Clayton College Of Natural Health Essay

This thesis is an exploratory study which investigates the phenomena of holistic healing through a phenomenological approach and the potential of this process to reveal the importance of relying on the client as the most important information resource. Using qualitative design, this research chronicles the experiences of people for their impressions regarding their healing experiences and their search for wellness through traditional medical and complementary therapies. Objective data will be collected to validate the nature of this research through the completion of self-assessment forms, in addition to a subjective inquiry into the energetic process of each client through the art and narratives of this researcher. The discoveries that will be produced during the course of this research is expected to reflect the numerous implications of the holistic healing process. 3. Statement of Purpose and Background Holistic healing is on the edge of mainstream scientific thought. It is contrary to the accepted view that we will always be able to find a specific cause for any given disease. Holistic healing was described by Pelletier (1997). For him, all states of health were psychosomatic, each person representing a unique interaction of body, mind, and spirit. Illness was a disturbance in the dynamic balance of these relationships. The client and the practitioner shared the responsibility for the healing and both creatively learned about themselves during the healing process. This study seeks to add valuable information about the growing phenomena of holistic health. It strives to explore the process of holistic healing. In the process of investigating the studies hypotheses, this study hopes to discover novel, unanticipated themes that help further our understanding of holistic healing. In spite of its importance as a central phenomenon in medicine, the word holistic healing is rarely used in nursing or medical literature unless the authors are describing some form of indigenous healing ritual or in the context of purely physiological healing. A holistic healing perspective would imply that healing is much more than physiological change. In spite of a thorough search of the literature, no studies have been found that relate directly to the focus to this study, the experience of holistic healing. The literature review is not the theoretical foundation on which the study is based, but it is represented in order to illustrate the current state of the relevant literature. The initial review established the appropriateness of this study. The majority of the review will be accomplished after the data will be analyzed and will be guided by the findings. Literature from both the initial review and the later review will be combined and the connections between the literature and the results of this study will be explored in the later chapters. Topics will also be discussed that might relate to the experience of healing, such as health status, recovery, and survival. In this related literature the independent variables such as social support, optimism, and hardiness are often well defined with reliable and valid measures. The dependent variables such as â€Å"being healthy, having minor health problems, suffering from chronic disease, being disabled, and being dead are treated as equally-spaced points on a continuum† (Hobroyd & Coyne, 1987, p. 364), and are not often well-defined or measured. Other measures sometimes defined as â€Å"healthy† are help seeking behaviours and compliance with medical recommendations. This research investigates these questions: 1. What does it mean to be holistically healthy? 2. What is the mechanism of the health creation process? Hence, this study hypothesized that: 1. Personal experiences will be a key contributing factor to participants` developing a holistic healing approach. 2. Participants will report healing experience with holistic health as key to developing their interests. This study assumes that holistic healing have an integrative theory that guides its process. Additionally, it assumes that holistic healing adhere to a theoretical orientation that promotes universal spiritual ideals as opposed to specific religious ones. The researcher believes that human existence is multidimensional. In addition, this study assumes that illness, whether physical, psychological or spiritual effect our all the levels of existence, body, mind, and spirit. Furthermore, the researcher believes those treatment regimens, regardless of the discipline of origin, increase their efficacy by addressing more of the levels-of-being thorough utilizing a holistic approach. Hence, involving human subjects in this research will be justified. 