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The role of empathic nursing telephone interventions with advanced cancer patients: A qualitative study
No full textPurpose: Effective symptom management and provider-patient communication are critical components of quality palliative cancer care. Studies suggest nurse-telephone-interventions are feasible, acceptable and may improve the provision and satisfaction with care. However, little is known about what specific elements of nurse-telephone-interventions are most beneficial. The study\u27s purpose was to describe the nature and key elements of therapeutic calls made by nurses to advanced cancer patients to understand what may have previously contributed to improvement in patients who received the intervention.
Methods: As part of a larger study on methylphenidate and/or a nurse-telephone-intervention for fatigue in advanced cancer patients from a tertiary hospital, nurse calls were made to 95 patients. This qualitative descriptive study used thematic analysis of transcribed telephone calls between nurses and advanced cancer patients.
Results: The overarching theme of these calls was supporting patients with empathy. Empathy in these conversations included nurses\u27 efforts to understand patients\u27 experiences, nurses communicating their understanding back to patients and nurses taking action in response to their understanding of patients’ experiences. While humor and validation were used to communicate empathy, problem solving and providing support constituted the content of empathic communication.
Conclusions: This study illustrates a nurse-telephone-interventions that embraced multiple components of clinical empathy. Nurse-telephone-interventions are feasible and acceptable with diverse, advanced cancer patients. The growing evidence base underscoring the numerous benefits of medical empathy may serve as a basis for adopting simple, feasible and accessible approaches such as empathic nurse-telephone-interventions in both research and clinical practice
Experiments of image classification using dissimilarity spaces built with siamese networks
No full textTraditionally, classifiers are trained to predict patterns within a feature space. The image classification system presented here trains classifiers to predict patterns within a vector space by combining the dissimilarity spaces generated by a large set of Siamese Neural Networks (SNNs). A set of centroids from the patterns in the training data sets is calculated with supervised k-means clustering. The centroids are used to generate the dissimilarity space via the Siamese networks. The vector space descriptors are extracted by projecting patterns onto the similarity spaces, and SVMs classify an image by its dissimilarity vector. The versatility of the proposed approach in image classification is demonstrated by evaluating the system on different types of images across two domains: two medical data sets and two animal audio data sets with vocalizations represented as images (spectrograms). Results show that the proposed system\u27s performance competes competitively against the best-performing methods in the literature, obtaining state-of-the-art performance on one of the medical data sets, and does so without ad-hoc optimization of the clustering methods on the tested data sets
Implementing Instructional Scaffolding to Support Secondary Students\u27 Abilities to Write Mathematical Explanations
No full textThis study examined the implementation of an instructional scaffolding teaching strategy in the secondary mathematics classroom. An iterative process was used to implement an initial design of instructional scaffolding, reflect on its efficacy, and adjust the design as needed. The goal was to assist students in learning to write responses of high epistemic complexity, which is an indicator of the degree of conceptual understanding. A total of 94 responses written by 35 students in two high school Algebra 2 courses were analyzed for epistemic complexity. Across three iterations of the implementation of instructional scaffolding, students wrote at the highest levels of epistemic complexity in 81.91% of the responses that were collected. These results provided evidence that instructional scaffolding is a viable teaching strategy that mathematics educators can employ to help students learn to write epistemically complex explanations of mathematics. Furthermore, two types of challenges are discussed that were encountered while implementing instructional scaffolding: a) challenges related to the instructional scaffolding process; and b) challenges related to coding responses while applying a coding framework designed to measure epistemic complexity
Nonsampling error in vegetation surveys: understanding error types and recommendations for reducing their occurrence
No full textObserver error is ubiquitous in vegetation sampling. Observer error, along with other types of related nonsampling error, may result in species richness being artificially underestimated (i.e., false-negative errors) or artificially overestimated (i.e., false-positive errors). Because of the manner in which observer error is usually quantified, there exists a strong bias against the discovery of false positives. At least seven different types of nonsampling errors can occur when surveying vegetation species composition: overlooking, misidentification, cautious, mythical, anecdotal, transcription, and relocation. Six of these error types can result in false negatives and five can result in false positives. Another type of observer error that can occur in plant surveys is estimation error, which occurs when abundances are not accurately estimated. There are many potential underlying causes of nonsampling error. Humans observers, even when highly trained and experienced, are prone to commit errors through slips, lapses, and mistakes. A number of contributing factors of observer error have been identified, including characteristics associated with the vegetation, the environment, and the observers themselves; design-based flaws may also occur. Although it may not be possible to eliminate all sources of nonsampling error, most can be reduced through understanding the mechanisms underlying the various types of error, followed by training exercises and the consistent use of appropriate operating procedures
Brides of the Jasmine Land: A Collection of Short Stories Exploring Womanhood in the Middle East
No full textThis creative thesis includes four short fiction stories, introduced by a critical essay about rhyming action in coming of age narratives. I discuss the works of John Gardner, Milan Kundera, Charles Baxter, and Mohamed Makhzangi to explore techniques in symmetrical composition and narrative echo. My hypothesis is that rhyming action in coming of age stories can be used as an effective technique to highlight the characters’ change and realization by the end of their stories. When reading about a character’s coming of age, the reader is not able to spot rhyming action until completing the work and reflecting on motifs. All of the stories in Brides of the Jasmine Land share themes of womanhood, faith vs. doubt, and unfairness and injustice
