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Securing a biomedical communications future: thinking strategically.

Ensuring continued growth and viability of the biomedical communication function has become a critical task of the biomedical communications director. Thinking strategically is a cognitive process which assists a director in visualizing programs and tactics which meet clients needs, creates competitive advantages for the biomedical communications unit and builds on existing unit strengths. Thinking strategically can be divided into five phases: strategic vision, strategy development, strategic plan implementation, strategic plan dissemination, and strategic plan evaluation. Each sequence leads the biomedical communications director through a process designed to increase the effectiveness of the biomedical unit and to meet the challenges posed by an environment characterized by diminished financial, material, and human resources as well as respond to threats and opportunities posed by increased competition in the biomedical communications product and marketplace.

Communication↗

Patients with delusional and bizarre thinking.

Patients with delusional or other types of bizarre thinking are often incorrectly labeled as schizophrenic. This error has significant medical and social implications to the patient. Delusional thinking has been linked with a variety of nonschizophrenic problems including the use of licit and illicit drugs, a wide variety of medical diseases, and nonschizophrenic psychiatric disturbances. A series of case studies in which the diagnosis of schizophrenia was incorrectly made elucidates the problem and helps the physician consider the alternatives.

Adolescent↗

[Statistical analysis of anesthesiologists' thinking patterns concerning regulation of the blood pressure and the concentration of inhaled anesthetics].

During surgery, the anesthesiologists adjust the concentration of inhaled anesthetics according to the change in blood pressure in order to achieve good control of anesthesia. Usually the thinking patterns of individual anesthesiologists differ from one to another. We obtained data from each anesthesiologist's thinking pattern concerning the regulation of blood pressure and the concentration of inhalational anesthesia. These patterns were analyzed statistically and compared for individual anesthesiologist. The results showed that anesthesiologists' regulation rules were formed independently of the 3 drugs and were specific to individuals. Some trends depending on institution were observed, but no statistically significant difference was found.

Anesthesia, General↗

Enhancing critical-thinking skills: faculty-student partnerships in community health nursing.

The enhancement of critical-thinking skills empowers students to participate in the building of healthy environments in a variety of settings. The authors describe the development and implementation of unique classroom strategies emphasizing the use of critical thinking by students, the forging of faculty-student partnerships in community health nursing, and the potential impact of these strategies on the expanding horizons of practice.

Clinical Competence↗

A "thinking-in-action" approach to teaching clinical judgment: a classroom innovation for acute care advanced practice nurses.

The complexity of the evolving advanced practice nurse (APN) role demands new teaching strategies. Based on the challenges that clinicians face daily, we have developed a teaching-learning strategy that addresses five central issues: (a) learning to perceive or identify relevant clinical problems; (b) learning to address the limits of formalism by situating clinical problem solving according to the most relevant goals and intents; (c) learning to reason in transition about the particular clinical situation; (d) learning the ethical skill of problem engagement and interpersonal involvement; and (e) learning to take a stand as a responsible agent by making clinical judgments, acting on them, and advocating for the patient/family. Although these five central issues are typically excluded from classic academic approaches, they are addressed in the "Thinking-in-Action" approach. This teaching-learning strategy offers a different way of teaching clinical judgment that closely resembles the way in which expert nurses actually think and reason in patient situations as they unfold.

Decision Making↗

Health promotion practice and public health: challenge for the 1990s. Heart Health Think Tank Group.

The issue of practice skills arose in the course of a process evaluation of the Heart Smart North Shore (HSNS) project in British Columbia. We created a Think Tank of researchers and community practitioners to make recommendations for improvement of our skills. These recommendations differed according to different values for health and opinions on how to create health in the community. Because the site reviewers of the HSNS project were clear this was a disease prevention project and not a community development initiative, HSNS's orientation to skill development after the Think Tank moved toward the Precede/Proceed model, the Transtheoretical model and social marketing approaches. The Health Unit has now been restructured into multidisciplinary service teams which must focus on population health, evidence-based practice and the social determinants of health, and thus need to consider health promotion from a community development perspective and empowerment model. We suggest that learning and the development of staff and community volunteers should be seen as a continuous and reflective process that takes place at the individual, community and organizational level.

