The Preservation of Spousal and Partner Relationships Among Nursing Home Residents

The decision to seek placement in a nursing home may be especially difficult for spouses or partners of the potential nursing home residents. Disruption of the attachment relationship following placement may influence the psychosocial well-being of nursing home residents. Although the responsibility of nursing home staff is to ensure psychosocial well-being, including awareness of the influence that separation can have on a spousal or partner relationship, little is known about services offered for the maintenance of spousal and partner relationships. This study was conducted to identify nursing home practices that had preservation of spouse/partner relationships as the goal. A mixed methods approach utilized both an online survey (81 respondents) with nursing home social workers in four Southern states and ten telephone interviews (from among the respondents). Survey results revealed that 49% of respondents’ facilities had a written policy to preserve these relationships, however, only 22% reported having a specific formal program to carry this out. In the interviews, participants expanded on survey topics and shared that facilitating outings and encouraging participation in routine facility activities were commonly used to preserve relationships. Privacy was discussed as being important in maintaining relationships and also found to be a barrier to doing so. Nursing home social workers can utilize the results in the design and implementation of specific services to preserve relationships and maintain strong attachment between residents and their spouses/partners. These will be best carried out in a coordinated, collaborative manner among multiple disciplines within the nursing home setting.

Reinforcing Factors Influencing Patient-physician Relationships: A Content Analysis Study

Background: Building an effective patient-physician relationship is a vital component of a successful health care. Therefore, educating and preparing students to communicate effectively with patients has always been critical. Such a criticism needs to evaluate the current situation and the socio-cultural context in which the communications are built. The aim of this study was to analyze the status of patient-physician relationship and explore factors influencing communication in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences (TUoMS) from the perspective of patients, students and faculty members.Methods: In this content analysis study, data were gathered using focus groups, semi-structured interviews and observations in the field, based on purposive sampling until the data saturation was achieved.Findings: Content analysis resulted in emerging five categories, affecting patient-physician relationship. They included factors related to: physician, patient, environment, socio-cultural context and health care system. Participants related their stratifying experiences of the PPR to 36 factors in five different categories. Among them, the factors related to the physician played the most significant role. Most students stated that they did not receive any practical or theoretical training in a form of a predefined formal program to improve their communication skills.Conclusion: The findings of this study indicated that the current situation of patient-physician relationship at TUoMS is not satisfying and serious and comprehensive interventions are needed to improve the PPR.

Perceptions of academic staff about mentoring in a Faculty of Dentistry in a public university in South Africa

Mentoring programs contribute to the development and retention of academics in dental education. To describe the perceptions of academic staff of the Faculty of Dentistry, University of the Western Cape, South Africa, about a funded pilot mentoring process. Cross-sectional, purposive sampling qualitative design. Twenty mentees who had engaged in the funded mentoring process were targeted for semi-structured interviews, to describe their perceptions about the ongoing mentorship process, experiences in other mentoring processes, and expectations about future formal mentoring in the faculty. Quantitative data was analysed descriptively, while content analysis of the qualitative data was performed to identify themes. Perceptions of eight mentees, aged 37 to 59 years and spent between 3 and over 20 years in the faculty, were categorized into two themes - ‘A welcome initiative’ and ‘Mentorship seen as a holistic experience’. The program provided the much-needed space where mentees felt they could seek guidance for their development. Expectations from a future formal program included assistance in meeting institutional and personal demands. Participants’ expectations were broader than what the pilot program offered, though

The Année Sociologique as Training Ground for Sociology: Durkheim, Mauss, and the Art of Book Reviewing in Fin de Siècle France

This chapter focuses on a specific aspect of the efforts of Durkheim and his colleagues to institutionalize sociology as a scientific research discipline in France in the late nineteenth century: the graduate training of emerging sociologists. This training posed several challenges at its inception, such as the lack of a formal program of education and of dedicated faculty or facilities. One way that Durkheim and his associates worked around their relative lack of resources was through the foundation of the Année sociologique. This journal was a discipline building enterprise: it was a collective undertaking, it discussed a wide variety of material, and it organized the intellectual division of labor in a number of subfields, effectively defining the discipline of sociology by its choices of authors and books for review. Durkheim, as the hub of the enterprise, and Mauss, as his closest collaborator and ‘alter ego’, reviewed all submissions, suggested revisions and insisted on examining everything in the smallest detail. This extensive work of editing formed the style of professional reviews of their collaborators. Durkheim encouraged and directed the research work of his younger teammates, providing them with guidance in producing original articles in the field of sociology, offering models of scientific research in the field, and helping them obtain academic appointments. A large part of this work of training was conducted via correspondence, due to the geographical distance between the members of the group. This chapter examines the practices of training in writing, their transfer across generations, and their significance to the success of the group.

