Walt Whitman’s Birthday

Today marks the anniversary of the birth of poet Walt Whitman, who during the American Civil War served as a nurse in military hospitals. Here, an excerpt from his poem “The Wound-Dresser” in the book of his wartime poetry, Drum Taps:

I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep;

But a day or two more—for see, the frame all wasted and sinking,

And the yellow-blue countenance see.

 

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet wound,

Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive,

While the attendant stands behind aside me, holding the tray and pail.

 

I am faithful, I do not give out;

The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,

These and more I dress with impassive hand—(yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame.)

CFP: SERI Conferences

The South-East Research Institute is now accepting submissions for upcoming conferences. SERI conferences bring together academics, health care professionals, industrials, entrepreneurs and business leaders to share news, views and developments and to analyze strategic developments in health care administration, business and technology, to disseminate scientific discovery to promote innovation and inspire change. The conferences offer opportunities to develop practical skills, debate important issues, exchange ideas and interact with your peers. Within two weeks of receiving your paper we will email you a notification of acceptance or rejection. If accepted, additional conference and registration-specific information will be included. All accepted papers are double-blind, peer reviewed and will be published in our conference proceedings (unless otherwise requested).

Huntington Beach, California – July 28 & 29, 2011. Final Papers/Abstracts are due by July 7, 2011. Conference Registration Fees must be received by July 1, 2011. Topics at the Conference will include:

• Innovation in Nursing Education and Practices
• Advances in Nursing Management
• The Business of Healthcare
• Legal, Social, and Ethical Issues in Business and Healthcare
• Technology in Business
• Financing of Healthcare

Submit papers to staff@seri-us.org by July 7, 2011. Please visit http://seri-usa.org/guidelines.html  for submission guidelines  

Washington, D.C.- September 1 & 2, 2011. Final Papers/Abstracts are due by August 11, 2011. Conference Registration Fees must be received by August 4, 2011. Topics at the Conference will include:

• Innovation in Nursing Education and Practices
• Advances in Nursing Management
• The Business of Healthcare
• Legal, Social, and Ethical Issues in Business and Healthcare
• Technology in Business
• Financing of Healthcare

Submit papers to staff@seri-us.org  by August 11, 2011. Please visit http://seri-usa.org/guidelines.html  for submission guidelines

Review: Wood & Ross-Kerr, Basic Steps in Planning Nursing Research

Wood, M. J., & Ross-Kerr, J. C. (2011).  Basic steps in planning nursing research:  From question to proposal (7th Ed.).  Sudbury, MA:  Jones and Bartlett Publishing. 511 pp.

Wood and Ross-Kerr, both nursing faculty members at the University of Alberta, have developed a guide for planning nursing research in their 2011 edition of Basic Steps in Planning Nursing Research:  From Question to Proposal.  This text offers a basic description of how to design a research project, from conception to implementation and would be a useful supplemental text for a beginning graduate course or for an advanced undergraduate course.  Undergraduate nursing students who are in an honors program might benefit from using this text to guide them in developing a research project or proposal.  The content of this text is presented in simple, easy-to-follow chapters.  One of the many strengths of this text is the appendices, which contain multiple examples of research proposals for several different research designs.  While valuable for its ability to inform and guide budding nurse researchers, this book is not analogous to a standard research methods textbook for an undergraduate research methods course and would most likely be used as a supplemental resource in such a course. 

–Heather Evans, PhD, RNC, CLC, Assistant Clinical Professor, School of Nursing, University of Connecticut

CFS: Alternative and Complementary Therapies

Alternative and Complementary Therapies provides the latest information on evaluating alternative therapies and integrating them into your clinical practice. Topics include: botanical medicine, vitamins and supplements, nutrition and diet, mind-body medicine, acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, ayurveda, indigenous medicine systems, homeopath, naturopathy, yoga & meditation, manual therapies, energy medicine, and spirituality and health.

