Most Popular Books by Marie O

This nursing handbook introduces and defines key terms about race and racism for nurses, nursing students, and nurse educators. It addresses how race and racism act as structural and core social determinants of health and propel health inequities. It moves beyond a focus on multicultural approaches for understanding inequity toward a recognition of the broader impact that both systemic and structural racism have had on inequality in health and life opportunities. Through a social justice lens, the book underscores how nurses, as frontline health professionals, need to understand racism as a factor behind these inequities and its significance to their working environment and nursing practice. In concise chapters with brief paragraphs and bulleted information, this practical handbook offers strategies for how to productively engage in a dialogue about race and racism. It considers the history of racism in the United States and then breaks down how it operates at structural, institutional, and individual levels. Case studies illustrate such concepts as microaggressions, implicit bias, power, privilege, and intersectionality in order to foster understanding and provide opportunities for both self-reflection and collective conversation.

This research is situated in a tradition of feminist scholarship, which focuses on the small and seemingly inconsequential, minutiae of everyday life. In elaborating upon this, I work with the theme of dress. It is suggested that dress occupies an interesting position at the cusp of inner and outer experience; simultaneously embracing the embodied self, whilst, communicating an image or representation of the self as a social being. My work presents a {u2018}close up{u2019} view of this social space. In presenting this view, I examine the area of dress practice using the narrative accounts of women who participated in the research. The underlying premise of this study is that attention to everyday culture, reveals consistent and concealed patterns of power and control. This research represents an attempt to deconstruct or unravel the elements that are implicated in this. I suggest that the prosaic forms of everyday culture are encoded with the language of power and class, which is oftentimes invisible and unacknowledged. In this sense, they are infused with the weight of social structure. In their relationship with the subject, they are influential in shaping the ways in which the subject is constructed as a social being. At the same time, their uptake in the experiential domain offers the possibility for a counter-hegemonic or oppositional construction of the self. This process operates in ways that are both conscious and unconscious. It is suggested that the analysis of dress meaning is challenged by the ephemeral, unfixed and transitory nature of its subject. It is this dimension of duality and paradox within the everyday construction of meaning that I explore in this research. Broadly stated, the objective of my work has been to construct an account of social action, which acknowledges Bourdieu{u2019}s insights into the structuring dynamics of class, but which enables a more fluid and nuanced understanding of class and gender processes. At the end of this deliberation, I refute the idea that identities are defined solely in terms of class and gender markers, gesturing instead towards an understanding of social processes that is rooted in relational, rather than categorical ways of understanding the social world.

The present study explored gender differences in psychosis and the potential role of psychosocial variables in these differences. A sample of 51 men and women with psychosis completed a questionnaire about clinical variables (age of onset, age of first contact with services, age of first hospitalisation, number of hospitalisations, symptoms, and time taken until symptom disclosure), psychosocial variables (childhood trauma, coping responses with past adverse events, dissociative responses to past adverse events, abuse-related variables, relationship history, substance use, reactions to symptom disclosure and coping with symptoms) and causal explanations. The aims of the study were to explore sex differences in age of onset, symptoms and psychosocial variables in men and women with psychosis and explore the relevance of psychosocial variables to age of onset and symptomatology. Participants were recruited from first-episode psychosis teams, community mental health teams and Hearing Voices support groups within the Auckland region. Analyses of the total sample revealed significant associations between psychosocial variables and age of onset. Specifically, coping responses with past adverse events were found to predict age of symptom onset. The experience of childhood trauma, coping responses with past adverse events and aspects of substance use were found to relate to differing symptom types across the total sample. In their causal explanations of psychosis, participants tended to identify multiple factors relevant to the development of psychosis. Rather than differing explanations based on gender, there were many similarities in the explanatory models of men and women with psychosis. There were no significant gender differences in relation to age of onset and for many of the symptom types. Females were found to experience more negative symptoms than males. Some differences were present for some forms of childhood trauma, aspects of coping and substance use across genders. Data was also analysed separately for men and women. A major finding was that there was little similarity in terms of the psychosocial variables which were relevant for each sex. This suggests that differing pathways to symptom development and the experience of psychosis may exist for men and women. This study highlighted the relevance of psychosocial factors in psychosis, including the role of childhood trauma and the importance of adopting integrated bio-psycho-social approaches within both research and clinical domains.

