Intercultural communication for health personnel

In order to develop successful health care delivery systems, both in the United States and abroad, health service workers need to understand various cultural orientations and to communicate effectively within the cultures. The authors discuss the cultural implications of health problems in three countries, the need for training health science professionals in intercultural communication, and describe an intercultural communication course designed especially for health science students at California State University, Northridge.     

Independence and obedience in the United States and Japan

Are some Americans and Japanese beginning to think more similarly about independence and obedience? Middle-class adult respondents from the suburbs of Chicago and Tokyo (U.S.: 43 males and 54 females: Japan: 71 males and 80 females) were surveyed about their sex-role values. This report focuses on two values which have been recognised as constituting fundamental differences between Japanese and Americans: personal independence and obedience. The survey used a metric multidimensional scaling technique called Galileo^®. Analyses of the data and results of other comparative studies suggest that any convergence taking place between the two societies is occurring primarily within American society. There is growing evidence, including the findings of this study, that Americans are moving away from their traditional stress on the importance of the individual in society. The Japanese respondents did show a more liberal conceptualization of the ideal woman with respect to obedience, however, there was no indication that this less traditional image of women extended to their other traditional roles in society.     

Librarians as hidden gems in a clinical team

Medical librarians typically contribute to patient care from the confines of the library in response to practitioners' requests for literature searches, information pearls, and evidence-based information. While this model has long served the needs of active clinicians, the learning environment of residency programs is ripe for innovative librarian involvement. This paper illustrates how the librarian can become part of a clinical team outside of the library and provide real-time reference services while teaching by example. Benefits of the alliance include the integration of disciplines to provide enhanced resident learning and improved patient care.     

The basic tastants in aversion conditioning: Evidence for sensory preconditioning and not potentiation

In Experiment 1, a potentiation paradigm was used to test the relative influence of odor and taste with two 2 basic tastants (i.e., salt and sweet) in conditioned aversion learning. Experiment 1 showed that aversions to tastants (salt or sweet presented in a manner by which it could be tasted) were established only in subjects trained with the tastant, not the odor (i.e., salt or sweet presented in a manner by which it could not be tasted). Experiment 2 demonstrated, with a sensory preconditioning procedure, that the expression of an aversion to tastants was dependent on previous tastant experience prior to odor aversion training. These results suggest that while subjects can smell salt and sweet solutions, these odors are neither sufficient nor necessary for the expression of a conditioned tastant aversion.     

The impact of childhood sexual abuse in anorexia nervosa

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to examine the impact of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) on clinical characteristics and premature termination of treatment in anorexia nervosa (AN). METHOD: The participants were 77 consecutive patients with AN admitted to an inpatient eating disorders unit. The patients were assessed in terms of eating disorder symptoms, general psychopathology, and CSA history at admission to hospital. RESULTS: Thirty-seven patients (48%) reported a history of CSA before the onset of the eating disorder. Individuals with a history of CSA reported significantly greater psychiatric comorbidity, including higher levels of depression and anxiety, lower self-esteem, more interpersonal problems, and more severe obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Patients with the binge-purge subtype of AN (AN-BP) were significantly more likely to report a history of CSA prior to the onset of the eating disorder as compared with patients with the restricting subtype (AN-R) of the illness (65% of the AN-BP patients vs. 37% of the AN-R patients; p<.02). Contrary to our predictions, abused patients were not significantly more likely to dropout of treatment overall. However, patients of the binge-purge subtype (AN-BP) with a history of CSA were significantly more likely to terminate treatment prematurely as compared with the other patients. CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with previous findings, the present results indicate that the prevalence of CSA is high among individuals seeking inpatient treatment for AN. A history of CSA was associated with greater psychiatric disturbance overall and a higher rate of dropout for patients of the binge-purge subtype.     

Teachers interacting with students: an important (and potentially overlooked) domain for academic development during times of impact

ABSTRACT

This article is situated in the context of an intensified discourse within which academic developers are being asked to provide evidence of impact, and argues that theoretical models currently used are imprecise and fail to capture the variation in outcomes from professional development activities. Through reference to previous research on how teachers' thinking can be described in relation to various thinking-zones, and how teachers notice and respond to signs of student learning, we suggest a more fine-grained perspective. Furthermore, we argue that improved models for design and evaluation of professional development might prove crucial for academic development as a profession.