Browsing by Author "Race, Paul T."
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Item Clostridium Difficile Infection: Nursing Considerations(2014-07-23) Race, Paul T.; Russo, Philip; Mitchell, Brett G.Clostridium difficile is a bacterium which commonly causes diarrhoea in inpatients. C. difficile affects hospitalised patients worldwide and can pose a significant risk to patients. This article explores the transmission and risk factors for C. difficile infection (CDI). There are many aspects to the prevention and control of CDI: appropriate antibiotic use, early instigation and maintenance of prevention and control strategies, and high standards of environmental cleanliness, education, and surveillance. This article discusses the role of the nurse in each of these prevention and control activities.
Item History: The San and Its Mission(2019-12-01) Radley, Rose-Marie; Baldwin, Annette; Clifford, Herbert E.; Race, Paul T.This book is a re-telling of the story of the mission of the Sydney Adventist Hospital - even today still known fondly to many as "the San" - based on the many stories and vignettes shared by people, and about people, who lived the San's mission, contributing to a hospital that has had an impact on many lives.This is not a chronological and systematic historical narrative, but it uses the motivation and inspiration of individuals and events to illustrate how the mission of the hospital has been fulfilled through its healing and restorative ministry since 1903. It also illustrates how mission inspired individuals, decisions, strategies and the pioneering work that remains the hallmark of the San.
Item Swimming in a Sea of Hypocrisy?: The Ethical Ambiguity of David Rieff's Memoir(2015-12-01) Gordon, Jill; Race, Paul T.; Rickett, CarolynWhen noted intellectual Susan Sontag died from myelodysplastic syndrome in 2004 aspects of her illness trajectory and death were captured and curated by photographer Annie Leibovitz. The harrowing photographs of Sontag’s diseased body – and later her corpse laid out in a New York mortuary – were included in travelling global exhibitions and were further commodified in Leibovitz’s book which she titled A Photographer’s Life. The historical events of Sontag’s illness and death were therefore (re)written and (re)presented in a way that involved commercial gain.
Sontag’s son, the journalist David Rieff, registered his contempt for the perceived exploitation/unmaking of his mother in a number of media interviews, and most tellingly he recorded and referenced it in his own memoir Swimming in a Sea of Death.
However, some critics have questioned Rieff’s own integrity, suggesting that rather than serving as a respectful ‘tribute’ or commemoration of his mother, aspects of his textual portrait may also be read as acts of ‘posthumous humiliation’. This paper explores how Rieff, while rightly questioning Leibovitz’s violation of his mother’s privacy, could be said to have added to that humiliation by the further exploitation of Sontag’s fame and by his revelation of aspects of her final illness that she may not have wanted to share.
Publication Teaching YA Cancer Narratives: The Fault in Our Stars and Issues with Voicing Illness(Avondale Academic Press, 2019-10-01) Bogacs, Paul; Race, Paul T.; Rickett, Carolyn; Lounsbury, LynnetteIncreasingly publishers are promoting illness as a commodifiable literary product. There is now a wide range of autobiographical and fictional texts that explore life-threatening illnesses from the embodied perspective of protagonists. This trend is also evidenced in the content of young adult literature where concepts of the diseased self, agency and mortality are explored. The aim of this paper is to provide some background context on illness narratives and offer a close reading of the young adult text, The Fault in our Stars by John Green, in order to highlight important issues such as the accurate and realistic portrayal of cancer, particularly in the lived experience of adolescent readers. It is anticipated that this discussion will allow classroom teachers to engage more fully in conversations about text selection and content, and the ways in which literature can advance realistic representation of illness that previously have been culturally taboo.
Item The Heart of Nursing: Attentive Listening and Serving Stories(2016-11-01) Smedley, Alison; Rickett, Carolyn; Race, Paul T.How to be an effective nurse? What “night side of life” looks like? Why relational skills are important? What patients indicate is important? The authors answer these and other questions in this book chapter and assure you that, “by choosing a career in nursing, you are committing to this ultimate goal of generating mutual trust, understanding and respect between yourself and your patient”.
Item When ‘Someone is Writing a Poem’: The Role of Metaphor in Transforming the Inhabited Experience of Life-Threatening Illness(2019-05-01) Race, Paul T.; Gordon, Jill; Beveridge, Judith; Rickett, CarolynBut most often someone writing a poem believes in, depends on, a delicate, vibrating range of difference, that an ‘I’ can become a ‘we’ without extinguishing others, that a partly common language exists to which strangers can bring their own heartbeat, memories, images. A language that itself has learned from the heartbeat, memories, images of strangers. (Rich 2003: 86)
The New leaves writing project was designed to provide people experiencing life-threatening illnesses the poetic tools to help gain self-confidence, literary skills and some kind of aesthetic satisfaction by creating their own poems. Because poetry often utilises the language of the subconscious, it has a unique capacity to help people uncover and listen to the deeper meanings of their lives (Harrower 1972; Mazza 1999). Poetry enables people to feel their lives, rather than to withdraw, or retreat into emotional numbness or states of paralysis in times of crisis. Participants in our project found writing poetry helped build an interior space and – when undertaken in a group led by Judith Beveridge, who is an experienced practitioner – connect their work to a wider community. This article focuses on the ways in which the creation of metaphors and symbolic images enabled New leaves poets to represent the knowledge and experience of illness while moving dialogically from an isolated ‘I’ to a connected ‘We’ by participating in the workshop and publication process.