To developed an educational tool for an online OSCE to evaluate the practice readiness of the fourth-year nursing students. Online professional proficiency evaluation of nursing students can be a valid alternative to traditional methods. We designed a one group pre-posttest study. The 51 nursing students were recruited. We implemented a 3-stage of…

There are many roles that women play in their lives. The most important of these roles is being a mother. The mother has to deal with other roles and responsibilities in her life. She wants to be successful in her working life, have healthy communication with her baby, and fulfill her responsibilities for the needs of her home. It causes some…

The nature of maternity services has changed in the past 20 years, with a movement away from traditional (physician delivery in a hospital) towards other alternative services. This study examined alternative maternity services in Washington State, which ranks eighth in the country in the use of such services. Data were collected from birth and…

This presentation, which is based in part on a cross-cultural survey of East Africans and also on research conducted in Ethiopia, highlights the importance of traditional knowledge of midwifery. Examples of traditional skills in pregancy and birth care, and of child care and child rearing in several East African countries, are offered. It is…

This ethnographic study sought to understand, from the native perspective, the traditional childbearing values and practices of Coast Salish peoples and the difficulties in maintaining these in a society that is not oriented to native values and practices. Observations and interviews were carried out over a 4-year period on the Songhees reserve in…

The document describes research on womens' attitudes toward abortion and their decision-making when pregnant leading to either birth or abortion. The objective was "to explore how womens' perceptions of the option of legal abortion have affected their pregnancy decision-making behavior" and to note the impact of their particular choices on their…

Teen Outreach is a school-based teenage pregnancy prevention program designed to decrease the incidence of teenage pregnancy and to increase the number of at-risk teenagers who successfully complete their high school education. Begun in 1981 in St. Louis, Missouri, Teen Outreach was implemented as a national replication study in 1983. There are…

The role of anxiety, stress, and social support in predicting negative obstetrical outcomes was examined in a high-risk group of pregnant women. The predictor variables were assessed with separate self-report scales, including The Sarason Life Experience Survey, the Spielberger State/Trait Inventory, and a modified version of the Lazarus and Cohen…

An instrument for naturalistic observation in the childbirth environment is presented. Observable features of the parturient woman's physical state, stimulus contact she experiences, and themes of conversations with the woman are recorded using a system of categories to time-sample in cycles of 30 seconds for observing followed by 30 seconds for…

A comparison of the social structuring of birth and death in modern American society is proposed as a new area of study: cosmic status passage. The author compares the two events as cosmic, universal transformations. The similarities of the experiences are explored in six categories. First, the role of the birthing or dying individual is…

Recent literature on the topic of pregnancy resolution among unmarried adolescent women investigates differences between women choosing abortions and those not so choosing, and is organized into studies dealing with social correlates of pregnancy resolution and research centering on psychological variables. The social correlate studies address…

Adolescents contribute nearly 20% of all births in the United States; half of these are unplanned or unwanted. Negative health and socioeconomic consequences are associated with adolescent childbearing, and teenagers account for nearly one-third of all reported therapeutic abortions. Failure to use other than traditional research methods to study…

This symposium presentation outlines the activity of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in regulating the use during pregnancy and lactation of drugs which affect the fetus and neonate. When presented with an unexpected adverse effect of a drug or of a class of drugs, the FDA can take several steps. These steps include ordering total removal…

This paper explores the effects of the childbirth environment and demographic variables on the laboring woman's expressions of tension and pain. Four observable physical measures were combined into a behavioral index of pain and tension: irregular breathing, tension of the upper extremities (rigid muscle flexion), vocalizations of pain (a cry,…

This paper describes the development of an instrument designed to obtain systematic data on the physical state, medical and social interactions of a woman in active labor. Observations were made of primiparous women who were accompanied in the labor room by the father. Women who had received childbirth training and those who had not were included…