Use of Physical Restraints in Adult Critical Care: A Bicultural Study

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Martin ◽  
Lars Mathisen

• Background Although controversial, physical restraints are commonly used in adult critical care units in the United States to prevent treatment interference and self-inflicted harm. Use of physical restraints in Norwegian hospitals is very limited. In the United States, an experimental design for research on use of restraints has not seemed feasible. However, international research provides an opportunity to compare and contrast practices.• Objectives To describe the relationship between patients’ characteristics, environment, and use of physical restraints in the United States and Norway.• Methods Observations of patients and chart data were collected from 2 intensive care units (n = 50 patients) in Norway and 3 (n = 50 patients) in the United States. Sedation was measured by using the Sedation-Agitation Scale. The Nine Equivalents of Nursing Manpower Use Score was used to indicate patients’ acuity level.• Results Restraints were in use in 39 of 100 observations in the United States and not at all in Norway (P = .001). Categories of patients were balanced. In the Norwegian sample, the median Nine Equivalents of Nursing Manpower Use Score was higher (37 vs 27 points, P < .001), patients were more sedated (P < .001), and nurse-to-patient ratios were higher (1.05:1 vs 0.65:1, P < .001). Seven incidents of unplanned device removal were reported in the US sample.• Conclusions Critical care units with similar technology and characteristics of patients vary between nations in restraint practices, levels of sedation, and nurse-to-patient ratios. Restraint-free care was, in this sample, safe in terms of treatment interference.

Author(s):  
Steven Hurst

The United States, Iran and the Bomb provides the first comprehensive analysis of the US-Iranian nuclear relationship from its origins through to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Starting with the Nixon administration in the 1970s, it analyses the policies of successive US administrations toward the Iranian nuclear programme. Emphasizing the centrality of domestic politics to decision-making on both sides, it offers both an explanation of the evolution of the relationship and a critique of successive US administrations' efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, with neither coercive measures nor inducements effectively applied. The book further argues that factional politics inside Iran played a crucial role in Iranian nuclear decision-making and that American policy tended to reinforce the position of Iranian hardliners and undermine that of those who were prepared to compromise on the nuclear issue. In the final chapter it demonstrates how President Obama's alterations to American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about the signing of the JCPOA in 2015.


Author(s):  
Frédéric Grare

India’s relationship with the United States remains crucial to its own objectives, but is also ambiguous. The asymmetry of power between the two countries is such that the relationship, if potentially useful, is not necessary for the United States while potentially risky for India. Moreover, the shift of the political centre of gravity of Asia — resulting from the growing rivalry between China and the US — is eroding the foundations of India’s policy in Asia, while prospects for greater economic interaction is limited by India’s slow pace of reforms. The future of India-US relations lies in their capacity to evolve a new quid pro quo in which the US will formulate its expectations in more realistic terms while India would assume a larger share of the burden of Asia’ security.


Author(s):  
Diomaris E.S. Jurecska ◽  
Chloe E. Lee ◽  
Kelly B.T. Chang ◽  
Elizabeth Sequeira

Abstract The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between intelligence (IQ) and self-efficacy in children and adolescents living in the United States and Nicaragua. The sample consisted of 90 (46 male, 44 female) students (mean age=11.57 years, SD=3.0 years) referred by school administrators and faculty. United States (US) participants (n=27) resided in rural counties in the Northwest. The other group consisted of 63 students from Central America. A comparison between groups revealed that in the US, sample higher grades and IQ scores are typically associated with higher levels of self-efficacy. However in the Nicaraguan sample, both IQ scores and grades were not associated with self-efficacy, although age was correlated with self-efficacy. Results suggest that the construct of self-efficacy might change depending on whether one belongs to an individualistic or collectivistic society. Additionally, the effects of socioeconomic factors might influence perceived ability even more than intellectual abilities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 1281-1303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Norrlöf

Abstract COVID-19 is the most invasive global crisis in the postwar era, jeopardizing all dimensions of human activity. By theorizing COVID-19 as a public bad, I shed light on one of the great debates of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries regarding the relationship between the United States and liberal international order (LIO). Conceptualizing the pandemic as a public bad, I analyze its consequences for US hegemony. Unlike other international public bads and many of the most important public goods that make up the LIO, the COVID-19 public bad not only has some degree of rivalry but can be made partially excludable, transforming it into more of a club good. Domestically, I demonstrate how the failure to effectively manage the COVID-19 public bad has compromised America's ability to secure the health of its citizens and the domestic economy, the very foundations for its international leadership. These failures jeopardize US provision of other global public goods. Internationally, I show how the US has already used the crisis strategically to reinforce its opposition to free international movement while abandoning the primary international institution tasked with fighting the public bad, the World Health Organization (WHO). While the only area where the United States has exercised leadership is in the monetary sphere, I argue this feat is more consequential for maintaining hegemony. However, even monetary hegemony could be at risk if the pandemic continues to be mismanaged.


