[Effect of clinical teaching partner model [CTP] on nursing students' clinical training outcomes]

The Clinical Teaching Partner model [CTP] integrates theoretical knowledge with professional skills and brings the reality to workplaces. Closing educational and practical aspects in nursing discipline has been a challenging goal for nursing which requires cooperation between faculty instructors with nurse practitioners; such collaboration will led to development and promotion of nursing discipline. Therefore selecting an effective and efficient approach in order to integrate theoretical knowledge with practical experiences would be crucial for nursing profession. This study was conducted in order to investigate the effect of CTP on nursing students' clinical skills outcome. A quasi experimental, only post test design was applied. Study sample consisted of 1] three faculty instructors, 2] seven registered nurse practitioners who were staff nurses in three pediatric wards and voluntarily participated in the study and 3] fifty two nursing students which were in the 5th semester of nursing BSc. program and had eligible criteria to enter the study. Students were allocated randomly to the intervention [n=28] and control [n=24] groups. Participants in the control group, initially started their internship period in 3 pediatric wards and were evaluated by faculty instructors regarding their clinical skills at the end; students in the intervention group, then started their clinical training course in the same ward as control group, but their clinical education was conducted by the nurse practitioners who voluntarily participated in the study and trained initially in the nursing faculties' skill lab. Students' clinical skills were evaluated by nursing mentors via some instruments at the end of the educational period; in addition, clinical education outcomes and nursing students' satisfaction of achievement to apprenticeship goals were assessed at the end of the training period. Data were analyzed using the statistical tests including Chi square, Fisher exact test, Mann-Whiney U, and t-test in SPSS. Considering students demographic characteristics, both groups were homogenous. There was a significant difference in the students' clinical skills between two groups [P<0.001]. A significant difference was shown in the nursing mentors and faculty instructors' satisfaction of application of cooperative education method between both groups [P=0.004]. No significant differences were found between students' satisfaction of reaching to educational outcomes between both groups [P=0.058]. There were also no statistical differences between nursing mentors and faculty instructors' satisfaction of achieving to clinical education outcomes [P=0.109]. According to this study, CTP is an effective approach in clinical education and development of clinical skills for nursing students; therefore, application of this method is recommended in clinical nursing education

[ investigation of quality of life and factors affecting it in the patients with congestive heart failure]

Improving the quality of life is generally one of the main goals in caring of the patients with congestive heart failure, so identifying factors affecting it is significantly important. This study was conducted to determining the quality of life of these patients. 184 of patients congestive heart failure who referred to clinics of Tehran University of Medical Sciences were chosen by goal-based sampling method. Data collection was done by questionnaire, which was consisted of 4 parts: individual factors, factors related to disease, patient knowledge and quality of life. Data analysis was done by SPSS computerized software. Most of the researching samples in following dimensions had undesirable quality of life: physical activity dimension [44.6%], Psychological dimension [47.3%], Economical/Social dimension [49.5%], total Quality of life [46.7%] and had fairly desirable quality of life in general health dimension [42.4%]. There is a significant statistical relationship between quality of life and these variables: job, Education level, care giver, the intensity of illness, duration of illness period, number of refers to physician and hospitalization, duration of combination of hypertension with CHF, presence of edema, high cholesterol, characteristics of disease, the intensity of fatigue at the time of research and in last 1 month ago [p=0.000] and the kinds of using drugs [p=0.039], but there is not a significant statistical relationship between quality of life and these variable: age, gender, Marriage status, Number of people living together, Having therapeutic insurance, Smoking, Body Mass Index: BMI presence of Myocardial Infarction or other diseases and patient knowledge. Congestive heart failure has a negative affect on quality of life. So assessing the quality of life and promoting it is viewed as one of the duties of nurses and also as one of the major caring goals

[ relation between female teenagers' life style and osteoporosis prevention]

Some aspects of life style in adulthood have major preventive role from osteoporosis in adult ages. This research has been done in order to determining female teenager's life style in relation with prevention of osteoporosis. This research was a descriptive - analytical study. In this study, 760 person of female teenage students in high schools and pre-university centers of zone 17 in Tehran city were chosen by random classified cluster sampling method. In this study, the tool for data collection was written questionnaire, and method of it was answering to questionnaire. The questionnaire had 2 parts. First part included demographic characteristics, and second part included different dimensions of lifestyle in relation with prevention of osteoporosis, such as nutrition, exercise and physical activity, habits [smoking, using weight loss food regimen and weight loss drug]. The life style categorized as 3 levels unfavorable, partially favorable, and favorable. The collected information was assessed by SPSS software and descriptive and analytical statistical methods were used to reaching study objects. Results Showed nutrition, physical activity and exercise the highest percent of cases [51.8%, 57.7%] had undesirable lifestyle. Also 50 percent of cases had undesirable lifestyle. About habits [Smoking, using weight loss food regimen and using weight loss drug] the highest percent of cases [74.9%] had desirable lifestyle. Also there was a significant statistical relationship between life style and variables of education level [p=0.004], economical status of family [p=0.043], the birth number in family [p=0.001] and educational level of mother [p=0.005]. According to the results of research, lifestyle of 50% of female teenagers was undesirable. Findings of this research are attentive and need more assessment and planning by responsible people in order to omitting noted problems in lifestyle

[Comparing predictions of type of pregnancy using artificial neural networks and multinomial logistic regression]

Some medical and epidemiological surveys have been designed to predict a nominal response variable with several levels. Type of pregnancy is one of them such that it has four possible states: wanted, wife unwanted, husband unwanted and couple unwanted. In this paper we have predicted type of pregnancy as influencing factors on it, using two different models and compared them together. Regarding type of pregnancy with several levels, we developed a multinomial logistic regression and a neural network based on data and compared their results using three statistical indices: sensitivity, Specificity and kappa. Based on three indices, neural network showed a better fit and prediction on data in comparison to multinomial logistic regression. When relations between variables are complex, one can use neural networks instead of multinomial logistic regression to predict nominal response variables with several levels in order to gain more accurate predictions