In 1999, a community college in Florida initiated a study abroad program that included a transcultural nursing Web-based course and a 2-week clinical component in Ecuador. The investigator collected data from 36 participants using Zorn's International Education Survey to measure 4 dimensions of impact of the international experience. Results revealed that impact on the professional role dimension was most significant, followed by the international perspective dimension, the personal development dimension, and the intellectual development dimension. Conclusions were that nursing international experiences do influence nurses' future professional and personal development.

Families of children with special health care needs face challenges in securing comprehensive health, educational, and social services. As a result, care may be fragmented, duplicative, confusing, and unnecessarily costly. Case management or care coordination is a method of overcoming some of the obstacles experienced by these children and their families. This article describes the Automated Case Management System/Community Based Care Coordination Project for California Children Services Children and Their Families in Los Angeles County (grant number MCJ 065020), a grant project funded by the Maternal Child Health Bureau from October 1987 to December 1990 in which family-centered, community-based care coordination services were provided to a select group of clients and the effectiveness of the interventions was evaluated. Care coordination was readily accepted by families and resulted in increased services, but the evaluation proved to be challenging.

Background The human mandible is variable in shape, size and position and any deviation from normal can affect the facial appearance and dental occlusion. Objectives The objectives of this study were to determine whether the Sassouni cephalometric analysis could help predict two-dimensional mandibular shape in humans using cephalometric planes and landmarks. Materials and methods A retrospective computerised analysis of 100 lateral cephalometric radiographs taken at Kingston Hospital Orthodontic Department was carried out. Results Results showed that the Euclidean straight-line mean difference between the estimated position of gonion and traced position of gonion was 7.89 mm and the Euclidean straight-line mean difference between the estimated position of pogonion and the traced position of pogonion was 11.15 mm. The length of the anterior cranial base as measured by sella-nasion was positively correlated with the length of the mandibular body gonion-menton, r = 0.381 and regression analysis showed the length of the anterior cranial base sella-nasion could be predictive of the length of the mandibular body gonion-menton by the equation 22.65 + 0.5426x, where x = length of the anterior cranial base (SN). There was a significant association with convex shaped palates and oblique shaped mandibles, p = 0.0004. Conclusions The method described in this study can be used to help estimate the position of cephalometric points gonion and pogonion and thereby sagittal mandibular length. This method is more accurate in skeletal class I cases and therefore has potential applications in craniofacial anthropology and the ‘missing mandible’ problem in forensic and archaeological reconstruction.