[Obstacles, difficulties, and facilitators in setting up a research project funded by the Hospital Program for Nursing and Paramedical Research : Lessons learned from a mental health research project] / Freins, difficultés et facilitateurs dans la mise en place d'une recherche financée par le Programme hospitalier de recherche infirmière et paramédicale (PHRIP) : retour d'expérience d'un projet de recherche en santé mentale.

Nursing research continues to grow and become self-sustaining. It was in this context that we received funding from the Hospital Program for Nursing and Paramedical Research for our research project on schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that affects 1% of the general population, and is a crippling disease both cognitively and socially. Cognitive remediation and therapeutic education are nursing practices deemed suitable for the psychosocial rehabilitation of schizophrenia patients. We hypothesized that a therapeutic education program placed upstream of cognitive remediation would have beneficial effects. We planned to include eighty patients aged eighteen to sixty, randomized into two groups, one combining cognitive remediation and therapeutic education, the second using just cognitive remediation. Each patient was assessed using a range of neuropsychological scales. Due to difficulties encountered in including and following up with participants, our statistical results could not be used. We therefore turned our focus to the factors that facilitate and hinder the setting up of a nursing research project. We organized these factors into three areas : those related to the nurse ; those related to the care facility and the organization ; and those related to the research. The results were consistent with the literature and show how important it is to encourage nurses to be more involved in a scientific approach.

Freins, difficultés et facilitateurs dans la mise en place d'une recherche financée par le Programme hospitalier de recherche infirmière et paramédicale (PHRIP) : retour d'expérience d'un projet de recherche en santé mentale.

Nursing research continues to grow and become self-sustaining. It was in this context that we received funding from the Hospital Program for Nursing and Paramedical Research for our research project on schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that affects 1% of the general population, and is a crippling disease both cognitively and socially. Cognitive remediation and therapeutic education are nursing practices deemed suitable for the psychosocial rehabilitation of schizophrenia patients. We hypothesized that a therapeutic education program placed upstream of cognitive remediation would have beneficial effects. We planned to include eighty patients aged eighteen to sixty, randomized into two groups, one combining cognitive remediation and therapeutic education, the second using just cognitive remediation. Each patient was assessed using a range of neuropsychological scales. Due to difficulties encountered in including and following up with participants, our statistical results could not be used. We therefore turned our focus to the factors that facilitate and hinder the setting up of a nursing research project. We organized these factors into three areas : those related to the nurse ; those related to the care facility and the organization ; and those related to the research. The results were consistent with the literature and show how important it is to encourage nurses to be more involved in a scientific approach.

Interacting effects of vision and attention in perceiving spontaneous sensations arising on the hands.

Visual input and attention enhance tactile perception. But do they influence the perception of spontaneous sensations (SPS) arising in the absence of any external stimulus? We have investigated this by requiring subject to focus attention on each hand while orienting overtly toward it (convergent focusing) or away (divergent focusing) and to subsequently describe the properties of the SPS they felt. Subjects performed this task under free viewing conditions or while blindfolded. Enhanced perception of SPS was found under convergent focusing and also under free viewing conditions. However, the effects of focusing were different whether visual input was available or not. When visual input was available, SPS were enhanced in the fingers but suppressed in the palm, suggesting that enhancement and suppression operated to refine perception of SPS. When visual input was unavailable, only enhancement was observed, even in areas of the hand where suppressing effects were found under free viewing conditions. These interacting effects between vision and attention were observed exclusively in the left hand. A control experiment failed to evidence whether looking at different parts of the hand modulates SPS. We suggest that vision facilitates perception and, when interacting with attention, it enables better perception by promoting suppression of SPS arising in areas of lower sensitivity that may interfere with processing in more sensitive zones. The results are discussed with respect to mechanisms lateralized in the right cerebral hemisphere, and a role of SPS in the maintenance of a conscious image of the body is suggested.