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Biomedical subjects

A J Walters

Publications and source records attributed to A J Walters.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1996

Being a clinical nurse consultant: a hermeneutic phenomenological reflection.

This paper describes the lived experiences of clinical nurse consultants. The research approach was that of hermeneutic phenomenology, and the participants in the study were 10 clinical nurse consultants who work in a range of clinical specialty services in a large Sydney referral hospital. The paper provides a phenomenological account of two themes that emerged from the study: the experience of diversity, and the experience of working with people. The experience of diversity relates to the different clinical specialties in which nurse consultants are employed and to the diverse nature of the role. The experience of working with people requires that nurse consultants focus on particular disease symptoms while simultaneously caring for the whole person.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1996

Nursing research methodology: transcending Cartesianism.

Nurses involved in research are concerned with methodological issues. This paper explores the Cartesian debate that has polarized the discourse on nursing research methodology. It is argued that methodologies exclusively based on objectivism, one pole of the Cartesian debate, or subjectivism, the other, do not provide nurses with adequate research foundations to understand the complexity of the lifeworld of nursing practice. This paper provides nurse researchers with an alternative methodological perspective, Gadamerian hermeneutics, which is in harmony with the clinical world of nursing practice.

Humans↗
PubMed1995

Technology and the lifeworld of critical care nursing.

Traditionally, nursing scholars have concerned themselves with philosophies of science. This perspective reflects the Platonic dominance of theory over practice. The consequence of this view is that technology is conceived as an applied science. Furthermore, technology is considered as a neutral instrument of science. The primacy of theory was challenged by the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who argued that the correct relationship between these two concepts was a technology-science one. This reconceptualization suggests that practice precedes theory. This paper examines the developing body of literature concerning the philosophy of technology. Specifically, the philosophies of Martin Heidegger, Don Ihde, Albert Borgmann and Langdon Winner are explored from a nursing perspective, and how they may offer nursing a way of conceptualizing the ever expanding technological environment of the intensive care unit is discussed.

Critical Care↗
PubMed1995

The phenomenological movement: implications for nursing research.

This paper presents a comparison of the phenomenologies of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger with the aim of highlighting some of the critical distinctions between these two 'schools' of phenomenology concerning the methodological implications of each approach for nursing research. Specifically, the paper examines: the implications of epistemology versus ontology; issues relating to validity; the involvement of the researcher, and aspects relating to interpretation.

Humans↗
PubMed1995

A hermeneutic study of the experiences of relatives of critically ill patients.

This paper describes a hermeneutic study of experiences of relatives of critically ill patients in the context of a large tertiary referral hospital in Sydney, Australia. The participants were 15 female family members of critically ill patients. Taped conversations between the researcher and participants were conducted and interpreted using Reinharz's hermeneutic method. Two themes emerged from the participants' experiences and are described as 'being-with' and 'seeing'. 'Being-with' focused on the desire of the participants to 'be-with' their relatives, in a physical and emotional sense. The theme 'seeing' highlighted the importance of actually seeing the patient. Ontological concepts relating to the themes are described with reference to Taylor's concept of being human.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1995

A Heideggerian hermeneutic study of the practice of critical care nurses.

This study provides a Heideggerian analysis of the practice of eight critical care nurses who work in an Australian intensive care unit. Specifically, it describes two themes that emerged from a larger study on expert critical care nursing practice. These themes are referred to as 'balancing' and 'being busy'. Each theme emerged with several foci. The theme 'balancing' is concerned with the ability of the nurse to manage simultaneously the paradoxical relationship between the technology of the intensive care unit and the processes of care. 'Being busy' was a theme that recognized the technical nature of critical care nursing. The paper concludes with a discussion of the relevant Heideggerian philosophical concepts.

Australia↗
PubMed1995

The lifeworld of relatives of critically ill patients: a phenomenological hermeneutic study.

This paper describes a phenomenological hermeneutic study of the experiences of relatives of critically ill patients. The study was conducted at a large tertiary referral hospital in Sydney, Australia. The participants were 15 female family members of critically ill patients. Taped conversations between the researcher and participants were conducted and interpreted using a hermeneutic transformative process. Four themes were identified: 'being-with', 'seeing', 'plain talk' and 'making sense'. The theme 'plain talk' was concerned with the importance of sensitive and timely communication, and was congruent with previous research findings. The other three themes, however, surfaced new understanding of the relative's experience. 'Making sense' focused on the participant's understanding of the experience of having a critically ill relative. 'Being with' was concerned with the desire of the participants to be with their loved one. 'Seeing' highlighted the importance of actually seeing the patient.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1994

The comforting role in critical care nursing practice: a phenomenological interpretation.

This paper provides an hermeneutic analysis of comforting as it applies in critical care nursing practice. Comforting emerged as an important phenomenon of an Heideggerian phenomenological study of the lifeworld of eight critical care nurses (Walters, 1992, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation). This study described three other themes; focusing, balancing and being busy. It also provides an ontologic description of critical care nursing practice. Comforting is described with reference to the following foci: providing support to the patient, relief from pain, relief from anxiety, communicating, using touch, facing death, comforting family and friends and supporting other nursing staff.

Anxiety↗
PubMed1994

A hermeneutic study of the concept of 'focusing' in critical care nursing practice.

A phenomenological hermeneutic study of the lifeworld of critical care nursing was undertaken, from which emerged the concept of 'focusing'. Focusing is defined as empathizing concern for the critically ill person and his/her family amid the high technology of the intensive care unit. When nurses focus on the patient and the patient's family they are able to empathize with the personal dimensions of caring. The study used a phenomenological hermeneutic approach to describe the nature of the lived experience of clinical nursing practice in a high technology environment.

