Optimizing the Benefits of Self-Monitoring Among Patients With Cancer.

Purpose/objectives: To investigate oncology professionals' perspectives about, experience with, and envisioned feasibility of incorporating patient self-monitoring as a patient-centered practice. 
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Research Approach: An interpretive, descriptive study.

Tracking and journaling the cancer journey.

Clinicians sometimes suggest to patients that they keep track of illness-related issues. Self-monitoring is a helpful term to describe these at-home activities that yield essential information for self-management. The purpose of this article is to create greater awareness of the opportunities (and potential shortcomings) of patient self-monitoring for oncology nursing practice.

Transformative learning theory: facilitating mammography screening in rural women.

Purpose/objectives: To use transformative learning to investigate what experiences serve as catalysts for mammography screening, the cognitive and affective responses that result from the catalyst, and how screening behavior is impacted.

Research Approach: A descriptive qualitative study.

Setting: Southeastern Wyoming.

Perspectives on learning for childbirth educators.

This continuing education module reviews the uses of ways of knowing and ways of learning to assist the childbirth educator become a master teacher who facilitates the growth of the learner.

Alarming racial differences in maternal mortality.

In this column, the author reviews statistics that reflect the disparity of maternal mortality rates among black, nonwhite, and white women.

Uncertainty exists in recommendations for reducing prenatal exposure to mercury.

The Environmnetal Working Group, Health Care Without Harm (1999) recommends that pregnant women avoid eating tuna, swordfish, or shark and that young children avoid eating more than one serving of tuna per week. Childbirth educators are in a unique position to educate women about the dangers of methylmercury exposure during pregnancy.

Some suggested cautions for pregnant women.

Researchers continue to find new ways to protect the fetus and newborn from hazards posed by the environment through infectious and chemical agents. Research indicates that for women infected with toxoplasmosis during pregnancy, antibiotic treatment reduces the incidence of harmful effects this infection can have on the fetus. In addition, researchers have concluded that women's breast milk can be a source of lead exposure in infants.

Physiological effects of infant exposure to environmental tobacco smoke: a passive observation study.

This study explored infant physiologic responses of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) using a longitudinal passive observation study with a control group. Fifteen smoking and 15 non-smoking mothers were initially contacted in hospital maternity units, with home visits made when their infants were 2, 4, and 6 weeks old. Exposure to ETS was measured using infant urinary nicotine and cotinine levels.