Association between resting-state EEG oscillation and psychometric properties in perimenopausal women.

BACKGROUND: The perimenopausal period is associated with a higher risk of various mood disorders. Similarly, although resting-state electroencephalogram (rsEEG) brain oscillatory activity has been associated with various neuropsychological disorders and behaviours, these issues have not been assessed in perimenopausal women. This study aimed to evaluate quantitative relationships between psychometric properties and rsEEG rhythms (delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma powers) in perimenopausal women. METHODS: A cross-sectional correlational descriptive study was conducted to quantitatively analyze the correlations between rsEEG low-to-high band activities (delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma powers) and psychometric properties in 14 perimenopausal women. Participants completed a psychological inventory comprising the State Anxiety Inventory (SAI), Depression Inventory (DI), Behavioural Inhibition Scale (BIS) and short-form UPPS Impulsive Behaviour Scale (IS) before EEG recording. RESULTS: Results showed that impulsivity was positively related to the beta power, symmetrical at most channels (frontal, temporal, central, parietal and occipital regions; p < .05); but did not related to the delta, theta, alpha and gamma powers. The brainwave low-to-high bands, delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma power were not associated with DI, SAI or BIS scores. CONCLUSIONS: This study's findings propose that significantly enhanced resting-state beta activity is a trait of impulsivity in perimenopausal women. Therefore, results have potential implications for the preclinical or clinical evaluation of these issues in perimenopausal women.

Challenges faced by community connectors: lessons learned from a Taiwan public health initiative.

BACKGROUND: Effective solutions that meet the diverse community health needs of older adult populations are of critical importance. To address these needs, a nationwide community connector team-tasked with providing referral support to older adult populations and completing an asset mapping resource inventory initiative centered around the needs of older adult populations-was developed in Taiwan. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore community connectors' experiences and challenges. METHODS: Community connectors (n = 26) across four diverse sites participated in focus group interviews in July 2020. Interviews explored the challenges community connectors encountered in their roles; the strategies used to address these challenges; the asset mapping process; and on how they conceptualized their roles. Qualitative content analysis was applied. RESULTS: Three themes were uncovered: developing community ties, cross-organization interactions and professional conflicts. The findings show that community connectors face hurdles in uncovering community resources and that they experience considerable professional instability. The findings also shed light on the day-to-day approaches used to navigate on-the-job challenges and the steps taken to develop community partnerships. CONCLUSIONS: The experiences of community connectors provide important insights and can serve to illuminate the development of similar initiatives that seek to use community connectors for community health related purposes.

[The Establishment and Examination of the Reliability, Validity, Discrimination, and Difficulty of Nursing Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE)].

BACKGROUND: The objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) is one of the evaluation strategies used to examine the clinical competence of nursing students. More attention needs to be paid to establishing an examination that is based on the standardized protocol and on reliability and validity. PURPOSE: The aims of this study were to develop an OSCE that is based on a standardized protocol and to analyze the content validity and predictive validity, inter-rater consistency, internal consistency, item-to-total correlation, and the degree of discrimination and difficulty of this OSCE. METHODS: Based on the blueprint for OSCEs that use an 8-station format, this study used a descriptive, cross-sectional design and a sample population of 207 senior students who were preparing for their last-mile practicum at a nursing technology university in northern Taiwan. The study period lasted from September 2015 to October 2016. Furthermore, the validity, reliability, degree of discrimination, and difficulty of the OSCE were examined. RESULTS: An OSCE with an eight-station format was developed. The content validity index (CVI) was .85-1.0, inter-rater reliability was .80-1.0, Cronbach' alpha internal consistency was .53-.82, and item-to-total correlation was .36-.63. In addition, the level of difficulty of the OSCE was easy to moderate and the discrimination of the OSCE ranged from fair to excellent. Meanwhile, the OSCE scores of the participants appeared to be a valid predictor of scores on the last mile practicum. CONCLUSIONS / IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: According to the standardized protocol of OSCE development, an 8- station nursing OSCE format is reliable and valid, providing fair levels of difficulty and discrimination. The developed OSCE may be applied to evaluate the clinical competence of nursing students prior to beginning their last mile practicum. The results from the present study may provide a reference for nursing educators who are responsible for developing OSCE evaluation strategies.

