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Biomedical subjects

N F Woods

Publications and source records attributed to N F Woods.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Design and measurement challenges in family research.

Closing the chasm between family theory, nursing practice, and family research requires design and methods that foster the study of families as dynamic, holistic entities. This article has outlined several strategies for capturing morphostasis and morphogenesis and for studying the family as a unit of analysis.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1991

AAN responds.

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Academies and Institutes↗
PubMed1990

Social support for women during chronic illness: the relationship among sources and types to adjustment.

The purpose of this study was to explore who in the network provided what type of support in relation to psychosocial adjustment for women experiencing chronic illness. The Norbeck Social Support Questionnaire was administered to 125 chronically ill women, along with measures of depression (CES-D), family illness demands (Demands of Illness Inventory), marital quality (Spanier Dyadic Adjustment Scale), and family functioning (FACES-II). Repeated-measures ANOVA was used to examine the average amount of support from four main sources: partner, family, friends, and others. Women perceived more support from the partner than from any other source. Family members provided more affective support than friends or others. Friends provided more affirmation than family or others. After the partner, women reported confiding about their illness more to health care providers, counselors, or religious personnel than family or friends. Pearson correlation coefficients were computed for the amount of support from each source and the measures of individual, dyadic, or family adjustment. In general, affect, affirmation, and reciprocity from both the partner and family were associated with less depression, higher marital quality, and better family functioning.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1990

Sleep patterns related to menstrual cycle phase and premenstrual affective symptoms.

An ovulatory menstrual cycle is characterized by fluctuating levels of progesterone. Progesterone, a gonadal hormone known for its soporific and thermogenic effects, is present in negligible levels prior to ovulation and in high levels after ovulation. To describe and compare sleep patterns in relation to ovulatory cycles and premenstrual mood state, sleep was monitored in healthy women at two phases of the menstrual cycle. Results indicated that rapid-eye-movement (REM) latency was significantly shorter during the postovulatory (luteal) phase compared to the preovulatory (follicular) phase, but there was no significant difference in latency to sleep onset or the percentage of REM sleep. While there were no menstrual cycle phase differences in the percentages of various sleep stages, the women with negative affect symptoms during the premenstruum demonstrated significantly less delta sleep during both menstrual cycle phases in comparison with the asymptomatic subjects.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

The family's functioning with chronic illness in the mother: the spouse's perspective.

While previous research has studied the impact of chronic illness on the patient or spouse, the impact on the marriage, the child, the parent-child relationship, and the family's functioning have been relatively ignored. To date ther is no known study of the impact of a mother's chronic illness on the family. The purpose of the current exploratory study was to test a set of interrelated hypotheses about family functioning with the mother's chronic illness from the spouse's perspective based on a family systems perspective. Data were obtained from standardized questionnaires from 48 fathers with young school-age children whose wife had either breast cancer, diabetes, or fibrocystic breast disease. Results of a path analysis revealed that the number of illness demands the father experienced was a significant predictor of his level of depression. More demands resulted in higher depression scores. Marital adjustment was significantly affected by both the father's level of depression as well as by his wife's type of disease. Spouses of women with breast cancer had significantly higher levels of marital adjustment than did partners of the other women. More depressed spouses had lower levels of marital adjustment. Both illness demands and level of marital adjustment significantly predicted the type of coping behavior the family used. More frequent illness demands and higher levels of marital adjustment were associated with familial introspection, that is, coping behavior characterized by frequent feedback, reflection, and discussion in the family. The quality of the father-child relationship was significantly affected by this type of coping behavior. Families characterized as introspective had fathers who reported more frequent interchange with their children.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1989

Living with cancer. Family experiences.

The focus of this paper is to describe what it is like to live with cancer from the perspective of families. Recent studies indicate that family members' concerns vary with their roles as family members and patient/nonpatient status. Moreover, concerns vary with stage of illness and time since diagnosis. Not all concerns are shared among all family members. Families influence the adjustment of the person with cancer. Family members cope in different ways, and coping patterns vary with status of the disease and the person's role in the family. Nevertheless, families coping in different ways can achieve similar outcomes.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1988

Being healthy: women's images.

Although the concept of health is central to nursing practice and science, measurement of the concept has lagged far behind theory development. The study presented extends Laffrey's earlier work by describing the meaning of health for a population of women representing multiple ethnic groups residing in the Pacific Northwest. A sample of 528 women from a cross-section of a community who had participated in a study of women's health was asked to respond to the question, "What does being healthy mean to you?" In addition to evidence of the clinical, role performance, and adaptive models of health, the women's responses yielded nine dimensions consistent with the eudaemonistic model. Each dimension included multiple descriptors identified through content analysis of the women's verbatim responses. The women's images of health were consistent with Smith's and Laffrey's four conceptions, but the eudaemonistic category included multiple dimensions. The women reported images of health consistent with contemporary nursing theorists' views. Moreover, their emphasis on eudaemonistic images crossed all categories of age, education, income, ethnicity, and employment status.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Women's health.

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Adaptation, Psychological↗