Psychopharmacology RACE: a fun road to competence

1 In this era of rapidly changing mental health services and new psychotropic drugs, health professionals are challenged to develop and maintain psychopharmacology competencies. 2 The Psychopharmacology RACE provides an interactive and learner-oriented method of developing and assessing theoretical and clinical competencies for psychopharmacology. 3 The Psychopharmacology RACE is also well suited for modification and application toward the professional development of nurses and the education of clients.     

The development of the physicians' end-of-life care attitude scale

The Physicians' End-of-Life Care Attitude Scale (PEAS) was developed as an outcome measure for palliative care education. PEAS assesses the willingness of medical trainees to care for dying patients. Sixty-four Likert-type questions were created on the basis of discussions with focus groups of medical trainees, then administered to sixty-two medical students and residents. Total PEAS scores as well as personal preparation and professional role subscales (where higher scores indicated greater concern) possessed excellent internal consistency and reliability. In addition, there were substantial correlations between PEAS scores and the CA-Dying scale, a measurement of laypersons' fears about interacting with dying persons. Thus, PEAS adequately assesses the unique communication concerns of physicians in training regarding working with dying persons and their families. Correlations between PEAS scores and age were negative, while those who had experienced the death of a loved one had higher PEAS scores than those who did not. This suggests that for some persons, life experiences may lessen difficulties in dealing with dying persons, while for others, personal losses may exacerbate such concerns. The utility of PEAS in evaluating the efficacy of palliative care education as well as its potential to measure medical trainee's willingness to care for the terminally ill is discussed.     

The discourse and dimensions of irregularity in post-apartheid South Africa

South Africa's migration policy since 1994 has been described as contradictory and confused. Indeed, there are profound differences of opinion within government and civil society over the best means to deal with what is believed to be a massive and threatening increase in clandestine migration and irregular employment.
Clarity of thought and policy debate has been hampered by an inflammatory discourse which fixates on the issue of numbers, and views all migrants as a problem and threat. Partly this reflects fundamental inadequacies in systems of data collection and analysis, and partly a poor understanding of the causes and character of cross-border migration in Southern Africa.
As a corrective, this article presents an overview of the causes and spatial/sectoral distribution of irregular employment in post-apartheid South Africa, drawing on recent research. It then critically examines efforts to ascertain the dimensions of undocumented migration to South Africa, concluding that the results are fundamentally flawed by the methodologies used. The article then disaggregates irregular migration and assesses current knowledge about each subcategory.
In conclusion, the article argues for a comprehensive labour market survey as the foundation for a coordinated and rational approach to the challenges of irregular migration and employment.     

Alcohol and drug use of inter-city versus rural school age children

The purpose of this study of seventy-nine children was to determine: 1) the prevalence and type of substance use in inter-city and rural eight to twelve-year-old children; and 2) the relationships between child substance use, self-esteem, peer substance use, and family climate. The conceptual framework for the study was a modification of Kumpfer and Turner's Social Ecology Model (1991). Nineteen percent of the children had used alcohol or drugs. Thirty-three percent of the children acknowledged having friends who used substances. Inter-city children reported more alcohol and marijuana use, while the rural children reported more use of inhalants. The responses of both inter-city and rural children also indicated that there were problems with substance use and family violence in the home. Self-esteem and affiliation with drug using peers were significantly correlated with substance use of the child.     

Death at the border

"Debates about United States border control policies have generally ignored the human costs of undocumented migration. We focus attention on these costs by estimating the number, causes and location of migrant deaths at the southwest border of the United States between 1993 and 1997.... Deaths from hyperthermia, hypothermia and dehydration increased sharply from 1993 to 1997 as intensified border enforcement redirected undocumented migration flows from urban crossing points to more remote crossing areas where the migrants are exposed to a greater risk of death."     

Hypothesis Testing of Hazard Ratio Parameters in Marginal Models for Multivariate Failure Time Data

Marginal hazard models for multivariate failure time data have been studied extensively in recent literature. However, standard hypothesis test statistics based on the likelihood method are not exactly appropriate for this kind of model. In this paper, extensions of the three commonly used likelihood hypothesis test statistics are discussed. Generalized Wald, generalized score and generalized likelihood ratio tests for hazard ratio parameters in a marginal hazard model for multivariate failure time data are proposed and their asymptotic distributions examined. The finite sample properties of these statistics are studied through simulations. The proposed method is applied to data from Busselton Population Health Surveys.     

Aalen's Linear Model for Sampled Risk Set Data: A Large Sample Study

Borgan and Langholz (1997) describe a method for estimating the parameter functions in Aalen's linear hazard regression model from sampled risk set data. Using a counting process formulation and the martingale central limit theorem, we provide a study of the asymptotic distributional properties of the estimator. The results are applied to study the efficiencies of the nested case-control and counter-matched designs relative to a full cohort analysis.     

普救说与世界问题的政治化

一、真理的实在真理的传统形式:真理作为概念、结构或关系只能是肯定的东西。真理与实在的区别在于:真理不仅是存在着的,还是正确无误的,真理不可能来自谬误或错误的政策。所以,真理具有肯定的特性。这一肯定的特性能够被作为绝对知识而予以强调。为了新思维起见,我们必须超越真理与实在之间的这一鸿沟。实在不仅是肯定性的真理,它也可能是谬误。因而,实在也可能是否定性质的真理。结论:可以把实在描述成以下的东西:a.作为肯定性质的真理,实在是我们必须保存的那部分实在。b.作为否定性质的真理,实在是我们必须     

关于决定理论的分析

决定理论最先的蓍作倾向于经典理性主义的思考方式。我汇集了一组与此有关的论著,在他们看来,经典理性主义思考方式能使人们对在形式主义外表下的现实作出良好的描绘,也能对机制作出更好的分析,并能对“最好”的决定规则作出归纳。 然而,这个思考方式在大量与此相关的研究中隐含着的问题是: 1.决定者是杰出的行动者,其行为很富有理性。决定是这个行动者为了获得最大的收益,用十分理智的手段从已知的抉择中进行的选择。     

八十年代的“问题管理”

什么是“问题管理”?为什么它如此引人注目?问题管理为显示预测和未来研究的价值提供了一个重要机会。它是未来学家新的、主要的机会领域。问题管理与未来研究的相似之处在于:多学科的结合,以预测、未来研究、环境探索、规划、公共关系、政府关系和公共事务为基本成份。一个组织制定一项包括上述成份的计划,以调动该组织的各种资源来预测、提出和回答正在出现的、对该组织具有潜在重要意义的问题,这种方式就叫问题管理。显然,预测和未来研究在其中起着极为重要的作用。