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This qualitative study guided by the nursing as caring theory used nursing situations for data gathering to explore breast cancer survivorship. Eight women described survivorship focusing on a past–present–future perspective. Data analysis was completed using Giorgi’s phenomenological method. The overall essence of survivorship was sorting priorities to move forward with purpose, an idea that is closely aligned with the concept of personhood from nursing as caring. Consistent with extant literature, participants described emotional turmoil, engaging in life with realistic optimism, and appreciating systems of support. The potential of using nursing situations as a data-gathering research resource was affirmed through this work.

The study looks at the option of change in interventions to control behavior change caused due to disorders associated with modern lifestyles.

A pilot study evaluates blood pressure reactivity along with gender and biologic maturity in teenagers discussing angry life circumstances and how their life is going. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure went up during the talking, and adding biologic maturity to the analysis showed males to have higher systolic blood pressure than was true for females in the protocol. In general, mature subjects had both higher systolic and higher diastolic blood pressures than did less mature subjects. Continued research on this aspect of the health of adolescents may add to understanding of gender differences in adult cardiovascular disease.

The State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI) measures the experience and anger in adolescents, which is a self-report questionnaire. It is a reliable method to test samples for ethnic, sex and age group differences, and also to assess the psychometric properties of the adolescents.

The purpose of this pilot study was to compare garden walking (either alone or guided) with art therapy in older adults with depression. Depression was measured using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and stories of sadness/joy. Prior to the intervention, 47% of participants had depression scores in the severe range and 53% in the mild range. At the end of the intervention, none of the participants had scores in the severe range, 89% had scores in the mild range, and 11% had scores in the normal range. Results of the GDS data using repeated measures analysis of variance indicated significant decreases in depression for all three groups from pretest to posttest. All participants, regardless of group assignment, had a lower percentage of negative-emotion word use and a higher percentage of positive-emotion word use over time. This study provides evidence for nurses wishing to guide older adults in safe, easy, and inexpensive ways to reduce depression.

ABSTRACTSubstance use is a pervasive health problem. Therapeutic community (TC) is an established substance abuse treatment but TC environments are stressful and dropout rates are high. Mindfulness-based TC (MBTC) intervention was developed to address TC stress and support self-change that could impact treatment retention. Self-change was assessed through feeling and thinking word-use in written stories of stress from 140 TC residents in a historical control group and 253 TC residents in a MBTC intervention group. Data were collected 5 times over a 9-month period. Linguistic analysis showed no differences between the groups over time; however, over all time points, the MBTC intervention group used fewer negative emotion words than the TC control group. Also, negative emotion (P< .01) and anxiety (P< .01) word-use decreased whereas positive emotion word-use increased (P< .05) over time in both groups. Descriptive data from linguistic analyses indicated that sustained self-change demands participation in mindfulness behaviors beyond the instructor-guided MBTC intervention.

To provide this second 10-year review of nursing research on blood pressure (BP) and to focus attention on incorporating biopsychosocial factors affecting BP in nursing research.

To describe embodied language for Japanese elders who suffered a stroke or cardiac disease within the previous year. Embodied language is the overlap of feeling and temporal word use with blood pressure during descriptions of health experience.

This study investigates sexual maturity as a predictor of resting blood pressures independent of other known predictors, in 179 boys and 204 girls 11‐16 years of age from the Heartfelt Study. The sample included youth of African (n= 140), Mexican (n= 117), and European and “other” (n= 126) backgrounds. Sexual maturity was assessed during clinical examination of three standard indicators for each sex. Systolic and diastolic blood pressures were higher in children of maturity stages IV and V, compared to stages I–III, in each gender/ethnic group (P < 0.01 in almost all groups). Boys and girls advanced in sexual maturity for their age group, had significantly higher systolic blood pressures (but not diastolic) than the less advanced in linear models that included height, body mass index (BMI), ethnicity, and age as co‐predictors. Diastolic blood pressures were predicted by height in boys and by age and the BMI in girls. This analysis, using a very conservative approach, suggests that sexual maturity provides important and independent information on systolic blood pressure in adolescents. Further investigation of its role in 24‐hr blood pressures and in blood pressures taken during physical and emotional stress, is recommended. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 13:227–234, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Attentively embracing story, a middle range nursing theory, is presented and its use in practice is discussed. The relevance of story path, represented by story-line and markings, is made explicit in the practice application, which describes using the theory with a person who has heart disease. The healing potential embedded in the human story is made explicit through the theory of attentively embracing story. Practicing with the theory is a healing art that promotes the transformational and self-transcendent potential of people.

In 1989, Hermann Hospital and University of Texas-Houston Health Science Center School of Nursing applied for and received approval to implement a 5-year demonstration project funded by the Health Care Finance Administration using Medicaid pass-through funds to educate nurses at the graduate level. The project aimed to evaluate the impact of advanced practice nurses and researchers on the practice of professional nursing at a 655-bed acute-care hospital in a large metropolitan area. The authors describe the factors that served to galvanize the two institutions to apply for such a grant, discuss the barriers encountered along the course of the project, and list the outcomes achieved by 1994 or project end. Predictions regarding the second 5-year segment (phase 2) are summarized as well. The article includes suggestions to other institutions interested in replicating such a project.

This paper describes the middle-range theory of attentively embracing story. Attentively embracing story is connecting with self-in-relation through intentional dialogue to create ease. The theory emerged in the context of the neomodernist and simultaneity paradigms as the authors shared situations in practice and research and linked these encounters to the story literature. Practice implications with a client who has hypertension and research implications with a pregnant adolescent are presented. The proposed middle-range theory is offered for critical examination by the nursing community as a guide for practice and research aimed at the promotion of human growth and change.

This paper considers the honors program described by Schumann and McNeill through the caring lens of story. It affirms the underlying caring nature of honors program principles and pushes the edges of these principles—student-centered focus, experiential learning, and research-practice reciprocity—to expand thinking about caring educational approaches.