Prior studies have proven the existence of the "hearing aid effect" when photographs of Caucasian males and females wearing a body aid, a post-auricular aid (behind-the-ear), or no hearing aid were judged by lay persons and professionals. This study was performed to determine if African American and Caucasian males, judged by female members of their own race, were likely to be judged in a similar manner on the basis of appearance, personality, assertiveness, and achievement. Sixty female undergraduate education majors (30 African American; 30 Caucasian) used a semantic differential scale to rate slides of preteen African American and Caucasian males, with and without hearing aids. The results of this study showed that female African American and Caucasian judges rated males of their respective races differently. The hearing aid effect was predominant among the Caucasian judges across the dimensions of appearance, personality, assertiveness, and achievement. In contrast, the African American judges only exhibited a hearing aid effect on the appearance dimension.

Although examiner race did not appear to influence SCAN performance for this group of children, the possibility of a race effect needs further investigation with a larger sample, as does the clinical utility of the SCAN as a processing-dependent measure. The significant learning effect also suggests potential problems with the test-retest reliability of the SCAN.

This study investigated the dialectal sensitivity of the T-unit to determine if it provides a nonbiased alternative for assessing the oral grammatical skills of school-age, nonstandard English speakers. Language samples obtained from 9-year-old children (14 African American English [AAE] speakers and 14 Standard American English [SAE] speakers) were analyzed using words per T-unit, clauses per T-unit, and words per clause across three

Assuring that critical care nurses have the skill and knowledge necessary to accurately utilize the many diagnostic monitoring functions available within critical care is essential for optimizing patient outcomes. This performance improvement project focused on the hemodynamic monitoring skills and knowledge level of the critical care nurses in both a cardiovascular and medical/surgical intensive care unit. A four-step progressive intervention strategy was initiated based on our pre-implementation assessment. Post-implementation measures demonstrated a substantial increase in the skill and knowledge level of the nurses.