Gadget Computer and Academic Performance - 2555 Words

NEW ERA UNIVERSITY #9 Central Avenue, New Era, Quezon City Gadgets Obsession and Academic Performance Of High School Students Submitted by : Go, JolinaQ. Colintava, Lanimarie Dizon, Mark Lean Salvador, Angel G. Chapter 1 THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND INTRODUCTION Gadget refers to any electronic device that has specific functions like voice recording, music playing, surveillance, video playing, photos displaying, etc. The advantage here is that because of its mobility, it can help you lessen the time you consume in your work load. Most school systems have technology standards that all students must attain at various points throughout their education. Education standards are guidelines that define the knowledge and†¦show more content†¦Gadgets compile many products in one. But over using them tends to change its usefulness to destruction, therefore users who are experiencing addiction to gadgets seems to be more noticeable as it greatly affects their psychological ability and of course their social interaction that is why we made this study to figure out, how gadgets dramatically affects the performance of the students. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM This study aims to know the effect of obsession to the academic performance of High School students. Specifically this study seeks to answer the following question: This study specifically answers the following questions: 1. What is the demographic profile of the respondents in terms of: 1.1Gender 1.2 Economical Status 2. What are the different gadgets being obsessed by the students? 3. What is the activity you mostly do in your gadget 4. How do gadgets affect their everyday life? 5. Is there a significant relationship between the students obsession of the different gadgets in their overall performance? 6. How may the results of the study be utilized to enhance the academic performance of the students? SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY This research is with great significance to the readers because life generally demands, challenging, fast phasing and unstoppable because of continuous evolution of technology and its consequences. For students to serveShow MoreRelatedTechnology And Its Impact On Human Life And Improvement Of The Socio Economic Relations1638 Words   |  7 PagesThe use of technology is worldwide domineering owing to its impact on human life and improvement of the socio-economic relations worldwide. For instance, the wireless communication involving mobile phones and computers are the fastest diffusing globally. This has given technology a lot of popularity among the teens and the youths. One thing we have to agree on is that technology cannot be done away with from students since it helps them in preparing for the real world. Therefore, for them to be relevantRead MoreRelation of Computer Literacy to Students Academic Performance1519 Words   |  7 Pagestaken the time to learn about computers often do not even know what to do once one has been turned on, and this problem should be corrected. That is why all high schools must make a computer literacy course a requirement for graduation. Alth ough a computer course would take away two or three periods of a high school students weekly schedule, it will be well worth it in the real world with so many careers today involving a knowledge of a computers basic functions, computer literacy plays a big partRead MoreAcademic Performance and Use of Electronic Gadgets Among Secondary Students2033 Words   |  9 Pagesand convenient. Today, the world has turned into a world of electronic gadgets. The electronic gadgets have advanced in various ways. Today, you will find gadgets that fulfill your everyday needs. These gadgets can be anything from a grinder to a camcorder to a laptop.   The origins of the word gadget trace back to the 19th century. According to the  Oxford English Dictionary, there is anecdotal evidence for the use of gadget as a  placeholder name  for a technical item whose precise name one cantRead MoreImpacts of Technology Dependency on the Academic Performance of Usls Students1490 Words   |  6 Pagessuch as playing Gameboy, watching DVDs, or listening to music players. They tend to be less involved in academic life. Positive impacts will be an important part of this study, for which technology used for academic engagement. A student may use computers, electronic mails, or a cellular phone for social purposes, however, those same technologies will also be use for communication on academic matters, thereby increasing educational involvement. According to Maxima J. Acelajado, (Ph.D., De LaRead MoreLiterature Review : A Research Essay1741 Words   |  7 Pagesnetworking sites (also called social media websites) has also been facilitated by technological advancements and development in recent years. Today, there are numerous gadgets and electronics that can be used to access the internet from anywhere in the world. They include; smartphones, tablets, phablets, laptops, and personal computers among other devices. Today, even television sets can be used to access the internet (Kirschner and Karpinski, 2010). In addition, internet connectivity and speed hasRead MoreThe Myth Of The Ant Queen By Steven Johnson1420 Words   |  6 Pagesmake technology to what they want. Davidson noted that in the Dukes experiment, the student had spent their entire childhood life with computers. Rather than technology changing the students, the students changed the iPod, a gadget merely made for music into an academic tool with different apps to accommodate various subjects. Johnsons notes that the digital computers learn on their own when he states, â€Å"proposing a model of the process which we claim can adaptively improve itself