Frank Discussions in Verse: What Women Tell Each Other in Opal Palmer Adisa’s 4-Headed Woman

Opal Palmer Adisa presents frank exploration in poetic form on subjects like mental and emotional breakdown, menstruation, pre-marital sex, abortion, oral sex, masturbation, adultery, and pressures of family life, to name a few. She gives symbolic and metaphorical signification to what is still considered taboo, immoral, or unspeakable in certain enclaves and communities, relegated to the private spheres and spaces of our lives but needing to be uncovered, addressed, and resolved through open dialogue and debate. An overall message is conveyed in 4-Headed Woman: Poems that women’s issues are best dealt with when women support and encourage, provide solace and advice, share life experiences, and listen to each other. This supportive and communicative process need not always be immediate or face to face and can transcend barriers, as well as occur among intersections—of space, time, age, ideology, sexual preference and orientation, class, and race—as illustrated in the writings on the wall in the ladies’ room. The paper analyses selected depictions from the collection of women’s hidden and outer realities in the privacy of this public place/space—of how women publicly address the private concerns, problems, and situations they face in a society of paradoxical expectations. The ideas of a community of women and the complexity of women’s lives are portrayed in the symbolism of the 4-headed woman, further echoed in the 4-part structure of the collection that culminates in the experimental poetic performance piece which draws together each thematic focus of the entire text.

Border sexuality: identity exp¬eriences and inclusion paths of women with non-heteronormative sexual orientation born from mixed couples

The article examines the processes of identification of women born from mixed couples (one Italian and one foreign parent), to explain the complexity in the self-determination processes of women with non-hetero-normative sexuality living in multicultural families. Based on the intersectionality paradigm, we will analyse how biosocial categories such as sex, gender, sexual orientation, class, name, skin colour, family background may influence the self-definition identity processes and generate multiple discrimination. Inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s thoughts, we will highlight how girls shun widespread heteronormative models not only of mainstream society, but of the LGBT community itself. We also applied a methodology used in non-formal education, which allowed us to explore how the women interviewed put different aspects of themselves to the test, negotiating them in the different scenarios of everyday life, in an attempt to counteract situations for which they can feel stigmatized and oppressed.

Outcome-Focused Critical Care Orientation Program: From Unit Based to Centralized

Background An effective orientation ensures that new nurses are prepared to deliver competent care to patients. In organizations with several critical care units, opportunities exist to achieve standardization of core content applicable to all critical care areas. Purpose This quality improvement project, conducted in a large children’s hospital with multiple critical care units, was designed to centralize critical care orientation and standardize its content, as well as to measure learning outcomes of the revised program. Methods Before initiation of this project, a 2-day critical care orientation class was held regularly for newly hired critical care nurses. Nurses attended this class at different time points in their orientation. Critical care units also held unit-based orientation classes. Nursing professional development specialists and representatives from each critical care unit collaborated to redesign the 2-day critical care orientation class in order to standardize content taught across the organization, increase attendance at the class, and reduce redundancy of topics covered in unit-based classes. Interventions The redesigned program included online modules followed by 4-hour sessions that built on the knowledge gained in the modules. The sessions used multiple learner engagement strategies. Learning outcomes were evaluated using pretests and posttests. Results Between June 2017 and March 2018, a total of 150 nurses completed the redesigned program. Median posttest scores increased significantly from median pretest scores for each critical care orientation session. Conclusion The program achieved the goal of standardizing education and increasing critical care nurses’ knowledge.

WOULD MANDATORY TEACHING OF BLS, ACLS AND PALS IMPROVE THE KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE OF MEDICAL STUDENTS IN EMERGENCY CARE?

Background and objective: The medical students should be trained in BLS/ACLS/PALS in order to attain the skills for emergency patient management. The objective of the study is to compare the knowledge, attitude and practice about BLS/ACLS/PALS among the interventional and non-interventional groups both before intervention and after intervention. Methods: This interventional study was done among final year medical students and house surgeons in six Medical colleges of Northern Kerala.The study subjects were categorized into two groups,Category 1 received an orientation class on BLS/ACLS/PALS and students belonging to category 2 did not receive the orientation class. A pre-validated pretested questionnaire to assess the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of medical students regarding BLS/ACLS/PALS was distributed after the orientation class.The control group (category 2) who did not receive the orientation class also were given the questionnaire same as that of other group. Results: Total of 608 students participated in this study.Out of which 325 received an orientation class. Unpaired t-test done in pretest among interventional and non-interventional group showed p value>0.01 which implied that both groups were comparable. The mean scores of Knowledge, attitude and practice in the post test increased to 8.111±1.507, 2.328±.743, 2.065±.297 among house surgeons and an increment to 6.260±1.087, 2.277±.474, 1.659±.659 among final years in the interventional group as when compared with the scores of the non-interventional group. Paired t test also showed significant difference among interventional group while there was no change in the non-interventional group.(p>0.05). Conclusion: BLS/ACLS/PALS training among undergraduates can improve the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of medical students thereby increasing the resuscitation as well as the survival of patients in emergency care. Keywords: BLS, ACLS , PALS, Resuscitation

