Carolyn Saarni’s book is one of a very practical series of titles by Guilford Press examining emotional and social development. The author stated a number of goals for the book including: writing about emotional development in mid-childhood and adolescence, examining emotion as a part of culture, and establishing a pattern of studying emotion within the lives of children. The book was organized into three parts: research and theories of emotional competence; skill levels of emotional competence and the clinical application of emotional competence.

In the first part, Dr. Saarni defined emotional competence as the functional capacity wherein a human can reach their goals after an emotion-eliciting encounter. She defined emotion as a building block of self-efficacy. She described the use of emotions as a set of skills achieved which then lead to the development of emotional competence. Attainment of the skills of emotional competence is crucial to self-efficacy. Dr. Saarni outlined her theoretical position in relation to theories of emotion and social learning and cognitive development. Her approach to theory in each of these fields was integrative and focussed on self-development with a strong social-contructivist perspective. I enjoyed the culture and folk theories of emotional regulation in chapter three. Also, chapter three contained an interesting section on parent and peer influences on emotional regulation, very useful for child psychiatrists who work to discern abnormal emotional regulation and mood patterns in context.

The bulk of the book was devoted to the eight emotional competence skills:


Awareness of one’s own emotions,


Ability to discern and understand other’s emotions,


Ability to use the vocabulary of emotion and expression,


Capacity for empathic involvement,


Ability to differentiate subjective emotional experience from external emotion expression,


Adaptive coping with aversive emotions and distressing circumstances,


Awareness of emotional communication within relationships, and


Capacity for emotional self-efficacy.



Skills one through six are based on developmental research on emotions but the final two skills are based on her experience as a clinical developmental psychologist. Each chapter contained organizing subtitles and ended with culture, developmental stage and gender information. In keeping with her leanings to Lewis and Michaelson, her most basic skill, ‘awareness of one’s own emotions,’ is one that requires cognitive ability. She stipulated that, to accomplish the first skill, (Lewis’ argument) the child must know how the body feels to have an emotion. A child needs to be age four or five to demonstrate this skill reliably. Of all the skills, skill four, the capacity for empathic involvement appears to be an outlier. While the material she presented was interesting to read, the role of empathy as a skill of emotional competence wasn’t argued convincingly. On the other hand, skill 7 had a great deal of face validity. It suggested that there is a skill of emotional meta-communication.

A strength of the book is its comprehensive examination of the skills she proposed. She covered many practical issues in emotional competence. The book conveyed a strong sense of children in their world and thus it was easy and enjoyable to read. A limitation of the book related to Dr. Saarni’s description of the differences between the theoretical models and how she applied them. There is a distinct difference between the social constructivists and functionalists. If child psychiatrists or residents are not familiar with the difference, this book will confuse their understanding. The former see emotions as arising from the development of cognition and the latter see emotion as not developmentally dependent upon cognition, rather, an organizing principle in development in its own right. Despite this, the effort and breadth of the treatment of emotional competence as illustrated in this book makes it well worth the read.

The Development of Emotional Competence

Concerns about the potentially corrupting influence of private industry on medical research, education, and practice have been growing since the 1970s, when the U.S. Congress passed the first anti-kickback law applying to medicine. Since then, Congress has banned self-referrals in medicine, enacted laws that regulate the commercialization of publicly funded biomedical research, and held hearings on conflicts of interest in biomedicine. Government agencies have issued policies concerning disclosure of financial interests in research, professional associations have published guidelines pertaining to financial relationships with industry, and scientific journals have developed conflict of interest policies.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM)’s Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice makes an important contribution to the continuing debate about financial conflicts of interest in medicine. This report reviews empirical studies, analytic essays, regulations, and guidance documents concerning conflicts of interest in medical research and makes recommendations for researchers, educators, physicians, institutions, corporations, and government agencies. The report consists of nine chapters as well as appendices that examine particular topics in greater depth, such as the relevance of psychological research on subconscious biases to conflict of interest policies, and a comparative analysis of conflicts of interest in nonmedical professions.

To draft this report, the IOM assembled experts from various fields including medicine, public health, law, health policy, ethics, philosophy, and economics. The authors acknowledge that collaboration with industry is a double-edged sword: Collaboration can produce important benefits, but it can compromise the integrity of professional judgment and erode the public’s trust in medicine. In crafting their recommendations, the authors strike a balance between protecting medical research, education, and practice from the harmful effects of industry collaboration and avoiding unnecessary administrative burdens that could undermine the benefits of collaboration. They make judicious use of empirical evidence to support their conclusions and recommendations. When evidence was lacking, the authors developed arguments based on their own experience and judgment as well as different approaches found in the literature.

