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Objectives: Despite there being many models for how spiritual care should be provided, the way nurses actually provide spiritual care often differs from these models. Based on the premise that the way a person enacts their work role is related to how they understand that role, this study aims to describe the qualitatively different ways that nurses understand their spiritual care role. Methods: A convenience sample of 66 American nurses completed an anonymous, online questionnaire about what spiritual care means for them and what they generally do to provide spiritual care. Their responses were analyzed phenomenographically. Results: Four qualitatively different ways of understanding emerged: active management of the patient's experience, responsive facilitation of patient's wishes, accompaniment on the patient's dying journey, and empowering co-action with the patient. Each understanding was found to demonstrate a specific combination of 5 attributes that described the spiritual care role: nurse directivity, the cues used for spiritual assessment, and the nurse's perception of intimacy, the patient, and the task. Significance of results: The findings of this study may explain why nurses vary in their spiritual care role and can be used to assess and develop competence in spiritual care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011 members of the School of Philosophy and Theology at The University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) Sydney campus, designed two standards rubrics as part of a project aimed at undertaking research within the area of assuring graduate attributes and capabilities in Australian universities. The standards rubrics designed were oriented towards developing particular graduate attributes intrinsic to the Core Curriculum programme in philosophy, ethics, and theology; all students at UNDA are required to undertake this programme, which reflects a 'liberal arts' or 'liberal education' approach to university education. In this paper, we engage in an institutional case study of this project, discussing the advantages and challenges of developing and using these standards rubrics with a specific focus on: how they have already been used, how we plan to use them in the continuing development of our Core Curriculum programme, and the particular challenges we face in developing standards rubrics within a 'liberal arts' or 'liberal education' environment. In doing so, we will attempt to demonstrate the usefulness of developing standards rubrics as a basis for careful and systematic review of our pedagogical approach, and curriculum and assessment design so as to assure the achievement of graduate attributes and capabilities. Given our focus on developing these standards rubrics within a Catholic liberal education environment, the paper will begin with a discussion of the tradition of liberal education. This tradition provides the immediate context for the graduate attributes and capabilities toward which our rubrics are oriented and helps explain the specific nature of the Core Curriculum programme. The article will then consider key theoretical problems that arise in attempting to assure graduate attributes and capabilities within a liberal education environment, including problems related to educating towards objectives or attributes that are difficult to assess or measure due to their generality. In the final part of the paper, we demonstrate the usefulness of developing standards rubrics as a means of reviewing our pedagogical approach and curriculum design for the purposes of fostering graduate attributes and designing assessments that enable students to demonstrate the degree to which they have attained graduate attributes.

Objectives: The aim was to identify determinants of nurse spiritual/existential care practices toward end-of-life patients. Nurses can play a significant role in providing spiritual/existential care, but they actually provide this care less frequently than desired by patients. Methods: A systematic search was performed for peer-reviewed articles that reported factors that influenced nurses' spiritual/existential care practices toward adult end-of-life patients. Results: The review identified 42 studies and included the views of 4,712 nurses across a range of hospital and community settings. The most frequently reported factors/domains that influenced nurse practice were patient-related social influence, skills, social/professional role and identity, intentions and goals, and environmental context and resources. Significance of results: A range of personal, organizational, and patient-related factors influence nurse provision of spiritual/existential care to end-of-life patients. This complete list of factors can be used to gauge a unit's conduciveness to nurse provision of spiritual/existential care and can be used as inputs to nurse competency frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The kinetic stability of wild-type (WT) superoxide dismutase (SOD) and five FALS-related mutants is investigated, in both the metal-deficient (apo) and metalated (holo) forms. The important role of the metals in the kinetic stability of SOD is determined by comparing the acid-induced unfolding kinetics at physiological temperature.

One defining characteristic of service-learning as a pedagogical tool is its focus on reflection. Within service-learning programmes, students engage collaboratively with one another and community members and are encouraged to reflect on the various aspects of their experience. The author argues that reflection is crucial for its contribution to service-learning, as a teaching methodology, and to service-learning's cognitive, affective and social impact. Part of service-learning's impact is its contribution to the development of inclusive attitudes and predispositions towards inclusiveness among school students and tertiary students, particularly pre-service teachers. The chapter recognises inclusivity as an element of quality teaching that helps students make connections with contexts outside the classroom, engage with different perspectives and ways of knowing and to accommodate all their peers and all those being offered service. The chapter recommends a particular approach to the expansion of thinking and practice that inclusivity requires, one based on the methodology of the Philosophy in Schools movement, which has its genesis in the work of John Dewey. That approach uses the mechanism of the Community of Inquiry to structure reflective activities in a way that facilitates the development of student's critical and creative thinking and their capacity for substantive dialogue. Within the Community of Inquiry students are encouraged to engage with differing and perhaps novel perspectives as they respond to real-life service-learning experiences. Well-facilitated reflection gives students the opportunity to develop skills and dispositions conducive to deep understanding of concepts and issues that arise in discussion. It also helps to raise awareness of preconceptions and attitudes that can undermine inclusiveness in education. The chapter draws the conclusion that rigorous reflection serves as a stimulus to act to implement inclusive practices within service-learning projects on the basis of well-justified reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]