National Symbols as Commemorative Emblems in Nigerian Films

Nigerian films worldwide are the entertainment offerings of the nation, a burgeoning industry with steady increase growth rate and contributing substantially to the GDP of the nation. National symbols are objects, entities and relics representing an idea, concept, character that may be physical, abstract, religious, cultural, and linguistic among others in a sovereign context and beyond. Symbols or objects that connected together may not have anything in common in reality but by association and common agreement, they have come to represent each other in social contexts; a symbol may arbitrarily denote a referent, icon and index. In the case of Nigeria, the National flag, Anthem, Pledge, Currency, language, Coat of arms, National institutions like the National Assembly complex, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), images of past leaders, historical monuments like the Unknown Soldier (representing military men who died in the cause of protecting the nation), dresses are some of these national symbols. Apart from commemorative historical functions, national symbols are also used to represent hard work, credibility or truthfulness, as well as ethnic differentiation, religious affiliation, cultural background, social status, professional orientation, class distinction among others. Theorizing with Gate-keeping and Framing Analysis, this study adopts a content analysis design which is the study of recorded human communications, an objective and systematic analysis of the contents of any document that are manifest. It is often used to investigate the level of presence of a given content in mass communication. The study selected thirty video films between 2010 and 2015 through a systematic sampling with a random start. Content categories include genre of film, type of symbol, setting of symbol, purpose of symbol, cultural implication of symbol, positioning of symbol, symbiotic relations, prominence, and direction of presentation among others. The study presumed that the nation is replete with communicative, symbolic emblems commemorating historical, cultural, religious, social and family landmarks in nationhood but that these items of symbols are minimally represented in the films that stand as cultural products and identity of the nation in the international community. Findings of the study have dire implications for the critical assessment, representation and image or identity of the nation for the past, present and the future.

Introduction

What is friendship? At first blush, the answer seems obvious: Friendship is a voluntary association between people who enjoy one another’s company and care, at least to some degree, about one another’s welfare. But this definition, which would probably elicit few objections from most present-day Europeans and North Americans, does not address a number of contested issues in contemporary Western friendship. For example, is it possible for men and women to be friends? Must friends be peers in every respect, or is there room for age differences, or inequality of income, social status, or power? Can parents and children be friends? Might sexual relations play a role in friendship? Does friendship necessarily involve emotional intimacy? Are there contrasting male and female, gay and straight, working-class and middle-class friendship patterns? Each of these questions would very likely stimulate debate among the people I know, and the answers would probably depend on some combination of the generation, gender, sexual orientation, class, and cultural background of the respondent. Apart from agreeing that friends associate voluntarily, like one another, and take an interest in one another’s well-being, there might not be much consensus among my friends, neighbors, colleagues, students, and family members about the contested aspects of friendship that I have mentioned. Were we to go beyond speculation about the views of the people I encounter in my life, and conduct research on the beliefs about friendship held by a larger population of contemporary North Americans or other Westerners, I would expect to find even less agreement about what constitutes friendship. In short, friendship as we know it in contemporary Europe and North America is shaped by a variety of socio-cultural influences and ...

Study on the effectiveness of orientation class about rational prescription on interns

Background: Prescribing is one aspect of patient care where it is possible to do considerable harm if not done judiciously. The first experience of unsupervised prescribing begins during the internship year. Junior doctors are the most frequent prescribers in the hospital setting and are reported to make most of the prescribing errors. The Objective of the study was to study on the effectiveness of orientation class about rational prescription on interns.Methods: Sample size was 100 students attending orientation course at the beginning of intern ship. This study was done in Government Medical College Kozhikode, after getting ethics Committee approval. Total of 100 interns were included in the study. Pre-test was conducted to assess the prescribing skills by giving one case scenario, followed by a class on rational prescription writing. 14 questionnaires are made and prescription quality is assessed. Post-test was given after 2 weeks where the same previous case scenario repeated.Results: This study shows that orientation class about rational prescription during the beginning of internship improves the quality of prescription writing. Among the 14 parameters made for assessment of quality of prescription thirteen shows significant P value. So it is very effective to take orientation class about rational prescription during the internship period.Conclusions: It is very effective to take orientation class about rational prescription and periodic updating during the internship period improves the quality of prescription. As they learn the basics of prescription writing during their third semester only. Thus we can reduce the prescribing errors.

Geometric Model for Human Body Orientation Classification

This paper proposes an approach for cal- culating and estimating human body orientation using geometric model. A novel framework integrating gradient shape and texture model of the human body orientation is proposed. The gradient is a natural way for describing the human shapes, while the texture explains the body characteristic. The framework is then combined with the random forest classifier to obtain a robust class differ- ence of the human body orientation. Experiments and comparison results are provided to show the advantages of our system over state-of-the-art. For both modeled and un-modeled gradient-texture features with random forest classifier, they achieve the highest accuracy on separating each human orientation class, respectively 56.9% and 67.3% for TUD-Stadtmitte dataset.