4. Subjects a. Subject Characteristics In this study a target number of ten participants will be chosen. Their ages range from 28-65. The participants are expected to come from a variety of occupations. Moreover, these participants are expected to demonstrate unique behaviors prior to surgery that appeared as if they might add important insight to the study. The researcher would like to have equal number of male and female participants (5 males and 5 females) to have an equal perspective from both genders. Further, in phenomenology it is important to choose participants who are able to speak with ease, express their feelings, and describe physical experiences (van Kaam, 1966). All the participants are expected to be verbal and expressive and should have little trouble discussing their healing experiences. b. Selection Criteria Participants to be chosen are those who: 1. had had recent surgery (first interviews will be conducted one week after hospital discharge); 2. were expected to return to their presurgical level of functioning. To insure that the participants would have a significant enough surgery to focus their attention on healing, they: 1. were in the hospital for at least three days; 2. were not expected to return to presurgical functioning for at least three weeks. Certain situations related to the surgery could have distracted the participants from focusing on healing. It was not assumed that these situations could not be healing experiences, but individuals with the following characteristics were not included: 1. external disfigurement from the surgery, beyond the incision; 2. an illness that was expected to be fatal. c. Special Populations No special group will be used in this study. d. Recruitment Source There are three surgeons known to the researcher that are the sources and they will be contacted by telephone and then by letter (see Appendix A). Nurses in surgical practice will also be contacted for help. Through the researcher’s own private practice she had many contacts with lawyers, personnel departments and other referring sources. The need for participants was expressed to many of them. Participants referred by professional friends are also good recruitment source. e. Recruitment Method All the participants will be given the researcher’s telephone number and a brief description of the study (see Appendix B). It will be up to the potential participants whether they would make the first contact. Their participation in the study will not be discussed with referring person. The researcher will assume that access to participants would be much easier this way. The resources who were able to provide participants all knew and trusted the researcher. This knowledge could have made it easier to believe that patients would not be harmed by participation in the study. More personal contact beyond telephone and written contact may help to build the necessary trust with potential providers of participants who have never met the researcher. f. Informed Consent Process Because of concern for protection of human subjects, potential participants will be the one responsible for contacting the researcher, not visa versa. This may add to the difficulty of finding participants. Perhaps more potential participants could have been contacted sooner to insure a less prolonged interview schedule. Phenomenological research is a relatively unknown methodology in the medical community and potential providers of participants may have been concerned about the validity of the research. After the potential participants called the researcher, a short interview will be conducted on the telephone to ascertain whether they met the requirements for the study. They will be told what would be expected of them and asked whether they will be willing to participate. Participants will be informed about the nature of the study verbally and through a written consent form (see Appendix C). The nature of the study will also be discussed over the telephone and at the start of the first interview. Questions about the study will be answered at this time, as well as later. As stated in the consent form interviews will be tape-recorded. The tapes will be transcribed by the typist. Pseudonyms will be substituted whenever the participant’s name is used on the tape. The tapes, transcriptions of the tapes, information sheets, and any other materials written by or about the participants’ actual names will not appear in any written reports, nor will they be used in any other way. A list of participants wishing information about the results will be kept separate and will be in no way connected with the data. Participants will be assured that they could withdraw from the study at any time, and that this would not affect their treatment in any way. g. Study Location Attempt will be made to interview all participants in their homes as it will be likely the place where they will feel comfortable and will be sufficiently relax to be able to talk about their experiences. The home is a more appropriate setting than the hospital. Although healing probably will not occur in the hospital, many factors are present which may influence the ability to focus on the process. Pain, recovery from anesthesia, lack of privacy, and immersion in the patient role are notable destructors which are expected to be less pronounces at home. Most of the interviews will be conducted in the home but if the participant will find it more convenient to be interviewed in their office or in other comfortable place (i. e. restaurant) then that will be granted. h. Potential Problems It is anticipated that some questions may cause emotional trauma, thus the participants’ emotional state will be assessed throughout the interview and time will be allotted to discuss any difficulty they will have. 5. Research Design and Methods a. Research Design A suitable design for exploring holistic healing from the perspective of the person in the mechanism of the health creation process is phenomenology. In phenomenology, the essence of human experience (Solomon, 1980) will be studied. It