Psychiatrists' and Psychiatric APRNs' Views of the Adolescent Mental Health Nurse's Role In the Inpatient Setting

Current perceptions about nurses’ roles and responsibilities are examined in this study, specifically relating to adolescent inpatient MHNs. Psychiatrists and psychiatric advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs), who work with MHNs and have also published scholarly psychiatric articles, were contacted to request their participation in an anonymous survey hosted by SurveyMonkey.com. This research was conducted to examine the stereotypes that exist against nurses within the health care profession itself, as compared to the pre-existing stereotypes displayed by the media’s view of nurses. Due to investigator time constraints, only six subjects participated in the study. Analysis of survey responses revealed four overarching themes. First, MHNs are a critical component of the health care team, emerging as rigorous, independent leaders, although still classified as female and sociable. Second, MHNs complete a wide range of daily activities, many of which go unnoticed by observers, often resulting in mixed feelings regarding whether MHNs are given the respect and recognition deserved. Third, MHNs treat each patient as a person with unique thoughts, feelings, and physical make-up. Fourth, MHNs act as a coordinator of care between various health professionals to provide the patient with a holistic approach to healing.

Cooperation & Competition Between Navigation Systems in the Rat Brain: The Role of the Hippocampus and Striatum During a Dissociative Maze Task

While many tend to think of memory systems in the brain as a single process, in reality several experiments have supported multiple dissociations of different forms of learning, such as spatial learning and response learning. In both humans and rats, the hippocampus has long been shown to be specialized in the storage of spatial and contextual memory whereas the striatum is associated with motor responses and habitual behaviors. Previous studies have examined how damage to hippocampus or striatum has affected the acquisition of either a spatial or response navigation task. However even in a very familiar environment organisms must continuously switch between place and response strategies depending upon circumstances. The current research investigates how these two brain systems interact under normal conditions to produce navigational behavior. Rats were tested using a task developed by Jacobson and colleagues (2006) in which the two types of navigation could be controlled and studied simultaneously. Rats were trained to solve a plus maze using both a spatial and a response strategy. A cue (flashing light) was employed to indicate the correct strategy on a given trial. When no light was present, the animals were rewarded for making a 90º right turn (motor response). When the light was on, the animals were rewarded for going to a specific goal location (place strategy). After learning the task, animals had a sham surgery or dorsal striatum or hippocampus damaged. In order to investigate the individual role of each brain system and evaluate whether these brain regions compete or cooperate for control over strategy, we utilized a within-animal comparisons. The configuration of the maze allowed for the comparison of behavior in individual animals before and after specific brain areas were damaged. Animals with hippocampal lesions showed selective deficits on place trials after surgery and learned the reversal of the motor response more rapidly than striatal lesioned or sham rats. Unlike previous findings regarding maze learning, animals with striatal lesions showed deficits in both place and response trials and had difficulty learning the reversal of motor response. Therefore, the effects of lesions on the ability to switch back and forth between strategies were more complex than previously suggested. This work may reveal important new insight on the integration of hippocampal and striatal learning systems, and facilitate a better understanding of the brain dynamics underlying similar navigational processes in humans.

An Appropriate Role for the Leadership: A Quantitative Analysis of the Effects of House Leadership on Open-Seat Races

This paper investigates the effects on open-seat races in the United States House of Representatives. This project focuses on the influence that the House leadership exerts on races. Generally, the leadership influences race through spending by party organizations and leadership visits. During each election cycle, national party organizations spend millions of dollars to get their candidates into office. I have developed a multiple regression model that measures different types of spending from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the Republican National Committee and the effects of these spending types on the election results. Also, the study examines the number of visits by each party’s leadership to each race. I introduced control variables that account for the year, the competitiveness of each race, and the individual candidate fundraising. In terms of statistical significance, the results were mixed showing one type of party spending to be highly influential in the outcome of the race. Competitiveness and individual candidate fundraising also achieved statistical significance. The study also includes a qualitative investigation of leadership visits and individual case studies in order to understand better the way in which the data interact in real campaigns.