1,721,143 research outputs found
Psychosocial aspects of pain and fatigue
No full textGriffith Health, School of Nursing and MidwiferyNo Full Tex
A rebellious distemper : a Foucaultian history of breast cancer to 1900
No full textThis dissertation explores some of the conditions of possibility underpinning contemporary breast cancer discourse, which is imbued with harsh moral, social and spiritual nuance. I have therefore explored a set of questions concerned with the past state of things in breast cancer care that laid the foundation for present approaches. I wanted to know how it became possible to speak what we now regard as the only truth about breast cancer. I wanted to understand how this truth was determined; who determined it, and who or what gave them the right to assert that their truth was the only truth. I wanted to acquire insight into the ways that thinking about and managing breast cancer based on this truth came to dominate the post-modern consciousness (rather than other, perhaps equally valid ways). And if it was possible, I wanted to open up a space for thinking differently about breast cancer. Finally, I wanted to test the fit of the ideas of the philosopher-historian, Michel Foucault, to these questions.\ud
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Foucault's notions of discontinuity, discipline, the gaze, normalising judgements and to a lesser extent, some aspects of power/knowledge and the ethics of the self are here tested on the surgical archive of breast cancer, which housed the discourse that best represented Western societal beliefs about the disease, and which had been invested by society with the greatest authority in its conception and management. The analytic framework - modes of consciousness - suggested by Foucault provided a coherent structure with which to explore the archive. I found that there are numerous elements in the archive instrumental in cementing the conditions of possibility for breast cancer discourse in our own time. This dissertation demonstrates that, as is the case in the present day, these were based on unstable truths about breast cancer that were a result of a complex of sociocultural and political norms rather than an objective truth
Multicultural issues in health
No full textFocuses on developing and strengthening understanding of the illness experience, and encourages students to critically appraise conventional approaches to understanding and caring for those who are ill, to empower readers to offer true holistic care and, where appropriate, to change nursing practices in light of recent research
Review: "Breast cancer : can you prevent it?" by A. Lawson, J. Lawson. McGraw-Hill Book (1998)
No full textWhile reviewing this book, I was not of the target audience. For example, there is a first chapter (presented as a case study, and integrated in an unconvincing manner into the remainder of the book) that obviously meant to soften the book for the lay person. In the third chapter, the authors provide their philosophical interpretation on the meaning of breasts for reasons that entirely escape me, and that have no relation to the book as a whole. Finally, there are potted histories of the heroics of ‘tireless’, ‘dedicated’ and ‘earnest’ epidemiologists, some of whom have nothing to do with breast cancer or the book at all. Despite this lack of focus, the authors give an honest and coherent account of the current state of breast cancer research from an epidemiological viewpoint..
The nursing management of the cutaneous toxicities of chemotherapy : A review of the current evidence
No full textReview : "Quality of life: the assessment, analysis and interpretation of patient-reported outcomes (2nd Ed.)" by Peter M. Fayers & David Machin
No full textAn updated version, this excellent text is a timely addition to the library of any nurse researching in oncology or other settings where individuals’ quality of life must be understood. Health-related quality of life should be a central aspect of studies concerned with health and illness. Indeed, considerable evidence has recently emerged in oncology and other research settings that selfreported quality of life is of great prognostic significance and may be the most reliable predictor of subsequent morbidity and mortality. From a nursing perspective, it is also gratifying to note that novel therapy and other oncology studies increasingly recognize the importance of understanding patients’ subjective experiences of an intervention over time and to ascertain whether patients perceive that a new intervention makes a difference to their quality of life and treatment outcomes. Measurements of quality of life are now routine in clinical trials of chemotherapy drugs and are often considered the prime outcome of interest in the cost/benefit analyses of these treatments. The authors have extensive experience in qualityof- life assessment in cancer clinical trials, where most of the pioneering work into quality of life has been conducted. That said, many of the health-related qualityof- life issues discussed are common to many illnesses, and researchers outside of cancer should find the book equally helpful
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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