Factors affecting the quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in inpatient units: perception of nurses

Abstract OBJECTIVE To identify, in the perception of nurses, the factors that affect the quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in adult inpatient units, and investigate the influence of both work shifts and professional experience length of time in the perception of these factors. METHOD A descriptive, exploratory study conducted at a hospital specialized in cardiology and pneumology with the application of a questionnaire to 49 nurses working in inpatient units. RESULTS The majority of nurses reported that the high number of professionals in the scenario (75.5%), the lack of harmony (77.6%) or stress of any member of staff (67.3%), lack of material and/or equipment failure (57.1%), lack of familiarity with the emergency trolleys (98.0%) and presence of family members at the beginning of the cardiopulmonary arrest assistance (57.1%) are factors that adversely affect the quality of care provided during CPR. Professional experience length of time and the shift of nurses did not influence the perception of these factors. CONCLUSION The identification of factors that affect the quality of CPR in the perception of nurses serves as parameter to implement improvements and training of the staff working in inpatient units.

Emotion and reason in everyday risk perception

Although research has documented the importance of emotion in risk perception, little is knownabout its prevalence in everyday life. Using the Experience Sampling Method, 94 part-timestudents were prompted at random via cellular telephones to report on mood state and threeemotions and to assess risk on thirty occasions during their working hours. The emotions valence, arousal, and dominance were measured using self-assessment manikins (Bradley &Lang, 1994). Hierarchical linear models (HLM) revealed that mood state and emotions explainedsignificant variance in risk perception. In addition, valence and arousal accounted for varianceover and above reason (measured by severity and possibility of risks). Six risks were reassessedin a post-experimental session and found to be lower than their real-time counterparts.The study demonstrates the feasibility and value of collecting representative samples of data withsimple technology. Evidence for the statistical consistency of the HLM estimates is provided inan Appendix.

Quelle est la perception de la littératie en santé des patients par les médecins de famille?

Objectifs¦? Connaître le vécu des médecins face à des patients ayant une faible littératie en¦santé (FLS)¦? Savoir de quelle façon les médecins s'y prennent pour détecter ces patients¦? Comprendre quels sont les problèmes rencontrés avec de tels patients¦? Connaître les stratégies utilisées pour faire face à cette situation¦? Découvrir ce qui pourrait aider les médecins à mieux détecter cette problématique¦chez leurs patients et à surmonter plus aisément les problèmes qui en découlent¦Méthode¦Enquête auprès de 47 médecins de famille de Suisse romande au travers d'un¦questionnaire élaboré à partir d'entretiens avec cinq médecins de la région et validé par¦ceux-ci ; analyse mixte quantitative et qualitative.¦Résultats¦? Les médecins de famille sont conscients de cette problématique (58% y sont¦confrontés quotidiennement).¦? La FLS représente une certaine charge dans leur pratique quotidienne (pour 68%¦des médecins).¦? La majorité (70%) des praticiens pense avoir les outils et compétences nécessaires¦pour gérer la situation.¦? Un grand nombre aimerait cependant en acquérir de nouveaux (entre 38% et 75%¦selon les outils).¦? Les médecins ont tendance à sous-estimer la prévalence des patients avec une¦FLS.¦? 60% des praticiens seraient intéressés par des outils de dépistage.¦Discussion et conclusion¦La FLS est une problématique importante au cabinet du médecin de famille, ayant de¦nombreuses conséquences sur la santé du patient. Nos résultats montrent, en¦concordance avec la littérature, qu'il est essentiel de dépister la FLS chez les patients et¦d'apporter de nouveaux outils aux praticiens afin de les aider dans la gestion de cette¦situation. Diverses interventions pourraient être mises en place afin d'améliorer la prise en¦charge de ces patients:¦? une introduction à la littératie en santé durant le parcours universitaire¦? un enseignement pratique lors de la formation post-graduée¦? un manuel d'information pour le praticien visant à l'aider dans cette problématique¦et à lui proposer des questions de dépistage¦? des brochures d'explications simples et illustrées à l'intention des patients

An ASsessment of Relationship between Students' Perception of Social Studies and their Academic Performance in Colleges of Education in Kaduna State

The objective of this study was to find out the relationship between students’ perception of Social Studies and their academic performance in the subject in Colleges of Education in Kaduna State. The respondents of the study comprised NCE 2 and NCE 3 students of Social Studies at the Federal College of Education in Zaria and the Kaduna State College of Education in Gidan Waya. The data for the study was collected using a questionnaire with reliability coefficient of 0.87. The Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient was used to test the hypotheses formulated for the study. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance with df = 232. The findings were as follows: 1. The Social Studies students in colleges of education in Kaduna State do not record high academic performance in the subject. 2. Students’ perception of the Social Studies curriculum does affect their academic performance in the subject 3. Students’ perception of relevance of Social Studies education has no bearing on their academic performance in the subject. 4. Students’ perception of public attitude towards Social Studies has no impact on their academic performance in the subject. 5. Students’ general perception of Social Studies does not affect their academic performance in the subject. Based on these findings the following recommendations were proffered for Social Studies researchers and policy makers. a. There is need for further research in order to determine the actual cause of students’ failure to display high performance in Social Studies. b. The NCE Social Studies curriculum should be reviewed in terms of volume and difficulty.

