Nurses’ attitudes regarding the importance of families in pediatric nursing care

Affective, cognitive and behavioral components affect nurses´ attitudes to include families in the care processes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of nurses about the importance of including families in nursing care. Data collection was performed in pediatric and maternal-child unit of a Brazilian university hospital. A sample of 50 nurses completed the Portuguese version of the instrument Families’Importance in Nursing Care-Nurses’ Attitudes (FINC-NA). The results indicated that nurses have supportive attitudes regarding families participation in nursing care. Attitudes of lower support for involving families in nursing care were found among nurses with older age, more time in the profession and who had no previous contact with contents related to Family Nursing. The application of the instrument in other contexts of assistance may help to illuminate important aspects of the challenges to implementing a family-centered approach in clinical practice.





The Brazilian policy for reduction of accidents and violence aligns with international perspectives?

The study analyzed The Brazilian Policy for Reduction of Morbidity and Mortality from Accidents and Violence, in the socio-political perspective. We used as a base the chapter “Violence: a global public health problem” from the World Report on Violence and Health. The analysis revealed convergent and divergent elements of the Brazilian Policy in comparison with the international perspectives. We verified that the Brazilian Policy tried to converge to the international policies, however: it emphasizes the health promotion actions, but are limited to the context and behavior of individuals and individual communities; the performance of health professionals is expected without providing more structural investments, as the improvement in work conditions, the increase of financial and material resources; there are few clear definitions of the government and economical sector responsibilities.

Evaluation of professional knowledge and attitudes on dementia patient care: a trans-cultural adaptation of an evaluation instrument

Objective To describe the trans-cultural adaptation of the evaluation instrument entitled Atenció Sanitària de Les Demències: la visió de L' Atenció Primarià from Catalan into versions in Portuguese for doctors and nurses. This study evaluates the knowledge and perspectives of these professionals in their treatment of patients diagnosed with dementia in cases of primary care. Method The adaptation followed internationally accepted rules, which include the following steps: translation, synthesis, back-translation, revision by a committee of specialists, and a test run with 35 practicing doctors and 35 practicing nurses in Brazil's Family Health Strategy (Estratégia Saúde da Família, or ESF in Portuguese). Results The translation, synthesis, and back-translation steps were performed satisfactorily; only small adjustments were required. The committee of specialists verified the face validity in the version translated into Portuguese, and all of the items that received an agreement score lower than 80% during the initial evaluation were revised. In the test run, the difficulties presented by the health care professionals did not reach 15% of the sample, and therefore, no changes were made. Conclusion The Portuguese translation of the instrument can be considered semantically, idiomatically, culturally, and conceptually equivalent to the original Catalan version and is, therefore, appropriate for use in Brazil.

Hematological profile of beef cattle with divergent residual feed intake, following feed deprivation

The objective of this work was to characterize the hematological profiles of steers and bulls, according to residual feed intake (RFI), after feed deprivation. Twenty‑month‑old Nellore steers and bulls were fed feedlot diets for 70 and 56 days, respectively. RFI was calculated as the difference between actual feed intake and expected feed intake. More and less efficient steers and bulls, according to RFI, were subjected to 24 hours of food deprivation. Blood was sampled prior to and following the withdrawal period. Hematological analyses included total and differential white blood cell count, red blood cell count and morphology, and plasma glucose concentration. Variation in RFI did not influence plasma glucose concentration or blood cell profiles. Glucose concentrations in bulls decreased from 114 to 97 mg dL‑1, but remained unchanged in steers, and the neutrophil:lymphocyte ratio increased from 0.39 to 0.57 following deprivation. Hematological profiles do not differ between more and less efficient steers and bulls, according to RFI.

Formal semantics for propositional attitudes

Contemporary logic is confined to a few paradigmatic attitudes such as belief, knowledge, desire and intention. My purpose is to present a general model-theoretical semantics of propositional attitudes of any cognitive or volitive mode. In my view, one can recursively define the set of all psychological modes of attitudes. As Descartes anticipated, the two primitive modes are those of belief and desire. Complex modes are obtained by adding to primitive modes special cognitive and volitive ways or special propositional content or preparatory conditions. According to standard logic of attitudes (Hintikka), human agents are either perfectly rational or totally irrational. I will proceed to a finer analysis of propositional attitudes that accounts for our imperfect but minimal rationality. For that purpose I will use a non standard predicative logic according to which propositions with the same truth conditions can have different cognitive values and I will explicate subjective in addition to objective possibilities. Next I will enumerate valid laws of my general logic of propositional attitudes. At the end I will state principles according to which minimally rational agents dynamically revise attitudes of any mode.

