Showing papers by "Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences published in 2000"

Quality of life in women with breast cancer: a review of the literature and implications for nursing practice.

Abstract: This article discusses the gap between an ever-increasing interest in research on the quality of life in patients with breast cancer and the lack of impact this research has had in the actual care of these women. A critical review of the literature is used to answer the question of how much can be accepted as established knowledge despite the often methodologically weak studies and contradictory results. Deficiency in research studies is no rationale for not improving nursing care in areas wherein there is an expressed need for support and assistance. Nurses are in contact with patients who have breast cancer at all stages of the disease and treatment, because they meet the women in the hospital, at the outpatient clinic, and in their homes. They play an important role in meeting the needs of these women. Ways of improving nursing practice at the different stages of the illness, from the pretreatment phase to posttreatment follow-up assessment, are discussed, and concrete suggestions made. This article addresses the women's need both for adequate information and for social and emotional support.

On the theory of system administration

Abstract: This paper describes necessary elements for constructing theoretical models of network and system administration. Armed with a theoretical model it becomes possible to determine best practices and optimal strategies in a way which objectively relates policies and assumptions to results obtained. It is concluded that a mixture of automation and human, or other intelligent incursion is required to fully implement system policy with current technology. Some aspects of the author's immunity model for automated system administration are explained, as an example. A theoretical framework makes the prediction that the optimal balance between resource availability and garbage collection strategies is encompassed by the immunity model.

Theoretical System Administration

Abstract: In order to develop system administration strategies which can best achieve organizations' goals, impartial methods of analysis need to be applied, based on the best information available about needs and user practices. This paper draws together several threads of earlier research to propose an analytical method for evaluating system administration policies, using statistical dynamics and the theory of games.

Changes in the importance of quality of life domains after cancer diagnosis.

Abstract: The aim of this study was to describe what domains in quality of life were considered most or least important by patients with newly diagnosed cancer and in what way the domains of importance changed during a 9-month period. We also analysed the impact of selected demographic variables on the important domains. The Ferrans' and Powers' Quality of Life Index was used to measure quality of life. As this index consists of one section measuring the importance of various domains of life, information about changing standards was available. The study sample consisted of 131 adult patients recently diagnosed with different cancers. The whole sample filled in the questionnaire once, while part of the sample (n = 41) filled it in four times during a 9-month period. Items related to family matters were rated as most important, while faith in God was reported to be of least importance. The patients fluctuated somewhat in terms of what was most important to them during the study period. Overall, the most unstable items tended to be less important over time. In addition, results showed significant differences in the importance of quality of life domains according to gender, age, educational level and cohabitation.

Cancer nursing research priorities: a Norwegian perspective.

Abstract: The purpose of the study was to determine research priorities among Norwegian nurses in cancer care, and to investigate implications that these priorities might have for future planning of nursing research. Differences between specialists in cancer nursing and other nurses working in cancer care, and between the current results and earlier findings in this area also were evaluated. Half the members of The Norwegian Society of Nurses in Cancer Care (n = 197) were mailed a questionnaire used in a similar Canadian study. The nurses were asked to select the five topics they perceived as most important from a list of 80 items, and to rank them in order of research priority. The response rate was 43% (197/464), and 75 respondents were specialists in cancer nursing. Quality of life was given the highest research priority in the total sample. Psychosocial support/counseling, communication between patient and nurse, patient participation in decision making, nurse burnout, and ethics also were ranked highly. In contrast to the others, cancer nursing specialists ranked ethics as their number one priority. Except for symptom management, the priorities given in Norway and other Western countries were found to be similar. These results might suggest topics for future research tailored to the needs of cancer nursing.

Tales full of sound and fury : A cultural approach to family therapeutic work and research in rural Scandinavia

Abstract: The concept of "culture" figured prominently in the development of family therapy. Recent conceptualizations, however, have tended to focus primarily on the ideational dimensions of culture. While not disputing that meanings and other ideas constitute significant features of group lifeways, this article proposes a return to earlier anthropological framings that incorporate material and ideational dimensions of cultures. To illustrate how his expanded concept may serve as a guide for therapeutic work, the article describes therapy with one family at a clinic in rural Scandinavia. We especially focus on the place of key symbols as historical links between the ideational and material dimensions of cultures. The perspective developed here is one of seeing cultures as sets of interpenetrating actions and ideas shaped by as well as shaping their practitioners.

