Examination of the Literature Review Essay Example for Free

Examination of the Literature Review Essay I selected Guidetti and Tham’s (2002) paper because I am fascinated by the work of occupational therapists. They are tasked, by the nature of their profession, to assist people with impairments or disabilities in achieving competence in their daily activities and consequently, they empower these individuals to grab hold of their limitations and transform them in a fashion that nurtures their sense of control and brings peace of mind to their loved ones who lives with them. The paper sought to elucidate the strategies utilized by occupational therapists in their self-care intervention process with neurologically-impaired clients, specifically those who had had stroke or spinal cord injury. The study tapped the qualitative research design. Specifically, it employed a modified phenomenology approach called EPP (empirical, phenomenological, psychological) method in generating and analyzing the data. The purpose of EPP method is â€Å"to describe the essence, structure and character of the studied phenomenon† (Guidetti Tham, 2002, p. 260). Although it informs the research question, the literature review (as well as the reference list) is not sufficient to build a platform for the â€Å"need to provide a definition and description of the concept of self-training and the typical therapeutic strategies used by therapists† (Guidetti Tham, 2002, p. 258). It lacks relevant scientific texts. It is understandable that there is no existing study on the subject, but there is more scientific information in the literature about the therapeutic strategies in adjacent fields which could add valuable background to the introductory problem identification as well as to the incisive discussion of the results later on. In the introduction section, the scholars presented the important variables of the research question finely (i. e. , meaning of self-care, therapeutic strategies), but failed to include a review of empirical literature, simply stating that â€Å"there is a lack of empirical studies identifying the therapeutic strategies in self-care training† (Guidetti Tham, 2002, p. 258). Although the statement may be correct, there are still many relevant studies worth reviewing that would guide the inquiry. It may not necessarily be those on self-care therapeutic strategies utilized by occupational therapist with persons who have neurological disorders, but also those studies on strategies used by the same professionals on rehabilitating persons with orthopedic injuries, lymphedema or amputees which do not specifically addressed the phenomenon, but may have implications for the study. In addition, the physical therapy literature on similar issues could also add important insights. A look at the reference list of the article reveals that it is limited in three ways. First, five of the papers in this list were written by either one of the same two authors, in collaboration with other scholars. Second, there are only three occupational therapy journals where they garnered articles for the review (i. e. , Occupational Therapy International, American Journal of Occupational Therapy, and Clinical Rehabilitation). Finally, the doctoral dissertations/theses reviewed in the paper came only from Sweden. This is not ideal especially in a journal with international circulation. The authors could have scoured articles from other journals of similar discipline that are available like British Journal of Occupational Therapy, Journal of Occupational Science, OT Practice, International Journal of Therapy and Rehabilitation, Journal of Integrated Care, etc. Further, they could have utilized the abstracts available in the Dissertation Abstracts International to offset the Swedish-focused dissertation reviews in the study. In qualitative studies, an in-depth, exploratory literature review is vital to discover what currently exists in the body of knowledge about the concerned phenomenon (Taylor Bogdan, 1998). Thus, the article’s literature review and reference list in this regard only supported halfway the research question. Much could have been done. References Guidetti, S. , Tham, K. (2002). Therapeutic strategies used by occupational therapists in self-care training: A qualitative study. Occupational Therapy International, 9(4), 257-276. Taylor, S. J. , Bogdan, R. (1998). Introduction to qualitative research methods (3rd ed. ). New York: John Wiley Sons, Inc.

