Is patient education helpful in providing care for patients with rheumatoid arthritis? A qualitative study involving French nurses.

This French study explored nurses' involvement in patient education for patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The study design was qualitative. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 16 hospital nurses. Data analysis was performed according to Giorgi's descriptive phenomenological method, and supported by specific qualitative analysis software (Sphinx). The results showed the important role of hospital nurses in rheumatoid arthritis care. Patient education is a core part of nurses' work, allowing them to give patients information and emotional support. The interviewees displayed skills in helping patients learn to care for themselves. However, patient education mostly concerned patients who are already committed to their health care. Non-adherent patients warrant special attention; their acceptance of their disease, perceptions about disease and treatment, motivation, and autonomy should be specifically addressed. French nurses could benefit from more training, and could be aided by psychologists. Ambulatory services could also be developed for patient education in France, based on examples from other countries.

Emotional conception: how embodied emotion concepts guide perception and facial action.

This study assessed embodied simulation via electromyography (EMG) as participants first encoded emotionally ambiguous faces with emotion concepts (i.e., "angry,""happy") and later passively viewed the faces without the concepts. Memory for the faces was also measured. At initial encoding, participants displayed more smiling-related EMG activity in response to faces paired with "happy" than in response to faces paired with "angry." Later, in the absence of concepts, participants remembered happiness-encoded faces as happier than anger-encoded faces. Further, during passive reexposure to the ambiguous faces, participants' EMG indicated spontaneous emotion-specific mimicry, which in turn predicted memory bias. No specific EMG activity was observed when participants encoded or viewed faces with non-emotion-related valenced concepts, or when participants encoded or viewed Chinese ideographs. From an embodiment perspective, emotion simulation is a measure of what is currently perceived. Thus, these findings provide evidence of genuine concept-driven changes in emotion perception. More generally, the findings highlight embodiment's role in the representation and processing of emotional information.

Beliefs about power and its relation to emotional experience: a comparison of Japan, France, Germany, and the United States.

This research examined the concept of power in Japan, France, Germany, and the United States, as well as beliefs about the emotions persons in power tend to elicit in others and about powerful people's regulation (specifically, inhibition) of certain emotions. Definitions of power were assessed by examining the importance of two main components: control over self versus other and freedom of action vis-à-vis social norms. Beliefs about both positive (pride, admiration) and negative (jealousy, contempt) emotions were measured. Analyses revealed that the concept of power differed across countries and that the definitions of power as well as country of origin significantly predicted beliefs about the emotions that are elicited in others by powerful people and also the regulation of expression of emotion by powerful people.

Validation of a transient pain monitor in healthy volunteers.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Transient pain in humans is usually quantified using visual analog or numeric rating scales, but no assessment method has yet been validated in real time during such stimulation. METHODS: To validate a transient pain monitor, healthy volunteers submitted to stimulations generated by a CO(2) laser at graded levels of stimulation were trained to close the dominant hand around a handgrip dynamometer as strongly as they felt the pain, and the signal was computerized.The parameters recorded for each response were the peak intensity, the area under the curve, and pain expressed on a visual analog scale as a control. The volunteers underwent a second session 1 week later to assess reproducibility. RESULTS: The 3 parameters studied had a similar capacity to report the intensity of stimulation. The peak intensity showed many similarities with the visual analog scale, although a downward drift of the values throughout the session was observed. The area under the curve displayed a greater interindividual variability than other parameters, but it was better to assess low-intensity stimulation; a better fit for crossover designs was also suggested with the area under the curve. CONCLUSIONS: This study validates in human volunteers under a laser stimulation of skin the metrological properties of an electronic handgrip device to assess the intensity of transient punctuate pain (compared with visual analog scale). The transient pain monitor validated here should now be tested in the clinical context.