[Construction and Application of Innovative Education Technology Strategies in Nursing].

The evolution of information and communication technologies has deeply impacted education reform, promoted the development of digital-learning models, and stimulated the development of diverse nursing education strategies in order to better fulfill needs and expand in new directions. The present paper introduces the intelligent-learning resources that are available for basic medical science education, problem-based learning, nursing scenario-based learning, objective structured clinical examinations, and other similar activities in the Department of Nursing at Chang Gung University of Science and Technology. The program is offered in two parts: specialized classroom facilities and cloud computing / mobile-learning. The latter includes high-fidelity simulation classrooms, online e-books, and virtual interactive simulation and augmented reality mobile-learning materials, which are provided through multimedia technology development, learning management systems, web-certificated examinations, and automated teaching and learning feedback mechanisms. It is expected that the teaching experiences that are shared in this article may be used as a reference for applying professional wisdom teaching models into nursing education.

Effect of Physical Exercise on Executive Functions Using the Emotional Stroop Task in Perimenopausal Women: A Pilot Study.

Exercise has beneficial effects on emotional cognitive control for the majority of the population. However, the impact of exercise on cognitive processes in perimenopausal women remains unclear. Therefore, this study investigated the effect of aerobic exercise on the cognitive processes of perimenopausal women using an emotional Stroop task (EST). METHOD: A quasi-experimental pilot study was conducted involving 14 perimenopausal women (Peri-MG) and 13 healthy young women (YG) who completed an EST before and after an aerobic cycling exercise. Mixed-effects models for repeated measures were used to analyze reaction times (RTs) and error rates (ERs) during emotional word processing (positive, negative, and neutral) for both groups. RESULTS: Compared with the YG, the Peri-MG showed significantly shortened RTs for positive and negative emotions (p < 0.05) post-exercise, but not for neutral words. In addition, the Peri-MG exhibited significantly increased ERs for negative words at baseline compared with the YG (p < 0.05), but this difference was not observed during the post-exercise test. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that aerobic exercise can enhance executive control performance in perimenopausal women. The Peri-MG exhibited marked behavioral plasticity in the form of reduced bias to salient cues that were significantly more sensitive to alterations due to exercise. This new evidence enhances the understanding of emotional vulnerability and beneficial susceptibility to exercise in perimenopausal women.

Substance use, gender, socioeconomic status and metabolic syndrome among adults in Taiwan.

OBJECTIVES: This study had two purposes: (1) To explore the mediating effects of substance use-as indicated by alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, and betel-nut chewing-on the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and metabolic syndrome; and (2) to examine the way gender moderates any mediating effects of substance use. DESIGN AND SAMPLE: Secondary analyses were conducted on a cross-sectional national dataset. The data from 3,107 males and 3,081 females of Taiwanese were analyzed. MEASURES: The prevalence of metabolic syndrome, education level, occupation, age, body weight, body height, and behaviors were collected. RESULTS: In male subjects, SES had no direct effect on metabolic syndrome; however, cigarette smoking and betel-nut chewing, but not alcohol consumption, were found to have mediating effects on SES and metabolic syndrome. In females, SES was found to have a direct effect on metabolic syndrome; however, substance use had no mediating effects on the relationship between SES and metabolic syndrome. These differences, in males and females indicated that the mediating effect of substance use on the relationship between SES and metabolic syndrome is moderated by gender. CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests that health care providers may need to provide gender-specific health promotion programs to prevent metabolic syndrome.

Neurobiological effects of exercise intervention for premenstrual syndrome.

