Week 10 blog

Week 10

Active Euthanasia

This week I was most interested in the topic of active euthanasia. I think of this topic quite often, and mostly because I take care of many terminally ill patients. I hear the patients talk about assisted suicide on occasion and yet I wonder if they really know what they are asking for, or is this just something that they say because they feel like there is no other way out or they are unable to manage the pain, or worse yet, because they feel like they are too much of a burden on their families. I enjoyed the reading in the text book about active euthanasia, what I appreciated is the statistics showing how well the guidelines behind the "Death with Dignity" Act that passed in 1994 in Oregon state is working. Reports shows that people that do chose this option have passed through very strict requirements.
If I could discuss this topic with the most famous person to bring this option to popularity, I would like to interview him on his personal thoughts behind his willingness to assist people to their death. The current laws mandate that the patients must administer their own lethal dosage of medication, I can see how this takes some of the guilt away for the doctors. I agree with putting the decision and responsibility into the patients own hands.
The information that was new to me in this reading was the fact that Asian Americans have the highest suicide rates, and all because they feel as though they are too big of a burden for their family members, this is so sad to think people would go to those measures just so they don't disrupt their families.
I personally am thankful that we have this option available for those who truly want to end their suffering due to a terminal illness. I am glad there are safety rules put in place. I have seen cases that truly make me support assisted suicide, watching such horrific pain with no end to it has made me a supporter of this. I think death is an individual thing, we were born alone and we will die alone, if someone of a sane mind plans to end their life due to the agonizing pain they will endure, with no possibility for a cure I support their personal decision. What I most want to remember is to have respect for those people that have chosen this way to end their suffering and not to be judgmental, and if patients ask me my opinion, I will try and make sure they have access to all the information they need to make the most informative decision for themselves, this is a personal choice not something healthcare workers should share opinions on with their patients.

   

Week 9 Blog

Week 9 

Patronizing Speech 

This week I really enjoyed reading about how the elderly view nursing homes and how they perceive the experience of being in a nursing home. I am a certified nurses assistant here at a local nursing home. I have been an assistant for over 6 yrs now and I know the homes in town vary quite a bit with the quality of care. I won't name any names of the different places, but I will say I have worked at several now and the one I work at now is by far an above average facility. In this weeks reading what piqued my curiosity the most was "Patronizing speech" when caring for an older person. I really haven't given this topic much thought before. I think as care givers, far too often we tend to get in a daily routine of how we deal with patients and forget how much each patient is different. If I had unlimited funds I would like to see more  research done on patronizing speech and more studies on the outcomes of specialty training. I can see how more training on this subject for caregivers could improve the quality of life for our long term patients. I consider myself to be an above average care giver, but now that I have read more about this topic I can see ways I could improve in the way I help my patients on an individual basis. If I could read more about this subject I would like to learn more about what I can say or do when interacting with my patients by using different techniques in the way I talk to them. This topic made me stop and realize that far too often we treat the patients the same or say the same phrases over and over like "How are you feeling today", if each care giver said the same thing to each patient each day it could lead the patient to think no one really cares about them as an individual.  I could see how an elder person would lose their integrity. I would love to see more money spent on training with regards to the way we interact with patients in regards to speech patterns. Caregivers should receive more training on speech patterns, and get to know the individuals past hobbies, past careers. We need more research to show the caregivers that this approach in regards to the way we talk to patients can make a huge difference in the quality of life to our patients. I liked reading about how the nursing homes that allow more self decisions of the patients had a better quality of life as well. I will be more aware of my tone and the questions I ask now of my patients, I will try and apply more individual related questions and be more aware of using same phases over and over. I can see how personalizing the way you speak to your patients can make a huge difference in their quality of life just by rephrasing what you say to them on a daily basis. 

Week 8 Blog

 Week 8

Is There Love After Baby

Something that was interesting to me is that made me stop and think is that kids do bring a lot of stress to a marriage or a relationship, even though you can be totally aware that a child will be a lot of work. The hardest part is the unexpected events that come about with both parents having different parenting styles, this can be the cause of disagreements in a relationship/marriage. The concept is that when parents are dealing with conflicts with a child it creates problems between a relationship/marriage not because of the child; it's due to unsolved problems in the relationship that at one point were not resolved. This is interesting to me because when my daughter was in kindergarten, she was having a lot of trouble transitioning from preschool and my spouse and I didn't really discuss the best way to approach these issues, after we began to get in line with our parenting styles we learned how to talk through issues regarding our daughter. When other issues would arise with her in school I was thankful that we as a couple learned how to communicate better, I wouldn't want to create a broken home and just give up on my marriage. I wonder if articles like "Is There Love After Baby" were made available to couples expecting a child, would the chances of a broken home be less? In the article I learned the importance of good communication between couples, this is key to working through major life changes relationships go through such as having children, job changes, finances etc. I most want to remember how important my relationship is, not only to me but to my daughter and husband as well. I want be able to talk to my husband about anything that might potentially build up even if it seems unimportant and I hope he will always be open to listen.

