Assessing the impact of a study skills programme on the academic development of nursing diploma students at Northumbria University, UK.

BACKGROUND: The Government's nursing recruitment campaign has widened access for those wishing to enter the profession, resulting in some students entering university with clinical experience but little experience of academic writing or using libraries. For these students, the library and study advice staff have an important role to play in helping them acquire appropriate information literacy and study skills. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of workshops supplementing online instruction in study skills on students' study and writing skills, and level of information literacy. METHODS: A small group of pre-registration nursing students identified as needing support with information literacy and study skills participated in focus groups to identify areas of concern, and were offered four remedial workshops. A follow-up focus group explored whether the students' needs had been addressed. Further evaluation of the workshops' impact was completed by diagnostic testing within the University's information literacy programme, Skills Plus. OUTCOMES: The results showed that all students who attended at least one workshop improved their academic grade in their next assignment. Qualitative data indicated that the students' confidence level and information literacy, including referencing skills, had improved. CONCLUSION: Evaluating the impact of this intervention has provided the evidence to demonstrate the value of this additional support.

Supporting learning in practice in the EBL curriculum: pre-registration students' access to learning resources in the placement setting.

This paper explores access to learning resources for nursing students when on placement. It also examines, in parallel, the impact of the move to enquiry based learning has on learning resources use by nursing students. The increased time spent learning in the clinical setting means that a deeper understanding of the use of learning resources by nursing students is necessary. A questionnaire survey was completed by 247 nursing students at Northumbria University around their use of learning resources on placement. This corresponded with focus groups being run with University and NHS providers of learning resources to establish the impact of enquiry based learning. It was found that effective collaboration between different stakeholders was especially important. Nursing students are also becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of electronic learning resources. The nature of support for effective learning resources use by nursing students whilst on placement in the NHS has also been identified as key. The work has shown that it is very difficult to establish the impact of enquiry based learning on learning resources, as there are so many other variables.

Beta-chain variants in Jamaica newborns

In an electrophoretic study of 15,661 Jamaican cord bloods, 8 rare beta-chain variants were found in 18 subjects in addition to the common beta-chain variants, Hb S and Hb C. The heterozygote frequencies for Hb S and Hb C were 10.1 percent and 3.7 percent respectively. The most frequent of the rare beta-chain variants were Hb Korle Bu (beta 73 Asp leads to Asn) (7 cases) and Hb O su-Christiansborg (beta 52 Asp leads to Asn) (3 cases). One new beta-chain variant, Hb Caribbean (beta 91 Leu leads to Arg) was found. (AU)