SEARCH · Search PubMed
Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
This article presents a concept interpretation of patterns for bidirectional associative memory (BAM) and a representation of hierarchical structures of concepts (concept lattices) by BAMs. The constructive representation theorem provides a storing rule for a training set that allows a concept interpretation. Examples demonstrating the theorems are presented.
The concept of theme is critical to the accurate interpretation of qualitative data. A literature review of qualitative research methodology and nursing research studies reveals considerable diversity in the identification of themes, the interpretation of the concept, and its function in data analysis. Part of the problem is the transfer of research methods from other disciplines to the study of nursing phenomena. The transfer often results in a blending of distinct research methods that compromises methodological rigor in data analysis and theory generation. A definition of theme is developed from the literature review and interdisciplinary definitions and descriptions. Five aspects of a theme and criteria foundational to the definition and concept of theme are identified. Implications of the concept of theme are presented for the conduct and application of research findings to the practice and development of nursing science.
The concept of acculturation in Mexican immigrants was analyzed using the concept analysis technique developed by Walker and Avant. The related concepts for acculturation are assimilation, separation, and marginalization. The defining attributes identified for acculturation are original cultural identity, exposure to a culture different from one's own, and changes in the behavioral, affective, and/or cognitive domains of one's functioning after exposure to a new culture. An antecedent for acculturation is that identification with one's culture of origin must be well established. Another antecedent is the willingness to modify one's original cultural identity. Transition is identified as a consequence of acculturation. Acculturation is a complex, multifaceted concept and cannot be adequately captured by measures that use language preference alone. Other factors such as social class, employment, education, and income should also be considered when acculturation is a factor in nursing practice and research.
This paper reviews the conceptual history of brief and acute psychoses. As psychotic disorders of usually dramatic symptomatology but nevertheless with a usually benign course, brief and acute psychoses have the air of a paradox. Thus, they have posed specific problems in regard to nosology, diagnostics and aetiology. Despite a strong convergence of the descriptive elements, the historical concepts of brief and acute psychoses have yielded different answers to the questions raised. Kahlbaum and Kraepelin set the stage on which brief and acute psychoses appeared "atypical". The concept of "bouffée délirante" used degeneration theory as a background for nosological and aetiological allocation. Similarly, the concepts of cycloid psychoses, reactive (psychogenic) psychoses, emotional psychoses and atypical psychoses have provided diverging but interrelated ways to delineate brief and acute psychoses, to determine their nosological status and to explain the coexistence of severe disorder and favourable prognosis. Modern classifications, namely the acute and transient psychotic disorder of ICD-10 and the brief psychotic disorder of DSM-IV, reflect the varied history of the concept.
The concept of adaptation is historically evident in nursing practice. Florence Nightingale showed how the environment required adaptation to meet the needs of the patient. Following her lead, several nurse theorists developed models with examples of the concept of adaptation: the nurse either adapts to the patient's needs, works to help the patient adapt to the environment, or adapts the environment to the needs of the patient. Sr. Callista Roy's Adaptation Model of Nursing is one such nursing model. Although this model has been applied in many clinical and administrative areas, the use of the concept in a school setting with special-need's student requires additional definition and clarification. The goal of this concept analysis paper is to clarify and explore the definition of adaptation in the school setting with application to an Individualized Healthcare Plan (IHP).
Twenty-five in-depth interviews were made with middleaged persons of both sexes, who had suffered a first myocardial infarction (MI) two months previously. The purpose was to assess the layman's understanding of concepts such as social network, social support and control which are exposures commonly used or suggested for use in quantitative research in the area of social epidemiology. The validity of the instruments and the underlying concepts in assessing such exposures has important implications for the interpretation of the association between psychosocial factors and health or health behavior. The layman's understanding of social network and social support concepts seemed unproblematic, but the concept of control was understood in rather disparate ways among those interviewed. The experience of control/decision latitude in the work environment, seemed to form a model for the overall understanding of control among several of those interviewed and there also seemed to be important differences based on gender. Another impression, was that the individual's level of aspiration might be an important confounder in the assessment of control in population studies. It is therefore suggested that epidemiologcal data should be stratifyed by basic demographic variables like age, sex and social class in analyses including the control variable, to improve the valid use of this type of measure.