to handle particularRead MoreAssistive Technology And Instructional Technology1551 Words   |  7 Pagesboth Assistive Technology and Instructional technology one may begin to see how they can both beneficial to student with disabilities. To understand Assistive technology (A.T.), we first should defined it. Assistive technology is defined as, as any gadget/equipment for and exceptional individual that helps to counter-balance their specific disability(s). (Stanberry Raskind, 2009, para.4) In clearer terms A.T. is any device that is used to help someone with a disability complete daily tasks. TheRead MoreFactors Affecting the Study Habits and Attitudes of 1st Yr Bsa Student of Pup-Src1669 Words   |  7 PagesFactors affecting the study habits and attitudes of 1st yr BSA student of PUP-SRC Objectives * this study is to provide awareness and better understanding of how their current study habits affected their academic performance to 1st year college students *   gives them a more focused and clear perspective on how the specific behaviors related to their studies influenced study habits * this study also gives a much deeper understanding of their selves as students considering that the collegeRead MoreTechnology Has Impacted Our Lives6520 Words   |  27 Pages INTRODUCTION Technology impacts our daily lives in every field, from the cars we drive, cell phones we use, computers and networks we access and the power we consume! Technology and human life cannot be separated; society has a cyclic co-dependence on technology. We use technological gadgets like laptops, smart phones, tablets, television and services like internet that serves lots of lucrative social networking sites like skype, twitter, facebook, whats app etc. in our daily life and our needsRead MoreComputer Engineering At Shanghai Jiao Tong University961 Words   |  4 PagesDuring my college career, through various challenging courses and research experience, as a computer engineering major, I not only obtained a solid background knowledge in this field but developed an analytical mind for research and a passion to continuing working in computer architecture. After deliberating on my future, I decided to apply for the Ph.D. program at (department of Computer Science Engineering) at (the Pe nnsylvania State University). I was honored to be admitted to the dual degree

College Pressure Free Essays

string(103) " of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination\." â€Å"What’s wrong with the students of today? Back when I was a student we had a better attitude! † Criticisms like this are often heard from parents and teachers, in the newspapers and other media? And it’s been that way ever since education began. No matter what society or era you consider, there are always plenty of wise authorities pointing out that â€Å"The students of today† are somehow failing to grasp the true meaning of university education. Or maybe it’s the other way around: Are universities failing to grasp the true meaning of students? This text examines different aspects of this question and discusses the many pressures that modern students face. We will write a custom essay sample on College Pressure or any similar topic only for you Order Now College  Pressures William Zinsser I am master of Branford College at Yale. I live on the campus and know the students well. (We have 485 of them. ) I listen to their hopes and fears — and also to their stereo music and their piercing cries in the dead of night (â€Å"Does anybody care? â€Å"). They come to me to ask how to get through the rest of their lives. Mainly I try to remind them that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more unexpected turns than they think. There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don’t want to hear such news. They want a map — right now — that they can follow directly to career security, financial security, social security and, presumably, a prepaid grave. What I wish for all students is some release from the grim grip of the future. I wish them a chance to enjoy each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a tiresome requirement in preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as educational as victory and is not the end of the world. My wish, of course, is naive. One of the few rights that America does not proclaim is the right to fail. Achievement is the national god, worshipped in our media — the million-dollar athlete, the wealthy executive — and glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old. I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It’s easy to look around for bad guys — to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no bad guys, only victims. Today it is not unusual for a student, even one who works part time at college and full time during the summer, to have accumulated $5,000 in loans after four years — loans that the student must start to repay within one year after graduation (and incidentally, not all these loans are low-interest, as many non-students believe). Encouraged at the commencement ceremony to go forth into the world, students are already behind as they go forth. How can they not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? Women at Yale are under even more pressure than men to justify their expensive education to themselves, their parents, and society. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society hasn’t yet caught up with this fact. Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined. I see students taking premedical courses with joyless determination. