RESEARCH
TCU’s Center for Oncology Research makes an impact
Oncology is a growing and constantly changing field, and with a $1 million grant from the University of Texas Southwestern Moncrief Cancer Foundation, nursing students at TCU are getting hands-on experience and training. The Center of Oncology Education and Research is in its second year at TCU and the program continues to be a huge success.
The center’s primary goal is to increase the number of nurses who go into oncology after graduation.
“There are shortages in many health care settings, especially oncology. Nursing students do not want to go into oncology nursing because they think it is a depressing field. But it is actually one of the most rewarding fields to be in as a nurse,” said Suzy Lockwood, associate professor and director of the Center of Oncology Education and Research.
The nursing students are placed in internships where they work closely with oncology nurses. There are currently 17 students enrolled in the program who have completed the initial oncology course, Aspects of Oncology Care, and two that are completing a clinical residency. Additionally four are actively involved in internships at the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders in Fort Worth.
Lockwood said, “We want to help students see and explore firsthand what it is like to be an oncology nurse. The students involved in the program truly enjoy it and we look forward to growth and expansion in the program.” (more)
Helping bi-lingual aphasics is the work of this professor
If you’ve ever tried to speak a foreign language, you know how tough it can be. The native speaker, unaware of your inability, rattles off a question. You hear the sounds but they don’t make sense. Or they do, sort of, and you know that somewhere in your brain is the answer. “Spit it out!,” you tell yourself. But the moment has passed. The questioner has given you that, “Are you deaf, or just stupid?,” look, and moved on.What a relief it is to get back to your own language.
But what if you couldn’t? What if your native tongue suddenly didn’t compute and you couldn’t speak it? Right now, over a million Americans live with such a condition, and this year another 100,000 people will join them.
When a rupture or blockage in the brain deprives speech centers of oxygen, speaking and understanding one’s own language becomes the nightmare known as aphasia. Aphasia buries our treasured relationship to words. Sometimes it takes years to recover a small piece of that treasure. For bilingual patients, it can take even more digging, says Maria Muñoz, speech-language pathologist and director of Harris College’s new bilingual clinic.
Long known as one of the few programs in the nation that offers bilingual Spanish-English training for speech-language pathologists, TCU’s new clinic is one of a handful devoted to treating bilingual aphasic adults.
Clinical studies have shown that bilingual patients benefit from assessment and treatment that takes both languages into account, says Muñoz. Her research focuses on improving the English-centered state of the art. (more)
Moving from your home to a nursing home or assisted living is stressful and depressing. Or is it?
There’s no question older adults face myriad challenges related to aging, but when nursing professors Linda Cox Curry and Charles Walker ’77 (BSN ’83) looked into the effects of moving to a long-term care (LTC) facility, they discovered that assumptions didn’t connect to reality. In fact, their research revealed just the opposite — such a move often provides relief from worries and improves quality of life.
“The symptoms of relocation stress were conspicuously missing from the interview transcripts, which was both unmistakable and surprising,” Curry says.
The absence of relocation stress-supported data led the research team to believe that relocation stress may be more related to a negative perception of long-term care rather than the actual move.
Sadly, those perceptions can be problematic. The diagnosis of relocation stress syndrome may be overused and might not appropriately address a patient’s psychological needs. (more)
Look past the color of my skin and how much money I make: Look at ME
The stereotype may be only affluent White females suffer from eating disorders/disordered eating and pressure to attain the thin ideal reflected in Western-based values, but recent studies have found it’s not uncommon for persons of color to develop them, too. There are even conflicting studies about which race or ethnic group is more at risk for eating disorders, excessive dieting, and body dissatisfaction issues.
When researchers dig into the etiology of eating disorders by race, they find the root of problem may be in the development of two types of outcomes: diagnosable eating disorders and eating disorder symptoms. Diagnosable eating disorders are generated from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the criteria and symptomology generated from different eating disorder sources are inadequate for non-Western or non-White populations because they are based on early research of predominately White women in colleges and treatment centers. This leads to underreporting and under-diagnosing of other populations.
In addition, researchers know individuals who self-identify as Hispanic, Asian, or Black make fewer doctor visits and are less likely to carry health insurance. Therefore, less information is documented about eating and body image issues among persons of color, which contributes to a deceptively low 3-5% prevalence rate for patients of color in eating disorder clinics. Eating disorders often go unrecognized in persons of color or are only acknowledged once they have progressed to more severe stages.
A more recent investigation of race and ethnicity differences found behavioral and psychological characteristics associated with diagnosing eating and body image issues. However, different races used different characteristics to control their lives. There’s growing awareness that current research models are lacking and may benefit by incorporating risk and protective factors such as body esteem, cultural identity, and addressing heterosexist biases. (more)