Trois sortes d'altruisme et leur rapport à la morale

Nombreux sont les philosophes et psychologues qui voient en l'altruisme une des plus grandes vertus humaines. Certains en font même une composante nécessaire à la morale. Sachant cela, il est assez piquant de constater que les biologistes trouvent de l'altruisme dans le monde animal et que, plus récemment, il est également devenu un objet de recherche en économie. L'hétérogénéité des disciplines qui traitent de l'altruisme en ont fait une notion extrêmement complexe et difficile à saisir. L'objectif de cet article est d'explorer les différents sens donnés à cette notion et de comprendre le rôle qu'elle joue dans les débats propres aux sciences qui l'utilisent. Il s'agira également de réfléchir aux liens qu'entretiennent les diverses formes d'altruisme, entre elles d'une part, et avec la morale d'autre part.La première partie de l'article est consacrée à trois types de débats faisant usage de la notiond'altruisme. Nous verrons que chacun d'eux prend place dans le cadre d'une science ou d'un groupe de sciences différentes et que la signification de l'altruisme s'y adapte. Le premier débat a pour cadre la biologie et utilise la notion d'« altruisme biologique » ; il s'agit d'expliquer comment un comportement désavantageux du point de vue de la survie et de la reproduction a pu être sélectionné au fil de l'évolution. Le second débat a lieu au sein des sciences sociales (plus particulièrement en économie et anthropologie évolutionniste) et se centre sur la notion d'« altruisme comportemental » ; il s'agit de montrer que des personnes ordinaires ne se comportement souvent pas en maximisateurs rationnels de leur gains propres, comme le prédirait la théorie économique néoclassique. Le troisième débat repose sur la notion d'« altruisme psychologique » et engage particulièrement les philosophes, les psychologues mais également certains économistes et neuroscientifiques ; il s'agit de déterminer si les êtres humains sont capables d'agir en fonction de motivations dirigées vers le bien-être d'autrui. La seconde partie de l'article a pour objectif de mettre en relation ces trois formes d'altruisme ainsi que leur rapport avec la morale.

Perception of the damaging effects of smoking, and brief cessation counselling by doctors.

An open prospective study was conducted among the patients visiting an urban medical policlinic for the first time without an appointment to assess whether the immigrants (who represent more than half of our patients) are aware of the health effects of smoking, whether the level of acculturation influences knowledge, and whether doctors give similar advice to Swiss and foreign smokers. 226 smokers, 105 Swiss (46.5%), and 121 foreign-born (53.5%), participated in the study. 32.2% (95% CI [24.4%; 41.1%]) of migrants and 9.6% [5.3%; 16.8%] of Swiss patients were not aware of negative effects of smoking. After adjustment for age, the multivariate model showed that the estimated odds of "ignorance of health effects of smoking" was higher for people lacking mastery of the local language compared with those mastering it (odds ratio (OR) = 7.5 [3.6; 15.8], p < 0.001), and higher for men (OR = 4.3 [1.9; 10.0], p < 0.001). Advice to stop smoking was given with similar frequency to immigrants (31.9% [24.2%; 40.8%] and Swiss patients (29.0% [21.0%; 38.5%]). Nonintegrated patients did not appear to receive less counselling than integrated patients (OR = 1.1 [0.6; 2.1], p = 0.812). We conclude that the level of knowledge among male immigrants not integrated or unable to speak the local language is lower than among integrated foreign-born and Swiss patients. Smoking cessation counselling by a doctor was only given to a minority of patients, but such counselling seemed irrespective of nationality.

Noise in Brain Activity Engenders Perception and Influences Discrimination Sensitivity.

Behavioral and brain responses to identical stimuli can vary with experimental and task parameters, including the context of stimulus presentation or attention. More surprisingly, computational models suggest that noise-related random fluctuations in brain responses to stimuli would alone be sufficient to engender perceptual differences between physically identical stimuli. In two experiments combining psychophysics and EEG in healthy humans, we investigated brain mechanisms whereby identical stimuli are (erroneously) perceived as different (higher vs lower in pitch or longer vs shorter in duration) in the absence of any change in the experimental context. Even though, as expected, participants' percepts to identical stimuli varied randomly, a classification algorithm based on a mixture of Gaussians model (GMM) showed that there was sufficient information in single-trial EEG to reliably predict participants' judgments of the stimulus dimension. By contrasting electrical neuroimaging analyses of auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) to the identical stimuli as a function of participants' percepts, we identified the precise timing and neural correlates (strength vs topographic modulations) as well as intracranial sources of these erroneous perceptions. In both experiments, AEP differences first occurred ∼100 ms after stimulus onset and were the result of topographic modulations following from changes in the configuration of active brain networks. Source estimations localized the origin of variations in perceived pitch of identical stimuli within right temporal and left frontal areas and of variations in perceived duration within right temporoparietal areas. We discuss our results in terms of providing neurophysiologic evidence for the contribution of random fluctuations in brain activity to conscious perception.