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know them in other corners of their life as cheerful people. â€Å"Do you want to go to medical school? † I ask them. â€Å"I guess so,† they say, without conviction, or, â€Å"Not really. †    â€Å"Then why are you going? † â€Å"My parents want me to be a doctor. They’re paying all this money and †¦ †   Ã‚   Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they begin from the very start of freshman year. I had a freshman student I’ll call Linda,† one instructor told me, â€Å"who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I couldn’t tell her that Barbara had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda. † The story is almost funny — except that it’s not. It’s a symptom of all the pressures put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight. I wish they could sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the rattling of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due: â€Å"Will I get everything done? †   Ã‚  Ã‚   Probably they won’t. They will get sick. They will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out. I’ve painted too grim a portrait of today’s students, making them seem too solemn. That’s only half of their story; the other half is that these students are nice people, and easy to like. They’re quick to laugh and to offer friendship. They’re more considerate of one another than any student generation I’ve ever known. If I’ve described them primarily as driven creatures who largely ignore the joyful side of life, it’s because that’s where the problem is — not only at Yale but throughout American education. It’s why I think we should all be worried about the values that are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age. I tell students that there is no one â€Å"right† way to get ahead — that each of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination. You read "College Pressure" in category "Papers" I tell them that change is healthy and that people don’t have to fit into pre-arranged slots. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk informally with my students during the year. I invite heads of companies, editors of magazines, politicians, Broadway producers, artists, writers, economists, photographers, scientists, historians — a mixed bag of achievers. I ask them to say a few words about how they got started. The students always assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was what they wanted to do. But in fact, most of them got where they are by a circuitous route, after many side trips. The students are startled. They can hardly conceive of a career that was not preplanned. They can hardly imagine allowing the hand of God or chance to lead them down some unforeseen trail. College Pressures by William Zinsser( , ) , , , Dear Carlos: I desperately need a dean’s excuse for my chem midterm which will begin in about 1 hour. All I can say is that I totally blew it this week. I’ve fallen incredibly, inconceivably behind. Carlos: Help! I’m anxious to hear from you. I’ll be in my room and won’t leave it until I hear from you. Tomorrow is the last day for †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. Carlos: I left town because I started bugging out again. I stayed up all night to finish a take-home make-up exam and am typing it to hand in on the 10th. It was due on the 5th. P. S. I’m going to the dentist. Pain is pretty bad. Carlos: Probably by Friday I’ll be able to get back to my studies. Right now I’m going to take a long walk. This whole thing has taken a lot out of me. Carlos: I’m really up the proverbial creek. The problem is I really bombed the history final. Since I need that course for my major I †¦. Carlos: Here follows a tale of woe. I went home this weekend, had to help my Mom, and caught a fever so didn’t have much time to study. My professor †¦.. Carlos: Aargh!! Trouble. Nothing original but everything’s piling up at once. To be brief, my job interview †¦.. Hey Carlos, good news! I’ve got mononucleosis. Who are these wretched supplicants, scribbling notes so laden with anxiety, seeking such miracles of postponement and balm? They are men and women who belong to Branford College, one of the twelve residential colleges at Yale University, and the messages are just a few of the hundreds that they left for their dean, Carlos Hortas — often slipped under his door at 4 a. m. — last year. But students like the ones who wrote those notes can also be found on campuses from coast to coast — especially in New England, and at many other private colleges across the country that have high academic standards and highly motivated students. Nobody could doubt that the notes are real. In their urgency and their gallows humor they are authentic voices of a generation that is panicky to succeed. My own connection with the message writers is that I am master of Branford College. I live in its Gothic quadrangle and know the students well. (We have 485 of them. ) I am privy to their hopes and fears — and also to their stereo music and their piercing cries in the dead of night (â€Å"Does anybody ca-a-are? â€Å"). If they went to Carlos to ask how to get through tomorrow, they come to me to ask how to get through the rest of their lives. Mainly I try to remind them that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more unexpected turns than they think. There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don’t want to hear such liberating news. They want a map — right now — that they can follow unswervingly to career security, financial security, social security and, presumably, a prepaid grave. What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy grip of the future. I wish them a chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive as victory and is not the end of the world. My wish, of course, is naive. One of the few rights that America does not proclaim is the right to fail. Achievement is the national god, venerated in our media — the million dollar athlete, the wealthy executive — and the glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old. I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It is easy to look around for villians — to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are are no villians, only victims. â€Å"In the late 1960’s,† one dean told me, â€Å"the typical question that I got from students was, ‘Why is there so much suffering in the world? ‘ or ‘How can I make a contribution? ‘ Today it’s, ‘Do you think it would look better for getting into law school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just majored in one of them? Many other deans confirmed this pattern. One said, â€Å"They’re trying to find an edge — the intangible something that will look better on paper if two students are about equal. † Note the emphasis on looking better. The transcript has become a sacred document, the passport to security. Ho w one appears on paper is more important than how one appears in person. A is for Admirable and B is for Borderline, even though, in Yale’s official system of grading, A means â€Å"excellent† and B means â€Å"very good. † Today, looking very good is no longer enough, especially for students who hope to go on to law school or medical school. They know that entrance into the better schools will be an entrance into the better law firms and better medical practices where they will make a lot of money. They also know that the odds are harsh, Yale Law School, for instance, matriculates 170 students from an applicant pool of 3,700; Harvard enrolls 550 from a pool of 7,000. It’s all very well for those of us who write letters of recommendation for our students to stress the qualities of humanity that will make them good lawyers or doctors. And it’s nice to think that admission officers are really reading our letters and looking for the extra dimension of commitment or concern. Still, it would be hard for a student not to visualize these officers shuffling so many transcripts studded with A’s that they regard a B as positively shameful. The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and get a job. Long gone are the days of the â€Å"gentlemen’s C,† when students journeyed through college with a certain relaxation, sampling a wide variety of courses — music, art, philosophy, classics, anthropology, poetry, religion — that would send them out as liberally educated men and women. If I were an employer I would employ graduates who have this range and curiousity rather than those who narrowly purused safe subjects and high grades. I know countless students whose inquiring minds exhilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I don’t know if they are getting A’s or C’s, and I don’t care. I also like them as people. The country needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to relax. They can’t. Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room, and board at most private colleges now comes to at least $7,000, not counting books and fees. This might seem to suggest that the colleges are getting rich. But they are equally battered by inflation. Tuition covers only 60% of what it costs to educate a student, and ordinarily the remainder comes from what colleges receive in endowments, grants, and gifts. Now the remainder keeps being swallowed by the cruel costs higher every year, of just opening the doors. Heating oil is up. Insurance is up. Postage is up. Health premium costs are up. Everything is up. Deficits are up. We are witnessing in America the creation of a brotherhood of paupers — colleges, parents and students, joined by the common bond of debt. Today it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part-time at college and full-time during the summer, to accrue $5,000 in loans after four years — loans that he must start to repay within one year after graduation. Exhorted at commencement to go forth into the world, he is already behind as he goes forth. How could he not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? I have used â€Å"he,† incidentally, only for brevity. Women at Yale are under no less pressure to justify their expensive education to themsleves, their parents, and society. In fact, they are probably under more pressure. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society hasn’t yet caught up with that fact. Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined. I see many students taking pre-medical courses with joyless tenacity. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know them in other corners of their life as cheerful people. â€Å"Do you want to go to medical school? I ask them. â€Å"I guess so,† they say, without conviction, or â€Å"Not really. † â€Å"Then why are you going? † â€Å"Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They’re paying all this money and †¦ † Poor students, poor parents. They are caught in one of the oldest webs of love and duty and guilt. The parents mean well; they are trying to steer their sons and daughters toward a secure futu re. But the sons and daughters want to major in history or classics or philosophy — subjects with no â€Å"practical† value. Where’s the payoff on the humanities? It’s not easy to persuade such loving parents that the humanities do, indeed, pay off. The intellectual faculties developed by studying subjects like history and classics — an ability to synthesize and relate, to weigh cause and effect, to see events in perspective — are just the faculties that make creative leaders in business or almost any general field. Still, many thaters would rather put their money on courses that point toward a specific profession — courses that are pre-law, pre-medical, pre-business, or as I sometimes put it, â€Å"pre-rich. † But the pressure on students is severe. They are truly torn. One part of them feels obligated to fulfill their parents’ expectations; after all, their parents are older and presumably wiser. Another part tells them that the expectations that are right for their parents are not right for them. I know a student who wants to be an artist. She is very obviously an artist and will be a good one — she has already had several modest local exhibits. Meanwhile she is growing as a well-rounded person and taking humanistic subjects that will enrich the inner resources out of which her art will grow. But her father is strongly opposed. He thinks that an artist is a â€Å"dumb† thing to be. The student vacillates and tries to please everybody. She keeps up with her art somewhat furtively and takes some of the â€Å"dumb† courses her father wants her to take — at least they are dumb courses for her. She is a free spirit on a campus of tense students — no small achievement in itself — she deserves to follow her muse. Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they begin almost at the beginning of freshman year. I had a freshman student I’ll call Linda, † one dean told me, â€Å"who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I couldn’t tell her that Barabra had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda. † The story is almost funny — except that it’s not. It’s symptomatic of all the pressures put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight. I wish they would sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the clack of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due : â€Å"Will I get everything done? † Probably they won’t. They will get sick. They will get â€Å"blocked†. They will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out. Hey Carlos, Help! Part of the problem is that they do more than they are expected to do. A professor will assign five-page papers. Several students will start writing ten-page papers, and a few will raise the ante to fifteen. Pity the poor student who is still just doing the assignment. â€Å"Once you have twenty or thirty percent of the student population deliberately overexerting,† one dean points out, â€Å"it’s just bad for everybody. When a teacher gets more and more effort from his class, the student who is doing normal work can be perceived as not doing well. The tactic works, psychologically. † Why can’t the professor just cut back and not accept longer papers? He can and he probably will. But by then the term will be half over and the damage done. Grade fever is highly contagious and not easily reversed. Besides, the professor’s main concern is with his course. He knows his students only in relation to the course and doesn’t know that they are also overexerting in their other courses. Nor is it really his business. He didn’t sign up for dealing with the student as a whole person and with all the emotional baggage the student brought from home. That’s what deans, masters, chaplains, and psychiatrists are for. To some extent this is nothing new: a certain number of professors have always been self-contained islands of scholarship and shyness, more comfortable with books than with people. But the new pauperism has widened the gap still further, for professors who actually like to spend time with students don’t have as much time to spend. They also are overexerting. If they are young, they are busy trying to publish in order not to perish, hanging by their fingernails onto a shrinking profession. If they are old and tenured, they are buried under the duties of administering departments — as departmental chairmen or members of committees — that have been thinned out by the budgetary axe. Ultimately it will be the student’s own business to break the circles in which they are trapped. They are too young to be prisoners of their parents’ dreams and their classmates’ fears. They must be jolted into believing in themselves as unique men and women who have the power to shape their own future. â€Å"Violence is being done to the undergraduate experience,† says Carlos Horta. â€Å"College should be open-ended; at the end it should open many, many roads. Instead, students are choosing their goal in advance, and their choices narrow as they go along, it’s almost as if they think that the country has been codified in the type of jobs that exist — that they’ve got to fit into certain slots. Therefore, fit into the best-paying slot. † â€Å"They ought to take chances. Not taking chances will lead to a life of colorless mediocrity. They’ll be comfortable. But something in the spirit will be missing. † I have painted too drab a portrait of today’s students, making them seem a solemn lot. That is only half of their story: if they were so dreary I wouldn’t so thoroughly enjoy their company. The other half is that they are easy to like. They are quick to laugh and to offer friendship. They are not introverts. They are unusually kind and are more considerate of one another than any student generation I have known. Nor are they so obsessed with their studies that they avoid sports and extra-curricular activities. On the contrary, they juggle their crowded hours to play on a variety of teams, peform with musical and dramatic groups, and write for campus publications. But this in turn is one more cause of anxiety. There are too many choices. Academically, they have 1,300 courses to select from; outside class they have to decide how much spare time they can spare and how to spend it. This means that they engage in fewer extracurricular pursuits than their predecessors did. If they want to row on the crew and play in the symphony they will eliminate one; in the ’60’s they would have done both. They also tend to choose activities that are self-limiting. Drama, for instance, is flourishing in all twelve of Yale’s residential colleges as it never has before. Students hurl themselves into these productions — as actors, directors, carpenters, and