PURPOSE/OBJECTIVE: To apply Rodger's (1989) evolutionary view of concept analysis to the term "cancer survivorship" with a heightened focus on breast cancer and African American women. DESIGN: Qualitative, concept analysis. DATA SOURCES: 50 references from the disciplines of nursing and medicine. DATA SYNTHESIS: This analysis revealed that the concept of cancer survivorship is unique, evolving, and based on the meaning individuals give to a diagnosis of cancer and their experiences of living beyond the diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS: The concept of breast cancer survivorship can be operationally defined as the process of living through the cancer experience beyond a breast cancer diagnosis. A crucial need exists to explore the meaning of cancer survivorship among African American women as a basis for culturally competent care. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: Nurses and other healthcare professionals must comprehend the meaning of breast cancer survivorship and its implications for cancer survivors. The meaning of cancer survivorship to African American and ethnic minority women must be explored. Culturally relevant cancer survivorship education and care should be provided for African American women and other cancer survivors of ethnic minorities as well as those involved in the women's social and healthcare world. Nurses and healthcare professionals must continue to advocate for health policies to improve the lived experiences of all cancer survivors.
Although neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) was initially thought to be a rare, idiosyncratic complication, the incidence estimates have been rising over the years. A part of this increase can be explained on the basis of an over-inclusive definition of NMS. The unitary concept of NMS has been challenged recently and a spectrum concept has been enunciated on the basis of findings of retrospective chart-reviews which have used too broad a definition of NMS. The authors describe three cases of neuroleptic-related toxicity with different clinical presentations which appeared in a manner apparently supporting the spectrum concept. They discuss this controversial concept critically, however, and caution against its overzealous use in routine clinical practice owing to its far-reaching clinical implications.
There is a strong prima facie case linking the abuse of psychiatry with difficulties about the concept of mental illness. However, a survey of recent Soviet literature showed that the concept of disease employed in the former USSR (where abuse was for a time widespread) was similar to its counterparts in the UK and USA in being strongly scientific in nature. A number of factors--legal, bureaucratic and professional--are important in abuse becoming widespread. These, however, fail to explain why psychiatry, rather than physical medicine, should be vulnerable to abuse. It is here that the concept of disease could be important. A scientific model of disease suggests that a significant vulnerability factor is the relatively underdeveloped status of psychiatry as a science. This leaves room for poor standards of scientific work in clinical research and practice, factors which are recognised as important in the Soviet case. In addition to the scientific element, there is an evaluative element of meaning in the concept of disease. Hence a second vulnerability factor could be the evaluatively problematic nature of judgements of mental illness. It is concluded that a failure to recognise this factor greatly increases the vulnerability of psychiatry, not only to gross abuses, but also to inadvertent misuses of involuntary treatment in everyday practice. This conclusion, far from undermining the role of science in psychiatry, is a step towards clarifying its proper role.
The Cape Town Case Study (CTCS) was a multi-institutional collaborative project initiated by CUBES, a knowledge networking initiative of UNESCO's Ecological Sciences Division and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Cape Town was selected as a CUBES site on the basis of its high biological and cultural significance, together with its demonstrated leadership in promoting urban sustainability. The CTCS was conducted by the Cape Town Urban Biosphere Group, a cross-disciplinary group of specialists drawn from national, provincial, municipal, and civil society institutions, mandated to examine the potential value of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve concept as a tool for environmental management, social inclusion, and poverty alleviation in Cape Town. This article provides a contextualization of the CTCS and its collaborative process. It also reviews the biosphere reserve concept relative to urban sustainability objectives and proposes a more functional application of that concept in an urban context. A detailed analysis of key initiatives at the interface of conservation and poverty alleviation is provided in table format. Drawing on an examination of successful sustainability initiatives in Cape Town, specific recommendations are made for future application of the biosphere reserve concept in an urban context, as well as a model by which urban areas might affiliate with the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves, and criteria for such affiliation.
