of an extinguished fear memory, as well as the influence of time on this microtopography.

Localization of Contextual and Context Removed Auditory Fear Memory within the Basolateral Amygdala Complex.

Debilitating and persistent fear memories can rapidly form in humans following exposure to traumatic events. Fear memories can also be generated and studied in animals via Pavlovian fear conditioning. The current study was designed to evaluate basolateral amygdala complex (BLC) involvement following the formation of different fear memories (two contextual fear memories and one adjusted auditory fear memory).

Anx7 is required for nutritional control of gene expression in mouse pancreatic islets of Langerhans.

Background: Gene expression in islets of Langerhans is profoundly sensitive to glucose and other nutrients. Islets of Langerhans in the Anx7(+/-) knockout mouse exhibit a profound reduction in ITPR3 protein expression, defective intracellular calcium signaling, and defective insulin secretion. Additional data presented here also show that mRNA for ITPR3 is virtually undetectable in isolated Anx7(+/-) islets.

New technologies in exocytosis and ion movement.

Evolving new technologies for the study of exocytosis have been successfully exploited for the analysis of secretory events in the well-characterized chromaffin cell system. These technologies include amperometry, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), confocal and total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF), and organelle-targeted aequorins.

Pharmacogenomics of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) and the cystic fibrosis drug CPX using genome microarray analysis.

Background: Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most common lethal recessive disease affecting children in the U.S. and Europe.