Red Flower's Journal of Psychiatric Nursing

Background: Minor physical anomalies are considered as neurodevelopmental abnormalities. The frequency of minor physical anomalies was considerably higher in patients with schizophrenia as compared to healthy controls. Aims: To compare the frequency of minor physical anomaliess in late onset schizophrenia and healthy control group. Methodology: This study was Hospital based cross sectional comparative study by purposive sampling method which included 41 patients with late onset schizophrenia and 41 healthy controls assessed on Waldrop’s Minor physical anomalies scale. Results: 63.4% (26) of the cases with late onset schizophrenia had one or the other minor physical anomalies and adherent ear lobe was the most common MPA which is statistically significant as compared to healthy controls. Conclusions: Presence of more minor physical anomalies in late onset schizophrenia indicates the possible neurodevelopmental etiology similar to early onset schizophrenia.

Keywords: Minor physical anomalies; Schizophrenia

Psychiatric nursing is the science and art of providing protective, therapeutic, supportive, physical and social care to the people too ill to be completely responsible for management for their own behavior. For clients in mental hospitals and other institutional settings, the psychiatric nurse is the primary health care provider and is, in fact, a primary mental health care nurse. Background of the study: The role of nurses and professional nursing has expanded rapidly within the past few decades to include expertise specialization, autonomy and accountability, both from a legal and ethical perspective. This expansion has forced new concern among nurses and a heightened awareness of the interaction of legal and ethical principles. Ethics is the science relating to moral actions and one’s value system. Many nurses envision ethics are dealing with principles or mortality and what is right or wrong. Ethics are concern with motivates and attitudes and the relationships of these attitudes for the individuals.

Keywords: Ethics; Psychiatric nursing.

Background of the study: Substance abuse is a growing problem in India, in 1956 by the World Health Organization and the American Psychiatric Association, substance abuse is “the illicit consumption of any naturally occurring or pharmaceutical substance for the purpose of changing the way in which a person feels, thinks or behaves, without understanding or taking into consideration the damaging physical and mental side-effects that are caused. Objective: To assess the knowledge and attitude. To determine the correlation and association between knowledge and attitude of ITI students regarding the ill-effects of substance abuse with selected socio-demographic variables. Design: A descriptive design was used for the study. Results: The knowledge mean score of ITI students was 9.26 with Standard deviation of ±1.91 median of 10. The attitude mean score of ITI Students was 18.13 with Standard deviation of ±1.58 median of 18. Study subjects according to the level of Knowledge among ITI students majority 48 (80%) had moderate knowledge and inadequate knowledge 7 (11.66%). Adequate knowledge only 5 (8.33%) of ITI students the level of attitude among ITI students majority 32 (53.33%) had positive attitude and 15 (25%) Favorable attitude only 13 (21.66%) of ITI students had Negative attitude. r = 0.48 (0 > r > +1), hence there was moderately positive correlation between knowledge and attitude. Since there was positive correlation research hypotheses is accepted. Chi-square value is significant between knowledge regarding ill-effects of substance abuse. With personal variables like association among the like educational level of students, type of family value is significant between Level of attitude regarding ill-effects of substance abuse with personal variables like age, type of family, percentage of SSLC and rest all were not significant at 0.05 level. Conclusion: Majority of ITI Students had moderate knowledge regarding ill-effects of substance. Most of the ITI Students had positive attitude towards ill effects of substance.

Keywords: Knowledge; Attitude; Substance abuse; ITI students.