Step Family as Dyads - Direct and Indirect Relationships

Abstract: INTRODUCTION Historically where divorces did not exist either because they were not permitted or specifically prohibited by law, marriages were dissolved by the death of one of the spouses. In many Western societies where mortality rates were very high during these periods, the combination of no divorce and high mortality meant that many marriages were dissolved when the spouses were still fairly young. Younger persons are traditionally, ceteris paribus, more prone to seek or find a person or to be found by a person for a new relationship than elderly persons are. Given this background and still thinking about earlier periods of history, one could conclude that many households containing a single parent (widowed) and his or her child/ ren were reformed into stepfamily households when the parent remarried. For example, in the years 1800, more than 25 per cent of all marriages in Norway and Sweden were remarriages of one or both spouses. Of these remarriges, many - most probably a large majority - involved children from either or both spouses' earlier relationships. Now two centuries later, 30 per cent of all marriages are remarriages and there are many newly formed recohabiting relationships, again many of them with children present. Nowadays, very few marriages or cohabiting relationships are dissolved by the deaths of spouses or cohabitants. Divorce or separation is mainly the background for remarriage or recohabitation and ex-spouses or ex-cohabitants are still alive. Since many of these persons have minor children living with either one or the others of the divorced or separated parents (and, in some cases, living in both households - alternatively - but officially residing in only one of the households), a stepfamily household is formed at start of the time of the new partner moving in. A stepfamily household can be a stepfamily but a stepfamily can also consist of members living in a number of households. For example, from a child's perspective, his or her definition of the situation can include both parents as members of the family as well as, for example, grandparents. Thus, the stepfamily as well as any family, can contain members from various and many households distributed over a large area. The terms stepfamily and stepfamily household are not automatically synonymous. Whatever concept is covered by the term,of course, is decisive for what it means. All social groups can be deconstructed into sets of dyads. The term family is traditionally referred to as a social group and can be seen as a set of dyads. As a group, the smallest family, for example, could consist ofjust one dyad: that of the dyad of a parent and a child or the dyad of two spouses. One person alone, however, cannot by herself be a group. In a similar way, one could deconstruct the concept of family, taking the dyad as the determining unit (Trost 1988, 1990, 1993). In the same manner in which nuclear families can be combined into more complex units, parent-child units, spousal units, other dyads can be combined in various ways. The smallest one-parent family would be defined as a family consisting of only one dyad, the parent-child dyad. The smallest "nuclear" family would consist of three dyads: one spousal dead, one mother-child dyad, and one father-- child dyad. The cultural anthropologist Murdock (1949), who was interested in analysing and classifying societies, based his scheme upon both the nuclear family as a preferred and typical form as well as more complex family forms consisting of a number of nuclear families. It appears that he never used the term to denote any actual family, only to denote societies. Murdock wrote that ". . . nuclear family, consists typically of a married man and woman and their offspring" (1949: 1). In his discussion, he adds that they live together, that the spouses have sex together and that they take care of their children. Murdock's perspective, however, is that of an outsider's, which means that the borders for inclusion as members of a family is his definition of the situation and not that of the members themselves. …

History and critical theories: discursive play and body work

Abstract: Schooling Bodies: school practice and public discourse, 1880–1950 DAVID KIRK, 1998 London: Leicester University Press. 148 pp., ISBN 0 7185 0100 4, £39.99

Co-Amenability of compact quantum groups

Abstract: We study the concept of co-amenability for a compact quantum group. Several conditions are derived that are shown to be equivalent to it. Some consequences of co-amenability that we obtain are faithfulness of the Haar integral and automatic norm-boundedness of positive linear functionals on the quantum group's Hopf *-algebra (neither of these properties necessarily holds without co-amenability).