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Biomedical subjects

D Sands

Publications and source records attributed to D Sands.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1997

Adaptation to suffering. Meaning and implications for nursing.

Nurses daily encounter persons who are suffering, but few have studied the suffering experience. Although the phenomena has been observed in the clinical setting, scientific inquiry has been limited. The meaning of suffering was explored through semistructured interviews with 20 subjects who had multiple sclerosis. The adaptation to suffering model provided the conceptual framework for this qualitative study. Stressors (e.g., problems associated with multiple sclerosis) and strategies perceived as helpful were identified. Subjects' responses about their suffering experiences followed an hierarchical progression from shock and denial through acceptance and understanding to finding meaning in their suffering. Rank ordering of responses illustrated the components of adaptation and how they changed with duration of illness. Findings provided support for the theoretical model and the importance of assisting clients to find meaning in their suffering experiences.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1995

[A study evaluating the correlation between the phenotype and genotype among 65 cystic fibrosis patients].

Among 65 CF diagnosed patients with both CFTR gene mutations known genotype-phenotype studies were performed. Correlation between pancreatic insufficiency and so called "severe mutations" was found. Respiratory tract symptoms do not seem to depend on one specific mutation as well as meconium ileus is not only limited to the group of patients with delta F508/delta F508 genotype. Some other genotype - clinical features correlation in CF patients are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

A comparative study among college students of sexual abuse in childhood.

A disproportionate random sample (200 women, 400 men) of students attending a major university was invited to participate in a mailed survey to study differences in self-efficacy, coping, and well-being between men and women who were sexually abused in childhood and those who were not. A total of 271 students (111 women, 160 men) responded by returning the completed survey. Fifty percent of the women and 22% of the men in the sample reported one or more unwanted sexual experiences in childhood. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) techniques to analyze differences in self-efficacy, coping (confrontive, emotive, palliative), and well-being between women and men who reported childhood sexual abuse and those who did not showed significant interaction effects by sex for abuse (F = 2.609, P = .025, df 5,263) and significant effects by sex (F = 3.356, P = .006), but no significant differences for abuse alone. Univariate F tests were significant (F = 5.386, P = .021) for palliative coping with abused men reporting the highest scores, abused and nonabused women having the highest scores on emotive coping (F = 9.049, P = .003), and nonabused men and women having highest scores on well-being (F = 7.276, P = .007). A second MANOVA was performed on data from 245 students (nonabused and those who reported contact sexual abuse). Significant interaction effects by sex for abuse (F = 2.259, P = 0.49, df 5,237) and main effects for abuse (F = 3.225, P = .008) were found. Although abused men scored lowest on well-being, both abused men and abused women scored higher on emotive coping and lower on well-being than nonabused subjects. These are new findings with implications for developing and testing nursing interventions for this vulnerable group of young adults.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1989

Memory for action events in Alzheimer-type dementia: further evidence of an encoding failure.

The purpose of the present research was to examine the nature of the encoding problem in patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) using a nonstrategic memory task, namely the recall of action events or subject-performed tasks (SPTs). The first experiment investigated the retention of SPTs and the verbal descriptions of action events in patients with mild-to-moderate DAT, young, and old adults. While the healthy older adults showed significantly higher recall for SPTs than for verbal descriptions, the DAT patients failed to exhibit this effect. A follow-up study replicated this same pattern using SPTs and tasks performed by the experimenter. As the multimodal and contextually rich encoding environment present in SPTs had no effect on the patients' retention, this suggests that manipulations designed to enhance encoding in this population will be unsuccessful. The relevance of the results to (1) memory compensation in the aged, and (2) the development of mnemonic training programs for the elderly are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Memory for internally generated words in Alzheimer-type dementia: breakdown in encoding and semantic memory.

The "generation effect" is a phenomenon in which words that are generated by the subject are remembered better than words which are read. The present experiments examined this effect in patients with mild-to-moderate dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), healthy elderly adults, and young adults under a variety of different encoding and retrieval conditions. Experiment 1 employed an intentional learning task with multiple study/test trials using the same list of words. While both the young and elderly adults exhibited higher recall for internally generated words than read words, the DAT patients failed to demonstrate the effect even after repeated exposures to the same stimulus list. Experiment 2 replicated this same pattern of results using an incidental learning paradigm with both recall and recognition tests. Various explanations as to why the DAT patients failed to show the generation effect were discussed with particular emphasis placed on the role of semantic memory and encoding failure.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Health promoting attitudes and behaviors among persons with disabilities.

