Sterile water injections for childbirth pain: An evidenced based guide to practice

Background

About 30% of women in labour suffer from lower back pain. Studies of sterile water injections for management of low back pain have consistently shown this approach to be effective. The objective of this evidence-based guide is to facilitate the clinical use of sterile water injections to relieve lower back pain in labouring women.

From Parent Verbal Abuse to Teenage Physical Aggression?

Teenagers who were considered status offenders and criminal offenders were randomly matched to a group of teenage non-offenders for age, sex, ethnicity and family structure. The teens rated themselves for aggression, both physical and verbal. They gave their perceptions of physical and verbal aggression between their parents and between their parents and themselves. Substance abuse, runaway behavior and elements of teenage culture such as movies, music and videos were also compared between the two groups. The offenders reported an extreme use of verbal abuse in their families that did not exist for the non-offenders. The teens in the offender group were much more physically aggressive compared to their parents and to the teens and parents in the non-offender group.     

Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment

At the request of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Research Council (NRC) recently completed a major report, Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment, that is intended to strengthen the scientific basis, credibility, and effectiveness of risk assessment practices and subsequent risk management decisions. The report describes the challenges faced by risk assessment and the need to consider improvements in both the technical analyses of risk assessments (i.e., the development and use of scientific information to improve risk characterization) and the utility of risk assessments (i.e., making assessments more relevant and useful for risk management decisions). The report tackles a number of topics relating to improvements in the process, including the design and framing of risk assessments, uncertainty and variability characterization, selection and use of defaults, unification of cancer and noncancer dose‐response assessment, cumulative risk assessment, and the need to increase EPA's capacity to address these improvements. This article describes and summarizes the NRC report, with an eye toward its implications for risk assessment practices at EPA.     

I Frameworks for analysis of course content and practice learning

The authors note that the recent changes to the C.C.E.T.S.W. Guidelines contain no stipulation that the teaching of economics should constitute an integral part of social work education. They argue that it is impossible for social workers and their clients to achieve control of their lives without a knowledge of the economic influences that help to determine them. The authors' conflict with the priorities implied by the C.C.E.T.S.W. Guidelines led them to survey British courses which lead to a professional social work qualification. They found that only 28% teach economics formally, while some evidence suggests that this proportion is declining despite a widespread expression of regret at the absence of economics. The authors attempt to outline the objectives of a relevant economics syllabus for social work students. They conclude that powerful positive and negative arguments exist to support a substantial economics component in social work education and that the present crisis of both welfare and the economy intensifies, but does not create, this need.