Knowledge and use of evidence-based practice of GPs and hospital doctors.

Rationale, Aims And Objectives: Clinical effectiveness and evidence-based practice (EBP) are the cornerstone of modern day health care. Although many studies have explored attitudes and perceived knowledge of individual professions few have compared the factors between professional groups and in particular in the medical profession. We report a study comparing the views, knowledge and practice of hospital doctors with their general practitioner (GP) counterparts in terms of EBP and clinical effectiveness.

Mood changes following golf among senior recreational players.

Golf has been recommended as a relatively risk-free form of exercise for an ageing population. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of playing a round of golf on mood states in recreational players. Ageing male golfers (N = 34; Age: M = 68.

Pressure ulcer risk assessment and prevention.

Pressure ulcers were once viewed as an inevitable consequence of being infirm and bed-ridden. As it has been recognized that this is not the case, pressure ulcers have come to be seen much more as an indicator of the quality of care provided, and are consequently high on the political and health agenda. This article provides an overview of the key aspects of pressure ulcer risk assessment and prevention drawn from a variety of national policy documents.

Differential expression of putative floral genes in Pharbitis nil shoot apices cultured on glucose compared with sucrose.

If, following an inductive treatment of 2 d of continuous darkness, shoot apices of Pharbitis nil are cultured 1 d later on White's medium supplemented with 2% sucrose, they cannot form carpels, but they can if they are cultured on 2% glucose. It was hypothesized that the differential effect of these sugars was because of differential expression of carpel-specific genes. Partial cDNA homologues to the Arabidopsis genes, LEAFY (PnLFY), AGAMOUS (PnAG1/2), and CRABS CLAWS (PnCRC1/2) were cloned.

Evaluation of a honey-impregnated tulle dressing in primary care.

Honey has been used for its healing properties for centuries and has been used to dress wounds with favourable results. The emergence of antibiotic resistance and growing interest in "natural" or "complementary" therapies has led to an interest in honey dressings. Much of the research to date has been related to honey's antibacterial properties.

Clinical leaders in paediatric nursing: a pilot study.

This pilot study explored the appropriateness and suitability of a questionnaire for discovering who the clinical nurse leaders are in a paediatric unit of a large NHS trust and what the qualities and characteristics of clinical leaders might be. Thirteen respondents made 24 separate nominations for clinical leaders, 20 of whom were 'F' grade junior sisters who were seen as having the clinical leadership qualities of: coping well with change; integrity; being supportive; considering relationships valuable; being flexible; and clinical competence. These results highlight aspects of clinical leadership in paediatrics and the value of conducting a pilot study.

Foxes, green fields and Britishness: on the rhetorical construction of place and national identity.

This paper explores an accepted but under researched feature of national categories: their complex relationship with social constructions of place. We argue that social psychological work on national identification and mobilization would benefit from closer attention to this relationship. In order to develop this argument, we analyse a series of newspaper accounts published on behalf of the Countryside Alliance, a coalition formed to preserve rural 'ways of life' in the UK and, more specifically, to defend extant practices of hunting.

An exploration of the factors that affect nurses' record keeping.

It is generally accepted that written documentation is significant not only as a communication medium in nursing, but also in the fulfilment of a number of other professional and legal obligations for nurses. The literature suggests, however, that the records nurses keep often fail either to represent the care delivered or the patient's health status accurately. This article explores a number of possible reasons for this, including: nurses' apathy to documentation; the time-consuming nature of documentation; discrepancies between nurse/patient and nurse/nurse interpretation of the significance of an event; and nurses' literacy skills.

How a pyramid helps to unravel the stages of nursing assessment.

Teaching nurses at one college's nursing and midwifery department how to assess patients and clients has been made easier with the help of a visual pyramid developed by one lecturer. The model highlights the need to distinguish between holistic, physical and specialist/specific assessment.

Case study of alopecia universalis and web-based news groups.

This article presents findings from an 18-month case study of a web-based news group used by individuals with alopecia universalis. Content analysis of 228 episodes of web-based communication that occurred in relation to themes of discussion was undertaken, supported by the use of concept mapping (Northcott, 1996). Analysis identified a core concept relating to that of a community of shared experience together with four supportive themes.

Consumerism 2: preregistration nursing and midwifery curricula.

This article, the second of two parts, presents findings from a four-stage study exploring the extent to which consumerism and its related aspects have been incorporated into the preregistration nursing and midwifery curriculum. The study was undertaken in recognition that NHS policy (as considered in the first article: Vol 12(5): 321-6) increasingly gave emphasis to the development of a health service that was more consumer and user focused. The study involved use of a Delphi panel, postal questionnaire, review of curriculum documentation, and timetables, together with a small focused group discussion.

Seeking advice from NHS direct on common childhood complaints: does it matter who answers the phone?

Background: National Health Services (NHS) Direct is a national nurse-led, call-centre based, telephone triage, health information and advice service in the United Kingdom (UK). Forty percent of calls to NHS Direct are about children. There is a need to identify whether there is a difference in the time taken for nurses to triage calls about children.

It's not what you do - it's the way that you do it.

Never before has so much attention been paid to the assessment of the older adult. As a post-graduate student conducting research into the process of nursing assessment, I have read many hundreds of thousands of words on this subject. Having spent several years providing care for older adults, I feel heartened by the continued efforts being made to give this vulnerable and needy client group the quality care they deserve.

National Service Framework for Older People: stroke coordinators.

The National Service Framework (NSF) for Older People aims to develop integrated stroke services with specialized treatment, carer involvement, secondary prevention and rehabilitation. There is an emphasis upon the role of stroke coordinators. The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between stroke coordinators and other agencies involved in stroke care, and to describe stroke coordinators' current roles.

Emotional intelligence: its role in training.

The ability to manage your own emotions while interpreting other people's is a useful skill in any caring environment, yet emotional intelligence is often overlooked in training programmes. Incorporating it into the curriculum will give nurses greater understanding of themselves and the way they relate to others, enabling more effective interactions with patients. It will also equip them emotionally to deal with highly charged situations.

When all is revealed: a dissociation between evaluative learning and contingency awareness.

Three experiments are reported that address the issue of awareness in evaluative learning in two different sensory modalities: visual and haptic. Attempts were made to manipulate the degree of awareness through a reduction technique (by use of a distractor task in Experiments 1 and 2 and by subliminally presenting affective stimuli in Experiment 3) and an induction technique (by unveiling the evaluative learning effect and requiring participants to try to discount the influence of the affective stimuli). The results indicate overall that evaluative learning was successful in the awareness-reduction groups but not in the awareness-induction groups.

Ethylene induces cell death at particular phases of the cell cycle in the tobacco TBY-2 cell line.

It was examined whether ethylene induces programmed cell death in a cell cycle-specific manner. Following synchronization of the tobacco TBY-2 cell line with aphidicolin and its subsequent removal, ethylene was injected into the head space of 300 cm(3) culture flasks at 0 h or 3.5 h later and cells were sampled for 26 h.