Search

Coronavirus disease 2019 posed a challenging situation for all educational programs. This perspective provides an insight into what three instructors in a Master of Science in Occupational Therapy program in the United States did to overcome these challenges and provide quality education to the students. In addition, strategies are provided on how to conduct lectures, laboratories, and clinical competencies and practicums across eight courses. Technologies utilized in the delivery of these courses are provided with an emphasis on what worked best for different classes. Feedback from the students validated that the educational format used was beneficial to them in furthering their knowledge. The insights gained from this experience have helped the instructors to improve their knowledge of technology, increase their flexibility, and design their courses in innovative ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Infertility impacts approximately 16% of couples in the United Statesroughly five million individuals. Experiencing infertility takes a physical and psychological toll on the infertile individual, as well as his/her partner. The goal of the current study was to explore and provide better insight into how infertility affects the roles and daily occupations (Such as self-care and work related tasks) of females. This information can better assist health care providers in providing quality care to such clients. Methods: 21 participants, females ranging in age from 20 to 46 years and experiencing infertility, participated in this qualitative, phenomenological research study. They partook in two telephone interviews aimed at exploring how infertility has impacted their roles and daily occupations. Inductive content data analysis was utilized to analyze the data. Results: Findings resulted in three main themes. Quotes from participants were used to title the themes. They are "when you're dealing with infertility, every aspect of your life is impacted by it", "infertility impacted my areas of interest in life" and "infertility is very lonely". Conclusion: Infertility has the potential to impact every area of a female's life. The emotional impact infertility may have on women, in addition to the physical and time constraints involved with pursuing fertility treatments, frequently resulted in decreased occupational engagement and fulfillment of roles as spouse or friend. Those experiencing infertility need more resources and support to navigate their journey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cavernous angiomas of the cranial nerves are extremely rare, and those of the oculomotor (third) cranial nerve are rarer still, with no previous cases having been reported in the literature. We report herein the first case of a presumed cavernous angioma involving the subarachnoid portion of the left third nerve presenting as an acute left third nerve palsy in an infant. The child was followed without intervention and the palsy completely resolved. Given the poor functional results with attempted surgical excision and the potential for spontaneous improvement in oculomotor nerve function, it is reasonable to follow patients with these lesions without intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eyelid involvement in sarcoidosis is very rare. A search of the medical literature indicates one previous report of sarcoidosis with destructive eyelid lesions.We describe the case of a 50-year-oldwomanwith severe systemic sarcoidosis, which included her eyelids. To our knowledge, the case presented herein represents the first to show the full-thickness histopathology of destructive eyelid lesions in sarcoidosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rate of school-aged children with incarcerated parents continues to rise in the United States. These children are especially prone to experiencing social-emotional, behavioral, and academic issues in school as a result of various factors, including general strain and stress associated with incarceration. Given their unique role in schools, professional school counselors are well positioned to provide support to children of incarcerated parents. This article presents a review of relevant literature, including key theories that explain the challenges faced by children with incarcerated parents. The impact of incarceration on children as well as protective and risk factors are presented. Finally, strategies and resources school counselors can use when working with this population are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, neuroscience and psychology have studied the human brain during periods of "online" attention to the environment, while participants actively engage in processing sensory stimuli. However, emerging evidence shows that the waking brain also intermittently enters an "offline" state, during which sensory processing is inhibited and our attention shifts inward. In fact, humans may spend up to half of their waking hours offline [Wamsley, E. J., & Summer, T. Spontaneous entry into an "offline" state during wakefulness: A mechanism of memory consolidation? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 32, 1714–1734, 2020; Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330, 932, 2010]. The function of alternating between online and offline forms of wakefulness remains unknown. We hypothesized that rapidly switching between online and offline states enables the brain to alternate between the competing demands of encoding new information and consolidating already-encoded information. A total of 46 participants (34 female) trained on a memory task just before a 30-min retention interval, during which they completed a simple attention task while undergoing simultaneous high-density EEG and pupillometry recording. We used a data-driven method to parse this retention interval into a sequence of discrete online and offline states, with a 5-sec temporal resolution. We found evidence for three distinct states, one of which was an offline state with features well-suited to support memory consolidation, including increased EEG slow oscillation power, reduced attention to the external environment, and increased pupil diameter (a proxy for increased norepinephrine). Participants who spent more time in this offline state following encoding showed improved memory at delayed test. These observations are consistent with the hypothesis that even brief, seconds-long entry into an offline state may support the early stages of memory consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The USee device is a new self-refraction tool that allows users to determine their own refractive error. We evaluated the ease of use of USee in adults, and compared the refractive error correction achieved with USee to clinical manifest refraction. Methods: Sixty adults with uncorrected visual acuity <20/30 and spherical equivalent between –6.00 and +6.00 diopters completed manifest refraction and self-refraction. Results: Subjects had a mean (±SD) age of 53.1 (±18.6) years, and 27 (45.0%) were male. Mean (±SD) spherical equivalent measured by manifest refraction and self-refraction were –0.90 D (±2.53) and –1.22 diopters (±2.42), respectively (p = 0.001). The proportion of subjects correctable to ≥20/30 in the better eye was higher for manifest refraction (96.7%) than self-refraction (83.3%, p = 0.005). Failure to achieve visual acuity ≥20/30 with self-refraction in right eyes was associated with increasing age (per year, OR: 1.05; 95% CI: 1.00–1.10) and higher cylindrical power (per diopter, OR: 7.26; 95% CI: 1.88–28.1). Subjectively, 95% of participants thought USee was easy to use, 85% thought self-refraction correction was better than being uncorrected, 57% thought vision with self-refraction correction was similar to their current corrective lenses, and 53% rated their vision as “very good” or “excellent” with self-refraction. Conclusion: Self-refraction provides acceptable refractive error correction in the majority of adults. Programs targeting resource-poor settings could potentially use USee to provide easy on-site refractive error correction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]