Background: Up to 75%-90% of women have varying degrees of premenstrual syndrome (PMS). Exercises are recognized to be beneficial to regulate the negative emotions associated with PMS; however, the effects of exercise on sadness inhibition have not yet been investigated from the neurobiological perspective. Purpose: This study examined the effects of a single exercise intervention on the neural mechanisms mediating sadness response inhibition at the cortical level using multichannel event-related potential (ERP) recording in women with PMS. Methods: Participants performed Go/No-go trials while viewing of sad or neutral images before and after exercise intervention, and changes in the No-go-evoked N200 (N2) ERP component were measured by electroencephalography (EEG) at multiple cortical sites. The associations of PMS Inventory scores with N2 amplitude and latency changes were then examined using Pearson's correlation analysis. Results: There were no significant differences in N2 latency and response error rate following exercise compared to baseline. However, women with higher PMS Inventory scores (greater symptom severity) demonstrated significantly lengthen N2 latency at the Fz electrode sites during correct sad face No-go trials after exercise (p < 0.05), which was not the case in the pre-exercise baseline. We detected no significant relationship between the PMS score and N2 amplitude, either pre- or post-exercise. Conclusion: Women with higher PMS severity exhibited longer sad N2 latencies as well as slow down the speed of reaction to negative stimuli by exercise, suggesting that the prefrontal emotion regulation network is involved in PMS symptoms and is sensitive to the beneficial effects of exercise.

Prelicensure Nursing Students' COVID-19 Attitude Impact on Nursing Career Decision during Pandemic Threat in Taiwan: A Cross-Sectional Study.

The COVID-19 pandemic may cause a nursing shortage. Prelicensure nursing students who are exposed to high-stress COVID-19 events are related to defective career decision-making. This study validated the COVID-19 attitude scale and clarified how their attitudes about COVID-19 affected their behavioral intentions toward career decision-making. We conducted a cross-sectional study and recruited a convenience sample of 362 prelicensure nursing students from Northern and Central Taiwan. Two measurements were applied, including the Nursing Students Career Decision-making instrument and COVID-19 attitude scale. We used AMOS (version 22.0) to perform a confirmatory factor analysis. The Cronbach α of the COVID-19 attitude scale was 0.74 and consisted of four factors. The most positive attitude was the nursing belief factor, and the least positive factor was emotional burden. Prelicensure nursing students' COVID-19 attitudes were significantly positively associated with their career decision-making attitudes and perceived control (ß = 0.41 and ß = 0.40, respectively; p < 0.001). All the key latent variables explained significantly 23% of the variance in the career decision-making behavioral intentions module. In conclusion, the COVID-19 attitude scale is valid. Although the prelicensure nursing students' COVID-19 attitudes had no direct effect on career decision-making intentions, they had a direct effect on career decision-making attitudes and the perceived control.

Trend analysis of nursing intervention studies published by Taiwan nurses association between 1954 and 2006.

This study reviewed historical nursing intervention studies in Taiwan and analyzed results based on sample characteristics, methodology characteristics, and content characteristics. Historical studies were split into four groups, G1970, G1980, G1990, and G2000, based on the decade in which they were published. A comparison was then made to identify significant differences between G2000 and other groups. A total of 103 nursing intervention studies were analyzed in this study. Results included sample characteristics of studies conducted primarily by single-disciplinary research teams, although multidisciplinary studies showed a growth trend across decades, with the number of multidisciplinary studies significantly greater in G2000 than in other decades. Nursing practice was the main area of research, clients were the major participants studied, and hospitals provided the principal research setting. No statistical difference was noted in the above mentioned variables. In terms of methodology characteristics, questionnaires were used most frequently to collect data. A quasi-experimental design was the primary research design employed. Although the number of experimental designs has increased significantly in recent years, most studies specified their inclusion criteria. Reliability and validity of instruments were more clearly specified in recent decade groups than in earlier decade groups. Methodology rigor has improved in recent years, achieving a statistically significant difference between G2000 and other groups in all categories, with the exception of instrument validity. In terms of content characteristics, health education was the leading intervention type. Most interventions were categorized as tertiary prevention, with perceptual outcome used most often as the outcome indicator. However, no statistical differences in content dimension variables were identified between G2000 and other groups. In summary, the number of nursing intervention research cases has risen, and research methodology rigor has improved in recent decades. However, no statistically significant differences in sample characteristics and content characteristics between the most recent and earlier decade groups were found. Suggestions for future domestic nursing intervention studies based on study findings are made at the conclusion of this article.