1,720,958 research outputs found
The experience of mothers who gave birth to stillborn babies
Get PDFM.Cur.The purpose of this study is to determine the experiences of mothers after delivery of a stillborn baby. Parents who experience this event have mixed emotions, that is feelings of helplessness, disbelief, powerlessness, fear and anxiety. Unstructured in-depth interviews were held with ten (10) mothers three months after the death of their babies, the experiences of the ten mothers were compared afterwards. A literature study was undertaken in order to determine what the conclusions of other researchers in the field were. The result of the literature study was compared with that of the present study. Recommendations are made at the end of this study on the practical education and further research that can be undertaken on this subject
Support programme for mothers with pregnancy loss
Get PDFD.Cur.Although the general topic of death is receiving increasing attention by the medical community, little is known about the impact that pregnancy loss has on the lives experiencing it. Statistics show that the problem is widespread, but they tell nothing about the tears, the regrets, the feeling of guilt and the long process of rebuilding hope. And the medical community is not consistent in attitude or skill where caring for mothers with pregnancy loss. Mothers expect their physicians to be understanding and compassionate, especially when the worst fear has become a reality and the baby had died. Sadly, these expectations are too often unfulfilled, leaving the mother angry and confused, instead, death becomes the enemy to be avoided and opposed at all costs. The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual framework of support to mothers with pregnancy loss to assist midwives and doctors in supporting these mother
Managers\u27 Perceptions of the Availability of Medicines in the Free State District Health Services
No full textThe purpose of this study was to explore and to describe perceptions of pharmaceutical service managers and district managers regarding factors influencing the availability of medicines within the district health services of the Free State province. A qualitative, descriptive, exploratory and contextual research design was followed. Data collection was conducted through two focus group discussions consisting of pharmaceutical managers and district health services managers, respectively. The collected data were organised and analysed by means of an inductive model where the data that were relevant to the topic had to be grouped into appropriate and meaningful categories. This was enhanced by the use of XSight, a software package developed for the analysis of qualitative data. The research results demonstrate that there is inadequate availability of medicine in district health services due to various factors, including a shortage of pharmacists and pharmacist assistants in the primary health setting, lack of delegation, red tape in the procurement of medicines, and lack of an electronic medicine procurement and monitoring system. The study made recommendations on how to improve medicine availability within the district health services
A Healthy Mother and Baby through Optimal Timing and Spacing of Pregnancy
No full textOne of the strategies that can assist to improve maternal and newborn outcomes in Malawi is the provision of preconception care. Most of the problems that affect the neonates and their mothers occur before pregnancy and during organogenesis. Men and women of childbearing age need appropriate advice and healthcare to assist them to have healthy maternal and newborn outcomes. Persistent use of family planning and healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy could assist in reducing some of the causes of the maternal and infant mortality rate. Preconception health should be promoted through the use of family planning methods at a recommended time to have a healthy pregnancy. A quantitative descriptive non-experimental design was used to examine the use of preconception interventions at health centres in the urban areas of Blantyre, Malawi. Information was collected from 300 men and women of childbearing age between 18 and 35 years that had a pregnancy and intended to get pregnant in five years. The major findings indicated that information on optimal timing and spacing of pregnancy should be provided to men and women of childbearing age and that there should be adequate use of family planning methods. There were mixed messages on healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy as 32.8 per cent of the participants indicated that pregnancy should be spaced in 1 to 2 years and 23.5 per cent indicated that pregnancy should be spaced more than 5 years. About n = 196 (64.9%) had one to two children. Healthcare providers should provide guidelines on healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy through preconception care that would enable men and women of childbearing age to access information and care to improve pregnancy outcomes
ANTENATAL ASSESSMENT OF THE PSYCHOSOCIAL WELLBEING OF PREGNANT WOMEN: A CASE OF MPILO LOZIKEYI MATERNITY HOSPITAL, BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE
No full textIntroduction: Women have psychosocial challenges but perinatal interventions are not making much impact on their mental status hence the interventions need scaling up. This study involved measuring and analysing the extent to which levels of the psychosocial markers reflect effectiveness of the mental health interventions offered by midwives.
Methods: The study was conducted at Mpilo Central Hospital Maternity Bulawayo, for the main reason that it receives women referrals from 5 out of the 10 provinces in the country with a total catchment of almost 50% of the country’s population. The maternity hospital has a full complement of all the five maternity units. A quantitative approach administrating a Quality-of-Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Short form (Q-LES-SF) scale was used. The scale ranged from “very poor” to “very good” with “poor”, “fair”, “good” components in between was used to measure the psychosocial scores on a purposive sample of 300 women in the third trimester of pregnancy. The participants had attended at least three antenatal reviews where psychosocial interventions and mental health assessment, monitoring and evaluations are normally carried. The quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics on SPSS Version 23 package.
Results: The Q-LES-Q-SF psychosocial scale which was revealed that women had psychosocial challenges without adequate mental health interventions to ameliorate these challenges. The study demonstrated a bimodal sample with peaks at the “Good” and “Poor” set points. The relationships of the psychosocial and satisfaction scores along the scale continuum showed that “Poor” (33%) Q-LES-Q-SF was higher, followed by “Good” (29%), followed by “Fair” (25%), followed by “Very Poor” and “Very Poor” and “Very Good” being equal (6.5%) in a normal distribution pattern. The likelihood of the demographic variables influencing the Q-LES-Q-F scale were not necessarily linked to the quality-of-life enjoyment and satisfaction of the expectant women during prenatal period. However, age, education level acquired and marital status showed a linearity towards the “Good” when individually rated against the Q-LES-Q-F.
Discussion: The psychosocial scores were generally both poor and good indicating that perinatal interventions are needed are needed to making much impact on the mental and social wellbeing of women in the third trimester of pregnancy. The good to very good Q-LES-Q-F scores are a requirement in expectant mothers as this has a strong bearing on the wellbeing of the foetus and mother post parturition. Apparently, the need for scaling up psychosocial support, monitoring, evaluation and interventions to third trimester pregnant women by midwives cannot be overemphasized
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
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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