Enclosed versus open nursing stations in adult acute care psychiatric settings: does the design affect the therapeutic milieu?

Specific efforts by hospital accreditation organizations encourage renovation of nursing stations, so nurses can better see, attend, and care for their patients. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of nursing station design on the therapeutic milieu in an adult acute care psychiatric unit. A repeated cross-sectional, pretest-posttest design was used. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 81 patients and 25 nursing staff members who completed the Ward Atmosphere Scale. Pretest data were collected when the unit had an enclosed nursing station, and posttest data were collected after renovations to the unit created an open nursing station. No statistically significant differences were found in patient or staff perceptions of the therapeutic milieu. No increase in aggression toward staff was found, given patients' ease of access to the nursing station. More research is needed about the impact of unit design in acute care psychiatric settings.     

What Difference Does Difference Make? The Persistence of Inequalities in Healthcare Delivery

Scholars across many disciplines have amassed a mountain of research documenting how social differences along lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality shape how those who need medical attention are cared for in the US healthcare system. Here, we aim to succinctly review a selection of studies that have considered the many ways both patients' and healthcare providers' social identities can impact care delivery. After establishing how these differences influence patient–provider interactions and patient diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes, we argue that a critical sociological perspective can help us to better understand why these inequities persist despite decades of research calling attention to them. Specifically, we suggest that research guided by symbolic interactionist and intersectional frameworks can generate more comprehensive analyses of inequality in healthcare delivery and help researchers delve deeper into the complex interactional processes undergirding disparities in care provision. We conclude by highlighting recent work that illustrates the value of this approach.     

The Student Watershed Research Project (SWRP): collecting watershed data for use by resource management agencies

From 1992 to 1994, Saturday Academy and the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology instituted the pilot phase of a long-term monitoring program called the Student Watershed Research Project (SWRP). The SWRP program was developed to create and maintain collaboration among eighth through twelfth grade teachers and students, scientists, businesses, governmental agencies, and community members which would couple environmental education with the collection of high quality, reproducible watershed health data.The original authors of this paper set out to evaluate the impacts of the SWRP program in terms of changes in educational attitudes of participants and collection of accurate data. Findings demonstrate that assuring accuracy of student collected data was challenging, that teachers and students benefited greatly from a hands-on research approach to science education, and that such an approach would be difficult without the support of a program like SWRP.The SWRP program is entering its seventh year in the Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington metropolitan areas with approximately half of the pilot phase participants still involved. A Quality Assurance Project Plan has been developed to assure data accuracy. Evaluation student science education attitudes documents improved results on a yearly basis.