The IOM report makes 16 recommendations for reforming medicine, some of which would require radical changes. For example, the report recommends that all academic medical centers, teaching hospitals, and training sites prohibit faculty, students, residents, and fellows from accepting gifts from pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or medical device companies, except in some circumstances, and not allow drug and medical sales representatives to have access to faculty, except by invitation in specified situations. The IOM report also recommends that academic medical centers, hospitals, and training sites develop a new system of funding continuing medical education that is free from industry influence; that research institutions prohibit investigators from conducting research with human subjects if they have a significant financial interest related to a product that would be affected by the research, except when the investigator’s participation is essential for conducting the research; and that physicians in private practice refrain from accepting items of value from pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or medical device companies.

The report also contains a conceptual framework that provides a foundation for policy recommendations. This includes a definition of conflict of interest (“a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgment or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest”) and criteria for assessing conflict of interest policies, such as proportionality (does the policy focus on the most important conflicts and is the policy practical?), transparency (is the policy understandable to those to whom it applies?), accountability (does the policy have enforcement procedures?), and fairness (does the policy apply equally to all relevant people in similar situations?). The authors also discuss problems with interpreting and applying the notion of an apparent conflict of interest.

This comprehensive and insightful report will undoubtedly have considerable influence over research, scholarship, and policy development for years to come. It is highly recommended reading for physicians, medical researchers, and medical educators.

Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice

《新世纪的医师职业精神--医师宣言》是由美国内科学基金、ACP基金和欧洲内科医学联盟共同发起和倡议,首次发表于2002年《美国内科医学年刊》和《柳叶刀》杂志.到目前为止,已有包括美国、英国、法国、德国、加拿大等国在内的36个国家和地区的120个国际医学组织认可和签署了该宣言.中国医师协会于2005年正式签署该宣言,加入推行《医师宣言》的活动。

Medical professionalism in the new millennium: a physicians' charter

In spite of evidence that more and more students are engaging in online learning experiences, details about the transition for teachers and students to a new learning environment are still unconfirmed. While new technologies are often expected to make work easier, they also involve the development of new competencies. This change may, in itself, elicit an emotional response, and, more importantly, emotion may impact the experience of online learning. Knowledge about the impact of emotion on learning broadly is available, but not about emotion and online learning. This study presents evidence of emotions present in online environments, and empirical data which suggests emotional presence may exist as a fundamental element in an online community of inquiry.

Emotional presence, learning, and the online learning environment

Occupational therapists believe that there is a relationship between occupation, health and well-being but there is little evidence in the occupational therapy literature to support this belief. This paper describes the results of a critical review of research examining the relationship between occupation and health and well-being. Twenty-two studies from the health and social sciences literature were reviewed using specific methodological review criteria. The findings of these studies provide moderate to strong evidence that occupation has an important influence on health and well-being. Because most of this research has been completed with persons without disabilities, further research is required to explain the nature of the relationship between occupation and health and well-being for persons who experience a disability which affects their daily occupations

Occupation, health and well-being

Defining professionalism in this constantly evolving world is not easy. How do you measure degrees of benevolence and compassion? If it is so obvious to our profession, what professionalism is, then why is it so difficult to teach it to medical students and residents? Today's definition of medical professionalism is evolving - from autonomy to accountability, from expert opinion to evidence-based medicine, and from self-interest to teamwork and shared responsibility. However, medical professionalism is defined as the basis for the trust in the patient-physician relationship, caring and compassion, insight, openness, respect for patient dignity, confidentiality, autonomy, presence, altruism, and those qualities that lead to trust-competence, integrity, honesty, morality, and ethical conduct. The purpose of this study is to explore professionalism in terms of its fundamental elements among medical students of Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA). This was a cross-sectional study carried out on medical students of UniSZA. The study population included preclinical and clinical medical students of UniSZA from Year I to Year V of academic session 2014/2015. The simple random sampling technique was used to select the sample. Data were collected using a validated instrument. The data were then compiled and analyzed using SPSS Version 21. Out of 165 questionnaires distributed randomly among Year I to Year V medical students of UniSZA, 144 returned, giving a response rate of 87%. Among the study participants, 38% (54) and 62% (90) were males and females, respectively. The grand total score was 170.92±19.08. A total of 166.98±20.15 and 173.49±18.09 were the total professionalism score of male and female study participants, respectively, with no statistically significant (P=0.61) differences. This study found almost similar levels of familiarity with all fundamental issues of professionalism with no statistically (P>0.05) significant differences. Medical faculty members should give more effort for the professional development of medical doctor. Henceforth, researchers believe and expect that the country will produce more rational and holistic medical doctors.

