Improvements in nurses' work environments in hospitals have the potential to simultaneously reduce nurses' high levels of job burnout and risk of turnover and increase patients' satisfaction with their care.

Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) assessment is becoming common practice in many clinical trials. There is much debate over how to determine the clinical significance of changes in size, which applies a common statistical premise known as the empirical rule, is also presented.The review of these techniques indicates that there is no singie, optimal solution to determin--

The current longitudinal study tested the premise that Latino adolescents' ( N = 323) proactive coping with discrimination would mediate the relationship between ethnic identity and self-esteem. Each component of ethnic identity (i.e., exploration, resolution, and affirmation) was positively associated with concurrent assessments of adolescents' self-esteem. However, in the longitudinal analyses, none of the ethnic identity components predicted future levels of self-esteem. Ethnic identity resolution was the only ethnic identity component to predict proactive coping over time. Furthermore, proactive coping did not mediate the relationship between ethnic identity and self-esteem. However, there was evidence to suggest that the association between proactive coping and self-esteem was bidirectional. These findings underscore the importance of examining the unique components of ethnic identity as well as using longitudinal designs to examine the associations between ethnic identity and adolescents' psychological well-being.

This study examines changes over time in ethnic affirmation/belonging and ethnic identity achievement, Spanish language use, English language use, Mexican/Mexican-American affiliation/ identification and Anglo affiliation/identification in a sample of Mexican-American adolescents participating in a longitudinal study of juvenile offenders. The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure and the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II were completed by the MexicanAmerican adolescents 7 times over a 3-year period. The findings from longitudinal growth modeling analyses and growth mixture modeling analyses indicate that there is heterogeneity in the initial scores and changes over time on these variables that are related to markers for the cultural qualities of the home environment (i.e., generational status and mother's most frequent language use). In contrast to expectations, marginalized or assimilated acculturation trajectories/types were not overrepresented in this sample of adolescent offenders. Implications for our understanding of the nature of acculturation and enculturation processes and the way these processes are studied are discussed.As a result of immigration and birth rates the ethnic minority populations (i.e., Latinos, Asian Americans, etc.) in the United States are rapidly increasing in absolute and relative size (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). Further, for some ethnic minority groups, increased exposure to the mainstream culture of the United States has been associated with increased delinquency (Buriel, Calzada, & Vasquez, 1982;Fridrich & Flannery, 1995;Samaniego & Gonzalez, 1999;Vega, Khoury, Zimmerman, Gil, & Warhaheit, 1995;Wall, Power, & Arbona, 1993) and poor mental health (Hovey & King, 1996;Katragadda & Tidwell, 1998;Rasmussen, Negy, Carlson, & Burns, 1997;Rogler, Cortes, & Malgady, 1991). Several authors (e.g., Gonzales, Knight, Morgan-Lopez, Saenz, & Sirolli, 2002;Szapocznik & Kurtines, 1993) NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript demands to adapt to both the mainstream and ethnic cultures experienced by ethnic minority youths may create challenges that place them at risk for negative mental health outcomes (i.e., depression, low self-esteem, or conduct problems) and negative life outcomes (i.e., school failure, drug and alcohol abuse, juvenile delinquency, and financial instability). That is, ethnic minority individuals may be at greater risk because they are often expected to adhere to many of the behavioral expectations and values of the ethnic culture in their home and proximal neighborhood while at the same time they are expected to adhere to the behavioral expectations and values of the mainstream culture at school and in the broader community.Although some (e.g., Berry, 2006) describe this dual cultural adaptation under the rubric of acculturation, we describe this dual cultural adaptation as occurring through the processes of acculturation and enculturation (Gonzales et al., 2002;Knight, Jacobson, Gonzales, Roosa, & Saenz, 2009) to diff...

This study confirms an earlier finding that women receiving 5-FU-based chemotherapy in a 5-day bolus schedule experience toxicity more frequently and with more severity than men. These data raise the question of whether the recommended initial dose of 5-FU-based chemotherapy for women should be lower than that for men.