technicians — with a dedication to create the best possible play, knowing that the day will come when the run will end and they can get back to their studies. They also can’t afford to be the willing slave for organizations like the Yale Daily News. Last spring at the one hundredth anniversary banquet of that paper whose past chairmen include such once and future kings as Potter Stewart, Kingman Brewster, and William F. Buckley, Jr. — much was made of the fact that the editorial staff used to be small and totally committed and that â€Å"newsies† routinely worked fifty hours a week. In effect they belonged to a club; Newsies is how they defined themselves at Yale. Today’s student will write one or two articles a week, when he can, and he defines himself as a student. I’ve never heard the word Newsie except at the banquet. If I have described the modern undergraduate primarily as a driven creature who is largely ignoring the blithe spirit inside who keeps trying to come out and play, it’s because that’s where the crunch is, not only at Yale but throughout American education. It’s why I think we should all be worried about the values that are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age. I tell students that there is no one â€Å"right† way to get ahead — that each of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination. I tell them that change is a tonic and that all the slots are not codified nor the frontiers closed. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk informally with my students during the year. They are heads of companies or ad agencies, editors of magazines, politicians, public officials, television magnates, labor leaders, business executives, Broadway producers, artists, writers, economists, photographers, scientists, historians — a mixed bag of achievers. I ask them to say a few words about how they got started. The students assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was what they wanted to do. Luckily for me, most of them got into their field by a circuitious route, to their surprise, after many detours. The students are startled. They can hardly conceive of a career that was not pre-planned. They can hardly imagine allowing the hand of God or chance to nudge them down some unforeseen trail. How to cite College Pressure, Papers

Clinical Assessment of TIA Leading to Stroke-Samples for Student

Question: You are required to demonstrate your understanding through guided application of the subjective and objective data gained from a patient situation to selected components of the clinical reasoning cycle. Answer: Patient situation: A 59 year old widow named Mrs. Amari was brought to the emergency department by her son, Niko. He noticed a sudden slurring in her mothers speech with drooped face on one side. She reported her son about the numbness of right side of her face including her right arm. Niko brought her to the hospital after having a fear of stroke. Previous history: Her mother had a history of hypertension with hypercholesterolemia with 25 years of tobacco usage which she had stopped ten years ago. She showed a positive history of family line with heart disease. She does not follow a regular exercise regimen with occasional walk in neighbourhood. Primary assessment: The nursing staff in the emergency department assessed her and found a slight diversion of mouth in the right side with speech slightly slurred. Further assessment showed no such weakness with steady gait and could swallow without any difficulty. She followed all the commands and looked oriented. The pupal examination showed round, equal and normally reacting to light (4mm to 2mm). No such nystagmus was noted. She did not complain of any kind of headache followed by nausea, vomiting, chest pain, diaphoresis or visual complaints. Information gathered: On examining her vital signs her temperature was 36.7C with an increased blood pressure of 148/97mmHg, pulse recorded 81, respiratory rate was 14 and the oxygen saturation was 94%. Numbering through Glasgow Coma Scale showed 15 with 6.6mmol/L blood glucose level. Based on the history and examination result she was diagnosed by a transient ischemic attack (TIA) also termed as mini attack. A scan of the head computed tomography (CT) showed no such change in intracranial structure with MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imagery) reports normal. The neurologist referred her to the stroke unit for further observation followed by treatment. Current situation: The visit to Mrs. Amari in the next day showed some changes in the clinical features. Her speech sounded slurry with drooped mouth in the right side. Examining her vital signs should an elevated change in blood pressure to 175/105mmHg with decrease in the SpO2 by 92%. The examination history showed consistency with the TIA. The change in the vital signs with increased ABCD scores (The Airway, Breathing, Circulation, Disability) constituted a risk of stroke in the upcoming 48 hours (Daniels et al. 2012). Hence, in this clinical report based on the case study of Mrs. Amari the methods relating the assessment, diagnosis and management of TIA followed by stoke signs will be evaluated with required interventions. Epidemiology with aetiology: Transient ischemic attack (TIA) is a common clinical disorder with incidental rate of 0.5 out of 1000 people. It usually affects the communication, motor functioning and sensibility. TIA is often followed by strokes which go unrecognised in patients (Hickey 2012). This symptom occurs when the blood vessel inside the brain is clogged (Figure 1). This clinical presentation occurs due to death of the brain cells (Rosenberg 2012). TIA differs from stroke in duration of the symptom, in which TIA does not persist more than one hour. Obstructed blood flow termed