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Objective: To test the hypothesis that swaddling is an effective method to reduce crying, we compared a standardized approach of regularity and stimulus reduction with the same approach supplemented with swaddling., Study Design: Healthcare nurses coached 398 excessively crying infants up to 12 weeks of age for 3 months. Outcome measurements were crying as measured by Barr's 24-hour diary and parental perception of crying., Results: Crying decreased by 42% in both groups after the first intervention week. Swaddling had no added benefit in the total group. Young infants (1-7 weeks of age at randomization) benefited significantly more from swaddling as shown by a larger decrease of crying over the total intervention period. Older infants (8-13 weeks of age at randomization) showed a significantly greater decrease in crying when offered the standardized approach without swaddling. The actual difference in crying time was 10 minutes., Conclusion: For older babies, swaddling did not bring any benefit when added to regularity and stimuli reduction in baby care, although swaddling was a beneficial supplementation in excessively crying infants <8 weeks of age.

Objective: To ascertain how much attention is given to cultural diversity in the eight medical faculties in Dutch universities., Design: Interviews., Method: In the period January-June 2001 interviews were held with 76 people in medical faculties: policy makers, teachers and students., Results: Medical courses scarcely devoted any attention to the fact that physicians need to deal with a multicultural society. Only the medical courses at the Free University of Amsterdam and Nijmegen University had included a compulsory module in this subject. The other universities were aiming for a more integrated treatment of the subject. However, for the time being, the acquisition of information about cultural diversity (specific diseases in different ethnic groups, different conceptions about health and disease and possibilities for solving communication problems) depended mainly on the personal interest of the teacher and the choices of the medical students., Conclusion: Cultural diversity receives little attention in the medical courses at the eight Dutch university medical faculties. A national approach to this problem is therefore recommended, with the setting up of an interfaculty workgroup to develop good teaching material on subjects related to cultural diversity.