A residential nursing camp program: effects on adolescent attitudes toward nursing careers.

Health policy experts predict that the current shortage of nurses will persist and perhaps worsen during the next 30 years. One of the most important causes of this problem is that too few youth choose nursing careers. A partnership was forged between university nursing faculty and nurse clinicians and administrators at a full-service hospital in northeastern Pennsylvania. The authors postulated that adolescent attitudes toward selecting nursing careers could improve after an intensive 4-day residential nursing camp program. We recruited local high school students generally interested in health care careers to attend the camp. Aggregate pre-camp and post-camp surveys obtained over 3 years demonstrated generally favorable attitudes toward nursing careers that improved at the conclusion of the camp. This camp program is an easily replicable intervention that successfully improves adolescents' attitudes toward pursuing nursing careers.

Surgeons and the spirit: a study on the relationship of religiosity to clinical practice.

This study aimed to identify the religious practices and beliefs of surgeons and the relationship between surgeons' locus of control and religiosity. Thirty-five surgeons completed a survey that included items from the Duke University Religion Index, the Salesian Center Intrinsic Religiosity Scale for Clinicians, and Rotter's Locus of Control Scale. Over 68% of sampled surgeons affirmed that their religious beliefs play a part in their practice, 47% attend religious services at least weekly, and 44% pray daily. There was no correlation between locus of control and religiosity. These results challenge the myth of the egocentric, agnostic surgeon.

An overview of pulmonary arterial hypertension: risks, pathogenesis, clinical manifestations, and management.

This article focuses on pulmonary arterial hypertension, including both primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH) and those forms of pulmonary arterial hypertension that are related to other factors, including collagen vascular diseases, congenital shunts, portal hypertension, human immunodeficiency viral infection, and exposure to specific drugs and toxins. Risks for different types of pulmonary arterial hypertension are identified. The common pathogenesis for pulmonary arterial hypertension is discussed, and includes an overview of the role of key vasoactive substances such as nitric oxide, prostacyclin, endothelin, and thromboxane. Typical presenting clinical manifestations, recommendations for screening of patients at risk, and key diagnostic findings are discussed. The mainstay of treatment is identified as pharmacologic, and may include diuretics, digoxin, warfarin, calcium channel antagonists, and prostacyclin analogues such as epoprostenol. Surgical interventions are considered as a last resort, and may include unilateral or bilateral lung transplant or atrial septostomy. Treatment options for patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension hold more hope today than they did a decade ago and are identified so as to guide the advanced practice nurse in recognizing and then facilitating the appropriate management of patients with this rare but disabling disease.

Impact of war on American adolescents.

PROBLEM: The impact of the Persian Gulf war on adolescents in Columbia, Charleston, and Sumter, SC. METHODS: Four semiannual surveys measured adolescents' exposure to and evaluations of the Persian Gulf war, and the relationship between this exposure and mental distress. FINDINGS: Of the sample, 814 (65.9%) reported being distressed by the war and 849 (69%) reported feeling better after the war ended. More than half the sample had a friend or relative sent to the war (n = 725, 58.8%), and of these, 458 were African American. Nine percent (n = 111) of the sample had a mother, father, or both a mother and a father in the war. CONCLUSIONS: There was a positive correlation between adolescents' ratings on the Negative Impact of War Scores and Mental Distress Scores despite the easy victory and public support for the war in the United States. Females and African Americans viewed the war more negatively than did Caucasian males.