2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTHONY PAYNE

United States–Caribbean relations over the period of the last thirty or forty years have rarely—if ever—been analysed in a thoroughly satisfying way. It is a strange omission in the international relations literature given the proximity of the United States to the Caribbean, and vice versa. But the fact is that most accounts of the relationship have fallen prey to a powerful, but ultimately misleading, mythology by which small, poor, weak, dependent entities in the Caribbean have either created trouble for, or alternatively been confronted by, the ‘colossus to the north’ that is the United States in whose ‘backyard’ they unfortunately have to reside. Virtually all analysts of the US–Caribbean relationship have thus drawn a picture marked at heart by the notion of an inherently unequal struggle between forces of a different order and scale. Within this broad metaphor the only major difference of interpretation has reflected the competing theories of power in the international system developed by the realist and structuralist schools.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Hong Nguyen

This article argues that representations in popular culture of the Holocaust of World War II are being used to reframe issues of racism in the United States. It critically examines three major discourse formations: contemporary Western thought on fascism, critical scholarship on the US collective memory of the Holocaust, and popular culture’s use of the Holocaust for racial instruction. The Americanization and de-Judification of the Holocaust shows how fascist racism is constructed through institutional discourses and practices and functions as an archetype for understanding race and racism in the United States. Exploring the emergence of Holocaust references in US public culture following Barack Obama’s election, this article proposes that the analogy gains its efficacy because the Americanization of the Holocaust articulates the relationship between institutional practices and race for racist whites.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 226-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Milner

This article addresses the link between political knowledge and populist attitudes in the United States (US) in comparative perspective. At the beginning of the new decade, populism in the US is associated with support for the Republican party and Donald Trump in particular, and that is how I address it here. Using secondary data from a number of related studies, we find that, overall, support for Trump is not only negatively related to political knowledge, but also to other factors that make his supporters unaware of their being misinformed. This is because, more than for others, partisan cues serve them as a basis for their factual beliefs about political actors and events and assessments of the beliefs of others. While political knowledge has long been comparatively low in the US, as I show in the early part of the article, the relationship between misinformation and populism (i.e., support for Trump) is seen as a new and especially worrisome element. In the concluding section I address what, if anything, could be done to address this situation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 19-27
Author(s):  
Weixing CHEN

The rise of China has shaken, to some extent, the pillars sustaining the US dominance in the world. Facing structural challenges from China, the United States has responded on three levels: political, strategic and policy. The Donald Trump administration has adopted a hard-line approach while attempting to engage China at the structural level. The China–US relationship is entering uncertain times, and the reconstruction of the relationship could take a decade.


Teknokultura ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
George Julian Hendrix

In the United States, “populist” is a controversial and often misunderstood signifier in common discourse. In addition, the current state of mass media and introduction of social networking tools has created a hyper-partisan spectacle of politics – especially during presidential campaign seasons. Through the review of literature on populism, traditional and social media, and presidential campaigning in the United States, this article constructs a new view on the relationship between these three topics in the 21st century. Important steps in this article’s process include defining populism and its place within campaigning and media; presenting social media as a political tool and a dynamic personalized informer; and analyzing the US presidential elections since 2008.  Resultantly, because the trends of online activity, on the part of both the citizen and the candidate, impact social media users’ self-informing and political engagement, the process of selecting a new US president has become more susceptible to various populist practices in this century than before.  


2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRICK IBER

AbstractThis article describes the relationship of the Centro Mexicano de Escritores, Mexico's most important writing centre in the second half of the twentieth century, to the US foundations that funded it. The Centre was founded by a North American writer, Margaret Shedd, with the financial support of the Rockefeller Foundation. The Rockefeller Foundation understood the Centre as a ‘Pan-American’ effort to improve relations between the United States and Mexico by bringing its writers closer together. Later, there were also contributions from two CIA fronts, the Farfield Foundation and the Congress for Cultural Freedom, to the Centre and its star graduate, Juan Rulfo. However, this article argues that none of the US foundations realised the ambitions that they had for the Centre. Through a process of ‘Mexicanised Americanisation', a project that had elements of Yankee cultural imperialism produced instead one of the world's finest writing centres, but without any clear political benefit for the United States.


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