Perceções dos enfermeiros e doentes com AVC sobre a educação para a saúde

Enquadramento: O Acidente Vascular Cerebral (AVC) acarreta múltiplas alterações no quotidiano do doente e seus familiares mas a reabilitação é considerada uma oportunidade. A Rede Nacional de Cuidados Continuados Integrados (RNCCI) facilita a reabilitação e a educação para a saúde possibilita a mudança de atitude necessária para a reabilitação. Objetivos: Conhecer e divulgar as perceções de doentes com AVC e enfermeiros relativamente às práticas de Educação para a Saúde na RNCCI. Metodologia: Qualitativa, com entrevista semi-estruturada, a 8 doentes e a 17 enfermeiros. A técnica escolhida foi a análise de conteúdo das entrevistas. Partimos de categorias definidas a priori, e emergiram outras categorias. Resultados: Os doentes atribuíram aos enfermeiros a maior parte da responsabilidade pela reabilitação. Os enfermeiros relacionaram os aspetos psicológicos e a importância do envolvimento da família com a adesão do doente ao regime terapêutico. Conclusão: Os doentes demonstram que se encontram no modelo biomédico, por outro lado os enfermeiros apontam o modelo biopsicossocial como orientador das suas práticas de Educação para a Saúde na rede.

Stress, cognitive appraisal, and psychological health: testing instruments for health professionals

The job of health professionals, including nurses, is considered inherently stressful (Lee & Wang, 2002; Rutledge et al., 2009), and thus it is important to improve and develop specific measures that are sensitive to the demands that health professionals face. This study analysed the psychometric properties of three instruments that focus on the professional experiences of nurses in aspects related to occupational stress, cognitive appraisal, and mental health issues. The evaluation protocol included the Stress Questionnaire for Health Professionals (SQHP; Gomes, 2014), the Cognitive Appraisal Scale (CAS; Gomes, Faria, & Gonçalves, 2013), and the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12; Goldberg, 1972). Validity and reliability issues were considered with statistical analysis (i.e. confirmatory factor analysis, convergent validity, and composite reliability) that revealed adequate values for all of the instruments, namely, a six-factor structure for the SQHP, a five-factor structure for the CAS, and a two-factor structure for the GHQ-12. In conclusion, this study proposes three consistent instruments that may be useful for analysing nurses’ adaptation to work contexts.

Gestão da manutenção de edifícios em unidades hospitalares

Dissertação de mestrado em Construção e Reabilitação Sustentáveis

Mitigating the impact of occupational noise exposure for elderly workers: Setting the functional requirements for an ANC system

Noise affects people in very different aspects and in almost every aspect of our daily life. The most prominent impact of noise exposure is hearing loss. However, it can also impair people at their work settings due to other effects rather than hearing loss. Older works tend to be more susceptible to noise exposure effects at work, firstly because most of them already have some ‘natural’ hearing loss, as a results of the ageing process, and secondly because they also tend to be more susceptible at an psychological level. The current study is an attempt to describe the potential problem and to make a survey to identify the available active noise cancelation systems, as well as to specific the main requirements of this type of systems to be applied in such contexts. Several aspects of characteristics of the ANC systems were identified and are presented in this study. From the obtained results it was possible to have a clearer idea about the potential of this technology, and to confirm that this type of solution can be extremely important as a component of an active ageing program, as the preservation of hearing will also impact on the social life of the exposed workers.

Emotional aspects of childhood career development: importance and future agenda

Childhood is a central period for career and social-emotional development. However, the literature covering childhood career development and the role of emotions in careers is scarce. In this article, we advocate for the consideration of emotions in childhood career development. Emotional aspects of children’s career exploration, key-figures and interests, as well as of childhood antecedents of lifelong career processes are presented. Relations between childhood emotion, behavior, functioning and learning are also presented. Conclusions center on a call for focused study of the role of emotion in childhood career development and how such an agenda will advance the literature.

Psychological intervention in Portuguese college students: effects of two career self-management seminars

This article describes the evaluation of a psychological intervention—the Career Self-Management Seminar, Version A, for undergraduate students, and Version B for postgraduate students—developed to support Portuguese college students in career exploration, goal setting, design and implementation of action plans, and decision-making. A total of 120 participants from CSMS-A (experimental group, n = 58; control group, n = 62) and 98 from CSMS-B (experimental group, n = 62; control group, n = 36) were assessed by the Career Exploration Survey according to a pretest and posttest plan. Results demonstrate a significant increase in most of the cognitive, behavioral, and affective career exploration dimensions among the CSMS-A and CSMS-B experimental groups.

Examining mindfulness and its relation to self-differentiation and alexithymia

Published online first in 10 July 2013

Postoperative self-efficacy and psychological morbidity in radical prostatectomy

Objective: evaluate the general and perceived self-efficacy, psychological morbidity, and knowledge about postoperative care of patients submitted to radical prostatectomy. Identify the relationships between the variables and know the predictors of self-efficacy. Method: descriptive, cross-sectional study, conducted with 76 hospitalized men. The scales used were the General and Perceived Self-efficacy Scale and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, in addition to sociodemographic, clinical and knowledge questionnaires. Results: a negative relationship was found for self-efficacy in relation to anxiety and depression. Psychological morbidity was a significant predictor variable for self-efficacy. An active professional situation and the waiting time for surgery also proved to be relevant variables for anxiety and knowledge, respectively. Conclusion: participants had a good level of general and perceived self-efficacy and small percentage of depression. With these findings, it is possible to produce the profile of patients about their psychological needs after radical prostatectomy and, thus, allow the nursing professionals to act holistically, considering not only the need for care of physical nature, but also of psychosocial nature.