Essay --

Isolation of leprosy patients What started as a problem with a horrific disease, lead to isolation of leprosy patients. It was hard for these patients to settle and make homes; communities feared the spreading of illness. The government took an old plantation to create a hospital for the leprosy patients. The old plantation was called hospital #66 or better known as Carville. â€Å"Over a long time period, the disease can be disfiguring, and societies have stigmatized victims of the disease. This attribute is deeply discrediting since the stigmatized individual is disqualified from full social acceptance. Leprosy was thus dreaded, not because it killed, but because it left one alive with no hope†. (P1. And 2, Sato, H., & Frantz, J. (2005). Termination of the leprosy isolation policy in the US and japan: Science, policy changes, and the garbage can model.) People deemed with this Disease were brought to Carville mandatory to be quarantined; some patients were brought in shackles against there will. Pati ents were forced to leave everything they knew and loved behind, including friends, family and children. While scientists worked to find a cure, policyholders that conducted legislative procedures were defining and enacting the problem; policies were designed to isolate sick patients as prevention of the further spread of the disease. Patients were even feared by medical staff and did not want to aide in helping these sick patients. Seeing the needs of these patients, a group of sisters named Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul stepped up and provided compassion. The disease is first noticed by skin change to usually hands and feet. In the movie Triumph at Carville directed by John Wilhelm and Sally Squires, one patient sa... ... isolation policy provided patients with some social support, but continuously deprived them of their civil liberties. Furthermore, the policy as an authoritative statement on the disease may have fostered the social stigma associated with a belief that the disease is a dreadful contagion, thereby maintaining a hurdle to patients' reintegration into society. Evidently, the policy's abolition was not easily accomplished nor was achieved solely by advances in scientific knowledge†. (P. 10) Carville took on what feared the public on multiple levels and were able to move past it. As dreadful as it was for the patients to go through, they were the first to say that all the pain was worth it. The Daughters of charity and the doctors took on a daunting task and made it ok. The patients all commented that the sisters showed love and compassion making it feel like home.

