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Biomedical subjects

C W Mueller

Publications and source records attributed to C W Mueller.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Job satisfaction and workplace characteristics of primary and specialty care physicians at a bimodal medical school.

PURPOSE: A few medical schools are highly successful in obtaining research funding and producing primary care physicians. The authors compared the job satisfaction of primary and specialty care faculty at one of these bimodal schools. METHODS: In 1998, all full-time physician-faculty (n = 408) in 15 clinical departments at the University of Iowa College of Medicine (a bimodal medical school) were sent a questionnaire based on the Price-Mueller model of job satisfaction. Faculty rated their global job satisfaction and perceptions about 18 workplace characteristics, stressors, and supports. Responses of primary and specialty care physicians were compared in these domains. RESULTS: A total of 71% of surveyed faculty (n = 341) returned usable questionnaires. Primary and specialty care faculty reported similar levels of job satisfaction (p =.20), and similar percentages (51% versus 54%, p =.63) reported overall satisfaction with their jobs at the medical school. However, primary care faculty perceived less opportunity to advance (p <.01), greater professional-role ambiguity (p =.02), less collegiality (p =.02), and less ability to make full use of their clinical skills (p =.01). Primary and specialty care faculty reported similar intentions of leaving the medical school within the coming year (p =.41). CONCLUSIONS: Primary and specialty care physicians at one bimodal medical school reported similar levels of job satisfaction. However, the primary care physicians rated several important job-related domains lower than did their specialty care colleagues, most notably the opportunity to advance within the medical school.

Adult↗

Psychological and spiritual growth in women living with HIV.

Women living with HIV and AIDS face tremendous obstacles to wellness, yet many find ways to use their experience of HIV as a vehicle for psychological and spiritual growth. A qualitative study was conducted to better understand this process. Thirty-four women living with various stages of HIV were interviewed. Five components were found to be important in their psychological and spiritual growth: reckoning with death, life affirmation, creation of meaning, self-affirmation, and redefining relationships. Implications for social work practice and future research are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Weapon carrying among black adolescents: a social network perspective.

OBJECTIVES: This report describes the salience of social networks to the phenomena of adolescent weapon carrying. METHODS: A random-walk network sampling design was used to survey 113 adolescents about topics, including weapon carrying. RESULTS: In a probability sample of 12- to 15-year-olds, 20.9% reported ever carrying a weapon. Carriers were eight times as likely as noncarriers to report weapon carrying by an older associate, and 19 times as likely to report weapon carrying by a peer. A significant dose-response effect was present. CONCLUSIONS: This evidence supports the interpretation that modeling of weapon carrying by personal network members is important for its initiation and maintenance in adolescence.

Adolescent↗

Teen perspectives on HIV and the relevance of Hawaii's health providers.

Based on focus group interviews with adolescents from an urban Honolulu community, the present article describes how these adolescents view HIV, HIV-prevention and the role of health care providers in addressing HIV-related needs. Although medical providers are known to be knowledgeable experts in a variety of health care areas, other research points to an underutilization of this potential. While knowledgeable about HIV, many of the youth in this study continue to engage in risky behavior. Few perceive they have others they can meaningfully talk to about their HIV and other health concerns. Even when probed for, almost none of these teens saw health care providers as pertinent to HIV or their health beyond the traditional illness/prescription role. Suggestions for ways to get more involved in the prevention of HIV and, more generally, positive health development in teens are discussed.

Adolescent↗

HIV-related training programs for health care professionals: findings from a collaborative assessment.

Seeking to avoid duplication of effort, evaluators from twelve separate HIV-related training programs worked together to share information, assessment tools, measurement instruments, and preliminary findings across programs. Each training program focused on preparing health care professionals to meet the growing demands of the AIDS epidemic and specifically address psychosocial issues of care. The collaborative effort of program evaluators included an examination of experiences across programs and yielded recommendations for needs assessments, process evaluation procedures, and outcome measures. This paper focuses on the findings from an analysis of needs assessments and process evaluations across twelve HIV-related training programs in eleven areas of the country.

Forecasting↗

Cross-cultural differences in rating hyperactive-disruptive behaviors in children.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the extent to which the reported variations across countries in the prevalence of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder are due to cultural differences among raters, the authors examined the degree to which mental health professionals in four countries differed in their ratings of hyperactive-disruptive behaviors in children. METHOD: Mental health professionals from China (N = 8), Indonesia (N = 12), Japan (N = 9), and the United States (N = 8) rated the presence and degree of hyperactive-disruptive behaviors in standardized videotape vignettes of four 8-year-old boys participating in individual and group activities. RESULTS: Chinese and Indonesian clinicians gave significantly higher scores for hyperactive-disruptive behaviors than did their Japanese and American colleagues. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that perceptions of hyperactivity vary significantly across countries even if uniform rating criteria are applied. Without correction for these perceptual differences, cross-cultural prevalence rates of hyperactivity may not be comparable.

Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity↗

Nursing faculty and students' attitudes regarding HIV.

A multidisciplinary group of health professional educators examined the faculty and student attitudes related to AIDS in undergraduate and graduate nursing programs and in a dental hygiene program. Results indicated consistent differences in attitudes toward homosexuality and intravenous drug users, AIDS-phobia, AIDS-related work stress, and willingness to work with HIV, homosexual, or intravenous-drug-using patients among faculty, undergraduate, and graduate nursing students, and certificate-level dental hygiene students. Faculty and master's-level nursing students consistently indicated the most positive attitudes and behavioral intentions. A one-year follow-up of a sample of undergraduate students revealed little change in these attitudes or behavioral intentions. Implications of these findings for nursing educators are discussed.

Attitude↗

Age discrimination in earnings in a dual-economy market.

Age discrimination in earnings has been difficult to establish because of the confounding effects of human capital variables that deteriorate as workers grow older. To assess the extent to which declining earnings result from discrimination, this study examines the age-earnings relationship for a panel of older workers in 1966 and 1976, simultaneously controlling for human capital variables and other variables related to both age and earnings. In addition, following literature that suggests that the economic sector in which employed influences this relationship, interactions by core/periphery sector are examined. Age-based discrimination is found for core sector workers, and as expected, becomes more prevalent as the workers grow older. These findings are discussed in light of claims that older workers, especially in the core sector, have lost power in the work place.

Age Factors↗

Nurses' job satisfaction: a longitudinal analysis.

A causal model of nurses' job satisfaction was tested using longitudinal analysis of 13 causal determinants and five correlates measured at Time 1, and job satisfaction measured at Time 2. Data were collected from 370 registered nurses at five hospitals using questionnaires mailed eight months apart. Four different models were analyzed using the LISREL maximum likelihood procedure to estimate the path coefficients. Variables reaching statistically significant levels included, in order of importance, routinization, promotional opportunity, distributive justice, age, day shift, workload, kinship responsibility, and opportunity for jobs outside the employing hospital. With the prior level of job satisfaction controlled, only the effects of day shift remained significant.

Adult↗

Determinants of turnover among nursing department employees.

A causal model of turnover, or quitting, among hospital nursing department employees was evaluated. This model includes job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intent to leave as intervening variables that mediate 13 determinants of turnover. The sample consisted of 841 female nursing department employees selected from five hospitals in a western state. Attitudinal and background data were obtained through a mail questionnaire survey, and turnover was monitored for 18 months following the survey. Intent to leave had a strong direct effect on turnover while kinship responsibility, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment had indirect effects on turnover through intent to leave. Task repetitiveness, autonomy, promotional opportunities, and fairness of rewards were important determinants of jobs satisfaction and thus provide a mechanism whereby hospital management may enhance commitment to the organization while reducing turnover.

Adult↗

The effect of alcohol on memory for feelings: does it really help users to forget?

In an innovative piece of research, Cowan (Cowan, J. D. Testing the escape hypotheses. Alcohol helps users to forget their feelings. J. Nerv. Ment. Dis., 171: 40-48, 1983) purports to have found that alcohol helps users to forget their feelings by impairing their ability to retrieve specific emotional states (i.e., reproduce particular mood ratings) originally experienced (rated) 48 hours earlier. Close inspection of Cowan's procedure and memory measures reveals, however, no basis for such a finding. Since his subjects rated their emotions on each of three occasions in addition to the one to be remembered and even reported virtually the same moods on each occasion, Cowan's memory test results were not unique to the intended target memories from 48 hours earlier but may have derived instead from any time at which mood was assessed, including just minutes before the memory test itself. To highlight the problems of interpretation encountered in this design, an alternative analysis of Cowan's data is offered, suggesting that alcohol may enhance, rather than impair, memory for feelings. The implications of that result for alcohol abuse are quite different from those proposed by Cowan, or by the "escape" hypotheses that he was trying to test.

Alcohol Drinking↗

Alcohol enhancement of human memory: tests of consolidation and interference hypotheses.

Two hypotheses about the phenomenon of alcohol-enhanced human memory were investigated. Whereas a consolidation account of this phenomenon indicates that continued processing of a target memory is facilitated by alcohol, an interference account states that the alcohol main effect is to impair the acquisition of potentially interfering new memories. No support was found for the consolidation view in an experiment manipulating (1) the length of time items preceded drug administration, (2) the amount of postpresentation processing each item received, and (3) the type of memory test employed. In line with expectations derived from interference theory, retention was substantially improved only for recall and not for tests of recognition memory.

Adolescent↗

A causal model for turnover for nurses.

Longitudinal data on 1,091 registered nurses in seven hospitals were used to estimate a causal model of turnover in organizations. Total effects on turnover were found to be the greatest for four determinants: intent to stay, opportunity, general training, and job satisfaction. The relative importance of the determinants of turnover and the explanatory power of the model are presented and discussed.

Analysis of Variance↗