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Background: The prevalence of dementia, a progressive and incurable condition that affects memory and daily function, is increasing worldwide. The perspective of people with dementia can be captured to better understand which factors impact quality of life for this particular population. Such factors can then be used to guide future research to improve quality of life for people with dementia, even as troubling symptoms like memory loss progress. Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation is to identify factors that influence quality of life from the perspective of people with dementia. Methods: The dissertation consists of four related and sequential papers: (1) a conceptual paper to assess the extent to which the perspective of people with dementia has been included to assess and conceptualize quality of life in the quantitative dementia-specific literature, (2) a systematic literature review and metasynthesis of qualitative evidence to identify factors that influence quality of life according to people with dementia, (3) a methods paper describing how metasyntheses findings were applied to design a quantitative study, and (4) a cross-sectional, quantitative, correlational study to test the association between perceived conflict and sadness (a proposed influencing factor and outcome of poor quality of life, respectively). Findings and Conclusions: Two important limitations of previous research to understand quality of life from the perspective of people with dementia were identified. First, existing quantitative literature was inconsistent with a subjective definition of quality of life because researchers neglected to conceptualize quality of life from the perspective of people with dementia. Second, the body of existing qualitative research had not been considered collectively, nor had it informed quantitative research. In this dissertation, these limitations were addressed by applying knowledge from the body of qualitative research as a whole to design a quantitative study that was consistent with a subjective definition of quality of life. The findings demonstrated that people with dementia could contribute meaningfully to advance knowledge about factors that impact quality of life in this population. The four factors that influenced quality of life from the perspective of people with dementia included Relationships, Sense of Place, Wellness Perspective, and Agency in Life Today. Further exploration of the Relationships factor generated evidence in support of the proposed association between conflict and sadness, and highlighted that conflict with family and friends may have a particularly negative impact on people with moderate and severe dementia living in long-term care. The factors identified in this dissertation were each complex, but potentially modifiable and useful to generate further research questions and hypotheses that reflect the priorities of people with dementia. Given these four factors, the roles and responsibilities of health care providers may need to be re-considered in order to optimize quality of life for people with dementia.

Background Cancer-Related Fatigue (CRF) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) are common, yet their pathophysiology is poorly understood. Aetiology may be central or peripheral and originate anywhere from the brain to muscle fibre. Studies have shown a dissociation between brain and muscle signals during voluntary muscle fatigue1,2,3. This suggests weakened corticomuscular coherence.Objective: To objectively evaluate the effect of muscle fatigue on corticomuscular coherence by determining EEG-EMG coherence during a fatiguing motor task. We hypothesize that corticomuscular coherence in u03b2eta-band frequency would decrease significantly with fatigue in CRF and CFS compared to healthy controls (HC). Methods12 newly diagnosed, pre-treatment, non-small cell lung cancer CRF, 12 CFS and 12 HC were enrolled. Participants completed a (subjective) Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI) and performed a sustained isometric forearm contraction (Flexor Carpi Ulnaris (FCU) & Flexor Carpi Radialis (FCR) muscles) at 30% maximal level (MVC) until failure. Endurance Time (ET) was noted. Task evaluated in two stages; mild & severe fatigue. EEG-EMG u03b2-band frequency (associated with voluntary motor activity) coherence and power spectrum in each stage was computed. ResultsCRF and CFS had weaker MVC and earlier perceived exhaustion than HC (Table 1). EMG power (but not EEG) increased while coherence at lower u03b2eta-band (15-25 Hz) significantly decreased in severe fatigue compared to mild fatigue (Figure 2).ConclusionsCRF was associated with weakened corticomuscular coherence in a sustained submaximal motor activity at lower u03b2eta-band frequencies. This suggests central neural mechanisms contribute to both CRF (and CFS) with associated performance impairment. Interventions to improve coherence may reduce fatigue.REFERENCES1 Yang, Q., Fang, Y., Sun, C. K. et al.,