History of martial law

Brief History of Martial LawOn September 21, 1972, Marcos issued Proclamation 1081, declaring martial law over the entire country , claiming that it was the last defense against the rising disorder caused by increasingly violent student demonstrations, the alleged threats of communist insurgency by the new Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and the Muslim separatist movement of theMoro National Liberation Front (MNLF). One of his first actions was to arrest opposition politicians in Congress and the Constitutional Convention.Initial public reaction to martial law was mostly favourable except in Muslim areas of the south, where a separatist rebellion, led by the MNLF, broke out in 1973. Despite halfhearted attempts to negotiate a cease-fire, the rebellion continued to claim thousands of military and civilian casualties. Communist insurgency expanded with the creation of the National Democratic Front (NDF), an organization embracing the CPP and other communist groups. Under mart ial law the regime was able to reduce violent urban crime, collect unregistered firearms, and suppress communist insurgency in some areas.At the same time, a series of important new concessions were given to foreign investors, including a prohibition on strikes by organized labour, and a land-reform program was launched. In January 1973 Marcos proclaimed the ratification of a new constitution based on the parliamentary system, with himself as both president and prime minister. He did not, however, convene the interim legislature that was called for in that document. Under the president’s command, the military arrested opposition figures, including Benigno Aquino, journalists, student and labor activists, and criminal elements.A total of about 30,000 detainees were kept at military compounds run by the army and the Philippine Constabulary. Weapons were confiscated, and â€Å"private armies† connected with prominent politicians and other figures were broken up. Newspaper s were shut down, and the mass media were brought under tight control. With the stroke of a pen, Marcos closed the Philippine Congress and assumed its legislative responsibilities. During the 1972-81 martial law period, Marcos, invested with dictatorial powers, issued hundreds of presidential decrees, many of which were never published.Like much else connected with Marcos, the declaration of martial law had a theatrical, smoke-and-mirrors quality. The incident that precipitated Proclamation 1081 was an attempt, allegedly by communists, to assassinate Minister of National Defense Enrile. As Enrile himself admitted after Marcos’s downfall in 1986, his unoccupied car had been riddled by machinegun bullets fired by his own men on the night that Proclamation 1081 was signed. Most Filipinos–or at least those well positioned within the economic and social elites–initially supported the imposition of martial law.The rising tide of violence and lawlessness was apparent t o everyone. Although still modest in comparison with the Huk insurgency of the early 1950s, the New People’s Army was expanding, and the Muslim secessionist movement continued in the south with foreign support. Well-worn themes of communist conspiracy–Marcos claimed that a network of â€Å"front organizations† was operating â€Å"among our peasants, laborers, professionals, intellectuals, students, and mass media personnel†Ã¢â‚¬â€œfound a ready audience in the United States, which did not protest the demise of Philippine democracy.The New Society Marcos claimed that martial law was the prelude to creating a â€Å"New Society† based on new social and political values. He argued that certain aspects of personal behavior, attributed to a colonial mentality, were obstacles to effective modernization. These included the primacy of personal connections, as reflected in the ethic of utang na loob, and the importance of maintaining in-group harmony and coh erence, even at the cost to the national community.A new spirit of self-sacrifice for the national welfare was necessary if the country were to equal the accomplishments of its Asian neighbors, such as Taiwan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Despite Marcos’s often perceptive criticisms of the old society, Marcos, his wife, and a small circle of close associates, the crony group, now felt free to practice corruption on an awe-inspiring scale. Political, economic, and social policies were designed to neutralize Marcos’s rivals within the elite.The old political system, with its parties, rough-and-tumble election campaigns, and a press so uninhibited in its vituperative and libelous nature that it was called â€Å"the freest in the world,† had been boss-ridden and dominated by the elite since early American colonial days, if not before. The elite, however, composed of local political dynasties, had never been a homogeneous group. Its feuds and tensions, fue led as often by assaults on amor proprio (self-esteem) as by disagreement on ideology or issues, made for a pluralistic system.Marcos’s self-proclaimed â€Å"revolution from the top† deprived significant portions of the old elite of power and patronage. For example, the powerful Lopez family, who had fallen out of Marcos’s favor (Fernando Lopez had served as Marcos’s first vice president), was stripped of most of its political and economic assets. Although always influential, during the martial law years, Imelda Marcos built her own power base, with her husband’s support. Concurrently the governor of Metro Manila and minister of human settlements (a post created for her), she exercised significant powers. Crony CapitalismDuring the first years of martial law, the economy benefited from increased stability, and business confidence was bolstered by Marcos’s appointment of talented technocrats to economic planning posts. Despite the 1973 oil pr ice rise shock, the growth of the gross national product (GNP) was respectable, and the oil-pushed inflation rate, reaching 40 percent in 1974, was trimmed back to 10 percent the following year. Between 1973 and the early 1980s, dependence on imported oil was reduced by domestic finds and successful energy substitution measures, including one of the world’s most ambitious geothermal energy programs.Claiming that â€Å"if land reform fails, there is no New Society,† Marcos launched highly publicized new initiatives that resulted in the formal transfer of land to some 184,000 farming families by late 1975. The law was filled with loopholes, however, and had little impact on local landowning elites or landless peasants, who remained desperately poor. The largest, most productive, and technically most advanced manufacturing enterprises were gradually brought under the control of Marcos’s cronies.For example, the huge business conglomerate owned by the Lopez family, which included major newspapers, a broadcast network, and the country’s largest electric power company, was broken up and distributed to Marcos loyalists including Imelda Marcos’s brother, Benjamin â€Å"Kokoy† Romualdez, and another loyal crony, Roberto Benedicto. Huge monopolies and semimonopolies were established in manufacturing, construction, and financial services. When these giants proved unprofitable, the government subsidized them with allocations amounting to hundreds of millions of pesos.Philippine Airlines, the nation’s international and domestic air carrier, was nationalized and turned into what one author has called a â€Å"virtual private commuter line† for Imelda Marcos and her friends on shopping excursions to New York and Europe. Probably the most negative impact of crony capitalism, however, was felt in the traditional cash-crop sector, which employed millions of ordinary Filipinos in the rural areas. (The coconut industry alone brought income to an estimated 15 million to 18 million people. ) Under Benedicto and Eduardo Cojuangco, distribution and marketing monopolies for sugar and coconuts were established.Farmers on the local level were obliged to sell only to the monopolies and received less than world prices for their crops; they also were the first to suffer when world commodity prices dropped. Millions of dollars in profits from these monopolies were diverted overseas into Swiss bank accounts, real estate deals, and purchases of art, jewelry, and antiques. On the island of Negros in the Visayas, the region developed by Nicholas Loney for the sugar industry in the nineteenth century, sugar barons continued to live lives of luxury, but the farming community suffered from degrees of malnutrition rare in other parts of Southeast Asia.Ferdinand Marcos was responsible for making the previously nonpolitical, professional Armed Forces of the Philippines, which since American colonial times had been modeled o n the United States military, a major actor in the political process. This subversion occurred done in two ways. First, Marcos appointed officers from the Ilocos region, his home province, to its highest ranks. Regional background and loyalty to Marcos rather than talent or a distinguished service record were the major factors in promotion.Fabian Ver, for example, had been a childhood friend of Marcos and later his chauffeur, rose to become chief of staff of the armed forces and head of the internal security network. Secondly, both officers and the rank and file became beneficiaries of generous budget allocations. Officers and enlisted personnel received generous salary increases. Armed forces personnel increased from about 58,000 in 1971 to 142,000 in 1983. Top-ranking military officers, including Ver, played an important policy-making role.On the local level, commanders had opportunities to exploit the economy and establish personal patronage networks, as Marcos and the military e stablishment evolved a symbiotic relationship under martial law. A military whose commanders, with some exceptions, were rewarded for loyalty rather than competence proved both brutal and ineffective in dealing with the rapidly growing communist insurgency and Muslim separatist movement. Treatment of civilians in rural areas was often harsh, causing rural people, as a measure of self-protection rather than ideological commitment, to cooperate with the insurgents.The communist insurgency, after some reverses in the 1970s, grew quickly in the early 1980s, particularly in some of the poorest regions of the country. The Muslim separatist movement reached a violent peak in the mid1970s and then declined greatly, because of divisions in the leadership of the movement and reduced external support brought about by the diplomatic activity of the Marcos government. Relations with the United States remained most important for the Philippines in the 1970s, although the special relationship betw een the former and its ex-colony was greatly modified as trade, investment, and defense ties were redefined.The Laurel-Langley Agreement defining preferential United States tariffs for Philippine exports and parity privileges for United States investors expired on July 4, 1974, and trade relations were governed thereafter by the international General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). During the martial law period, foreign investment terms were substantially liberalized, despite official rhetoric about foreign â€Å"exploitation† of the economy. A policy promoting â€Å"nontraditional† exports such as textiles, footwear, electronic components, and fresh and processed foods was initiated with some success.Japan increasingly challenged the United States as a major foreign participant in the Philippine economy. The status of United States military bases was redefined when a major amendment to the Military Bases Agreement of 1947 was signed on January 6, 1979, reaffirm ing Philippine sovereignty over the bases and reducing their total area. At the same time, the United States administration promised to make its â€Å"best effort† to obtain congressional appropriations for military and economic aid amounting to US$400 million between 1979 to 1983.The amendment called for future reviews of the bases agreement every fifth year. Although the administration of President Jimmy Carter emphasized promoting human rights worldwide, only limited pressure was exerted on Marcos to improve the behavior of the military in rural areas and to end the death-squad murder of opponents. (Pressure from the United States, however, did play a role in gaining the release of Benigno Aquino in May 1980, and he was allowed to go to the United States for medical treatment after spending almost eight years in prison, including long  stretches of time in solitary confinement. )On January 17, 1981, Marcos issued Proclamation 2045, formally ending martial law. Some contr ols were loosened, but the ensuing New Republic proved to be a superficially liberalized version of the crony-dominated New Society. Predictably, Marcos won an overwhelming victory in the June 1981 presidential election, boycotted by the main opposition groups, in which his opponents were nonentities.

