DEVELOPING AND USING INTERDISCIPLINARY CASE STUDIES IN TEACHING GERIATRICS TO PRACTICING HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS

Continuing education programs for health care professionals who practice in geriatrics are an important part of improving the health care provided to older adults. Programs utilizing active forms of learning that mimic the clinical environment are more successful at changing the behavior of health care professionals than traditional didactic styles of teaching. Problem-based learning methods allow learners to identify their own areas of strength and weakness and to work toward improvement in a manner best suited to their needs. This article describes an interdisciplinary team of educator-clinicians in geriatrics who developed clinical case studies embodying these approaches as one method of improving the learning process for adult health care providers. An actual sample case study is presented as an illustration of the principles embodied in this process. Lessons learned from the development and use of these case studies are summarized in the context of improving the quality of continuing education programs for health care professionals in geriatric practice.     

STAFF AND ELDERLY KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES TOWARD ELDERLY SEXUALITY

This study compared staff and elderly knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to sexual expression by elderly persons in a long‐term care setting. Volunteers (N = 194) responded agree or disagree to 159 items. Significant differences were observed between the staff and elderly responses on 36 items. Areas of greatest differences involved knowledge and attitudes about consensual sex and sexual abuse, issues related to family attitudes toward remarriage and sexual expression, and age‐related changes and health problems related to sexuality. Items related to masturbation received the greatest percentage of no response. The staff had significantly higher total scores as compared to the elderly reflecting more knowledge, positive attitudes, and support for more proactive responses toward elderly sexuality. Findings have major implications for staff training in long‐term care settings.     

Case Study on the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano,Italy

Bozen/Bolzano is situated in a trilingual region in Italy of which the three mother tongue languages are German, Italian, and Ladin (the latter only spoken by 4 percent of the population). The aim of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, which was founded in 1997 and launched its first programmes in 1998, is to offer its students a multilingual, practice-oriented education that meets the demands of the local and the European labour market. Trilingual educational activities are conducted in German, Italian, and English in the case of the School of Economics and its courses and in the course programmes in Industrial Engineering. The only exception is found in the Faculty of Education. This Faculty offers the German-, Italian-, and Ladin-speaking students separate training sections.     

“Latino night”: Performances of latino/a culture in northwest Ohio

It's something they can relate to. You know, assimilate. They go there, talk in Spanish, not worry about it, drink, have fun, do it all in a language they're accustomed to, or at least with people they feel more comfortable with. I guess that's why a lot of them come Monday nights from these distances. That's what I was trying to explain to Chris. If you have a Latino night it's going to be successful because us as Latinos don't have a lot of options for us to go or places for us to go.     

Reducing adolescents' involvement with relational aggression: Evaluating the effectiveness of the Creating A Safe School (CASS) intervention

This study examined the effectiveness of a comprehensive, school‐based intervention program, Creating A Safe School (CASS; The Ophelia Project) designed to reduce relational aggression (RA) and relational victimization (RV). Sixth‐grade students (N = 406) were surveyed before and after the intervention. Program effects were tested using a repeated‐measures design. Results revealed significant reductions in RA and RV among students who reported initially high levels of involvement. Findings also showed that decreasing approval of RA accounted for a significant amount of variance in changes in RA between pre‐ and posttest. These results provide initial evidence of the effectiveness of the CASS intervention model in reducing RA among early adolescents. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.