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Aims: The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines state that heart failure nurse specialists (heart-failure nurses) with specific competences are essential for a successful heart-failure-management programme. Thus, the Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the ESC developed the heart failure nurse curriculum (HFA curriculum). Several ESC member states developed cardiovascular education programmes to enable nurses to deliver high specialist care, but little is known of whether these curricula are in line with the HFA curriculum. Therefore, this paper describes the extent to which cardiovascular education programmes in Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany correspond to the HFA curriculum. Methods and results: A case study approach was adopted to obtain an in-depth understanding of the programme contents in relation to the HFA curriculum. For this purpose, representatives of the educational programmes and/or delegates of the national cardiovascular nursing organization shared their educational curricula. All of the studied cardiovascular education programmes aim to provide heart failure and/or cardiovascular nurses with essential competences for implementation of evidence based and guideline derived care. However, every cardiovascular education programme has a different focus/area of attention. Cardiovascular education in Belgium discusses aspects of all core-learning objectives of the HFA curriculum and emphasizes mostly knowledge aspects of these. Learning objectives in cardiovascular education in The Netherlands focus on chronic diseases in general and on learning objectives concerning patient education, support in self-care and management of device and pharmacological therapy. Cardiovascular education in Germany discusses most learning objectives; however, not all learning objectives receive equal attention. Conclusions: Although local cardiovascular education programmes adopt certain aspects of the HF curriculum, the curriculum as a whole is not adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extramarital sexuality has always been regarded as a transgression of the accepted norms. The increasing criminalization of extramarital sexuality after the Reformation led to an intensification of the prosecution of illegitimacy by secular authorities. But in the pluriform early modern legal landscape, a whole range of judicial, semi-judicial and extrajudicial institutions and mechanisms existed to exercise control over deviant behavior.  This paper focuses on the institutional setting in which social control over illegitimacy was exercised in the early modern period in Holland and Germany, working with Martin Dinges' concept of the "uses of justice." Both regions experienced several waves of criminalization of sexuality during and after the Reformation, and women were disproportionately affected by this. However, research for both regions has shown that women were not only "passive victims" in this process but also shaped the institutions by actively making use of them. It has been suggested in the literature that, in the early modern period, Dutch women enjoyed a rather favorable position compared to women in neighboring countries and that they were granted considerable leeway in social and legal respects. Considering the differences in the legal system in both countries, the question arises whether there were fundamental differences in the way that social control was exercised over illegitimacy in Germany and the Netherlands and whether Dutch women were truly granted more leeway in a social and legal respect with regard to illegitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marinova, Nadejda K. and Patrick James. (2012) The Tragedy of Human Trafficking: Competing Theories and European Evidence. Foreign Policy Analysis, doi: 10.1111/j.1743-8594.2011.00162.x This paper explores an issue that is both domestic and international: whether legalization of prostitution leads to an increase in human trafficking. For both theory and public policy, this is an important query to answer, with implications beyond the cases in question. The principal domains of investigation are Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands. These states subscribe to UN, EU, Council of Europe and OSCE agreements and are located in the same geographic region, yet have adopted opposite approaches to prostitution. The Netherlands and Germany legalized prostitution in 2000 and 2002, respectively. Sweden outlawed it in 1999 and imposed criminal penalties for the purchase of illicit sex. The preceding characteristics make these states ideal for a comparative exercise in the context of competing perspectives on human trafficking and legalized prostitution. We find that legalization leads to an increase in trafficking. The dynamics of trafficking are also associated with numerous factors, among which the most critical are government efforts specifically targeting the activity in the field of law enforcement. Implications for theory and public policy are offered, along with ideas about future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper gives a cross-national comparison, involving West German, Dutch, and United States data, on the use of social ties in the job-search process. Data for West Germany and the Netherlands are compared with the Lin et al. research on Albany-Schenectady and Troy. The findings show that (1) there is more use of informal sources in the U.S. than in West Germany and the Netherlands; (2) informal sources do not generally lead to higher occupational prestige and income; (3) for the Dutch data (no West German data are available for this question) greater social resources, that is, a contact person with relatively high prestige, do lead to a job with a higher prestige, though effects are less pronounced than found by Lin et al.; and (4) an extension of the Lin et al. analysis shows that these social resources do not have a significant impact on income. This last finding is consistent with the recent results of Marsden and Hurlbert's analysis of Detroit Area Study data. Institutional differences that might be relevant to the explanation of cross-national differences are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]