is based on careful consideration of rich complex data, using logic and insight (Cohen, 2001). Then careful interpretation will clarify this reality of human experiences. In the process of interpretation, data will not created, but they will be analysed with an attempt to discover their essence. So, in order to address the research questions posed in this study, select individuals will be asked to discuss their experience of holistic healing and the mechanism of their health creation process. Asking people directly seemed an effective way to study meaning, experience, beliefs, expectations, and perceptions of holistic healing. Benner (2002) pointed out that physiological aspects of healing can be studied readily with traditional quantitative research. Much of the research available on psychological, interpersonal, and personality dimensions of health has also been done using quantitative methods. But there is now a current interest in exploring holistic healing using qualitative means, but no qualitative studies have explored healing. As healing is a lived experience it seems appropriate to use a qualitative method to ask individuals who are in the process of healing to attempt to articulate what they believe is happening. The following is a list of the steps proposed by Colaizzi (1998) that will be followed in this study: 1. carefully interrogate presuppositions; 2. conduct pilot interviews; 3. integrate personal presuppositions and the thoughts about the pilot data, to generated a series of interview questions; 4. gather the data; 5. read all the transcriptions of the data and acquire a feeling for the whole; 6. underlie significant statements in the data; 7. try to formulate the meaning of the combined significant statements. Creative insights can be used to go from what the subjects say to what the researcher believes they might have meant; 8. organize formulated meanings from all the interviews into groups of themes. Validate these themes by asking whether there is anything in the original data that is not included in the themes, or whether the themes imply anything not in the original data; 9. write an exhaustive description of the results so far, including any discrepancies or themes that do not fit into a cohesive framework; 10. reduce the description to the fundamental structure of the phenomenon; 11. validate findings with selected participants. In a phenomenological study, oral interview is indispensable. The purpose of the interview is to elicit information about the participants’ experience in their own words, order of priority, and depth of emphasis. Hence, interviews will usually lasts from 60 to 90 minutes or even longer. Then, it is expected that there will be two interviews (first and a follow-up). The first interview is intended to be conducted approximately one week after hospital discharge. After the first interview with each participant, the data will be analyzed to discover whether any of this information needed clarification or expansion or whether any of these data pointed to the need for another area of questioning. A list of specific questions will be drawn from each participant to explore during the second interview. The second interview for each participant is planned to occur three weeks after the first interview to allow enough time to pass to have some additional thoughts on healing, yet to be early enough in the process that the participant will still focused on healing. The second will start with general questions before the more specific questions will be asked. Again, he purpose was to elicit the participants’ experience in the most uncontaminated way possible. The participants’ thoughts about the healing is expected to be stimulated during the first interview so that they will add new ideas to express during the second interviews and it will be validated as the emerging themes and interpretations of the researcher.

Life in Mumbai Essay

Life in Mumbai may just be like the life in some other city, or your city from outside. It’s just the same different people living well almost together, struggling to find their way, striving to make life better. They do have the differences, negatives and ways. But living in this city makes you realise how not so similar it is to every place in this world. How so many people from different cultures, states and countries can call this one city their home? On the world map Mumbai is nothing more than a small dot on the eastern side. It’s said to be even smaller than that, that it’s made of combined seven islands. And probably that’s where every resident gets one quality, unity, which may not seem significant, but its buried deep inside and nothing can reach there. Be it travelling in the same crowded local trains, sharing a flat with some strangers due to tight budgets or standing up together during terrorist attacks, people embrace this city and its residents. For every person the day starts early, anywhere between 5:30am to 7:00am. They get ready or help others to get ready to leave for work, school, etc. students face immense pressure of studies and competition while professionals to build and enhance their career. Travelling is more than time consuming be it the traffic of vehicles on roads or people in local modes of transport. After a day’s struggle, for professional doing the work of one and a half man, the cities night atmosphere is what it is popular for. If