Week 7 Blog

Week 7  

  

Young and Middle Adulthood - College Students  

  

I can relate to the topic on "Going to College" best this week. In the reading  it states that 67% of high school graduates go onto to college to better their education. They talk about the fact that many college students average around the age of 18-25yrs old. When I think back to when I was this age, there was no way I was ready for college. During these years I was far too wild and still learning what the world had to offer me. When the book refers to "Returning adult students" I fall into this category. I agree with the reading when it talks about the returning student being more of a problem solver, having more self discipline, and more life experience to bring to the table. Although I have a part time job and a family to support, I feel like I am more mature to take on the task of continuing my education where as I would not have been in the right frame of mind back when I was 18-25yrs old. When I look around the campus here at BTC I feel comfortable because I know I am not alone. Now we are seeing more and more returning students, and the percentage of older students has grown considerably. If I had attended college at the age of 18, I am sure I would have failed miserably, I was not in the right cognitive state of mind for learning or paying attention to what a teacher might have to say. More and more we are seeing advertisements on billboards showing the "Older" student going back to school. I know choosing to attend later in life is not a match for everyone, but I feel that more confident and ready for the challenge for success than I would have at a much younger age. 

Week 6

Week 6

Sleep deprivation for teens

I enjoyed the article “Sleep deprivation may be undermining teen health” by Siri Carpenter. When I look back to when I was a teenager, I remember being one of those kids who tried to survive on 6 to 7 hours a night of sleep. After reading about all the hazards sleep deprivation can cause, it is no wonder I could not stay focused in school. The article talks about when a teen enters puberty they need even more sleep than when they were in elementary school and yet we are finding teenagers getting an average of only 6.5 hours. The research that is now being done is very fascinating, they talk about how experts believed that people didn’t need as much sleep as they grew older from childhood to adulthood, and now they have discovered in the last few decades that kids need considerably more sleep than younger children and adults, they should be getting at least 9 hours of sleep. I learned how they are linking poor grades and accidents to the lack of sleep teens get. If I could research this further I would like to know why our government is not taking a serious look at adjusting the start time for High school students, if we start school for our younger kids later why is it such a huge deal to adjust it for the teens? I understand that some teens now have jobs, and sports to attend too but perhaps we as parents need to take a deeper look into what the end results of pushing our teens can cause. From this reading I most want to remember to find a way to make sure my own daughter gets the sleep she needs to continue to develop her learning abilities, I am going to try to help her get the rest she needs and I will remember now how much sleep teens really need. I hope that by the time she enters High School they will push the start time back a bit. 

Week 5

Week 5 Blog entry: Parenting styles 

This weeks reading was very interesting to me. I learned a lot about the different parenting styles by watching the video on You Tube titled "Parenting Style" along with the text book reading covering the dimensions and styles of parenting. The four parenting styles are Authoritarian, Authoritative, Permissive and Uninvolved parenting. I discovered by watching the You Tube video that I fall into the category of Authoritative. I identified how my parenting techniques and skills are affecting my daughter as she is growing up. Being an authoritative parent combines showing who is in control, along with showing a lot of  love and having very good communication  with your child. An authoritative parent knows how to have clear rules in place and also the ability to discus why those rules are so important, this gives the child a better understanding of what is expected of them. I would like to read more about this type of parenting style and how it affects older children, I can only imagine it will get a bit tougher as my daughter grows older. If I could discuss this parenting style with the person that came up with the different definitions, I would ask them how they determined that this type of parenting style is shown to be the best way of parenting, and would like to know more about the research behind their thoughts. As I read and studied this type of parenting style I felt proud that I follow this style very heavily with the way I am raising my own daughter.  I find that being a parent has high expectations, how are we as parents supposed to know what's the best way to raise our children without a parents manual. Unfortunately we have to wing it and hope for the best outcome for our children. After reading a bit more about this topic, I feel more confident that I am choosing the best parenting style, I will continue to strive to keep on good handle on this approach as I know I will be more and more challenged as my daughter grows up.

Week 4 Blog

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder 

  

     For this weeks blog I would like to respond to question two about ADHD. I will reflect back about four years ago when I first met my husband and my daughter had just turned three. Well my husband had a nephew that was diagnosed with ADHD because he was hyper active jumping off the couches and was hard to calm him down. My three year old was definitely a little hyper but not that she hard to control. My husband did comment saying that she should be seen by a doctor I was surprised by his comment but didn't think nothing of it. I always have been against giving a child drugs to calm them down, to me I always have said of course children are hyper active, their kids.  