A Comparative study was done to assess the academic stress among final year BSc nursing students in selected self-financing government and private colleges of Ernakulum. From selected colleges of Ernakulam, 100 samples were taken for the study. The tools used for the study comprised Socio-demographic data and Academic Stress Scale Majority (73%) of the samples belonged to Christian community, and females between 21 and 24 years of age group. Forty percentage of their fathers are educated up to high school and 43% of the mothers up to high school, 32% of their fathers are daily wages and 79% of the mothers are housewives. Fifty five percentage of the subjects were from rural Area and 54% of the samples spend 4–6 hr for study. Majority (80%) of the subjects spend 1–3 hr for extracurricular activities. The study findings revealed that the level of academic stress is almost same in Government (111.4 ± 23.66) and private (108 6 ± 23.74). In itemwise analysis the p-values corresponding to AS- score for item 23 (lack of communication between teachers and students) and AS-score for item 40 (Inadequate lab and library facilities) are less than the significance level 0.05; the difference in AS- score for item 23 and AS-score for item 40 between Government and private is significant. AS-score for item 23: The weighted mean confirms that the AS- score for item 23 (Lack of communication between teachers and students) is significantly higher in Government (3.28) compared to private (2.72). The mean rank also confirms that AS-score for item 23 is significantly higher in Government (56.9) compared to private (44.1). AS-score for item 40: The weighted mean confirms that the AS-score for item 40 (Inadequate lab and library facilities) is significantly higher in Government (2.56) compared to private (2.00). The mean rank also confirms that AS-score for item 40 is significantly higher in Government (56.8) compared to private (44.2). Therefore, the research hypothesis that there is significant difference between academic stress of final year students of government and private college is partially accepted. There is significant association between academic stress and education of father, mother and occupation of mother. Therefore, the research hypothesis that there is significant association between academic stress and education of father, mother and mother’s education is accepted. There is no significant association between academic stress and other demographical variables.

Keywords: Comparative; Academic stress; Nursing Students.

A new case of dementia every three seconds is a strong message that highlights how dementia will be the biggest challenges faced by the growing elderly population across the globe in the coming years. In India, the situation is no different; since there is no cure for dementia research plays a crucial role in improving the quality of care. Research in the field of dementia must be encouraged in order to bring about a change in the quality of care and to develop and implement new methods and activities for the active well-being of people of dementia. Objectives: To assess the severity, distress and cognitive functions of dementia patients and to seek association between them. Methodology: Quantitative research approach with non-experimental descriptive survey design was selected for the present study. The sampling technique chosen was non-probability convenient sampling technique for a sample size of 100. The study chosen was from memory clinic of Southern India. The tool consisted of Part A demographic profile with 5 variables. Part B consisted of Clinical dementia rating scale (CDR), Neuropsychiatric symptom inventory (NPI) and Addenbrooke’s cognitive Examination (ACE-III). We analyzed the scores using descriptive and inferential analysis. Association between them was performed using Chi-square. Statistical significance was taken to be p < 0.05. Results: The study shows that the majority were in the age group of 60–70 years. Maximum numbers of dementia clients were females. Duration of cognitive impairment was majorly between 1 and 3 years. The greater part of the diagnosis was of Alzheimer’s dementia and mostly under hospital care. The study also revealed that the CDR score constituted majorly of mild level among dementia clients and out of 85 clients receiving domiciliary services majority had mild impairment of 47%. The NPI-D confirms that 99% had mild distress. Moreover, in Residential care facility out of 5 clients there was equal percentage of mild and severe impairment, i.e. 40%, in Day care service out of 10 clients, half of them had severe impairment, i.e. 50%. Furthermore, NPI-FxS presented 90% with mild distress and ACE-III showed 79% with impaired cognition. There was no association between distress and severity and gender but there is a significant association between diagnosis and cognitive function. Conclusion: Dementia awareness and early detection is the urgent need of the hour, early symptom detection will help in alleviating the distress to a significant level. The interventional package will serve to cater the needs of the dementia patients in various dimensions of holistic health.

Keywords: Cognitive impairment; Alzheimer’s disease; Dementia; Domiciliary Service; Cognition.

This study aims to assess the stressors and coping strategy among the first year BSc Nursing students in selected College of Nursing at Coimbatore. A descriptive study was conducted for sample of 30 nursing students by using simple random sampling technique. The data was collected by using stressor scale and coping strategy scale. The results show that most of the students have moderate level of stressor 20 (66.67%) and coping strategy 26 (86.67%) respectively. There is a negative correlation between the level of stressor and coping strategy among the first BSc Nursing students. The researcher concluded that implementing empirically tested approaches useful to prevent the recurrence of stress and lessen its impact.

Keywords: Stressors; Coping strategy; Empirical; Recurrence; Impact.