Spousal support and satisfaction with healthcare services as moderators between psychological morbidity and adherence to diet in Type 2 Diabetes patients

Objectives: This study analyzed the moderating role of partners’ support and satisfaction with healthcare services in the relationship between psychological morbidity and adherence to diet in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Methods: Participants were 387 recently diagnosed T2DM patients that answered the following instruments: Revised Summary of Diabetes Self- Care Activities Measure, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scales, Multidimensional Diabetes Questionnaire and Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire. Results: Partners’ positive and negative support moderated the relationship between psychological morbidity and adherence to diet. Satisfaction with healthcare services also moderated the relationship between psychological morbidity and adherence to diet. Conclusions: Intervention programs to promote adherence to diet in patients with type 2 diabetes should focus on partners’ support and patient satisfaction with healthcare services.

The mediator role of psychological morbidity in patients with chronic low back pain in differentiated treatments

This study analyzed the mediating role of psychological morbidity and the variables that discriminated low versus high disability, in patients receiving physiotherapy and acupuncture. A total of 203 patients answered measures of illness and medication representations, coping, depression, anxiety, quality of life, and functional disability. Morbidity was a mediator between functional disability and quality of life. Treatment consequences and quality of life, in the acupuncture group, and emotional representations, quality of life, depression, anxiety, and active strategies for pain relief, in the physiotherapy group, discriminated patients with low versus high disability. These results have important implications for identifying high-risk patients.

Reducing seismic vulnerablity: Retrofitting historic buildings

The value of preserving historic buildings is increasingly accepted by society, which not only recognizes built cultural heritage as a part of its identity but is also more cognizant of its economic value. In Europe, for example, tourism accounts for 10 percent of the GDP in the EU and 12 percent of employment.1 Built cultural heritage is a fundamental element of what draws tourists to European destinations. To a great extent, the value of historic buildings rests in the integrity of their components as unique products of the technology of their time and place. Unfortunately, cultural heritage buildings are particularly vulnerable to disasters, for a variety of reasons. They are often damaged or in a state of deterioration; they were built with materials with low resistance; they are heavy; and the connections among their various structural components are frequently insufficient. The main causes of damage are lack of maintenance, water-induced deterioration (from rain or rising damp), soil settlement, and extreme events such as earthquakes. Earthquakes have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the last decade, in addition to the tremendous losses in built cultural heritage.

RNA-seq analysis of the Quercus suber root response to drought

Dissertação de mestrado em Plant Molecular Biology, Biotechnology and Bioentrepreneurship

Contributos dos doutores palhaços da Operação Nariz Vermelho para a qualidade da adaptação e do desenvolvimento em contexto pediátrico: o olhar da criança e seus pais

Tese de doutoramento em Ciências da Educação (Área Especialidade em Psicologia da Educação)

Indicadores chave de sustentabilidade para edifícios residenciais em estrutura metálica

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Civil

Growth of sulfate reducing bacteria on the methanogenic inhibitor BES

The metabolism of methanogenic archaea is inhibited by 2-bromoethanesulfonate (BES). Methane production is blocked because BES is an analog of methyl-coenzyme M and competes with this key molecule in the last step of methanogenesis. For this reason, BES is commonly used in several studies to avoid growth of acetoclastic and hydrogenotrophic methanogens [1]. Despite its effectiveness as methanogenic inhibitor, BES was found to alter microbial communities’ structure, to inhibit the metabolism of non-methanogenic microorganisms and to stimulate homoacetogenic metabolism [2,3]. Even though sulfonates have been reported as electron acceptors for sulfate- and sulfite-reducing bacteria (SRB), only one study described the reduction of BES by complex microbial communities [4]. In this work, a sulfate-reducing bacterium belonging to Desulfovibrio genus (98 % identity at the 16S rRNA gene level with Desulfovibrio aminophilus) was isolated from anaerobic sludge after several successive transfers in anaerobic medium containing BES as sole substrate. Sulfate was not supplemented to the anaerobic growth medium. This microorganism was able to grow under the following conditions: on BES plus H2/CO2 in bicarbonate buffered medium; on BES without H2/CO2 in bicarbonate buffered medium; and on BES in phosphate buffered medium. The main products of BES utilization were sulfide and acetate, the former was produced by the reduction of sulfur from the sulfonate moiety of BES and the latter likely originated from the carbon backbone of the BES molecule. BES was found, in this study, to represent not only an alternative electron acceptor but also to serve as electron donor, and sole carbon and energy source, supporting growth of a Desulfovibrio sp. obtained in pure culture. This is the first study that reports growth of SRB with BES as electron donor and electron acceptor, showing that the methanogenic inhibitor is a substrate for anaerobic growth.