     Well he was a little persistent on me taking her to see a doctor so I did, to my surprise they did diagnose her with ADHD I was shocked that they prescribed a drug called Ritalin. I was very unsure about giving her this drug so I never did give my child Ritalin. Luckily I went to see another doctor and they told me that she was fine she had no signs of ADHD.  

     Watching her now she is perfectly fine she is no longer as hyper as she used to be. When she was hyper she was only three and now she is seven and she grew out of that stage.  

     Now that I see that there is not enough research done by the FDA as it explained in the video from the Front Line to be giving these young children those drugs. I was really shocked and glad that I wasn't so naive to give my child anything that perhaps instead of helping her could have probably killed her. It's also scary because so many children are diagnosed with this problem and parents say the drugs are helping them, so this leaves a question in my mind is it good for children or not.  

     I now believe there should be an age limit to kids taking drugs that effect there brains. For me this is such a tough topic. 

Week 3 blog

Topic: Interacting with others

            This topic relates to myself in real life because a close friend and I were pregnant at the same time and delivered our children 5 days apart, she had a boy, and I had a girl. First hand I was able to identify how much faster her child was developing than my child. In chapter 5.3 it explains the different stages our children went through and was able to put in perspective how each child went through each stage. When our children were infants (prior to 6 months) they did not seem to interact with each other, but were still interested in what the other was doing. Once our children were about 12 months old they began to show interest in what the other child was doing or toys they were playing with. I am now able to understand that our children were going through a stage called “Parallel play”. In the book it also explains how later when they started engaging in play, and being more sociable, this stage is called “Simple social play”. It was during this stage that I noticed our children interacting with each other the most. It was very interesting and fulfilling to see my daughter interacting during this stage because I was able to see her personality traits first hand. By the time our children reached the “Cooperative play” stage (what I call the terrible twos) although they were very temperamental, they were able to play and share together quite well. I did notice that because my daughter was in daycare her social skills and educational skills a bit elevated compared to my fiends son, I believe this is because she was interacting with many children and probably learning at a faster rate because of that. I can definitely see the advantages of my daughter being in daycare and being exposed to many children at a young age compared my friend’s son being at home with mainly mom all day. Also in the gender section of this chapter “Gender differences and play” it states that children prefer to play with children of their own sex, however my daughter preferred to play with boys because she enjoyed playing with what would be considered boy toys, and to this day she does not own a Barbie.  

Week 2 Blog

For my topic this week I chose to talk about approaches to childbirth. 

  

I would like to learn more about multicultural childbirth experiences. I was very surprised and piqued my curiosity that although Holland and Sweden have the lowest immortality rates in the world and they also have the highest rate of home deliveries. My thought was that if emergency equipment used at hospitals were not available, I expected to see the opposite when it comes in immortality rates in those countries from the research I read. I believe the reason they have such low immortality rates is due to the fact that those countries have free government sponsored healthcare for all women, they are given the care needed prior to even becoming pregnant.  

      If had unlimited funds available to do further research, I would investigate the relationship between free healthcare for all woman prior to pregnancy and more fund more research for home deliveries in regards to education for women so they can make choices about different approaches to childbirth.  

      If I had more time to read up on different cultures childbirth approaches, I would be very interested in learning more about other countries beliefs and taboos about having men present when the baby is born. I watched the UNICEF video and was really shocked that the woman actually got up and ran out when they were shown movies involving the birth process and men were present for the birth of their own child. Makes me ask the question, why would it be a taboo for the father that helped create a child to not be present when the baby comes into the world.

Alma's Chapter 1 blog

Continuity vs Discontinuity

I quickly thought of continuity vs discontinuity being a perfect for my blog topic because I was able to compare myself to this topic in chapter one. When I think back when I was young, I was continuously a person that was not afraid of saying what was on my mind. I was a very out spoken person, it didn’t matter to me if I was hurting other peoples feeling or not. My mother made me feel like I was always doing something wrong; she was worried that because I was so out spoken, I was hurting other people’s feelings. Because of various problems I had with my parents, I became rebellious through my teenage years; doing bad thing to fulfill what I had lost by my parents divorcing. Being vocal and expressing my thoughts and feeling never went away but being rebellious did.

So that being said…..

 I can compare continuity with a part of me that I haven’t lost. What has stuck with me and makes me who I am today. I still can say what’s on my mind when I feel that it’s necessary. Therefore I have to admit that sometimes I say things without thinking and I find myself later thinking; “should I have said that”? This is not always good.

I can compare discontinuity with being rebellious, with issues that brought out being rebellious at that time. So that is being discontinuity where I suddenly became that way opposed to not always being that kind of person.