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PubMedDate not supplied

Continuing nursing education: a perspective.

This article takes a renewed look at continuing education (CE) within the discipline of nursing. Increasing complexity in the personal, professional, and social environments in which nursing is practiced, as well as changes in the present educational foundation of nurses all signal a need for a broader, more comprehensive concept of the content and process of CE. The continuing professional learning process (CPLP) is presented as a beginning attempt to view nursing CE from a more comprehensive perspective. The CPLP is a multifaceted, helical, on-going process of learning, patterned and directed by the learner. The CPLP, which incorporates the multiple contexts of nursing and nursing practice, and which may encompass learning of an informal, formal, or academic nature, has as its end the enhancement of the professional and the profession.

Education, Nursing, Continuing↗
PubMed1987

[Effects of verbatim information on recognition of S-O-V sentences under incidental learning].

By means of a delayed recognition task, propositions were tested about the retention of verbatim information on Japanese S-O-V sentences based on spreading activation in memory representations. Subjects studied written sentences under incidental instructions, and a recognition test was made after a 10-minute delay. In the test, subjects verified whether the sentences were true or false for (a) original sentences, (b) synonymous distractors (verbs replaced by synonyms), and (c) non-synonymous distractors (verbs replaced by non-synonyms). In Experiment I, subjects verified original sentences more accurately, faster, and more confidently than those having distractors. Results of Experiment II, in which subjects retrieved two related sentences sequentially, showed an inhibition (fan) effect for hits. In addition, there was a facilitation (priming) effect for correct rejections. These findings provide evidence in support of the spreading activation theory of memory.

Cognition↗
PubMed1986

Mitigating circumstance information, censure, and aggression.

One hundred men received one of two levels of mitigating circumstance information either before or after being insulted or not insulted by a co-worker. Participants were then provided with an opportunity ostensibly to deliver aversive noise to the co-worker under either high or low social censure conditions. Physiological data and self-report measures revealed that participants who learned of mitigating circumstance information before being provoked exhibited smaller increases in physiological arousal and reported less annoyance than did those who learned of mitigating circumstance information after insult. Aggression data showed that angered participants evaluated their provoker more favorably and retaliated less when they learned of mitigation before rather than after being insulted. These findings supported attribution theory assumptions that mitigating circumstance information known before the provoking incident influences the individual's interpretation of harm, thereby reducing anger and the instigation to aggression. The reduced impact of information on aggression that is acquired after provocation may reflect the provoked individual's shift of attention from cues surrounding harm to a consideration of inhibitory factors for aggression.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Learning and interhemispheric transfer of visual pattern discriminations following unilateral suprasylvian lesions in split-chiasm cats.

A suprasylvian lesion removing cortical areas 7 and 21 and portions of area 19 and of the lateral suprasylvian area was placed in one hemisphere of split-chiasm cats. By comparison with the normal side and with cortically intact split-chiasm and split-brain cats, form discrimination learning with the eye on the injured side was severely retarded. This deficit could not be attributed to an unintentional undercutting of areas 17 and 18, since in three cases the laminae of the lateral geniculate nucleus showed little retrograde atrophy; marked degeneration was found in the medial interlaminar nucleus and the pulvinar complex. In addition, interocular transfer of form discriminations to the eye on the injured side was absent or poor, while transfer in the opposite direction was normal. A cat with a suprasylvian lesion undercutting areas 17 and 18 was unable to learn pattern discriminations with the eye on the injured side, in spite of prolonged training with that eye and normal learning with the other eye. Another cat with a suprasylvian lesion selectively removing the anteromedial and posteromedial portions of the lateral suprasylvian area showed no learning deficit on the injured side, but poor transfer to that side. A learning deficit on the side of the lesion emerged in this cat after forebrain commissurotomy. The results support the hypothesis of a major involvement of cortical areas outside of 17 and 18 in the processes of abstraction and generalization of visual information necessary for learning and interhemispheric transfer of form discrimination in the cat.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

Multidimensional outcome considerations in assessing the efficacy of medical educational programs.

BACKGROUND: To be accredited, schools must evaluate the effectiveness of their programs. Educators are looking for specific indicators beyond the traditional measures. Data from multiple methods, including indicators of student performance and of the institutional environment, can be used to determine if educational program goals are met. SUMMARY: This article outlines specific ways to consider three types of efficacy outcomes that are consistent with accreditation guidelines: educational, clinical career, and environmental outcomes. Specific measurable outcomes for each of these categories are derived from higher education literature: for example, learning approaches and information acquisition for education; professional behaviors and interpersonal dimensions for clinical career, and scholarship of teaching and teaching itself as a shared and valued activity for environmental outcomes. These outcomes address student assessment and program evaluation. Data from problem-based learning programs illustrate these outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Educators can determine if educational program innovations have met their goals by collecting efficacy outcome data.

Accreditation↗
PubMed1990

Catching information technology by the tail for problem-based learning.

While computer-based resources are appealing, there is currently little evidence that they are superior to less expensive, traditional educational technologies and thus their introduction will be slow until we learn how to benefit from them. The lesson learned from the orientation of problem-based learning is that communications aspects of the new technologies may be much more important and should be, at least currently, the focus of attention. Thus, rather than concerning ourselves with the tiger, since communications do not require particularly sophisticated equipment, the important approaches now appear to be to give students experience with the means to access and exchange information; with those skills they should be reasonably prepared to survive in the Information Age and take advantage of what technology has to offer in the future.