time permits, everyone rushes to malls, beaches, seashores, theatres, restaurants and clubs. Life here is not very social for a common man due to work pressure but at this time it’s all about them, their fun and being with the people they like. In this city sleep is the first major sacrifice a person gives to achieve their dreams. The cities essence lies in it the way lacks of people travel by local trains and during their journey make friends irrespective of the differences. About people hanging from the train gates to save that one minute and not be late. Here life is about how people mix the high end branded clothes with high street fashion. It’s about the long queues at bus stops, an untold but embraced rule. It’s about seeing slums around posh locations even airport. It’s about gathering on public places just enjoying at night in cool sea breeze. It’s about gathering g together for cricket matches even on screens at your workplace. It’s about eating at roadside stalls with as much love for the food as that of a hotel. It’s about walking on the street with confidence that no one is judging you. It’s about the beautiful scene you see outside you window if you live on higher floors. It’s about the assurance that no matter what the time you will definitely get an auto at least. It’s about the undeserted roads even at 3:00am. It’s the celebration on roads when the national cricket team wins a match or a festival. It’s about the dabbawalas and the tiffins they get for so many working people. It’s about the madness for ganesh chatudashi. About long traffic jams and the six inch gap between cars. It’s about the beauty of streetlights. About the local markets and the bargaining t here. about marine drive, chowpatty, juhu beach, bandstand , late night movie shows, college fests, linking road, colaba causeway, fashion street, crawford market , malls and the sales there and so many other things. Mumbai is the city of dreams; life in this city is not just about work. Life here is about following your dreams. Thousands of people come every month in search for their future their dreams. There’s a reason why it is called the commercial capital of India or the city is just so popular. And for ti there needs to be an amazing life in there. There’s a reason why so many people come here, live here and almost none ever go back. And the same reason is why all do call themselves mumbaikars and the city aamchi Mumbai. And i guess the reason is â€Å"life in Mumbai’.

Operating Room Observation Paper Essay

Patient: J.D. Age: 39 year-old. Gender: Female. Marital status: Married. Chief complaint: Left tendoachilles pain for 5 years. Patient rates pain to 10/10. Patient said she had a Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) injection 2 years ago as a treatment intervention for this condition and had some relief but over time, the pain came back and got worse. Name of surgical procedure: Endoscopic Gastrocnemius Recession. Surgery: Left leg Gastrocnemius Recession. This procedure is to release a tight calf muscle that is pulling the heel upward. To improve ROM(Range Of Motion), the tendon connecting to the tight calf muscle will be cut, this will release the heel from the upward pull allowing the patient to stand with foot flat on ground. Gastrocnemius Recession is commonly performed to correct an equinus contracture of the ankle that may accompany foot and ankle pathology in adults. (An equinus deformity is basically one in which the achilles tendon is shorter than needed to allow adequate dorsiflexion during the gait cycle.  If the foot is perpendicular to the leg and put through a range of motion where the foot cannot dorsiflex (move upward) more than 10 degrees this is thought of as an equinus deformity). The equinus deformity leads to excessive pressure and pain that manifests as plantar fasciitis, metatarsalgia, posterior tibial tendon insufficiency, osteoarthritis, and foot ulcers. The procedure is also performed on individuals who have limited ankle dorsiflexion. Preoperative phase. In the preoperative phase, many informations are obtained, a full history from the client, including allergies, medication usage, and pre-existing medical conditions. Any previous experiences with sedation or anesthesia should to be reported, especially any adverse reactions. Note the last dose of each of the client’s prescribed medications, especially if it could alter the client’s response (diuretic, antihypertensive, narcotic). Provide education about the procedure and the medications to be used. Perform a full assessment on the client, including baseline vital signs, cardiac rhythm, and level of consciousness. Determine the last time the client ate or drank (generally NPO for 6 hrs or more before the procedure). The client may have clear liquids up to 2 hrs before the surgery or procedure. Instruct the client to adhere to the instructions to remain NPO, or the surgery or procedure may be cancelled. Establish IV access and administer fluids as prescribed. Verify that the client signed the informed consent. Attach monitoring equipment to the client. Remove dentures (in case intubation would become necessary). Anxiety level is also assessed regarding the procedure, and coping mechanisms. Diagnostic test. Usually many diagnostic test are performed, including Urinalysis, CBC, ECG, chest X-ray for heart and lung status and also for this case since my assignment