Emergent Entailed Analogical Reasoning of “Same,” “Different,” and “Opposite” in Children with Disabilities
No full textWe sought to evaluate a set of procedures based on Relational Frame Theory in teaching children with disabilities to reason analogically using relations between the contextual cues “same,” “opposite,” and “different.” Two children were first taught to respond to the relational cues using common pictures and were subsequently trained through an exemplar to correctly respond to analogies presented in an analogy matrix, based on the prior established relations. Two other children were exclusively trained to respond to analogies in the matrix without prior relational training. The children that received relational and analogy training could correctly respond analogically and the skill transferred to untrained analogies. Mastery was not observed in the control participants
Coherence and the merging of relational classes in self-organizing networks: Extending Relational Density Theory
No full textWe extended prior work on Relational Density Theory (Belisle & Dixon, 2020a,b) by evaluating the role of pre-experimental coherence among relational classes on the development of merged classes. Distance was modelled geometrically using a multidimensional scaling procedure. Phases 1 and 2 were identical across the participants and Phase 3 differed based on group assignment. In phase 1, we examined the pre-experimental relatedness of 12 arbitrary symbols and 4 known textual words (SALT, PEPPER, KING, QUEEN). Non-coherence was observed between the arbitrary symbols and coherence between the known words (SALT=PEPPER, KING=QUEEN). In phase 2, we established 4, 4-member equivalence classes using a linear training arrangement, where each class included 3 arbitrary symbols and 1 known word. Separation of the classes within the geometric space was observed. In Phase 3, for half of the participants, we attempted to establish a class merger between 2 members of each coherent class (Coherence condition; salt = pepper and king = queen). For the other participants, we attempted to establish a class merger between 2 members of each non-coherent class (Non-coherence condition; king = pepper and queen = salt). Results support the successful merger of the merged coherence class but not the merged non-coherence class. Results have implications for relational self-organization in the establishment of complex combined networks
Struggling Together: Examining the Narratives of Interdependence and Healing Within Romantic Relationships After Stroke
No full textThe consequences of a brain injury can introduce ripple effects within a family for years after the initial event. In this study, we focused on the experiences of couples negotiating their relationship after stroke. We specifically concentrated on the changes to couples’ interdependence and the relational ramifications of those changes. Interview data from 41 participants (including 20 people who have had a stroke and 21 caregiving partners) suggest that as individuals noticed changes in themselves and their partner, they also noted significant changes within their relationship. As couples encountered their new relational dynamic, they had to manage various struggles including how to provide assistance, how to communicate effectively, and how to reframe their situation. Overall, couples relayed a trajectory of post-stroke life that involved a level of mutual influence that did not seem to exist prior to stroke
Space Observations of AA Doradus Provide Consistent Mass Determinations. New HW-Vir Systems Observed with TESS
No full textWe present an overview of eclipsing systems of the HW-Virginis (HW-Vir) type, based on space observations from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. We perform a detailed analysis of the properties of AA Doradus (AA Dor), which was monitored for almost a full year. This excellent time series data set permitted us to search for both stellar pulsations and eclipse timing variations. In addition, we used the high-precision trigonometric parallax from Gaia Early Data Release 3 to make an independent determination of the fundamental stellar parameters. No convincing pulsations were detected down to a limit of 76 parts per million; however, we detected one peak with false alarm probability of 0.2 per cent. 20 s cadences being collected during Year 3 should confirm or reject our detection. From eclipse timing measurements we were able to confirm that the orbital period is stable, with an upper limit to any period change of 5.75 × 10−13 s s−1. The apparent offset of the secondary eclipse is consistent with the predicted Rømer delay when the primary mass is that of a canonical extended horizontal branch star. Using parallax and a spectral energy distribution corroborates that the mass of the primary in AA Dor is canonical, and its radius and luminosity are consistent with an evolutionary state beyond core helium burning. The mass of the secondary is found to be at the limit of hydrogen burning
The future of continuing education and lifelong learning in sport psychology professionals: A Delphi study.
No full textOne of the fundamental competencies for psychologists is to practice according to the ethical standards and principles of their profession. Two ways of achieving these standards include engaging in continuing education (CE) and lifelong learning (LL). Sport psychology professionals (SPPs) have frequently noted the importance of engaging in CE and LL to improving one’s professional practice, yet no research currently exists specifically examining these concepts in the sport psychology literature. A panel of 16 expert SPPs were invited to participate in a 3-phase Delphi study. This multinational panel of experts was selected based on their involvement in committees charged by sport psychology organizations with developing and implementing CE for their membership. The Delphi approach was used to better understand SPPs’ views on the optimal delivery, assessment, and impact of CE and LL, as well as the SPPs’ beliefs regarding the “half-life” of knowledge within the sport psychology field. The SPPs in the Delphi mainly worked in academic (65%) or applied (37.5%) settings, with an average professional experience of 14 years. While the experts considered CE and LL to be important, they reported limited engagement and investment in either activity. Moreover, the SPPs predicted an increase in e-learning methods of delivery and anticipated a growing impact of CE and LL in supporting professionals. Finally, the participants predicted a reduction in the “half-life” of sport, but not performance, psychology knowledge over the next 10 years. Such predictions highlight the salience of professional organizations promoting engagement with CE and LL. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved