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Understanding the Impact of Language Barriers and Visit Duration on Caregiver Satisfaction in Pediatric Primary Care
Get PDFBackground: Children from households that speak languages other than English (LOE) face barriers in accessing healthcare, leading to poorer health outcomes. Language barriers contribute to these disparities, often resulting in diminished communication between providers and families. Visit duration may play a key role in facilitating effective communication and improving patient satisfaction.
Purpose: This study examines how language barriers affect caregiver satisfaction in pediatric primary care, and whether visit duration mediates this relationship. We hypothesized that caregivers from LOE households would have comparable visit durations to English-preferring caregivers but report lower satisfaction due to receiving less information within that time.
Methodology: This cross-sectional study recruited 46 caregivers of pediatric patients at the Community Clinic, a federally qualified healthcare center in Springdale, AR. Participants were recruited at the end of healthcare visits and completed the Session Rating Scale (Duncan et al., 2003), the Short Assessment of Patient Satisfaction Scale (SAPS; Hawthorne et al., 2006), and a demographic questionnaire. Participants also consented to the research team accessing pediatric patients’ medical records to collect demographic and clinical data. The sample included 27 LOE caregivers and 19 English-speaking caregivers, with the mean child age being 6.82 years (SD = 5.67). Visit duration was recorded as the time between check-in and check-out. Statistical analyses included an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to compare SAPS scores by language preference while controlling for child age, and a bivariate correlation to assess the relationship between visit duration and satisfaction.
Results: The hypothesis was not supported. SAPS scores were similar between English and LOE-speaking caregivers (p = .082). Visit duration was not significantly associated with satisfaction (r = 0.05, p = .367), and there was no significant difference in total visit duration between groups (p = .103). As a result, visit duration was not explored as a mediating factor. However, LOE caregivers rated PCP explanations significantly lower than English-speaking caregivers (p = .004), indicating potential communication barriers.
Discussion: While overall satisfaction did not differ between groups, LOE caregivers’ lower ratings of provider explanations may suggest a need to more closely examine translation services for improving communication from provider to patient. These findings commend the providers at Community Clinic for their service to a diverse population but highlight the potential benefit of enhancing language access initiatives. Future analysis will explore visit types, results from the Session Rating Scale, and the impact of patient-provider language concordance. Further research should investigate qualitative factors influencing satisfaction, including perceptions of provider empathy, trust, and engagement, to enhance culturally competent pediatric care
Leveraging P4 Programmable Switches for Resilient Operation and Design of Phasor Measurement Unit Networks
Get PDFThe power grid utilizes a device called the phasor measurement unit (PMU), allowing power system administrators to remotely monitor and manage the state of the grid in Wide Area Monitoring Systems (WAMS). The advantages of PMUs – such as fine-grained, time-synchronized measurements and efficient, decentralized monitoring – are what make them key devices in the power grid. However, PMU technology also comes with new threats of the digital age, like malfunctions and cyberattacks, which can result in missing and faulty measurements that compromise power grid observability. P4 programmable networks can be used to detect faulty PMU data in a decentralized, efficient manner. Existing work has introduced in-network missing data recovery using P4. In this work, we extend that approach by adding the capability to detect and recover delayed PMU data to add onto the recovery scheme. We implement in-network PMU data logging on P4 switches, enabling retroactive power-system analysis without the need for changes to existing PDC hardware. Under a 5\% packet loss scenario, the mean absolute percentage error for voltage magnitude is 0.0279\% and the phase angle error is at 0.0272 degrees, demonstrating the effectiveness of incorporating delayed data recovery
Who’s in control? Perceived stress and emotional regulation partially mediate the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on mental health and life satisfaction.
Get PDFAdverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that occur during the first 18 years of life and have a strong potential to negatively impact health and well-being in adulthood. The exploration of this connection is important because health and lifestyle behaviors have been linked to the leading causes of death in the United States. ACEs have been found to alter brain development and have been associated with mental health issues and lower life satisfaction, but information about the pathway between these connections is scarce. The present study aimed to investigate if inadequate emotional regulation and higher levels of perceived stress, stemming from ACEs, may explain the relationship between ACEs and mental health issues as well as the relationship between ACEs and lower life satisfaction. Evidence of partial mediation was found in that emotional regulation and perceived stress partially mediate the relationship between ACEs and mental health, and ACEs and life satisfaction
Design Considerations of a GPU
Get PDFWith the current era of AI technology, the era of single instruction multiple data has become an increasingly viable solution to accelerate training. The problem is that while software to use GPUs and other hardware accelerators, designing GPUs and ASIC devices has become increasingly more expensive and there aren’t great examples of generic GPUs that anyone can use and modify. In this thesis, there are four design considerations that will be discussed and how they affect the result of a generic GPU. The four considerations that were talked about in the thesis are, word width, arithmetic type, number of stages, and number of memory paths. Throughout, decisions will be made about these design decisions to create an example GPU that will be tested at the end. The set up chosen is to make the GPU an 8-bit word width, integer-based arithmetic computations, single staged pipeline, with 8 memory paths onto and off the chip. The result was a generic GPU that can complete basic calculations
The Impact of Early Ambulation in Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Patients at the Oklahoma Heart Hospital
Get PDFBackground
Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) procedures are conducted across the United States to patients that have blocked arteries resulting in the heart not receiving enough profusion to adequately function. This is an invasive, lifesaving surgery that also welcomes complications post-surgery. 1 in 8 patients will check back into the hospital at least 30 days after their CABG procedures. Readmission can be related to arrhythmias and congestive heart failure; however, most patients see respiratory complications or infection (Shawon, et al., 2021).