patient was a female, a pregnancy test was performed, which came  out negative. Informed consent. Usually once surgery has been discussed as treatment with the client and significant other, family member, informed consent is obtained after discussing the risks and benefits of the procedure. To obtain informed consent, the provider must give the client a complete description of the treatment/procedure. A description of the professionals who will be performing and participating in the treatment Information on the risks of anesthesia. A description of the potential harm, pain, and/or discomfort that may occur. Options for other treatments and the right to refuse treatment. The patient must give informed consent voluntarily. And the nurse is to witness the patient sign the consent papers. The procedure/Intraoperative. The nurse remains with the client at all times. Allow other staff to assist the provider with the procedure, if indicated. Continually assess and monitor level of consciousness, cardiac rhythm, respiratory status, and vital signs. During the procedure, the following equipment must be present within immediate reach for routine monitoring and in case deep sedation with respiratory depression occurs. Fully equipped emergency cart that includes emergency medications, airway and ventilator equipment, defibrillator, and IV supplies. A 100% oxygen source and administration supplies, airways, manual resuscitation bag, and suction equipment. ECG monitor/display, noninvasive blood pressure monitor, pulse oximeter, thermometer, and stethoscope. The patient is placed in a supine position with leg elevated, and the surgical assistant prepares the surgical site by cleaning it appropriately. This procedure is performed with general anesthesia. When ready, an incision  is made on the back inside part of the lower leg and the gastrocnemius tendon is exposed. Once the tendon is exposed, the procedure is performed by releasing it as you can see it on the monitors. This effectively lengthens the calf muscle. Patients will now have the same ankle motion with their knee straight that they previously had with their knee bent. After the calf muscle is lengthened, the wound is closed up. This was a fairly quick procedure, about 35-40 minutes. Postoperatively, the patient is escorted to the post anesthesia care unit by the anesthesiologist and the circulating nurse who gives a verbal report to the post anesthesia care unit nurse. Initial postoperative care involves making assessments, administering medications, managing the client’s pain, preventing complications, and determining when a client is ready to be discharged from the PACU. During the immediate postoperative stage, maintaining airway patency and ventilation and  monitoring circulatory status are the priorities for care. Since my assigned patient was administered general anesthesia, frequent respiratory status was required. The nurse who is monitoring continues to record vital signs and level of consciousness until the client is fully awake and all assessment criteria return to presedation levels. Only then can the nurse remove the monitor and all emergency equipment from the bedside. Typical discharge criterias are level of consciousness as on admission, vital signs stable for 30 to 90 min, ability to cough and deep breathe, ability to tolerate oral fluids, ability to void, absence of nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, or dizziness. And the patient is then transferred to a post surgical unit where the patient is still being monitored for any sign of complications. The surgical leg is stabilized and put in a boot that will be in place for about 2-6 weeks. Patient teaching is done including telling the patient to keep leg elevated and keep weight off the foot. And pain level is assessed, patient is medicated as needed. Healing time for this procedure can be short or can take longer based on a some factors like nutrition, circulation, medical condition and also lifestyle, per example if you are a smoker, it will take  longer. The patient was discharged to home the same day since it was an outpatient surgical procedure. http://www.footeducation.com/gastrocnemius-slide-strayer-procedure http://www.aaos.org/news/bulletin/oct07/clinical4.asp http://www.instratek.com/userfiles/EGRTechniqueGuide.pdf http://www.ankleandfootcare.com/research/japma_vol95_no4.pdf http://whymyfoothurts.com/conditions/equinus.html

Property Tax Funding For Public Schools Research Paper

Property Tax Funding For Public Schools - Research Paper Example Instead of doing that, they make equal per-student funding available from their â€Å"General Tax Revenues† for all schools statewide. Most of the Americans declare that they are the supporters of the â€Å"Equal Funding† for the public schools, but the wealthy and the influential citizens often resist the attempts to remove the funding discriminations. This disagreement may be a sign of unawareness about the funding disparities, thoughtless approval of the conventional & long established methods for funding of education, and egotistical yearning to maintain the â€Å"Personal Taxes† at a low rate. The â€Å"Legal and Political† attempts to modify and remove the inequalities have been feeble at the â€Å"Federal Level†. But significant commotion has started to take place in the state courts and governing bodies. This paper ends with suggestions and policy propositions for struggling â€Å"Political and Cultural† conflict to reform. Introducti on: Property taxation and school funding are inter-linked with each other in United States. It has been known that almost half of the property tax revenue is used for funding public, elementary and secondary schools. It has become a hot topic to debate, across the United States as to which extent the public schools should be supported by the funds collected from property taxes. School funding is a controversial topic and it has become a matter to be resolved for almost every state.   