Factors Affecting Older Women's Adherence to Medication and Treatment

Over the past 25 years, there has been a growing interest in why many patients do not take prescribed medications or fail to follow medical advice. As many as 50% of all patients fail to adhere adequately to therapeutic advice or engage in inappropriate use of prescribed medications. Additionally, there has been a struggle over how best to describe this variance between what medical practitioners recommend and what patients actually do. This article examines factors thought to affect women's adherence to medication and treatment regimens. Literature on age, comorbid conditions, socioeconomic factors, environmental factors, and perceived susceptibility for an illness is reviewed as are individual psychological idiosyncratic dynamics that may influence health care behaviors.     

Profiles of adult survivors of severe sexual,physical and emotional institutional abuse in Ireland

Adult survivors of institutional abuse were interviewed with a comprehensive assessment protocol which included the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, the Institutional Child Abuse Processes and Coping Inventory, the Structured Clinical Interviews for Disorders of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV axis I disorders and personality disorders, the Trauma Symptoms Inventory, a Life Problems Checklist, the Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory and the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale. Profiles were identified for subgroups that described severe sexual (N = 60), physical (N = 102), or emotional (N = 85) abuse as their worst forms of maltreatment. Survivors of severe sexual abuse had the most abnormal profile, which was characterised by higher rates of all forms of child maltreatment and higher rates of post‐traumatic stress disorder, alcohol and substance abuse, antisocial personality disorder, trauma symptoms and life problems. Survivors of severe emotional abuse were better adjusted than the other two groups. The profile of survivors of severe physical abuse occupied an intermediate position between the other two groups. A thorough assessment of abuse history and current functioning should be conducted when providing services to adult survivors of institutional abuse, since this may have important implications for the intensity of services required. Survivors of severe sexual abuse may require more intensive services. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lean-healthcare approach to reduce costs in a sterilization plant based on surgical tray rationalization

Abstract

Sterilization plants process all reusable materials used in hospitals during different stages of healthcare provision. Most items sterilized come from the surgical theater in the form of individual instruments, linen and surgical trays. Reducing the number of instruments in trays impacts on the performance of the sterilization process. Here, we propose a three-phase method, based on lean healthcare principles, cluster analysis and kaizen groups of experts to rationalize surgical trays, reducing sterilization processing costs. We innovate by proposing a strategy to approach tray rationalization prioritizing surgical specialties that are both complex and frequent, and by using group technology to cluster surgical trays expediting expert analyses carried out by kaizen groups. Our propositions were tested in a high complexity, tertiary care hospital, covering 12 surgical specialties, reducing the number of instruments by average 9.75%, and the time-to-assemble trays by average 9.68%, obtaining annual savings of US$285.756,00 in sterilization processing costs.     

Robert M. Teeter, 1939-2004

Robert M. "Bob" Teeter—political pollster, key strategistin the campaigns of every Republican president from 1968 to1992, co-director with Peter Hart of the Wall Street Journal/NBCPoll, board member and consultant to major corporations—diedof cancer at his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on June 13. Hewas 65. "Teeter’s work with Hart evoked respect on both sidesof the political aisle," said Tim Russert, NBC News’sWashington bureau chief and host of Meet the Press. "You could always take Bob Teeter’s     

African American Mother-Daughter Relationships Mediating Daughter's Self-Esteem

For many, adolescence is a time when it is difficult to stand in front of a mirror and say, I like myself and I am competent. Such a statement requires a supportive environment and self-knowledge. This research explored global self-esteem in a sample of 105 urban African American seniors that attended an all girls' Catholic high school. A ten item scale that measured participants' belief in their mothers' ability and willingness to protect and soothe them (attachment) explained 27% of the variance in global self-esteem. Also important was feeling committed to an African American identity.     

Characteristics of evidence-based child maltreatment interventions

This project summarizes, using a treatment protocol review technique, characteristics of effective interventions from nine studies of child maltreatment that examined recovery from abuse or the effects of maltreatment on child and parent outcomes. Results suggest that stronger effects are yielded by targeting parents and the parent-child interaction context in home-based settings during early childhood, designing multicomponent interventions delivered by professionals for teaching parenting competency skills, and targeting families of higher risk children.     

Households and Territory. The Location of the Population of Rome in Relation to Housing Supply Characteristics

This study forms part of a general programme of research aimed at evaluating the quality of life in Rome. In particular, we have wished to analyse the way in which housing quality, measured with indicators of housing structure and utilization, intersects with the quality of urban livability, measured here only with indicators of social background, homogeneity and hardship referring to subjects living in the individual segments of the city. Groups of territorial areas, homogeneous by housing typology, were identified using multivariate data analysis and it was thus shown how particular typologies of household respond to this supply. From this emerged a particular model of development of the city in concentric bands, within which the originally differentiated households have tended over time to assume homogeneous characteristics.     

Integration revisited

Much of the existing literature inmigration and integration research pays hardly any attention to the subjective view of the immigrants on their individual migration history and the links between prior life phases and the structural embedding of integration processes. This article aims at connecting objective data and subjective perspectives analysing the intersections between migrants?? perceptions of their individual ??migration project??, objective traces of their biographies and societal opportunity structures. The model, that we develop at the end of the paper summarises emerging hypotheses during the analysis and stresses the dynamic, contextual and interactional nature of integration processes. It is based on qualitative interviews with 30 immigrants from the two biggest guest-worker groups in Austria originally recruited during the 1960ies and 1970ies from Ex-Yugoslavia and Turkey.