Advance directives that enable individuals to control their health care are underused due to lack of patient knowledge. Nurses can teach patients about them using adult learning principles, transformation theory, and skills for learning how to learn. (SK)

Older diabetic adults should receive memory training to improve their compliance with medication taking. The intervention should include comprehensible medical instructions, assistance with remembering the nutritional values of food, and higher order skills for disease management. (SK)

Describes the fundamental difference between complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and holistic medicine, highlighting holistic medicine's emphasis on the promotion of healthy lifestyles for practitioners and patients alike. Asserts that offering physicians-to-be more course work in holistic medicine could lay the groundwork for future…

Describes a survey of 740 board-certified family practitioners and pediatricians regarding their training in child-care issues, frequency of discussing child care during office visits, and their attitudes regarding specific medical and developmental issues related to child care. Indicates that 39% of the physicians felt uncomfortable discussing…

Equations for prorating the Wechsler Memory Scale--Revised General Memory (GM) and Delayed Recall (DR) index scores were confirmed in a clinical sample of 258 patients. These prediction equations for the GM and DR summary scores have validity for patient samples similar to those of the present study. (SLD)

Data from interviews with 83 occupational therapists affirmed the importance of a sense of connection in therapist-patient relationships and the predominance of helping and working together. A greater degree of reciprocity was evident than is usually assumed in such relationships. (SK)

Patients' use of Internet health information raises concerns about reliability, access to information meant for clinicians, and self-diagnosis and treatment. Nurses should become informed and undertake patient education about consumer health informatics. (Contains 25 references.) (SK)

Of 124 acute care nurses, 97% felt that patient education was a priority. Inhibiting factors were time, staffing, and patient receptiveness. Enhancers included having time to teach, receiving effective teaching guidance materials, and having access to teaching resources. (SK)

Extensive experience with the diagnosis of childhood-onset schizophrenia indicates a high rate of false positives. Most mislabeled patients have chronic disabling, affective, or behavioral disorders. The authors report the cases of three children who passed stringent initial childhood-onset schizophrenia "screens" but had no chronic psychotic…

Purpose. Most patients and families with dementia are cared for in primary care clinics. These clinics are seldom designed to provide the necessary comprehensive care. The purpose of this article is to describe nonpharmacologic protocols for the management of patients with Alzheimer's disease and their families that are administered as part of a…

Objective: Subcortical limbic structures have been proposed to be involved in the pathophysiology of adult and pediatric bipolar disorder (BD). We sought to study morphometric characteristics of these structures in pediatric subjects with familial BD compared with healthy controls. Method: Twenty children and adolescents with BD I (mean age = 14.6…

Objective: To evaluate the feasibility of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) implementation in a general child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient unit and to provide preliminary effectiveness data on DBT versus treatment as usual (TAU). Method: Sixty-two adolescents with suicide attempts or suicidal ideation were admitted to one of two…

Objective: Autism is a diagnostic spectrum of variable severity, with significant comorbidity. No existing standardized interview measures autistic features dimensionally. The authors aimed to develop a parental autism interview that could be administered to unselected clinical and general population samples that measures both symptom intensity…

Recent advances in health care technology have increased the number of health care decisions made by acute care patients and those who act on their behalf, known as health care surrogates. This study reports on the validation of a new measure, the Health Care Surrogate Preferences Scale. Designed to assess the willingness of adults to perform and…

The poor quality of oral health care for people with intellectual disability (ID) has been recognized, and the strong fears about dental treatment suggested as a major reason for disturbances of visits to dentists by such patients. Intravenous sedation is a useful method for relieving the anxiety and fear of such patients about dental treatment,…