British Columbia↗

[Metaphorical/metonymical analysis of public health thinking vis-à-vis teenage pregnancy in the 1960s]

This article is an analytical essay on a historical moment in the formation of public health thinking vis-à-vis adolescent pregnancy: the 1960s. Its relevance lies in the fact that several assertions produced then still bear great influence on ideas and models concerning adolescent maternity in current public health thinking. From the technical and methodological point of view, one can assume two levels: an explicit one pertaining to the documentary record, consisting of messages clearly communicated by authors of scientific texts, and an implicit one, with elements that could only surface in text discourse through stylistic effects. Based on such assumptions, we explored the specialized literature using a metaphorical/metonymical analysis in search of such implicit dimensions.

Journal Article↗

Elementary thinking and the classification of behavior.

A theory of thinking is presented which attributes the human brain's outstanding efficiency and versatility in problem solving and learning to two memory functions. The brain's efficiency is considered to be largely a function of the capacity to remember previous operations involved in finding answers to questions. Man's outstanding versatility in problem solving is basically attributed to memory which can activate, maintain, and terminate activities independent of, or only indirectly related to, environmental or physiologic regulatory factors. Within-brain activity patterns which have unidirectionally alterable probabilities of appearance allow for adaptation (learning). The fact that the probability of appearance of nervous system activity can be altered to approach zero or unity allows nervous system units to act as their own timing controls during answer finding; the fact that units are combined into pathways allows for propagation of addressed messages at rates of the same order of magnitude as those of the timing controls.

Behavior↗

Language and thinking: positive and negative effects of naming.

Subjects instructed to think of novel shapes in terms of relevant names made fewer errors in recalling a serial ordering of the shapes, but more errors in solving a mental jigsaw puzzle and in drawing the shapes from memory, than subjects instructed to visualize the shapes without using words.

Humans↗

Randomness and the "streaking" phenomenon: attentional anomalies in performance on the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST).

Examined in detail the performance of 36 hospitalized male schizophrenics on the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST). Results indicated two interesting phenomena. First, the performance of patients with the highest level of cognitive deficit approached a random level of responding with respect to both the type of error made and the propensity to improve after an error. Second, a subgroup of these highly impaired Ss, identified as "streakers," displayed periods of virtually error-free responding, interspersed with periods of extremely impaired performance. The streaking phenomenon, as well as the tendency toward randomness, was discussed in terms of attentional anomalies.

Adult↗

The validity of the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking.

The Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking was designed to address an important clinical and research problem--the objective assessment of thought disorder. The present study assessed this test's convergent and discriminant validity and its diagnostic discriminating power (N = 56). We found that the WIST has limited clinical utility as a specific measure of disordered thought and as a diagnostic tool, but that it might still have certain important research applications.

Adolescent↗

Differentiation of schizophrenics with and without brain damage using the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking.

Assessed the efficacy of the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking, Form A, in differentiating schizophrenics with and without brain damage. Two groups of 26 state hospital residents each were selected on the basis of evidence of schizophrenia and (or lack of evidence) of brain damage. Results indicated that at least one subtest, total time, and Index significantly discriminated between groups. Additionally, a cut-off index reliably discriminated schizophrenics with brain damage. Discussed were implications for diagnosis and treatment of the populations examined as well as the relationship between brain dysfunction and cognitive processes of schizophrenia.

Adult↗

Associative thinking in schizophrenia: a contextualist approach.

Explored the question of whether responses that appeared to be highly pathological on the basis of the word association test did indeed reflect an underlying aberrant associative process or whether the associations actually had a greater degree of meaning than was evident from the test (N = 60). Utilizing contextualist techniques designed by the authors, which were analogous to the word association test but yet measured schizophrenic associative thinking in specific contexts that more closely approximated natural language situations, the quality and purposiveness of the schizophrenics' associations were examined. The word association test technique was judged to be inadequate by itself to account for underlying associative processes involved in schizophrenic associative thought disorder. A majority of responses (70% schizophrenic, 81% nonschizophrenic) judged to be pathological on the basis of the word association test alone became meaningful in the context of a sentence created by the Ss to explain purposively their associations. The schizophrenics' experience of a stimulus word and consequent associations to that word became clearer when placed within an appropriate context (i.e., a sentence), rather than examined as isolated semantic features (as in the word association test).

