Palliative care and euthanasia have become the subject of ethical and political debate in Poland. However, the voice of nurses is rarely heard. The aim of this study is to explore the perception of palliative care and euthanasia among recent university bachelor degree graduates and experienced nurses in Poland. Specific objectives include: self-assessment of the understanding of these terms, recognition of clinical cases, potential acceptability of euthanasia, and an evaluation of attitudes towards palliative care and euthanasia. This is an exploratory (...) study. A convenience sample of 206 recent graduates and 252 experienced nurse practitioners were interviewed. A structured questionnaire was used for collecting and interpreting data. Subjective perception of the terms `palliative care' and `euthanasia' was high and consistent with the recognition of clinical cases. The majority of the nurses excluded euthanasia from palliative care. They recognized personal philosophy of life as the most influential factor affecting attitudes towards euthanasia. The importance of the law was valued more highly by the experienced nurses. (shrink)

In this study, the well-known CES-D depression scale was considered as a prototypical tool for assessing an individual’s inclination to respond at random. It was postulated that the set of the responses obtained from the participants of a questionnaire survey could be divided into three classes: the honest responses class; the pure random class, characterized by the same prob- ability of each admissible score; the smart random class, characterized by the same distribution of the probability of scores as in the (...) honest responses class. A two-step classifying procedure was recommended. According to this procedure, the first step should be to separate the pure random responses from the others. As needed, at the second step the smart random responses should be separated from the honest responses. The CES-D scale consists of sixteen direct questions and four reverse questions, each question with four admissible score values, 0, 1, 2, or 3. The material for the analyses includes all of the 4 294 967 296 possible arrangements of the four scores for the sixteen direct questions, and all of the 256 arrangements of the four scores for the four reverse questions, and all of the possible 49 · 13 = 637 pairs of the possible values of the mean scores from the sixteen direct questions and from the four reverse questions, respectively. It was assumed, without loss of generality, that the honest responses to the sixteen direct questions lead to the resulting distribution: P = (8/16; 5/16; 2/16; 1/16), for a score equal to 0, 1, 2, or 3, respectively. The original iterative procedure was used to compute the exact distributions of the mean scores in the pure random class, and in the smart random class. The discriminant ability to dis- tinguish between the two classes was characterized with the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. In result, the excellent discriminant properties of the CES-D were confirmed. The area under the ROC curve was estimated equal to AUC = 0.98 with standard error SE = 0.004 for the screening of the pure random responses from all of the others, and equal to AUC = 0.87 with standard error SE = 0.006 for the purpose of distinguishing the smart random responses from the honest ones. (shrink)

This study aims at demonstrating the usefulness of the Pareto in- clusive criterion methodology for comparative analyses of fungi toxicity. The toxicity of fungi is usually measured using a scale of several ranks. In practice, the ranks of toxicity are routinely grouped into only four conventional classes of toxicity: from a class of no toxicity, low toxicity, and moderate toxicity, to a class of high toxicity. The illustrative material included the N = 61 fungi samples obtained from three species: A. (...) ochraceus, A. niger and A. flavus. In accordance with the Pareto approach, four partial criterions of the worst toxi- city were defined, a single criterion used for each conventional class of toxicity. Finally, the odds ratios (OR) were calculated separately for each partial cri- terion, and the significance of the hypotheses OR = 1 was estimated. It was stated that A. ochraceus fungi are distinctly more toxic than the two remaining ones with respect to the all considered four partial criterions, with significance equal to p = 0.04, p = 0.04, p = 0.007 and p = 0.005, respectively. Thus, the suggested method illustrated its utility in the case under study. (shrink)