Relationship between emotional intelligence, stress, and burnout among dental hygiene students.

OBJECTIVE: Emotional intelligence (EI) is the recognition and management of emotions within oneself and others. Limited evidence exists that determine whether EI is related to stress and burnout. PURPOSE: The purpose of this project was to determine whether relationships exist between EI, stress, and burnout levels among undergraduate dental hygiene students. METHODS: This study used a quantitative cross-sectional research design. The study instrument consisted of 3 parts: (1) The Emotional Quotient Self-Assessment Checklist consisted of 30-questions in 6 domains and measured EI; (2) The Modified Dental Environment Stress Questionnaire consisted of 39 questions in 5 domains and measured stress; and (3) The Maslach Burnout Inventory-Health Services Survey consisted of 22 questions in 3 domains and measured burnout. RESULTS: The responses from 57 participants were used (response rate = 93.3%). A moderate negative correlation was found between self-control and personal stress and a moderate negative correlation was found between empathy and emotional evaluation. Moderate positive correlations were found between self-awareness, empathy, motivation, self-competence, self-confidence, and total EI scores and personal accomplishment. Multiple linear regression analysis found self-control was a significant predictor of personal stress (R2  = .023, P = .023); empathy and self-competence were significant predictors of clinical stress (R2  = .085, P = .034); empathy and self-awareness were significant predictors of emotional exhaustion (R2  = .071, P = 0.006); and empathy was a predictor of personal accomplishment (R2  = .150, P = 0.002). CONCLUSION: Subcomponents of EI were found to be significant predictors of stress and burnout levels. Future research is needed to improve EI levels to tolerate stress and minimize burnout levels.

Food-coping strategy index applied to a community of farm-worker households in South Africa.

BACKGROUND: In South Africa, households living in informal urban settlements, in rural areas, and on commercial farms experience various levels of dietary variety, food intake, and household hunger. Low incomes, poor food production and availability, and low spending power characterize these households. Households employ various food-coping strategies to alleviate food stress or poor food availability. OBJECTIVE: To apply an existing food-coping strategy (FCS) index to assess household hunger and its usefulness in identifying the level of food stress and the patterns of food coping in farm-worker households. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted. Data were gathered from women (18 to 57 years of age) responsible for food provision in a small farm-worker community in Fouriesburg, South Africa. A structured food-coping questionnaire and a standardized FCS index were used to gather data. RESULTS: The two most common FCS used were relying on cheaper food (chicken feet, diluted soya-mince soup) or less preferred food (meat bones) and employing food-seeking strategies (gathering wild foods), followed by consumption of seed stock (maize) and reduced portion sizes (protein foods and side dishes), resulting in starch-based diets of poor variety. Seasonal strategies varied according to the level of food stress experienced. Patterns of food coping were identified. CONCLUSIONS: Negative FCS (limiting food choices, only consuming starchy staples) may cause poor health status. The FCS index was effectively used to assess farm-worker household food-coping behavior (early, clear signals of the level of food distress). These results could be used to allocate appropriate food aid (type of food) and to design nutrition education programs focused on positive FCS (food gathering or bartering) in a particular community to prevent suboptimal nutritional status.

An integrated technique for the analysis of skin bite marks.

The high number of murder, rape, and child abuse cases in South Africa has led to increased numbers of bite mark cases being heard in high courts. Objective analysis to match perpetrators to bite marks at crime scenes must be able to withstand vigorous cross-examination to be of value in conviction of perpetrators. An analysis technique is described in four stages, namely determination of the mark to be a human bite mark, pattern association analysis, metric analysis and comparison with the population data, and illustrated by a real case study. New and accepted techniques are combined to determine the likelihood ratio of guilt expressed as one of a range of conclusions described in the paper. Each stage of the analysis adds to the confirmation (or rejection) of concordance between the dental features present on the victim and the dentition of the suspect. The results illustrate identification to a high degree of certainty.

A technique to capture, analyze, and quantify anterior teeth rotations for application in court cases involving tooth marks.

Anterior teeth within the human dentition have a specific numerical rotation value. Bite marks show an array of angled indentations, abrasions, microlacerations, and contusions. These marks generally represent the incisal surfaces of the suspect's dentition reflecting the rotation values of the teeth in the dental arch. This study described a method for capturing and analyzing anterior dental rotations. The rotations of individual anterior teeth within the study population were categorized as common, uncommon, and very uncommon according to Allen's classification. In the absence of a large number of incisal patterns present in a bite mark, a single but heavily weighted tooth rotation could be of equal discriminatory potential to several common rotation values. No prevalence studies quantifying individual tooth rotations are available. The measurement of each individual tooth rotation together with its individual discrimination potential will enhance the evaluation of the concordant features observed in bite marks.

Physicians' difficulty with emergency department patients is related to patients' attachment style.

Doctors experience 10-20 percent of patient interactions as being personally difficult, but the sources of difficulty are incompletely understood. In particular, physician-perceived difficulty has not been studied from the perspective of an established model of interpersonal relationships. Our objective was to determine whether a relationship exists between patients' attachment style and the degree of difficulty experienced by their attending physician in an Emergency Department in Pretoria, South Africa. Patients of an Emergency Department (n = 165) completed the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised Questionnaire to measure attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. Their physicians (n = 26), blind to the attachment measure, rated perceived difficulty using the Difficult Doctor-Patient Relationship Questionnaire. Four categories of attachment style were identified by cluster analysis of attachment scores. Patients were divided into difficult and non-difficult groups using a cut-off score. Two percent of patients with a secure attachment style were experienced as difficult, whereas the prevalence of difficulty in the insecure styles was 'preoccupied' 17 percent, 'dismissing' 19 percent and 'fearful' 39 percent (chi(2) = 16.383, df = 3, p = 0.0009), supporting the hypothesis that the physician's perception of patient difficulty is related to the patient's attachment style. The degree to which physicians serve attachment functions for patients in crisis merits further investigation.