The validity and 4-year test-retest reliability of the Brazilian version of the Eating Attitudes Test-26

In a cross-sectional study conducted four years ago to assess the validity of the Brazilian version of the Eating Attitudes Test-26 (EAT-26) for the identification of abnormal eating behaviors in a population of young females in Southern Brazil, 56 women presented abnormal eating behavior as indicated by the EAT-26 and the Edinburgh Bulimic Investigation Test. They were each matched for age and neighborhood to two normal controls (N = 112) and were re-assessed four years later with the two screening questionnaires plus the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI). The EAT results were then compared to diagnoses originating from the CIDI. To evaluate the temporal stability of the two screening questionnaires, a test-retest design was applied to estimate kappa coefficients for individual items. Given the prevalence of eating disorders of 6.2%, the CIDI psychiatry interview was applied to 161 women. Of these, 0.6% exhibited anorexia nervosa and 5.6%, bulimia nervosa (10 positive cases). The validity coefficients of the EAT were: 40% sensitivity, 84% specificity, and 14% positive predictive value. Cronbach's coefficient was 0.75. For each EAT item, the kappa index was not higher than 0.344 and the correlation coefficient was lower than 0.488. We conclude that the EAT-26 exhibited low validity coefficients for sensitivity and positive predictive value, and showed a poor temporal stability. It is reasonable to assume that these results were not influenced by the low prevalence of eating disorders in the community. Thus, the results cast doubts on the ability of the EAT-26 test to identify cases of abnormal eating behaviors in this population.

Identification of the divergent calmodulin binding motif in yeast Ssb1/Hsp75 protein and in other HSP70 family members

Yeast soluble proteins were fractionated by calmodulin-agarose affinity chromatography and the Ca2+/calmodulin-binding proteins were analyzed by SDS-PAGE. One prominent protein of 66 kDa was excised from the gel, digested with trypsin and the masses of the resultant fragments were determined by MALDI/MS. Twenty-one of 38 monoisotopic peptide masses obtained after tryptic digestion were matched to the heat shock protein Ssb1/Hsp75, covering 37% of its sequence. Computational analysis of the primary structure of Ssb1/Hsp75 identified a unique potential amphipathic alpha-helix in its N-terminal ATPase domain with features of target regions for Ca2+/calmodulin binding. This region, which shares 89% similarity to the experimentally determined calmodulin-binding domain from mouse, Hsc70, is conserved in near half of the 113 members of the HSP70 family investigated, from yeast to plant and animals. Based on the sequence of this region, phylogenetic analysis grouped the HSP70s in three distinct branches. Two of them comprise the non-calmodulin binding Hsp70s BIP/GR78, a subfamily of eukaryotic HSP70 localized in the endoplasmic reticulum, and DnaK, a subfamily of prokaryotic HSP70. A third heterogeneous group is formed by eukaryotic cytosolic HSP70s containing the new calmodulin-binding motif and other cytosolic HSP70s whose sequences do not conform to those conserved motif, indicating that not all eukaryotic cytosolic Hsp70s are target for calmodulin regulation. Furthermore, the calmodulin-binding domain found in eukaryotic HSP70s is also the target for binding of Bag-1 - an enhancer of ADP/ATP exchange activity of Hsp70s. A model in which calmodulin displaces Bag-1 and modulates Ssb1/Hsp75 chaperone activity is discussed.

Consumer attitudes toward information displayed at food buffets in commercial restaurants

This study aimed to evaluate the attitude of consumers towards information about dishes in a commercial restaurant. This research was conducted from January to April 2009 in a restaurant in the city of Santa Maria (RS), Brazil. Food information including the name of the dish, ingredients, health benefits and warnings, and calorie value was displayed. After providing this nutritional information, a questionnaire was applied to 300 consumers at the restaurant to observe their attitudes towards the food information. It was found that 10.57% of the respondents reported allergy or intolerance to some kinds of food and that 10.98% of the respondents reported having diseases that require moderate consumption and/or total restriction on the consumption of those foods. However, 84.96% of the respondents did not restrict consumption of any food, even though those foods may have posed a risk to their health, and 58.54% of the respondents consumed some food due to the potential benefits to their health. With regard to the respondents' level of satisfaction concerning the food information provided, 72.76% considered the information provided as very good. The respondents had a tendency to change their behavior towards consumption after having access to information about the dishes displayed.