[Application of the health belief model to the prevention of occupational needle accidents]. / Aplicação do modelo de crenças em saúde na prevenção dos acidentes com agulha.

OBJECTIVE: To prevent health care professionals from acquiring blood-borne diseases (AIDS, hepatitis B and C), it is recommended that needles should not be recapped. However, these professionals frequently do not comply with this recommendation. The main purpose of this study was to assess this problem by using the Health Belief Model (HBM) to correlate the compliance with the recommendation of not recapping needles with: (1) these professionals' perceptions regarding one's susceptibility and severity to blood-borne infections; (2) their perceptions regarding the benefits and barriers to comply with this recommendation; and (3) the cues received to comply with this recommendation. METHODS: Nursing staff at a hospital were asked: (1) how frequently they have recapped needles in the previous month; and (2) their HBM beliefs. To quantify and measure these beliefs, Likert scales were created and went through a validation regarding their content (referees) and construct (exploratory factorial analysis) and their reliability analysis (correlation of two halves and Cronbach's alpha coefficients). The relationship of beliefs and compliance with the recommendation of not recapping needles was obtained through regression analysis. RESULTS: A nursing staff sample was obtained through voluntary cooperation (n=319). In this group, 75% admitted recapping needles at least once. Nursing professionals who most frequently follow the recommendation of not recapping needles have less than two years of professional experience and they are the group who perceive less barriers and more benefits to follow the recommendation. These results initiated a discussion on restructuring the professional training provided by the hospital.

[Communication in nursing at the organizational level--questions and options]. / Comunicação na enfermagem em nível organizacional--questões e opções.

The importance of communication in organizational nursing culture and the nursing manager skills to improve the process of communicating are emphasized in this work. Communication ways in the nursing setting and the nurses' view about effectiveness of these ways are related.

[Nursing and research in Brazil]. / A enfermagem e a pesquisa no Brasil.

The brazilian nursing in relation to research presented an important development in the last few years, with a quantitative improvement in the last decade. The brazilian researchers are concentrated in its majority among the faculty members and in the Southeast of Brazil. There are eight graduate university centers with several knowledge areas of concentration at master level. The doctoral level programs are all in the Southeast. There are resources available in research financial agencies for nursing, however the demand is still incipient. The Brazilian Nursing Association has tried to implement procedures which aim the development of researchers in nursing.

[An evaluation of the sterilizing activity of paraformaldehyde]. / Avaliação da atividade esterilizante do paraformaldeído.

Sporocidal activity of paraformaldehyde tablets was assessed by means of the Association of Official Analytical Chemists technic which is required in Brazil to register this class of sanitizing substances by the Health Ministery. According to this methodology paraformaldehyde showed sterilizing activity at the 3% (3.0 g/cm3) concentration in 3 hour exposure period at 50 degrees C in the presence of relative humidity.

[Knowledge of the motives that lead a woman from Vargem Grande Paulista to undergo a Papanicolaou smear--I]. / Conhecimento dos motivos que levaram a mulher de Vargem Grande Paulista a realizar o Papanicolau--parte I.

In this first approach the authors discusses the state of the Program for Integral Assistance por Woman's Health in São Paulo and emphasize the deficit of information on social epidemiology of women's behaviors related to health practices. They focus on the preventive Pap smear and associate the motives that yeld women of Vargem Grande Paulista to have it made. They analyse this knowledge from criterian proposed by KULBOK for posteriory apply it in practice.