NURS 4465 - Vulnerable Populations (starting 8/12/13)

Nursing Students Texas (UTA)

Published

Getting an early start on the support group thread for the August 4465 class.

I heard it's second only to Research in terms of horror level...though having just survived Research, I'm optimistic about this one--it can only be better than Research was.

Specializes in ICU.

Where is everyone finding the information for the family characteristics? I must not be looking in the right place.

Edit: I found it! Now the question is, when you're using all information from the U.S. Census page, but the information comes from multiple parts of the website, do you need to cite areas individually? Or just cite the U.S. Census website in general?

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Specializes in ICU.

Oops one more question. It says to compare your community/zip code with city, state, and national. And in another place it just says to compare your city with state and national. How many columns are you doing? The city I'm covering has two zip codes but I haven't been able to find a breakdown for each. So do I compare the city with county? This assignment.... I needed to take a day off or something to try and work on this a little earlier.

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I looked under the CDC stats and just recorded the info under "housing" that outlines the types of families and whether or not they have kids, for example: male only household, no wife present" and then below that it will say "with own children under 18" blah blah blah.

Sorry, I am literally on hour 9 of working on this (in a row) and I have only just found my sources for my own statistical data that I need to back up or negate my CH problems. Ugh. There are SOOOO many things you could write that pertain to your CH diagnosis... I'm really not going that into detail. 1) I'm really getting sick of this assignment and I'm barely halfway done, and haven't APA-formatted anything and 2) I really don't think they read all of this crap.

I feel like there is a much better way we could be comparing and contrasting statistical data and synthesizing it other than having to copy and/or paste a bunch of percentages. It took me hours to do that!

I am doing zip code, city, state and national for most. However, I live in Boston and Boston is comprised of several different areas, each with their own zip code. This causes some issues as community data is obtained under "Boston" and not really under the neighborhoods within Boston, so for some parts, I really couldn't get specific zip code data.

I have about another hour to work on it and I'm hoping to get through all of the statistical stuff. Then, I am going to leave myself 5 hours on Saturday evening/night to summarize everything and do the APA formatting. If that isn't enough time then I'm sure I will be so sick of this assignment that I won't even care. I'll just work hard on everything else to keep my grade up if I do crappy on this. I really wish I wasn't taking assessment next...I have a feeling the last thing I'm going to want to do is more busywork writing.

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.

I did almost all of my data collection over the last two days...it was a challenge. I couldn't get zip code or even city data for my small place of residence, so in some cases I had to use data from the county in its place. I could probably add a couple more tables, but I'm going to get whatever I have formatted and written up first.

I've read one chapter. I figure since each quiz is only worth 3% and these projects are worth 10-15% each week, my focus will be on the writing.

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I'm having similar issues. For my identified health problems, the data is only supporting one issue and not the other. Plus, for both of them, I am missing data from some area, either the city or the zip.

I'm thinking it makes the most sense to research some more data and try to find another diagnosis and somehow tie it into my observations.

Also, I have some data where I can only find it for the state, but no comparable data for national or city...think I should still use it? I'm afraid they are really going to look for us to go in-depth on our morbidity and mortality stats as well as every other related issue. Ugh. I won't have time to work on it until tomorrow at 6 or 7 pm EST...hopefully 5.5 hours will be enough time to pull it together and format. I haven't event looked at how to APA this up!

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I think I am just going to have to be happy with a 70 on this assignment. I have not been this frustrated with an assignment since Research. I have worked on this thing all week, and I still think it is crap. I can't find all the detail I need, and think I am going to get major mark offs for not being detailed enough. I even contemplated making the data up so I don't get marked off for not having it. I need to finish it tonight, and I still have to do all the APA formatting. I hope the rest of the assignments for this class are less time consuming. I already did the FEMA thing so I have week 5 taken care of.

I thought the quiz was much easier this week. I think it was because I used the tips/review sheet to study for the quiz. Last week I didn't look at it. I just read the chapter summaries, and then I didn't know the answers to a lot of the questions on the quiz.

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.

Figuring out how to APA-ize these tables and list the sources in the References has been my headache. I've flooded my AC with e-mails and have flipped through my APA manual time and time again...and I'm still not sure of how to do it. I'm pretty much preparing myself to lose major points in the APA section as I've got 23 tables to sort out.

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Yea, my paper begins to fall apart at the morbidity and mortality. I'm trying to find comparable data for zip, city, state and the nation and I can't. They all provide stats for totally diffident things, but nothing that overlaps. Oh well, I'm going to go with the "more is more" theory and fill in blanks on the table with lots of "N/A."

I find it ridiculous that I, too, feel as if I will get a 60 or 70 on this...after about 20 hours of work on it. Ridiculous! The first part took all of my time with the copying and pasting of stats, and even countless math problems to find population percentages. Luckily I have managed to do well on everything else and since it seems that this is the one assignment that kills everyone emotionally, I think I can deal with one bad grade.

I really think they could re-format this assignment I a way that focuses on the synthesis and comparison of different data points without all of the busywork of compiling statistics.

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So, I'm not at hour 15 or so and am just getting to the analysis/synthesis portion. It's all going to be absolute, utter, B.S. Ugh. Can't wait for this to be over! I will be able to work on it for two hours tomorrow so I'm going to earmark two hours for finishing the synthesis and two hours for figuring out APA formatting...plus I will then have another hour as a buffer.

I couldn't care less at this point!

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.

That's the same point I'm up to as well. I figured I'd beat the APA down first. I'm still not sure I did it right as far as the tables go. But better that I cited and referenced every single thing and lose points for lousy APA, than miss citing something or leaving a data set out of the references, and I get dinged for plagiarism.

I spent more time stressing about APA than I did anything else. It would have been nice had the instructors or UTA given us a crash course in APA and tables.

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.
Yea, my paper begins to fall apart at the morbidity and mortality. I'm trying to find comparable data for zip, city, state and the nation and I can't. They all provide stats for totally diffident things, but nothing that overlaps. Oh well, I'm going to go with the "more is more" theory and fill in blanks on the table with lots of "N/A."

I ended up doing that too, because any morbidity stats I found weren't in rate per 100,000 like the mortality rates are, and I didn't know how to convert them so they'd sync up. At least I found local rates for hospitalizations for specific diseases, so I used that as a form of morbidity statistic. But state and national morbidity rates...not happening.

At this point, I'll settle for any passing grade on this paper as well.

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I just realized that my post from 2am last night didn't make much sense! I chose alcohol consumption and lack of bicycle helmet use as my issues with my community as it is a college-area located amongst wealthier suburbs. It was hard to find data for all the points, let alone data that synced together so I did a lot of mis-mashing. Plus, I struggled with how in-depth to go (ie: head injury with the helmet thing) and gave up at that point. So, then I realized the data wasn't supporting the alcohol consumption so I looked up hate crimes as many families that live in the area are very conservatively Jewish and we were the victim of anti-Semitic car vandalism on the first day of Passover a couple years ago (despite not being Jewish...many cars were vandalized) so I looked up that data which doesn't really support anything.

So, I'm going to weakly tie some CH diagnosis together from this, and give a very monotonous synthesis of each and every table I put together. Hopefully if I bore her to death, she won't grade as harshly because she will skim it :-).

Since this seems like the epically awful assignment of the course, and I did very well in week 1, I'm going to take the bad grade and put my effort towards all other assignments and hope for the best.

Also, it would be helpful if these were all due on Sunday.

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