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J Cheek

Publications and source records attributed to J Cheek.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Health policy and the nursing profession: a deafening silence.

The Australian healthcare system, and those of many other Western countries are experiencing significant shifts in the development of health policy. Many of these shifts are directly related to economic factors that have contributed to the spiralling costs of health care. The trends in health policy appear to be embracing a 'market driven' approach to the distribution of resources and health services. Technology and medical developments have contributed to these current economic trends. Over the past 20 years nurses have been faced with significant shifts in the direction of health policy to the extent that many policies have significantly impacted upon their practice without their apparent contribution. Several theoretical positions exist about nurses' lack of policy participation. This paper examines some of the current health policy changes in Australia that are perceived to have had the greatest impact on the nursing practice, and identifies some of the barriers to the nursing profession's participation in the formulation of health policy.

Australia↗

The politics of collaboration as viewed through the lens of a collaborative nursing research project.

Collaborative research has much to offer nursing. However, the collaborative research process is fraught with issues arising from the 'politics of collaboration'. Such politics operate at the individual and institutional levels and can have debilitating effects on the research enterprise if they are not dealt with. This paper explores what is meant by collaboration and the politics of collaboration. Drawing on a critical perspective, it uses Brookfield's themes of impostorship, cultural suicide and roadrunning as the theoretical framework for the analysis. The paper uses an actual collaborative research project to ground the discussion provided.

Cooperative Behavior↗

Critical aspects of nursing in aged and extended care.

An ageing Australian population and improving medical retrieval technology have led to an increasing need for nurses to manage complex and acute health issues of ageing and chronic disability. In a study of aged and extended care involving nurses, residents, allied health professionals and family members, investigators used semi-structured interviews to identify critical aspects of nursing. The aim of the study was to begin to identify and illustrate a theoretical framework of "critical' nursing activities for aged and extended care. Two important themes to emerge were the structure of the health care setting and the characteristic behaviours of people associated with it. These themes reinforce the importance of treating people as individuals and of describing caring criteria in ways which reinforce holism.

Aged↗

Exploring the nursing role in pain management from a post-structuralist perspective.

The way in which discourses influence understandings of pain and the management of pain by nurses has received little attention in the nursing literature. This is particularly apparent with the taken-for-granted practice of using self-reports of pain as the basis for the development of treatment regimes designed to manage that pain. This paper uses a post-structural frame to analyse the way in which pain itself, and the management of that pain, are texts which are discursively constructed. In so doing it opens up possibilities for a 'different' nursing role in the management of pain.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

The discursive construction of the role of the nurse in medication administration: an exploration of the literature.

This paper draws on postmodern thought to interrogate the literature relating to nurses and medications. An examination of the representation of a specific nursing activity in the literature-the administration of medications-reveals much about the way in which the role of the nurse is discursively constructed. This is particularly evident from an analysis of the procedures shaping that role. These procedures, which nurses themselves develop and institute as rules to guide nursing practice, can have the effect of reducing nursing work to a series of rituals which contribute to the discursive construction of the nurse's role in medication administration.

Ceremonial Behavior↗

Guidelines for prevention and control of hepatitis A in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

The Aberdeen Area Indian Health Service, South Dakota Department of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have collaborated since 1985 to investigate hepatitis A in Indian communities in the Northern Plains and to implement clinical trials of hepatitis A vaccine. After licensure of the hepatitis A vaccine in February 1995, community wide immunization programs have been implemented effectively in several communities experiencing hepatitis A outbreaks. The state health department, tribal health departments, Indian Health Service facilities, Head Start programs and schools have provided hepatitis A immunizations to children aged 2-12 years in each of these communities after obtaining parental consent. Culturally-specific educational materials were developed and extensive health education efforts were provided by IHS and tribal programs. Hepatitis A contacts age 2-12 were offered the hepatitis A vaccine at the same time they were offered passive immunization with immune globulin. To date over 70% of parents contacted by letter or in person have returned consent forms to have their children immunized. Higher response rates were obtained in communities where home visits were made to explain this program in more detail. The outbreaks appear to have stopped after 70% or more of the children aged 2-12 years were immunized. Immunization programs are being implemented in all Northern Plains Indian communities utilizing hepatitis. A vaccine from the Vaccine For Children Program. These efforts will likely eliminate hepatitis A as a health problem for Indian communities.

Adolescent↗

Nurses, nursing and representation: an exploration of the effect of viewing positions on the textual portrayal of nursing.

Textual portrayals of nursing can be 'read' from a number of possible viewing positions, which play a very real part in the way that our reality is constructed and understood. The image depends on which viewing position is chosen by or constructed for the viewer, and how the viewer interacts with that position. Thus without the viewer the image is incomplete. This paper is a beginning exploration of the nature of texts that portray nursing, and what Kaplan has termed the 'delicate negotiation' between the reader and the text in producing, in this case, understandings of nursing. Consequently the discussion focuses on how texts represent nursing, not in terms of what they portray, but how understandings of that portrayal are arrived at. This is to move exploration of portrayals of nursing from the descriptive to the discursive realm. In so doing the aim is to begin to explore and uncover the way in which we are positioned, and position ourselves, as readers of portrayals of nursing in text.

Attitude↗

The panopticon re-visited?: an exploration of the social and political dimensions of contemporary health care and nursing practice.