It has been estimated  that independent school districts receive 96% of their tax revenues from property taxes. This makes it clear that public school funding rely more on property taxation as compare to grants collected from local government (Fisher, 2007). Whereas on the other hand, almost half of the total property tax revenue collected are also in financing public elementary and secondary schools in the United States. According to the statistics of 2004-2005, United States spent total of $488.5 billion on public elementary and secondary education, with nearly 47 percent of the funds received from state sources, 44 percent funds obtained by local sources with just 9 percent of the contributions derived from federal sources. However, it is a known fact that local funds are mainly received from taxes, primarily the property tax. Since 1952, local governments’ dependence on property taxes has dropped, whether measured as a percentage of local tax revenue, own source general revenue, or total general revenue. There have been quite many strong views on both property taxation and school finance. The strongest statements typically in general disapprove of local property taxes or their use for funding education. A latest assessment of policies in the New England states, a region that rely more greatly on property taxes than the rest of the country, faces strong criticism for this dependence, as stated by Pierce and Johnson (2006) that high property taxes along with the weigh t and perverse incentives they generate, the frenzy they create, the overall town to town school funding inequities they grow typically symbolizes a never-ending series of nightmares for New England. Thus as recommended by the authors, its has been noticed  that New England states need to restructure their  tax systems by lowering their dependency on

International Logistics - Tate and Lyle Report Essay

International Logistics - Tate and Lyle Report - Essay Example Logistics or supply chain management is based upon two core perspectives. The first idea is based upon the fact that the end product used by the users is the effort of numerous organisations. In this context, the term organisation is referred as supply chain. The second perspective has been the fact that although the supply chain has been inexistence since a long period of time, most of the organisations have not paid due attention towards it and few businesses who have understood the importance of the supply chain have not managed it in a proper way. Therefore, this has led to disorganized and ineffective supply chain. From these two perspectives, supply chain management can be explained as the management of the supply chain activities for the purpose of maximising the value of the customers and thus achieve competitive advantages. Supply chain management tries to demonstrate the efforts made for the purpose of developing and operating a profitable supply chain in the best possible way. It is worthy of mentioning that supply chain management encompasses broad range of the activities such as development of the product, sourcing, production along with logistics and the Information Technology (IT) that assist in synchronisation of these activities. The firms that tend to make up the supply chain are found to be interrelated via physical flow and information flow. Information flows assist the partners of the supply chain to integrate long-term plans and thus monitor the day-to-day flow of the goods, up and down the supply chain. While on the other hand, the physical flow is concerned with the transformation along with movement, storage of the goods as well as services (Handfield, 2011). The report is about the worldwide supply chain management of Tate & Lyle which is one of the providers of distinct and competent ingredients to numerous sectors such as food, beverage as well as other industries. Since the company has a large manufacturing plant and innovative tech nology, the company is capable of turning the raw materials into competent materials for its customers (Tate & Lyle, 2011). The most innovative tool that the companies can use for the purpose of improving the logistics as well as the Supply Chain Management (SCM) processes is considered to be the electronic procurement. It is the electronic procurement that assists the companies to get rid of the challenges that the industry faces on the regular basis. Through the electronic procurement system the goods and the services can be bought online. It is via electronic business that the procurement process is converted online and thus all the geographically dispersed employees tend to coordinate online (Kothari & Et. Al., 2005). It can be mentioned that for applying the e-procurement solution, great deal of money is required. In the recent times, most of industries are trying to focus upon the cost