OBJECTIVE: The authors aimed to (1) formally represent OASIS-B1 concepts using the Logical Observation Identifiers, Names, and Codes (LOINC) semantic structure; (2) demonstrate integration of OASIS-B1 concepts into a concept-oriented terminology, the Medical Entities Dictionary (MED); (3) examine potential hierarchical structures within LOINC among OASIS-B1 and other nursing terms; and (4) illustrate a Web-based implementation for OASIS-B1 data entry using Dialogix, a software tool with a set of functions that supports complex data entry. DESIGN AND MEASUREMENTS: Two hundred nine OASIS-B1 items were dissected into the six elements of the LOINC semantic structure and then integrated into the MED hierarchy. Each OASIS-B1 term was matched to LOINC-coded nursing terms, Home Health Care Classification, the Omaha System, and the Sign and Symptom Check-List for Persons with HIV, and the extent of the match was judged based on a scale of 0 (no match) to 4 (exact match). OASIS-B1 terms were implemented as a Web-based survey using Dialogix. RESULTS: Of 209 terms, 204 were successfully dissected into the elements of the LOINC semantics structure and integrated into the MED with minor revisions of MED semantics. One hundred fifty-one OASIS-B1 terms were mapped to one or more of the LOINC-coded nursing terms. CONCLUSION: The LOINC semantic structure offers a standard way to add home health care data to a comprehensive patient record to facilitate data sharing for monitoring outcomes across sites and to further terminology management, decision support, and accurate information retrieval for evidence-based practice. The cross-mapping results support the possibility of a hierarchical structure of the OASIS-B1 concepts within nursing terminologies in the LOINC database.
Data are presented to support the Paired Hands Test (PHT) as a valid measure of the others-concept in children. This construct is defined as a person's general expectancies or perceptions about other people along a positive-negative continuum. Behavioral data are reported which replicate findings from earlier, smaller studies that children who have relatively high others-concepts are likely to interact more positively in small, unsupervised groups than children having relatively low others-concepts. Population data are also given, based upon 1,235 PHT test scores broken down by such variables as sex and socioeconomic status. Additionally, content validity inherent in the nature of the test is discussed. The conclusion drawn is that the data can be best explained by employing the others-concept as a theoretical construct measured by the PHT.
According to Penfield, the work of Charles Sherrington's laboratory forced a change from the long-held concept of a broad, overlapping sensorimotor cortex to the concept of a narrow, discrete pre-Rolandic motor cortex separate from the post-Rolandic sensory strip. Harvey Cushing, one of the founders of modern neurosurgery, coined the term narrow motor strip. Cushing also appears to have been the first to color the precentral gyrus in a mosaic pattern and to use red coloring for the motor cortex and blue for the sensory cortex. Cushing's red and blue color coding is still used in textbooks, nearly 100 years later. In this article, we review the historical evolution of and the evidence for the concept of narrow and discrete motor and sensory strips anterior and posterior to the Rolandic cortex. A review of the historical development of the concept and recent physiological studies reaffirms the proposition that the motor and sensory areas are much broader and more complex than they were thought to be in the classic teaching that originated with Sherrington and Cushing.
Breeding records from three inbred strains of mice (BALB/c ABom, C57BL/10ScSn, C3H/He/Kon) were examined with respect to the effects of parity and mode of conception upon litter size and sex ratio at birth. Litters from 3 modes of conception were considered: litters of primipares, litters of multipares conceived during postpartum oestrus and litters conceived after lactational anoestrus. Litters of multipares were assigned to one of these latter groups according to the inter-litter intervals. Parity had no significant effect upon the sex ratio but had a significant one upon the litter size, which did not vary between the strains when first litters were excluded from analysis. The expected variations in response to the mode of conception were found in BALB/c ABom mice but both the effects on the litter size as well as on the sex ratio varied significantly between the strains. Litter size reduction per se could be ruled out to be the cause of the sex ratio variations found. Rather, it is suggested that sex-specificity of embryonic loss depends upon the mode of conception.