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Professionalism perspectives among medical students of a novel medical graduate school in Malaysia.

Personality dimension negative emotionality is known to be associated with academic achievement. The present study focuses on the influence of negative emotionality (neuroticism) on the medical students' academic achievements. The main objective of this study was to ascertain the negative emotionality scores among the first year Malaysian medical students studying in Malaysia and India, further to find out the association between negative emotionality and their academic achievements. The current study sample includes 60 first year Malaysian medical students from Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Malaysia, and USM-KLE IMP, Belgaum, India. They were selected by convenient sampling technique. The Medico-Psychological questionnaire was used to find out the negative emotionality scores among the students and these scores were compared with academic scores. The data were analyzed using SPSS- 20. Thus, the study result goes with the prediction that there is a significant correlation between academic achievement and negative emotionality. We concluded that negative emotionality has a negative impact on medical student's academic achievement regardless of the fact whether they study in their own country or overseas.

/pdf/study-on-personality-dimension-negative-emotionality-on8wu2a7iq.pdf

Study on personality dimension negative emotionality affecting academic achievement among Malaysian medical students studying in Malaysia and overseas

Test anxiety has an impact on students either negative or positive. It is normal to have exam anxiety that help the students to prepare them for facing examination on the other hand it can also distress the students ‘and disturb them physically, emotionally; cognitively that can result in poor examination performance. The current study had analysed the past reviews regarding test anxiety impacting student performance in their examinations. The purpose of this study is to give overview of mind-body interventions for first year university students who facing test anxiety. This literature review was completed using electronic databases. The current study had analysed reviewing 70 articles from year 1961 to 2017. The reviewed articles were regarding test anxiety it's negative and positive correlates, Mind-body intervention and its benefits. Current study concludes though the test anxiety is common among students the academicians and educationalists in the universities should have awareness about negative and positive aspects of this test anxiety that can impact students’ performance. Further, current study suggests that practicing mind-body interventional programmes in the university to promote overall health and wellbeing among student population.

Test Anxiety and its Impact on first year University Students and the over View of mind and body Intervention to Enhance coping Skills in Facing Exams

Introduction:Test anxiety is known to have an impact on students either negatively or positively It is normal to have exam anxiety that help the students to be prepared them for facing examination, on the other hand it can also distress the students that can have a negative impact on students’ physically, emotionally, cognitively that paves a way to poor performance in the examination Objective:The purpose of this study is to find the prevalence and levels of test anxiety in the sample population Methods:The current study sample includes 60 first year nursing students from Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Terengganu, Malaysia Thecross sectional study design was applied and sample population was selected with universal sampling The data was analysed using SPSS statistics Version 22 (IBM Co, Armonk, NY, USA)The descriptive data analysis was used for the analysis of the prevalence, percentages and mean score Results:The study results revealed that only 17% respondents no anxiety, 367% respondents experienced of mild anxiety, more than half 583% respondents had moderate anxiety and 33% respondents experienced of severe anxiety Conclusion:Majority of first year nursing students experienced test anxiety The implications of this study is giving overview of mind-body interventions to get helped to have normal anxiety during their exams; the faculty, lecturer or advisor should find out the main factors contributing test anxiety and also should have some wellness programmes for the students

Assessing Test Anxiety among the First Year Nursing Students’ of University Sultan Zainal Abidinb

© 2018 Vidya Bhagat et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License -NonCommercialShareAlikeUnported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/). *Corresponding Author Mainul Haque, Unit of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine and Defence Health, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (National Defence University of Malaysia), Kem Sungai Besi, 57000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. E-mail: runurono @ gmail.com; mainul @ upnm.edu.my Enrich Schematization in Children: Play as The Tool for Cognitive Development

/pdf/enrich-schematization-in-children-play-as-the-tool-for-4f89zlzj3i.pdf

Vidya Bhagat

Papers

Professionalism perspectives among medical students of a novel medical graduate school in Malaysia.

Study on personality dimension negative emotionality affecting academic achievement among Malaysian medical students studying in Malaysia and overseas

Test Anxiety and its Impact on first year University Students and the over View of mind and body Intervention to Enhance coping Skills in Facing Exams

Assessing Test Anxiety among the First Year Nursing Students’ of University Sultan Zainal Abidinb

Enrich schematization in children: Play as the tool for cognitive development