ischemia causes permanent damage in brain causing (CVA) cerebrovascular accident (Sanderson et al. 2013). In TIA brain shows temporary damage. CVA with ruptured artery with bleeding within brain is called haemorrhage. TIA and stroke are distinguished depending on the cause. Hence, the patients with TIA can be cured by early recognition and by preventing other disabling events. Therefore, a thorough knowledge about the various mechan isms is important to provide exact treatment and thereby preventing death. Undertaking the diagnosis: TIA onsets suddenly and hence need immediate assessment. It is a neurological deficit of transient focal whose symptoms appears in late stage, thus proper diagnosis is required from examining and investigating (Riccio et al. 2013). Headache is sometimes perceived to be a part of TIA syndrome but severe headache is rarely noticed in TIA. TIA symptoms: The symptoms of TIA are feeling of numbness with unilateral weakness, slurred speech and defect in vision which was noted in Mrs. Amari. In this case the anterior circulation that involves the circulation of carotid artery is affected. Other symptoms are found in posterior circulation with affected system of vertebro-basilar. Thus, by understanding the symptoms pattern, exact diagnosis can be made. Investigations: The patients diagnosed with TIA should be assessed by primary investigation such as blood glucose test, routine check up of blood pressure and pulse with frequent ECG. The assessment should involve ABCD2 score for analysing the stroke risk with a score of four or above and should be recommended for carotid imaging to detect the stenosis of carotid artery (Sanders et al. 2013). In many hospitals, TIA assessment is done regularly in patient with urgent need. Stroke risk ABCD2 score: 1. Age 60 years - 1 point 2. BP 140/90mmHg - 1 point 3. Clinical components: Unilateral weakness- 2points Speech affected without weakness- 1 points 4. Symptoms duration: more than 60 minutes- 2 points 10 to 59 minutes- 1 point 5. Diabetes - 1 point Apart from scoring the symptoms, further investigations will be carried out by brain imaging. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of diffused weighted is done within a week in patients with low risk and within one day for patients with high risk. Advanced investigation can be done by CT (computed tomography) that identifies the haemorrhages and the lesions occupying the spaces. The patients with TIA diagnosed be provided Doppler ultrasonography in order to examine the disease associated with carotid along with vertebra-basilar. Other tests such as Halter monitoring with ECG (electrocardiogram) can be necessitated (Somford et al. 2013). Management of the situation: The TIA management with diagnosis is same in both cases of TIA and stroke. Although, stratified risks in TIA allows the treatment specialist to decide where and when to make the referral. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the management of the aggressive risk components. The advice regarding the lifestyle should point out as much as possible risk factors. The specific interventions in reducing the rate of stroke have been discussed below (Ihle?Hansen et al. 2014) Hypertension treatment: Treating hypertension by reducing the BP with antihypertensive can prevent the recurrent stroke along with other vascular problems after TIA. Combined use of diuretics with ACE inhibitors are found to reduce the BP by approximately 10/5mmHg (Bunker 2014). Hypertension was recorded in the history of Mrs. Amari which can be controlled by this treatment. Hypercholesterolaemia: The drugs related to lowering of cholesterol have been found to be effective in primary as well as secondary prevention (Rabar et al. 2014). Diets should be modified with statin use if the total count is more than 3.5mmol/L. Mrs. Amari showed hypercholesterolemia which can be controlled by this intervention. Smoking: Smoking is one of the leading causes for 50% stroke rise. Thus, patients with TIA and strokes should be recommended to quit smoking (Peters, Huxley Woodward 2013). Mrs. Amati had a smoking history of 25 years but had quit few years back. Anticoagulants: About 15% of TIA and ischemic strokes are intervened by anticoagulants based warfarin (Easton et al. 2012). Dabigatran is a new anticoagulant which has newly emerged but due its cost and irreversible nature, it is detrimental to life. Diabetes: The diabetic patients with TIA or stroke need strict control of glucose level in order to reduce the vascular related complications (Schnell, Erbach Hummel 2012). Antiplatelets such as aspirin are used in patients with past record of TIA or any kind of stroke to reduce the vascular risks by 13% (Geeganage et al. 2012). But aspirin should not be administered without doing brain imaging. Prognosis: The prognosis is linked with timely diagnosis of TIA followed by stroke referring to an immediate treatment with secondary prevention. The TIA prognosis is concerned with stroke risk followed by vascular events. Statistical studies have shown that 70% patients couldnt recognise TIA which delayed in getting medical help (Spurgeon et al. 2012). Therefore, the people should be educated for estimating the risk with proper planning programme and regular check up by specialist. Preventing future occurrence: Recurrent occurrence can be controlled by adjusting the diet with modified lifestyle such as smoking, physiological stress with hypertension and elevated cholesterol level with medical interventions. Modification in these risk factors can lower the risk of future stroke recurrence in patients diagnosed with TIA References: Bunker, J 2014, Hypertension: diagnosis, assessment and management,Nursing Standard,vol. 28, no. 42, pp.50-59. 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