ABSTRACT
The use of Assistive Technology with people with profound and multiple disabilities is a specialised subfield. Drawing on its authors' experiences and observations at a UK charitable foundation that offers specialised educational, residential and therapeutic facilities, this paper describes the distinct challenges that present themselves when applying AT to address the needs of this often-overlooked sector of the community. It is hoped that this will help raise awareness and contribute to improving the overall quality of AT provision in this area.
Subject(s)
Disabled Persons , Education, Special , Self-Help Devices , Awareness , HumansABSTRACT
Nurse practitioners (NPs) have an increasingly important role in health care provision in the United States. However, most nurses report that they receive little or no clinical training in the area of developmental disabilities. A core development team consisting of NP faculty members from three universities, one physician assistant faculty member, the parents of children with developmental disabilities, and educational specialists developed two multimedia interactive pediatric instructional modules in CD-ROM format: one involving a child with Down syndrome and the other, an infant born at 26 weeks gestation. Participants were required to make decisions about proper clinical interaction throughout the cases. The modules on CD were piloted with NP students at three universities. Effectiveness study results demonstrated significant gains in both knowledge and comfort level regarding the care of patients with developmental disabilities.
Subject(s)
Clinical Competence/standards , Computer-Assisted Instruction/methods , Developmental Disabilities/nursing , Education, Nursing, Graduate/methods , Nurse Practitioners/education , Pediatric Nursing/education , Adolescent , Adult , Attitude of Health Personnel , CD-ROM , Curriculum , Female , Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice , Humans , Infant , Male , Multimedia , Nurse Practitioners/organization & administration , Nurse Practitioners/psychology , Nursing Education Research , Nursing Methodology Research , Pediatric Nursing/organization & administration , Pilot Projects , Practice Guidelines as Topic , Self Efficacy , User-Computer InterfaceABSTRACT
Infants undergo a series of preventive and therapeutic health interventions and activities. Typically, each activity includes collection and submission of data to a dedicated information system. Subsequently, health care providers, families, and health programs must query each information system to determine the child's status in a given area. Efforts are underway to integrate information in these separate information systems. This requires specifying the core functions that integrated information systems must perform.
