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Residents (N = 32) of 3 skilled nursing homes participated in a study designed to document the nature of the stressors they experienced and the coping mechanisms they used. Medical issues were the most common stressors. The most common coping responses were prayer, reading, watching television, listening to music, and talking to friends and family. © 2009 by the American Counseling Association. All rights reserved.

The Reading Rescue tutoring intervention model was investigated with 64 low-socioeconomic status, language-minority first graders with reading difficulties. School staff provided tutoring in phonological awareness, systematic phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension. Tutored students made significantly greater gains reading words and comprehending text than controls, who received a small-group intervention (d = 0.70) or neither intervention (d = 0.74). The majority of tutored students reached average reading levels whereas the majority of controls did not. Paraprofessionals tutored students as effectively as reading specialists except in skills benefiting nonword decoding. Paraprofessionals required more sessions to achieve equivalent gains. Contrary to conventional wisdom, results suggest that students make greater gains when they read text at an independent level than at an instructional level.

This study examined student perspectives about writing by interviewing both typically developing and struggling writers in Grades 2 through 8. The findings revealed a progressive developmental pattern of writing knowledge in which novice writers place more emphasis on the physical product and local meaning, while more experienced writers focus on global aspects, such as meaning and communication with an audience. In comparison, struggling writers focus on product over process even at the secondary level. Educational implications are discussed and include careful attention to the developmental level of the students during writing instruction.

An extensive research base on beginning reading acquisition and reading difficulties, developed over the past few decades, has important implications for the teaching of reading. Unfortunately, much of this research does not appear to be reaching teachers, whose knowledge is essential for scientific findings about reading to benefit children. This article focuses on two key areas of teachers' research-based disciplinary knowledge for teaching reading: knowledge about children's early reading development and knowledge about English word structure. Evidence demonstrating a gap between teacher knowledge in these areas and current scientific findings is reviewed. Next, possible reasons for the gap are explored. The article concludes with suggestions for educators who are interested in acquiring additional research-based knowledge about reading.

Following less than 8 hr of instruction in the use of strategies to facilitate planning, self-regulation, and revising while writing opinion essays, a group of 3 middle school students with learning disabilities (LD) made substantial gains in each of 5 quality traits on which their papers were scored. On average, posttest scores of students with LD were better by 1 point on a 6-point scale than were those scores obtained by a group of LD students who served as controls. Participants' scores approached the level of writing performance exhibited by a group of peers without disabilities. The authors also observed treatment effects for number of functional essay elements; students who received strategy instruction gained an average of 1.3 functional elements from pretest to posttest. However, generalization to narrative writing was not obtained.

Objective: To examine whether an educational intervention that focused on physician communication training influenced physician ernpathic expression during patient interactions. Methods: This study used a quantitative research method to investigate the influence of communication training on physician-expressed empathy using two measures (global and hierarchical) of physician empathic behavior. Results: The differences in global empathy scores in the physician training group from baseline to follow-up improved by 37%, and hierarchical scores of physician empathic expression improved by up to 51% from baseline scores for the same group. Conclusions: The results strongly supported the hypotheses that training made a significant difference in physician empathic expression during patient interactions demonstrated by both outside observer measures of global ratings and hierarchical ratings of physician empathic behavior. Practice implications: These findings have significant implications for program design and development in medical education and professional training with the potential to improve patient outcomes. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The introduction of conscience clauses after the 1973 US Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade allowed physicians and nurses to opt out of medical procedures, particularly abortions, to which they were morally opposed. In recent years pharmacists have requested the same consideration with regard to dispensing some medicines. This paper examines the pharmacists' role and their professional and moral obligations to patients in the light of recent refusals by pharmacists to dispense oral contraceptives. A review of John Rawls's concepts of the “original position” and the “veil of ignorance”, along with consideration of the concept of compartmentalisation, are used to assess pharmacists' requests and the moral and legal rights of patients to have their prescriptive needs met.

In the United States, the number of HIV/AIDS cases among women of color is increasing, with African American women now comprising 60% of all female AIDS cases. Scholars have attributed this imbalance to social factors. The aim of this study was to explore the impact that relationship power has on heterosexual women's ability to practice safer sex. Five focus groups were conducted with 24 African American women, aged 18-57 years, residing in public housing in rural North Carolina over a six-month period in 2000. Findings suggest that women maintain their independence, despite inequities in relationship power and remain strong to make a better life for their families. Recommendations are made to promote and build upon this social identity that women have in order to help them practice healthier behaviors.

The influence of health and socioeconomic status on perceptions of aging and adaptation strategies of older African/Caribbean-American women was examined. Responses of 38 women (average age = 77.3 years) to: “What do you like and dislike about growing old?” and To what would you attribute your long life? were analyzed. Respondents were classified as: financially independent/healthy, financially dependent/healthy, financially independent/not healthy and financially dependent/not healthy. Narratives revealed declining health and restricted financial resources limited perceptions of opportunities for well-being. Despite differences in health and financial status, groups had some common strategies: avoiding risk behaviors, holding moral beliefs, optimism, altruism and spirituality. It was concluded that health and socioeconomic status had some influence on perceptions of aging and adaptation strategies.

This study applied word count strategies developed by expressive writing researchers to examine whether the words students use to describe and reflect on their field practicum experiences would predict practicum supervisors' ratings of their performance. The weekly journals of 66 students who completed a practicum at a mental health or school setting were analyzed using a computerized text-analysis program. As expected, positive emotion words and "insight" words were positively correlated with almost all dimensions of evaluation, with the exception of organizational ability, and "we" words were associated with dimensions that focused on interpersonal relations. These findings further support the view that positive emotion words and "insight" words are powerful markers of cognitive broadening and behavioral flexibility and that "we" words index feelings of affiliation and belonging. As one might expect, there was an increase in "we" words and a decrease in "anxiety" words over the course of the internship. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.