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L Burt

Publications and source records attributed to L Burt.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

Nurse-environment misfit and nursing practice.

AIM OF THE STUDY: The purpose of the following descriptive correlational study was to investigate nurses' responses to the image discrepancy between the public and nurses, and its relationships with their self-concept, job satisfaction and performance. BACKGROUND: It has been long said that nurses live in a dual structure wherein the nurse's journey toward professionalization is constrained by nursing stereotypes in a society. This duality of the nursing universe is assumed to have created a person-environment misfit which could lead to nurses' job dissatisfaction and low job performance. Nonetheless, little study has been done in this area. DESIGN/METHODS: The study was conducted in 1999 with ethical approval from an Australian University. A sample of 80 Australian registered nurses participated by completing the Porter Nursing Image Scale, Index of Work Satisfaction (IWS) and Six-Dimension Scale of Nursing Performance. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation. RESULTS: The results suggested that there is a discrepancy in the images of the nursing profession between nurses and the public, which can contribute to the nurse-environment misfit. The results also supported a negative correlation of the misfit with nurses' job satisfaction and performance. CONCLUSION: Despite the limited sample size and characteristics, this study provides evidence to encourage nurses to improve the public image of nurses, which will enhance the professionalization of nursing.

Employee Performance Appraisal↗

Synaesthesia: prevalence and familiality.

Synaesthesia is a condition in which a mixing of the senses occurs; for example, sounds trigger the experience of colour. Previous reports suggest this may be familial, but no systematic studies exist. In addition, there are no reliable prevalence or sex-ratio figures for the condition, which is essential for establishing if the reported sex ratio (female bias) is reliable, and if this implicates a sex-linked genetic mechanism. Two independent population studies were conducted in the city of Cambridge, England (studies 1 and 2 here), as necessary background to the family genetic study of synaesthesia (study 3). Studies 1 and 2 arrived at an almost identical prevalence rate for synaesthesia: approximately 1 case in 2000. The sex ratio found was 6:1 (female:male). A third of cases also reported familial aggregation. In study 3 six families were examined, and first-degree relatives were tested for genuineness of the condition. All six families were indeed multiplex for synaesthesia. Alternative modes of inheritance are discussed.

Chromosome Aberrations↗

Juvenile xanthogranuloma.

Three infants with juvenile xanthogranuloma are described. Of the two with ocular involvement, one responded to topical corticosteroid and mydriatic therapy and the other to irradiation. The third had skin lesions alone. In the first case new histologic findings were made: lipid vacuoles were observed, by light and electron microscopy, in smooth muscle cells of erector pili and in Schwann cells of small nerves. These findings, along with the detection of lipid vacuoles in mast cells, support the concept that the condition results from local tissue injury that evokes a histioxanthomatous response. Treatment of juvenile xanthogranuloma should be tailored to the individual case and ranges from no active intervention (when there are skin lesions alone or ocular involvement limited to the eyelid or the epibulbar tissue) to a combination of corticosteroid therapy, irradiation and surgery (when there are iris lesions, which rarely resolve spontaneously and may have serious complications). A trial of topical corticosteroid therapy alone in uncomplicated cases is suggested since it was curative in one of the cases presented here.

Conjunctiva↗

Phonological awareness skills of 4-year-old British children: an assessment and developmental data.

This study reports developmental data for the phonological awareness and processing skills of 57 normally developing Tyneside preschool children, aged between 46 and 58 months. The children were assessed on eight tasks: consistency of word production, phonological variability according to speech production task, non-word imitation, syllable segmentation, rhyme awareness, alliteration awareness, phoneme isolation and phoneme segmentation. The results indicated that girls and boys performed similarly; socio-economic status significantly affected performance on six of the tasks; and age was significantly correlated with performance on tasks targeting alliteration, non-word imitation, phonological variability, and phoneme isolation and segmentation. The older children were more phonologically aware than the younger children.

Awareness↗