Adult↗

Relationship of scales of schizophrenia proneness and premorbid adjustment to thinking deficits in schizophrenia.

Scales of premorbid adjustment, which generally rely very heavily upon assessment of premorbid social functioning, long have been known to predict some forms of thinking disorder in schizophrenia. Several scales theorized to detect schizophrenia proneness were compared to the Phillips Scale of Premorbid Adjustment to determine whether the characteristics measured by the proneness scales might underlie the predictive power of premorbid social functioning. In a sample of 48 schizophrenics, only the Phillips Scale predicted performance on the Gorham's Proverb Test. These data give no evidence that anhedonia, ambivalence, or perceptual aberration underlie defective schizophrenic social functioning. Cautions and other uses for the schizophrenia proneness scales are discussed.

Adult↗

The Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST) and thirteen systems for diagnosing schizophrenia.

Developed the present study in conjunction with a project that evaluated the psychiatric diagnosis of schizophrenia (Landmark, 1982; Landmark & Leslie, 1982). This design, which included 13 different interview systems for diagnosing schizophrenic disorders, allowed for an in-depth analysis of the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST). Eighty-five outpatients who were receiving long-term chemotherapy for schizophrenia at the Moditen Clinic of London Psychiatric Hospital were reassessed individually using each of the 13 systems, following a clinical interview format, and the WIST. Major statistical analysis evaluated the concurrent validity and discriminatory efficiency of the WIST in comparison to the 13 systems. The WIST was found to show a consistently high agreement with each of the 13 systems for an average WIST discriminatory efficiency of 70%. The WIST is suggested as a practical, easily administered, diagnostic tool that performs well in comparison to the interview systems.

Adult↗

The measurement of schizophrenic conceptualization using a Spanish translation of the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking.

The Spanish translation of Form A of the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST) was administered to 50 schizophrenic (25 acute; 25 chronic) and 50 (25 = depressives; 25 = normals) nonschizophrenic residents of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Results suggest that this translation effectively discriminated between schizophrenics and non-schizophrenics on the WIST total score, time, and index. A cut-off of 25 on the WIST index correctly classified 98% of the schizophrenic volunteers.

Adult↗

Irrational thinking and negative emotionality in college students and applicants for mental health services.

Although Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) would posit that greater levels of irrationality and negative emotionality will be found in distressed persons, this basic hypothesis has never been examined. In this study, 60 normal university students and 45 new client applicants for mental health services completed the Survey of Personal Beliefs to assess irrational ideation and the Beck Depression Inventory, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the State-Trait Anger Inventory, the Problematic Situations Questionnaire, and the Profile of Mood States to assess negative emotionality. As predicted, the clinical group was found to be more anxious (p less than .01), more depressed (p less than .01), more confused (p less than .01), less vigorous (p less than .05), and to report lower frustration tolerance (p less than .05) as compared to the normal group. Overall, clinical subjects did not show higher levels of irrational thinking. However, clinical subjects with high depression scores had significantly higher overall irrational ideation in contrast to those in the normal group with low depression scores (p less than .05). Finally, significant correlations were found between overall irrational ideation and Trait Anger (p less than .01) and between overall irrational ideation and Total Guilt (p less than .05). Because the clinical group was significantly older by 10 years, replication with a larger number of subjects of equal ages is recommended.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Standardization of the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST) in a Mexican population: a multivariable study.

This study reports a study of Spanish translation of Form A of the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST) administered to 104 Mexican subjects: 40 schizophrenic (20 acute and 20 chronic) and 64 nonschizophrenic (10 nonschizophrenic hospitalized, 10 alcoholics, and 44 normals). A multiple regression analysis was carried out in order to evaluate the existing relation between each of the MMPI and WIST forms. The results suggest that this translation effectively discriminates between schizophrenics and nonschizophrenics on the WIST Total Score, Time, and Index. A cut-off of 23 on the WIST Index correctly identified 79% of the total subjects. The WIST, as well as the MMPI, separately detects in a reliable way schizophrenic subjects, but the correlation between the Index of the WIST and the MMPI 8 or schizophrenia scale by itself is not significant.

Acute Disease↗