Insights from critical and postmodern perspectives are used to explore some of the aspects of contemporary nursing practice and health care which are taken for granted. Such an exploration begins to deconstruct the power relations implicit within the socio-political context of the health care arena in which nursing operates. In particular, the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault is used to explore the discourses of the various health care "experts". Aspects of women's health and nursing practice are used as exemplars of the limiting effects of such discourses.

Delivery of Health Care↗

Nursing as textually mediated reality.

Nursing and nursing practice both construct and are in turn constructed by the context in which they operate. Texts plays a central part in that construction. As such, nursing and nursing practice can be considered to represent a reality that is textually mediated. This paper explores the notion of nursing as a textually mediated reality and offers the reader the possibility of engaging in reflection on what implications this has for nursing and their own nursing practice. The analyses provided draw on aspects of the work of both Foucault and Derrida. Foucault's notion of discourse provides a vehicle for the exploration of nursing as textually mediated, as does Derrida's concept of binary oppositions. The paper thus illustrates some of the possibilities afforded nursing by poststructural analyses. In particular it does this by exploring one of the central textual constructions, impacting on the way that nursing and nursing practice are conceptualized, the mind/body binary opposition.

Communication↗

Been there, done that? Consciousness raising, critical theory and nurses.

The concept of consciousness raising has become somewhat tired and jaded in nursing literature. Indeed the notion of consciousness raising and its associated catchcry of 'making the personal political', is almost so hackneyed as to be somewhat unfashionable and clichéd in the 1990s. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that consciousness raising emanated from the women's movement of the 1960s and was originally directed at linking the personal and the political, but in nursing emphasis has often been given to the personal with little recourse to the political. It is thus timely and important to draw on insights afforded by critical perspectives and synthesize them anew with the tenets of consciousness raising in order to make explicit the power relations and structural oppression implicit in the nursing context. If consciousness raising, and the making of the personal political, are combined with the theoretical insights provided by critical theorists such as Faoucault (1977, 1980), it is possible to re-orient and re-energise the somewhat trite and worn catchcry of the personal as political.

Awareness↗

Holism, care and nursing: points of reflection during the evolution of a philosophy of nursing statement.

An exploration of the diversity and complexity of perspectives from which holism and care can legitimately be constructed. The preparation of a document for accreditation of a proposed pre-registration Bachelor of Nursing award was the impetus for this exploration. School members deemed holism and care to be central to our philosophy of nursing statement, however, difficulty arose in determining a shared understanding of these notions. Through reflective deliberation and a review of the literature, the authors attempted to unravel the range of meanings given to these problematic terms.

Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate↗

Exchange of tubulin dimer into rings in microtubule assembly--disassembly.

We have prepared native radioactive tubulin dimer from two species: [35S]tubulin dimer, by in vivo labeling of rat brain, and porcine [3H]ethyltubulin, as previously described [Zeeberg, B., Cheek, J., & Caplow, M. (1980) Anal. Biochem. 104, 321--327]. After microtubule assembly with radioactive tubulin dimer and nonradioactive dimer and rings, the tubulin in the rings and the dimer obtained upon disassembly have approximately equal specific activities. Therefore, during the reaction sequence dimer + rings leads to 37 degrees C microtubules leads to 0 degrees C dimer + rings the tubulin initially in rings becomes indistinguishable from tubulin initially in dimer. Under nonpolymerizing conditions (0 degrees C) radioactive tubulin dimer and radioactive guanine nucleotide are incorporated into rings at approximately equal rates. This indicates that there is a pathway for nucleotide incorporation into rings under nonpolymerizing conditions which involves the incorporation of dimer-bound nucleotide. We also report results on the lack of the mirror image equilibrium during the disassembly process, using porcine [3H]-ethyltubulin dimer, rat [35S]tubulin dimer, and a [3H]-GDP.porcine tubulin dimer complex. In all three cases there is no significant disassembly-dependent incorporatioin of radioactivity into rings when microtubules are disassembled in the presence of radioactive dimer. These results demonstrate that, for rat and porcine tubulin, rings are formed during microtubule disassembly by direct cleavage of intact rings, without a tubulin dimer intermediate.

Animals↗

Hemolysis induced by cefazolin and cephalothin in a patient with penicillin sensitivity.

A patient with penicillin sensitivity, who had never received a cephalosporin antibiotic previously, developed anemia and spherocytosis following the administration of cefazolin. Hemolysis abated when the drug was discontinued on the fourth day, and recurred on day six when cephalothin therapy was begun. IgG and complement components were present on the patient's erythrocytes, and IgG antibodies in her serum reacted with normal red blood cells which had been coated with benzylpenicillin, cefazolin or cephalothin. Antibodies to cephalothin-coated red blood cells were removed partially by incubating her serum with either benzylpenicillin or cefazolin. Complement-fixing IgG antibodies which reacted with red blood cells coated by cefazolin, cephalothin, and benzylpenicillin were considered to be responsible for hemolysis during the administration of cefazolin and, subsequently, cephalothin. The patient recovered completely following discontinuation of antibiotics, transfusion of red blood cells, and treatment with glucocorticoids. It is concluded that hemolysis may occur during therapy with cefazolin, as well as cephalothin, and may develop rapidly in a patient with penicillin sensitivity.

Adult↗