We examined the relations between plasma insulin-like growth factor (IGF) -I concentrations during treatment with CIDR-based or Ovsynch protocol for timed AI and conception and plasma steroid concentrations in early postpartum Japanese Black beef cows. Cows in the control group (Ovsynch; n = 21) underwent Ovsynch protocol (GnRH analogue on Day 0, PGF(2alpha) analogue on Day 7, and GnRH analogue on Day 9), with AI on Day 10, approximately 20 h after the second GnRH treatment. Cows in the Ovsynch+CIDR group (n = 22) received Ovsynch protocol plus a CIDR for 7 days (starting on Day 0). Cows in the further treatment group (EB+CIDR+GnRH; n = 22) received 2 mg of estradiol benzoate (EB) on Day 0 in lieu of the first GnRH treatment, followed by the same treatment as in the Ovsynch+CIDR protocol. Plasma IGF-I concentrations were determined on Days -7, 0, 7, 9 and 17. Conception rates were improved in the CIDR-combined groups (both CIDR-treated groups were combined) relative to Ovsynch group (P < 0.05) for cows with low IGF-I concentrations (<1,000 ng/ml) on Days -7, 0, and 7, but improved conception rate produced by the CIDR-based protocols did not occur in cows with a high IGF-I concentration (> or =1,000 ng/ml). Plasma estradiol-17beta concentrations increased from Day 0 to 7 (P < 0.05) and were unchanged from Day 7 to 9 in the Ovsynch group with low IGF-I concentrations on Day 0, while they were unchanged from Day 0 to 7 and increased from Day 7 to 9 (P < 0.05) in the Ovsynch group with high IGF-I concentrations on Day 0 and in the CIDR-combined group. Plasma progesterone concentrations in the Ovsynch group with low IGF-I concentrations on Day 0 were higher on Day 14 than in the Ovsynch group with high IGF-I concentrations on Day 0 and in the CIDR-combined group (P < 0.05). In conclusion, CIDR-based protocols may improve conception relative to Ovsynch in early postpartum beef cows with lower plasma IGF-I concentrations at the start of the protocols. This improvement is probably due to prevention of premature increases of estradiol-17beta and progesterone concentrations, which occurred in cows with low IGF-I concentrations treated with Ovsynch, by the CIDR treatment.
The authors determined gestational age from fetal weight, examined the range in conception dates, and classified the external fetal development process in sika deer of eastern Hokkaido. Gestational age (T) can be estimated from fetal weight (W) with the equation: T = (3 square root of W + 2.730)/0.091. Conception date can then be calculated back from date of kill of pregnant female, using gestational age. Though estimated conception dates ranged from 7 October to 17 January, most of them were concentrated between mid October and early November. In late November and after, nine conceptions were observed and six out of the nine late cases occurred in yearling females. This phenomenon is probably due to the excellent nutritional condition of deer in the study areas, which allows yearling females to mature sexually even in early winter. In fetuses, periods of tactile hair development, appearance of white spots, and development of general hairs overlap very little. In addition, these developmental changes occur at specific fetal weights. Based on these external phases, the gestation period can be divided into four stages. These stages will be useful for simple determination of fetal age in various sika deer populations.
This article illustrates how a concept clarification exercise can provide evidence to inform local policy development. Based on the framework developed in Walker and Avant's (1995) concept clarification theory, the concept of priority is examined in the context of a team of community mental health nurses. Themes of risk, multidisciplinary working, resources, and nursing role are identified as key areas for consideration, and the difficulties existing between government policy directives towards the severely mentally ill and health promotion are discussed. The article highlights how nursing theory can integrate the concept analysis of priority in planning client care. This is presented using Peplau's (1952) model as a guide to further enhance meaning of generated priorities to nursing practice.
This article is the first in a four-part series that explores the concepts of patient autonomy, privacy and informed consent in the context of the provision of nursing care. In this first article an overview of the concepts is provided, and some of the difficulties with definitions of these concepts are considered. The dearth of empirical exploration of the operationalization of the concepts of patient autonomy, privacy and informed consent within nursing practice is highlighted. The second, third and fourth articles report a series of empirical studies carried out with patients and staff in postnatal care, in continuing care of elderly people and in acute surgical care within Scottish NHS settings. These studies are part of a concerted effort to address the lack of empirical investigation of the ethical dimension of nursing care provision and clinical nursing practice.