Comfort in Labor: "Like Being Able to Exhale".

Comfort is a fundamental human need to seek relief, ease, and transcendence. Comfort is relevant to women in labor who experience intense pain and mixed emotions. The subjective meaning of comfort in labor for women is not fully understood.

Keeping it together and falling apart: Women's dynamic experience of birth.

Objective: To explore the complexity of women's birth experiences in the context in which they occur and to describe how these influence women's well-being in labor.

Design: Qualitative method with a phenomenological approach, following the analysis principles of van Manen.

Participants And Setting: Eight women from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds in Atlanta, Georgia, United States with a recent, healthy birth were interviewed twice about their experience of the labor journey.

Prevalence of cholera risk factors between migrant Haitians and Dominicans in the Dominican Republic.

Objective: To determine whether cholera risk factor prevalence in the Dominican Republic can be explained by nationality, independent of other factors, given the vulnerability of many Haitians in the country and the need for targeted prevention.

Methods: A cross-sectional, observational household survey (103 Haitian and 260 Dominican) was completed in 18 communities in July 2012. The survey included modules for demographics, knowledge, socioeconomic status, and access to adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure.

Perceived discrimination, humiliation, and mental health: a mixed-methods study among Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic.

Objective: Many Haitian migrants live and work as undocumented laborers in the Dominican Republic. This study examines the legacy of anti-Haitian discrimination in the Dominican Republic and association of discrimination with mental health among Haitian migrants.

Design: This study used mixed methods to generate hypotheses for associations between discrimination and mental health of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic.

A profile of midwifery in Paraguay.

Objective: The goal of this study was to provide a descriptive profile of midwifery in Paraguay.

Design: The study involved three components: background research from official documents and key informant interviews to complete questionnaires, qualitative interviews with Paraguayan midwives and obstetricians, and participant observation. Data from official documents and questionnaires were tabulated using descriptive statistics.

Barriers to participation in governance and professional advancement: a comparison of internationally educated nurses and registered nurses educated in the United States.

Objective: This study compared the perspectives of internationally educated nurses (IENs) and registered nurses (RNs) educated in the United States regarding participation in hospital governance structures and professional advancement.

Background: Nurses' participation in hospital governance is reported to contribute to empowerment. No research has examined how IENs' perceptions about participation in governance compared with those of U.

The experience of discrimination by US and Internationally educated nurses in hospital practice in the USA: a qualitative study.

Aim: To document experiences of nurses educated abroad and in the USA in 2 urban hospitals in the southeastern USA.

Background: Nurses are responsible for providing quality patient care. Discrimination against nurses in the workplace may create hostile environments, potentially affecting patient care and leading to higher nurse attrition rates.

Community-based participatory research and the challenges of qualitative analysis enacted by lay, nurse, and academic researchers.

There are multiple challenges in adhering to the principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), especially when there is a wide range of academic preparation within the research team. This is particularly evident in the analysis phase of qualitative research. We describe the process of conducting qualitative analysis of data on community perceptions of public maternity care in the Dominican Republic, in a cross-cultural, CBPR study.

Culturally responsive health promotion in puerto rican communities: a structuralist approach.

This literature review discusses the value of the structuralist approach as an integrated theoretical and methodological framework for participatory cultural assessments designed to capture the cultural dynamics of those affected by health disparities. Drawing from principles of the Lévi-Straussian strand of structural anthropology found in contemporary cultural studies, and using the Puerto Rican cultural experience as an example, the authors present the distinction between deep and surface structures of cultural knowledge and meaning and highlight information-processing and behavioral systems influenced by the complexity of cognitive and social representations of cultural structures. To understand and address the deeply rooted web of ideology, norms, and practices that influence health decision making and behavioral responses, the authors show the need for ethnographic narrative inquiry beyond surface manifestations of culture.

Measurement of hot flashes by sternal skin conductance and subjective hot flash report in Puebla, Mexico.

Objective: To measure hot flashes by sternal skin conductance in an urban Mexican population and to determine variables associated with hot flash reporting and measurement.

Design: From June 1999 to August 2000, 67 perimenopausal women aged 40 to 65 years participated in interviews, anthropometric measures, and a 2-h recording of sternal skin conductance. Changes in sweating were used to demonstrate the presence/absence of a hot flash.