The Consistency of Arithmetic

This paper offers an elementary proof that formal arithmetic is consistent. The system that will be proved consistent is a first-order theory R♯, based as usual on the Peano postulates and the recursion equations for + and ×. However, the reasoning will apply to any axiomatizable extension of R♯ got by adding classical arithmetical truths. Moreover, it will continue to apply through a large range of variation of the un- derlying logic of R♯, while on a simple and straightforward translation, the classical first-order theory P♯ of Peano arithmetic turns out to be an exact subsystem of R♯. Since the reasoning is elementary, it is formalizable within R♯ itself; i.e., we can actually demonstrate within R♯ (or within P♯, if we care) a statement that, in a natural fashion, asserts the consistency of R♯ itself. The reader is unlikely to have missed the significance of the remarks just made. In plain English, this paper repeals Goedel’s famous second theorem. (That’s the one that asserts that sufficiently strong systems are inadequate to demonstrate their own consistency.) That theorem (or at least the significance usually claimed for it) was a mis- take—a subtle and understandable mistake, perhaps, but a mistake nonetheless. Accordingly, this paper reinstates the formal program which is often taken to have been blasted away by Goedel’s theorems— namely, the Hilbert program of demonstrating, by methods that everybody can recognize as effective and finitary, that intuitive mathematics is reliable. Indeed, the present consistency proof for arithmetic will be recognized as correct by anyone who can count to 3. (So much, indeed, for the claim that the reliability of arithmetic rests on transfinite induction up to ε0, and for the incredible mythology that underlies it.)

A systematic scoping review of approaches to teaching and assessing empathy in medicine

Background Empathy is pivotal to effective clinical care. Yet, the art of nurturing and assessing empathy in medical schools is rarely consistent and poorly studied. To inform future design of programs aimed at nurturing empathy in medical students and doctors, a review is proposed. Methods This systematic scoping review (SSR) employs a novel approach called the Systematic Evidence Based Approach (SEBA) to enhance the reproducibility and transparency of the process. This 6-stage SSR in SEBA involved three teams of independent researchers who reviewed eight bibliographic and grey literature databases and performed concurrent thematic and content analysis to evaluate the data. Results In total, 24429 abstracts were identified, 1188 reviewed, and 136 included for analysis. Thematic and content analysis revealed five similar themes/categories. These comprised the 1) definition of empathy, 2) approaches to nurturing empathy, 3) methods to assessing empathy, 4) outcome measures, and 5) enablers/barriers to a successful curriculum. Conclusions Nurturing empathy in medicine occurs in stages, thus underlining the need for it to be integrated into a formal program built around a spiralled curriculum. We forward a framework built upon these stages and focus attention on effective assessments at each stage of the program. Tellingly, there is also a clear need to consider the link between nurturing empathy and one’s professional identity formation. This foregrounds the need for more effective tools to assess empathy and to better understand their role in longitudinal and portfolio based learning programs.

Polityczne wybory młodych do Parlamentu Europejskiego jako egzemplifikacja obywatelskości młodzieży – kontekst kształcenia formalnego

The main axis of the narration in this article is the analysis of the electoral activity of young Poles from the perspective of the formal program of Citizenship Education in the area of shaping the attitudes of young people as active voters. The first part of the article presents the context of Polish civil society and the electoral activity of young Poles. The Author connects the analyses of youth electoral patterns to with the assessment of effectiveness of formal education, including textbook messages, in shaping and developing civic engagement in youth. The article presents the analysis of textbooks for civic education, as well as indicates some non-textual contexts for implementing civic education in Poland. The analysis of citizenship education textbooks becomes an opportunity to approximate multi-faceted challenge of shaping civil attitudes among young people in Poland.

Political choices during the European Parliament elections as a model for civic responsibility of young people in Poland – the context of formal education

The main axis of the narration in this article is the analysis of the electoral activity of young Poles from the perspective of the formal program of Citizenship Education in the area of shaping the attitudes of young people as active voters. The first part of the article presents the context of Polish civil society and the electoral activity of young Poles. The Author connects the analyses of youth electoral patterns to with the assessment of effectiveness of formal education, including textbook messages, in shaping and developing civic engagement in youth. The article presents the analysis of textbooks for civic education, as well as indicates some non-textual contexts for implementing civic education in Poland. The analysis of citizenship education textbooks becomes an opportunity to approximate multi-faceted challenge of shaping civil attitudes among young people in Poland.