Purpose
The purpose of this externship was to learn if early ambulation had a positive impact on patients who had undergone coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.
MethodsThrough an externship at the Oklahoma Heart Hospital, 290 hours were given to patients on the progressive coronary care unit who had received CABG procedure. These patients were under a protocol that required them to participate in early ambulation. A literature review was also performed through CINAHL, Medline, and PubMed. Thousands of peer reviewed articles were found, but after filtering through articles that included keywords such as: ambulation, walking, post operative, cardiac surgery, and CABG, 15 articles were selected.
Results
Having patients walk after CABG surgeries helps decrease the chance of longer hospital stay and complications. The research conducted also highlighted obstacles that patients face while walking after open heart surgery, but it was found that walking will allow patients to recover faster and heal properly.
Conclusion
According to the research that was found, walking post CABG surgery will decrease the risk of complications. The evidence suggests that patients will see an increase in cardiac health and will face less rehospitalizations in the future
The Effects of Daily Beef Consumption on Sleep, Mood, and Wellbeing in Postmenopausal Women
Get PDFMenopause is often accompanied by changes in sleep, mood, and overall well-being, partly due to hormonal shifts and loss of muscle mass. Protein intake, especially from nutrient-rich sources like beef, may help address these changes, but research in postmenopausal women remains limited. This study explored how daily beef consumption, as part of a higher-protein diet, affected sleep quality, mood, and well-being over eight weeks. Ten active postmenopausal women were randomly assigned to either a control group (meeting standard protein recommendations) or a treatment group consuming twice that amount, including one serving of lean beef per day. Sleep was measured using both the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and wrist actigraphy, while mood and well-being were assessed through the POMS and SF-36 questionnaires. The beef group reported significantly better subjective sleep quality by the end of the study (p = 0.040), though no meaningful changes were observed in objective sleep data, mood, or quality of life scores. These early findings suggest that higher protein intake from beef may help improve how postmenopausal women perceive their sleep, though more research is needed to understand the broader effects
Over-Imitation Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Compared to Typically Developing Peers: An Expanded Literature Review
Get PDFAbstract
Background:
Imitation, a foundational social and cognitive development mechanism, enables individuals to acquire cultural norms, communication skills, and problem-solving strategies. Over-imitation— the replication of both relevant and irrelevant actions demonstrated by others—plays a critical role in social learning. While typically developing children often engage in over-imitation to promote social bonding and affiliation, the role and underlying motivations for over-imitation in children with ASD remain less clearly understood.
Purpose:
Through a critical synthesis of professional and scholarly literature, this review aims to evaluate the history and development of research on imitation and over-imitation, assess empirical findings regarding typically developing children and children with ASD, identify methodological and conceptual limitations in the existing literature, and propose directions for future research. This analysis seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of the role of imitation in social communication development and its clinical relevance for interventions and learning strategies for children with ASD.
Methods:
A comprehensive search was conducted using University of Arkansas Libraries OneSearch UARK, which included databases such as Taylor & Francis, EBSCO, MDPI, Elsevier, and ScienceDirect. Keywords such as “over-imitation in children with autism,” “over-imitation in children with autism and typically developing,” and “autism spectrum disorder” were used to identify relevant peer-reviewed studies published between 2009 and 2024. Articles were included if they focused on imitation behaviors in children with ASD and/or typically developing. Twenty articles met the inclusion criteria and were synthesized for this review.
Results:
Twenty articles met the inclusion criteria and were included in this review. Data was taken from these articles and then reviewed and synthesized into a table format. The findings suggest that children with ASD engage in over-imitation less frequently and demonstrate different patterns of selective imitation, favoring goal-directed over stylistic imitation. Additionally, the findings indicate that imitation is foundational for the acquisition of pragmatic communication skills. Deficits in imitation among children with ASD are linked to broader challenges in language development, joint attention, and social reciprocity.
Conclusions:
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate distinct patterns of imitation that reflect broader challenges in social motivation, pragmatic communication, and cognitive processing. These findings emphasize that imitation differences in ASD are not simply deficits but complex variations that warrant careful clinical attention. A deeper understanding of these differences has significant implications for speech-language pathology, informing the development of targeted interventions that support social learning and communication growth in this population