Despite the recognized importance of maintaining and improving the health status of persons with disabilities, there has been little research conducted to determine their health care attitudes and behaviors and what interventions might serve to enhance their health. Using Pender's Model of Health Promotion (1987), this study investigated the factors associated with the occurrence of health promoting behaviors among 135 adults with disabilities. Staff and peer counsellors from two Independent Living Centres in Texas administered the questionnaires and conducted brief semi-structured interviews with participants. Seventy-three percent of the sample rated their current health as good or excellent. Findings from both interviews and questionnaires suggest that participants are more likely to define health as being able to function well than as simply the absence of illness. High scores on Adaptive definition of health, the Self-Efficacy-Scale, age, and low scores on the Barriers to Health Promotion Activity for Disabled Persons scale accounted for 31% of the variance in scores on a self-report measure of health promoting behaviors. These findings suggest that interventions which address self-perceived barriers to health promotion, work to build participants' sense of mastery of their health behaviors, and encourage a definition of health that is broader than simply absence of illness may be more effective than those that focus only on information about good health practices.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

The preselection effect on the recall facilitation of motor movements in Alzheimer-type dementia.

Two experiments examined the coding and retention of psychomotor information in patients with mild to moderate dementia of the Alzheimer-type (DAT), healthy elderly controls, and young adults. Experiment 1 compared recall accuracy for preselected (subject-defined) and constrained (experimenter-defined) movements under three different retention conditions. Not surprisingly, the DAT patients showed significantly larger reproduction errors than did the controls. In all three groups, however, preselected movements were recalled more accurately than constrained movements. This preselection advantage was replicated in Experiment 2 using a new group of DAT patients with recall being performed under both same- and switch-limb conditions. While the results suggested that DAT patients suffer from both an encoding deficiency and a rapid loss of information from short-term memory, they also indicate that patients are capable of coding meaningful aspects of motor movements. Most importantly, the results suggest that in the motor domain, efforts to enhance encoding can facilitate the recall of DAT patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

The relationship of empathy to clinical experience among male and female nursing students.

While a number of educational interventions aimed at increasing empathy among nurses have been undertaken, research on empathy has yielded inconsistent findings. This study used a new multidimensional measure to study empathy levels among BSN nursing students during their first year of nursing education. Thirty-five nursing students completed Davis' Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) at four times during their junior year. The results of a repeated measures ANOVA indicated high consistency for all IRI scores across the four data collection periods. T-tests were also performed to compare IRI scores by gender. Males scored significantly lower than female nursing students on the Personal Distress Scale. While there were no other consistent, significant differences, males did not tend to score slightly higher than females on Perspective Taking. This response pattern is the opposite of what has been reported for other groups, although it is consistent with previous nursing research. The relationship between age, previous health-care experience, and IRI scores also varied by sex. Implications of these findings for educational interventions, recruitment, and retention of nursing students are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Health related attitudes and health promoting behaviors: differences between health fair attenders and a community group.

Demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral differences between health fair attenders and a community comparison group were examined along with predictions of health promoting behaviors from demographic and attitudinal variables. Differences between questionnaire responses of 155 health fair attenders and 71 grocery shoppers indicated attenders perceived themselves having better current health and greater internal control of their health, and reported more behaviors indicating health responsibility, exercise, and nutrition than the comparison group. Psychological variables--particularly perceptions of greater self-efficacy and better health status--were the best predictors of attenders' health promoting behaviors; demographic variables were less important. On the other hand, demographic variables were most predictive of comparison group health promoting behaviors with psychological variables playing a lesser role. Further studies of relationships between the variables examined here and experimental studies of the effects of health fair attendance on health knowledge and performance of health promoting behaviors are needed. Assuming health fairs are effective in educating attenders, it was concluded that health fair planners should: 1) encourage nonattenders to become attenders and attenders to be repeat attenders, 2) carefully promote and advertise health fairs, and 3) hold health fairs in locations easily accessible to large numbers of people.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1983

Infection in artificial blood pump implantation.

Infection has been observed in artificial heart experimentation to be of early onset and generally within the first 2 postoperative weeks. The organisms most often detected in blood cultures were Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterobacter cloacae, E. coli and Enterococcus, all of which are intestinal species. Contamination is thus thought to be the most plausible cause of perioperative infection. Absolute sterility must be maintained in animal care areas and blood access to these animals is to be minimized. Although prompt selection of a proper antibiotic therapy is essential, the eradication of infection maintains a poor prognosis. The time course of fibrinogen levels is a reliable index to determine the onset of infection.

Animals↗