This issue of the "Carnegie Quarterly" describes three projects that are being conducted by the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF). The projects are the following: (1) building community participation in health care at Lake Kenyatta; (2) the role of community education in disease control among the Turkana people at…

This manual is a programed learning tool for mental health professionals which teaches child and adolescent patient management skills to be used in a residential psychiatric care setting. The introduction to the paper describes the basic differences between adult and child psychiatry; behaviors that are abnormal for adults, such as having…

The demands by applicants for prompt emergency services and by funding sources for greater accountability along with long waiting lists resulted in the formation of a crisis unit offering brief psychotherapy in a problem-solving framework. The services focused on: (1) the presenting problem as it reflected a core conflict or longstanding life…

Recent communication training for health care clinicians has given little if any emphasis to systematic skills training in "giving" information to patients and others. The purpose of the communication unit presented to second-year medical students at the University of Calgary, Canada, is to enhance the clinician's ability to communicate…

Noting that medical consent forms traditionally have been so full of medical and legal jargon that they have been impossible for even the educated layperson to understand, this paper presents a model for revising medical consent forms to make them more comprehensible. After describing the model, the paper explains each step involved in using it,…

Based on a followup study of graduates from a two-year training program for Physician Assistants in Diagnostic Radiology (PA-DR) at the University of Kentucky Medical Center, results are presented of an evaluation of the first year of postgraduate work activities of the initial two classes (twelve students) in nine different radiological work…

In this paper, the authors report that in many of the cases they have treated, the living situations and/or environments to which patients were returning upon discharge, were not suitable for either maintaining, or improving upon, the gains achieved while hospitalized. As a result, a community residence training program, based upon a behavioral…

A major problem in doing linguistic research from tape-recorded material is finding specific tape content for later, detailed analysis of data. A project on use of language in medicine being carried out at the Cornell University Medical College has developed a method of cataloguing taped material that eliminates the need for transcriptions and…

The psychiatric/behavioral science component of the medical school curriculum at Texas A&M University, which involves a pediatric psychology rotation, is described. The content areas of pediatric psychology includes the basic curriculum areas of child/adolescent psychodiagnostic categories, behavioral/developmental disorders, and knowledge of…

Current research indicates that hospitalized children may profit best from preparation for surgery that is individually suited to their particular way of responding to hospitalization. It is likely, however, that preparation treatments will be provided for children in groups. Therefore, an attempt has been made to design and test information and…

While health services personnel in the United States receive the best technical training available, they are rarely exposed to a holistic health science curriculum which would enable them to develop the interpersonal competence needed in the delivery of health services. Indeed, the primary task of health services personnel is teaching patients to…

An exploratory study focused on how, when, and under what conditions clients with long term illness and their families view the Public Health Nurse Home Visit Service (PHNHVS) as assisting them in family health care. Data were obtained from home interviews and nurse records of 68 families served by 13 nurses in one San Francisco Bay Area locality.…

This paper highlights what the authors believe are the important issues and directions of change in the evaluation of mental health programs. The rationale for such evaluation is twofold. First, it provides a scientifically rigorous method of determining the therapeutic efficacy of the treatment or program, and secondly, these results can exercise…

The lack of research concerning instruction in veterinarian-client relations necessitates this examination of relevant studies in communication skills instruction in medical education. Issues discussed include the transfer of cognitive knowledge to actual behavior, evaluation of student performance, and course evaluation. (JMD)

A study of migrant health centers' access to hospitals uncovered financial barriers to private hospital care when the patient was indigent or without health insurance. This may be exacerbated as private hospitals expand in states with many migrants. Cooperative efforts between public and private institutions are in order. (VM)