Canada and the Pan-American Games

Abstract

Canadians have been involved in every edition of the Pan-American Games since they were inaugurated in Buenos Aires in 1951. That participation has provided thousands of Canadian athletes, coaches, and officials memorable international experiences. But the focus of Canadian involvement with the Pan-Ams has been the staging of games as a strategy for city building, city branding, and infrastructural investment. This paper examines the Pan-American Games of Winnipeg in 1967 and 1999 and Toronto 2015 as exemplars of that strategy. It argues that with the successes of those games, major games hosting has become virtually an article of faith of Canadian sport policy.     

Provider documentation of patient education: a lean investigation

Purpose

The study evaluates how providers give patient education materials and identifies improvements to comply with Meaningful Use (MU) requirements.

Methods

Thirty-eight patient-provider interactions in two health care outpatient clinics were observed.

Results

Providers do not uniformly know MU patient education requirements. Providers have individual preferences and find gaps in what is available. Accessing and documenting patient education varies among providers. Embedded electronic health record (EHR) materials, while available, have technical access barriers.

Conclusions

Providers'' EHR skills and knowledge levels contribute to non-standardized patient education delivery.     

Enhancing nursing home care for seniors: impact of a living classroom on nursing assistant’s education

ABSTRACT

Nursing Assistants (NAs) are the largest workforce in nursing homes, but often lack adequate preparation for their role. The Living Classroom (LC) is an integrated learning approach, whereby a NA program is delivered in a nursing home (NH) in collaboration with a community college. This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of the LC. Mixed methods were used to gather data from 48 NA students, 5 faculty, and 42 NH staff over 30 weeks. Students, faculty, and nursing home staff described the LC as a positive learning experience. Students’ gerontological knowledge increased over time (p = .0012). Students reported very positive relationships with program mentors and NH residents. The LC provides a unique approach to prepare NAs to work in nursing homes. This model could expand to other educational programs with a gerontology focus.     

The Past is Present: Responses to Infant Crying Among Mothers High in Attachment Anxiety

SYNOPSIS

This commentary explores potential mechanisms underlying the links between mothers’ attachment anxiety and levels of salivary alpha amylase in response to infant crying across levels of spouse support. The commentary argues that the current design cannot disentangle different explanations for the effects – whether they reflect general stress reactivity patterns or patterns occurring specifically in response to infant distress – and offers suggestions for ways in which to explore putative explanations in future studies. Understanding mechanisms is essential to identify risk factors for insensitive parenting.     

Inter-Parietal White Matter Development Predicts Numerical Performance in Young Children

In an effort to understand the role of interhemispheric transfer in numerical development, we investigated the relationship between children's developing knowledge of numbers and the integrity of their white matter connections between the cerebral hemispheres (the corpus callosum). We used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) tractography analyses to test the link between the development of the corpus callosum and performance on symbolic and non-symbolic numerical judgment tasks. We were especially interested in the interhemispheric connections of parietal cortex in 6-year-old children, because regions of parietal cortex have been implicated in the development of numerical skills by several prior studies. Our results revealed significant structural differences between children and adults in the fibers of the corpus callosum connecting the left and right parietal lobes. Importantly, these structural differences were predictive of individual differences among children in performance on numerical judgment tasks: children with poor numerical performance relative to their peers exhibited reduced white matter coherence in the fibers passing through the isthmus of the corpus callosum, which connects the parietal hemispheres.     

Does Fidelity of Implementation Account for Changes in Teacher–Child Interactions in a Randomized Controlled Trial of Banking Time?

This study examined fidelity of implementation in a randomized trial of Banking Time, a classroom-based intervention intended to improve children's behavior, specifically for those at risk for developing externalizing behavior problems, through improving the quality of teacher–child interactions. The study sample comes from a randomized controlled trial that took place over three years and included 183 teachers and 470 preschool children recruited across three sites. Results exploring fidelity of implementation indicated that Banking Time practices were present across treatment and nontreatment groups. In addition, the presence of more Positive Banking Time Practices accounted for improvements in teacher–child interactions while Restricted Banking Time Practices showed inconsistent patterns, relating both to positive and negative teacher–child interactions. Further, random assignment to Banking Time resulted in the presence of more Positive Banking Time Practices and fewer Restricted Banking Time Practices, which accounted for the improved teacher–child interactions. Thus, findings point to the critical need to better account for intervention fidelity across conditions in randomized trials, allowing for better understanding of the mechanism through which interventions lead to intended outcomes.