Critical Care↗
PubMed1994

An interpretative study of the clinical practice of critical care nurses.

This study explores the nature of clinical practice of eight expert nurses working in an intensive care unit. It is ontological and epistemologically grounded in Heideggerian phenomenological hermeneutics. This paper provides a description of the relevant Heideggerian concepts, in particular worldliness, understanding and care. The hermeneutic analysis revealed four themes: being busy, comforting, focusing and balancing. The paper concludes by discussing some ontological qualities, from a Heideggerian perspective, that underpin critical care nursing practice. This study contributes to the endeavour of exploring alternative ways of investigating human experience and also attempts to provide insight into the lifeworld of expert nurses working in an intensive care unit. The specific purpose of the study was to provide a phenomenological hermeneutic analysis of the aesthetics of nursing practice in an intensive care unit. Consistent with the epistemology of phenomenological hermeneutic philosophy, I have chosen to use the first person in reporting these research findings (see Webb 1992 for further discussion).

Critical Care↗
PubMed1994

Phenomenology as a way of understanding in nursing.

This paper discriminates between Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. It also discusses some of the implications of each of these phenomenological approaches for nursing research. Phenomenological research techniques offer nurses a valuable way to understand the lifeworld of nursing. While there has been a lot written by nurses about phenomenology as a nursing research technique, the essential differences between these two phenomenological schools have not adequately been documented. This paper suggests that each of these approaches offers nurse researchers significantly different perspectives about the human condition.

Cognition↗
PubMed1992

Schizosaccharomyces pombe mitochondria: morphological, respiratory and protein import characteristics.

A technique is described for the isolation and purification of intact, respiratory-competent mitochondria from Schizosaccharomyces pombe. The purified mitochondria are capable of oxidizing NADH and succinate as respiratory substrates, indicating the presence of succinate dehydrogenase and an NADH dehydrogenase located on the outer surface of the inner membrane. Mitochondria display good respiratory control with an ADP/O ratio of < 2. Respiratory activity is linearly dependent upon the redox poise of the quinone pool, suggesting the presence of an unbranched respiratory pathway to molecular oxygen. Immunogold labelling using antisera raised against mitochondrial HSP70 proteins (SSP1, SSC1 and PHSP1) from three different species, namely S. pombe, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the plant Pisum sativum respectively, has been used to investigate the presence and ultrastructure of the mitochondria isolated by this procedure. The immunocytochemistry was carried out using cells containing wild-type levels of SSP1 protein and cells over-expressing the protein. These results also demonstrate the capacity of mitochondria to import increased levels of protein in vivo. In vitro import experiments using COXIV-DHFR indicate that purified S. pombe mitochondria can efficiently import this precursor, and that protein translocation is dependent upon an oxidizable substrate and a membrane potential.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed1992

Characterisation of PHSP1, a cDNA encoding a mitochondrial HSP70 from Pisum sativum.

A pea cDNA clone, PHSP1, encoding a member of the HSP70 gene family has been isolated. DNA sequence analysis indicates that the protein encoded by PHSP1 is a homologue of the mitochondrial HSP70 proteins, SSP1 from Schizosaccharomyces pombe and SSC1 from S. cerevisiae. It contains an amino-terminal extension of 50 amino acids, rich in basic and hydroxyl amino acids, similar to other plant mitochondrial leader sequences. Western blot analysis indicates that the PHSP1 protein is associated only with mitochondria and not with any other sub-cellular organelle or cytoplasm. Further confirmation of its location within mitochondria was obtained from in vitro protein translocation experiments into purified Pisum sativum mitochondria. It was observed that the precursor protein was efficiently imported and that it is processed to produce a protein with an Mr of the anticipated size of the mature protein. Results are discussed with respect to the structure and function of the mitochondrial HSP70 protein.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed1992

Diagnosing infection in hip replacements. The use of fine-needle aspiration and radiometric culture.

In 78 consecutive patients, we performed fine-needle aspiration of the hip before revision surgery. At the revision operation biopsies were taken from the capsule and joint tissues. The aspirate and the homogenised soft-tissue specimens were cultured using a radiometric technique. Fifteen hips proved to be infected and 63 sterile on culture of the tissues taken during revision surgery; 94% of the aspiration results were correct. The sensitivity of the technique was 87% and the specificity 95%. Fine-needle aspiration combined with a radiometric culture technique is a simple and reliable method of diagnosing infection of hip prostheses.

Bacteria↗
PubMed1988

Urinary infection may invalidate the double-sugar test of intestinal permeability.

To assess the effect of urinary infection on a typical double-sugar test of intestinal permeability, rhamnose and cellobiose were added to 12 infected urine samples to give sugar concentrations generally present in the 5-h urine samples of patients undergoing the test. Rhamnose concentration fell by approximately 20% in two of the specimens after incubation at 37 degrees C for 5 h. Eight of the 12 samples showed a fall in cellobiose concentration at 2.5 h, and 11 at 5 h. On five occasions more than 90% of the cellobiose was destroyed within 5 h. Yet only eight of these urine samples contained organisms that were able to metabolize cellobiose. This apparent anomaly may have resulted from bacteria surviving in spite of the thiomersal preservative, and then consuming the glucose to which the cellobiose was hydrolysed to enable calculation of cellobiose concentration. We conclude that bacteriuria may invalidate the result of the double-sugar test of intestinal function.

Bacteriuria↗