Journal features include:

• Clinical applications of CAM therapies
• Profiles of innovative clinicians
• Profiles of successful new integrative clinics
• Integrative approaches for preventing and treating chronic illness
• Herbal alternatives to prescription drugs
• Mind-body approaches to disease management
• Nutraceuticals and their applications in clinical care
• Food as medicine
• The biochemistry of natural medicine
• Practical approaches to creating and expanding your holistic practice
• Legal matters
• Medical literature review

Alternative and Complementary Therapies welcomes the submission of clinical, practical papers for physicians and other healthcare providers involved in the integrative medicine and CAM. If you would like to submit a paper for consideration for publication, please contact Sheldon Lewis slewis@liebertpub.com

More information at: http://www.liebertpub.com/products/product.aspx?pid=3

How Reliable Is Peer Reviewed Health Science Research?

Two articles questioning the reliability of peer-reviewed research came to our attention recently.

David H. Freeman’s “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science” (Atlantic Monthly, November 2010) asserts that “much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors–to a striking extent–still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice?”

More recently, Jennifer Howard’s “Despite Warnings, Biomedical Scholars Cite Hundreds of Retracted Papers” (Chronicle of Higher Education, April 15, 2011), claims that “a large number of retracted papers continue to be cited long after they have been flagged as untrustworthy.” The article is available on line to subscribers.

Nurse Valinoti/Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

Recommended reading, Eileen Valinoti’s first-person narrative on the Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine:

After graduating from nursing school in 1954, I went back home until a hospital apartment became available. My mother bragged about my achievement to all the neighbors (my nursing expertise; my brilliant grades; my job offers overflowing in the mailbox). Our working class neighbors began to seek my advice on every imaginable affliction—arriving unannounced after dinner to show me their strange rashes, moles, warts and boils. I was amazed by their blind faith. Overnight it seemed my nursing degree had given me magical powers. Anxious to please, I did my best, keeping my answers as vague as possible.

Continue reading here . . .

CFS: Paradigm Shift

Paradigm Shift is a new interdisciplinary peer-reviewed online journal of essays that challenge the basic assumptions underlying much research about peoples of African descent, particularly, but not limited to legacy Black Americans. The research under investigation may be in the social and behavioral sciences, the life and biomedical sciences, or the arts and humanities. Paradigm Shift is published once a year, in March, through the Institute of African American Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: http://www.unc.edu/iaar/  The journal seeks electronic submissions of essays of 4000 to 5000 words that present novel alternative explanations, insights, and perspectives on various topics of relevance to research on African Americans. Authors are encouraged to send their essays to iaar@unc.edu , attention Paradigm Shift Editor.

Institute of African American Research, Fatimah Jackson, Director, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,  Attention: Paradigm Shift Editor, 919-843-1898, Email: jamba@berkeley.edu

Essay Competition: Mental Health and Substance Use

Mental Health and Substance Use announces its 2011 Essay Competition. Closing Date: 01 December 2011

As well as prizes for students who are undertaking, or have recently completed, a mental health and substance use (coexisting, dual diagnosis, co-occurring, co-morbid) course, at any level of study, there is a section for new writers who have not previously published in this field.

Complete information: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pdf/2011_essay_competition_instructions.pdf

The journal includes:

• Research papers
• Conceptual exploration and analysis
• Critical reviews
• Original papers
• Case studies
• Media reviews
• Clinical practice
• Policy and procedure
• Service user and carer perspectives
• Service development
• Legal and ethical issues
• Transcultural and ethnicity issues
• Debate

Information about the journal: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rmhs

Chronicle: Budget Straits Mean Grant-Success Rate Will Hit All-Time Low, NIH Warns

Reported yesterday in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Budget cuts forced by Congress will probably mean that university medical researchers seeking federal funds will have their lowest success rate in history, National Institutes of Health officials told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Only about one in six grant applications to the NIH are expected to be approved, the agency’s director, Francis S. Collins, told a Senate appropriations subcommittee. The NIH awarded about 9,300 research grants last year, with an application success rate of about 20 percent, Dr. Collins said.

Summer Break

NursingWriting now begins its summer mode, with fewer and less frequent postings. We hope your summer is productive and restorative. -TLL