The Most Common Risk Factor For Alzheimer Disease

4. What environmental factors and/or lifestyle choices may increase the possibility of someone being afflicted by the medical condition? Scientist have done extensive research on the factors that may afflict alzheimer s disease. Risk factors on their own are not causes of a disease. Risk factors represent an increased chance, but not a certainty, that Alzheimer’s disease will develop. The most common risk factors are age,history and heredity but evidence suggests that there may other factors that can be influenced. Ageing is the most common risk factor for alzheimer disease. Most individuals that are diagnosed with this condition are 65 or older. The likelihood of being conspired by this disease doubles about every five years†¦show more content†¦If there is any alterations in these genes you are more likely to inherit this disease in earlier stages. It is debateable that women have a higher likelihood of inducing alzheimers disease but only now is it looking certain that the increased Alzheimer s risk ApoE4 confers is largely restricted to women. ApoE4 is the strongest known single genetic risk factor for Alzheimer s, a progressive neurological syndrome that takes over its victims of their memory and reasoning ability. APOE-e4 is one of three common forms of the APOE gene; the others are APOE-e2 and APOE-e3. Everyone inherits a some form of APOE from each parent. Those who inherit APOE-e4 from one parent have an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. and those who inherit APOE-e4 from both parents have an even higher risk, but not a certainty. 6.What (if any) are the current treatments for this medical condition? When treating alzheimer s disease doctors will need to confer with their patients to prepare suitable treatments. The doctor will examine 5 factors of your diagnostic to suit each patient s mental and physical needs. They will look at the patient s age, overall health, and medical history, extent of the disease, patient’s tolerance for specific medicines and therapies, expectations for the course of the disease, patient and his or her caregiver’s opinions or preferences. Currently, there is no cure for