Canada↗
PubMed1984

Cognitive impairments in Parkinson's disease: distinguishing between effort-demanding and automatic cognitive processes.

The study was designed to define some of the elements of cognitive impairments evident in unmedicated Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. Unlike patients with progressive dementias such as Alzheimer's disease, untreated, mildly to moderately affected PD patients are efficient at accessing previously acquired knowledge. They also can learn and remember information that can be processed "automatically," using operations requiring little cognitive capacity. However, PD patients demonstrate relatively specific cognitive impairments for effort-demanding processes. These findings are clinically useful, but also help define the boundaries of psychobiologically distinct cognitive (memory-learning) processes.

Aged↗
PubMed1993

Medical decision making based on inductive learning method.

Medical decision making based on inductive learning has been studied in order to collect experience necessary for practical use of such methods in clinical and epidemiological work. The decision trees have been constructed by using the modified Quinlan's approach based on choosing relevant attributes according to their informativity. An inductive learning software tool, ASSISTANT Professional, has been used for experimenting. The variability in results has been studied under varying learning conditions. Two sets of data have been chosen for learning experiments: from a study on rheumatoid factors in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, and from an epidemiological investigation of aging. The results of this study indicate the necessity to determine inductive learning parameters for each particular problem. The pruning procedure is always recommended as it eliminates redundant elements in the tree. In problems with greater number of attributes, however, pruning itself is not guaranteeing satisfactory solutions. Interventions like the change of the minimal weight threshold might improve the situation. If these precautions are met, the method of inductive learning seems to be a useful guide in practical clinical and epidemiological decisions.

Aging↗
PubMed1996

Take-home informed consent for intravenous contrast media: do patients learn more?

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: In 1978, Morrow et al published the results of a simple technique for raising radiation oncology patients' levels of awareness about medical options. They reported that providing written information at least 24 hours in advance was an effective tool for increasing the baseline knowledge in this patient group. However, Morrow's cohort consisted exclusively of cancer patients receiving radiation therapy. The authors of this article are concerned with whether the encouraging results reported by Morrow are reproducible when applied to patients awaiting invasive radiologic procedures. METHODS: One hundred sixty consecutive outpatients awaiting contrast were block randomized into one of eight groups based on age, sex, and previous contrast exposure. For each group, half were given their consent form at least 24 hours prior, and the other half at the time of their procedure. All patients were tested at the time of their procedure to evaluate knowledge retention. RESULTS: Comparison between the two study groups showed no overall statistically significant differences either in knowledge (experimental group 4.7 +/- 1.32 versus 4.38 +/- 1.30 control group) or level of satisfaction. Additionally, individuals experienced with contrast failed to outperform those who had never previously been given contrast. There is no significant difference in the performance between the two sexes regardless of group. CONCLUSIONS: The providing of information 24 to 72 hours in advance of an invasive procedure does not have a beneficial effect over just providing the same information at the time of the study.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2005

The use of recognition information and additional cues in inferences from memory.

Goldstein and Gigerenzer's (2002) "Recognition Heuristic" (RH) was tested for its empirical validity in an experimental paradigm with induced recognition of objects. RH claims that upon inferring which of two objects (e.g., cities) scores higher on a criterion (e.g., city size), a recognized object will be chosen over an unrecognized one, if the recognition is a valid predictor of the criterion without considering additional object information. Trying to avoid potential shortcomings of former studies, we (a) used the city population task, (b) provided additional cue information only for recognized cities, and (c) had participants draw inferences from memory. Participants learned city names and additional information about some cities. They also learned that recognition and the additional information were valid predictors of the criterion "city size". In a subsequent decision phase, the additional information about the cities in memory strongly affected the inferences, suggesting that recognition information is clearly integrated into judgments, but by no means in a non-compensatory fashion that would dominate every other cue.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Computational models of the hippocampal region: implications for prediction of risk for Alzheimer's disease in non-demented elderly.

We have pursued an interdisciplinary research program to develop novel behavioral assessment tools for evaluating specific memory impairments following damage to the medial temporal lobe, including the hippocampus and associated structures that show pathology early in the course of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Our approach uses computational models to identify the functional consequences of hippocampal-region damage, leading to testable predictions in both rodents and humans. Our modeling argues that hippocampal-region dysfunction may selectively impair the ability to generalize when familiar information is presented in novel recombinations. Previous research has shown that specific reductions in hippocampal volume in non-demented elderly individuals correlate with future development of AD. In two previous studies, we tested non-demented elderly with and without mild hippocampal atrophy (HA) on stimulus-response learning tasks. Individuals with and without HA could learn the initial information, but the HA group was selectively impaired on transfer tests where familiar features and objects were recombined. This suggests that such generalization deficits may be behavioral markers of HA, and an early indicator of risk for subsequent cognitive decline. Converging support for the relevance of these tasks to aging and Alzheimer's disease comes from our recent fMRI studies of individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Activity in the hippocampus declines with progressive training on these tasks, suggesting that the hippocampus is important for learning new stimulus representations that support subsequent transfer. Individuals with HA may be able to learn, but in a more hippocampal-independent fashion that does not support later transfer. Ultimately, this line of research could lead to a novel battery of behavioral tests sensitive to very mild hippocampal atrophy and risk for decline to AD, allowing early diagnosis and also allowing researchers to test new Alzheimer's drugs that target individuals in the earliest stages of the disease - before significant cognitive decline. A new mouse version of one of our tasks shows promise for translating these paradigms into rodents, allowing for future studies of therapeutic interventions in transgenic mouse models of AD.

Aged↗