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Background: Nursing care documentation is an integral and important aspect of nursing practice. In Greek clinical settings, the nursing process is not practised, despite being proposed as a basis for documentation by many scientific and political organizations. A major barrier to its implementation is the inadequate educational preparation of nurses. Improvement in education constitutes a major factor in the improvement of knowledge, attitude and skills. Aim: Exploration of the effectiveness of an educational programme on documentation of nursing care for clinical nurses in nursing specialty programmes. Method: Prospective, comparative, quasi-experimental, pre- and post-test study. An educational programme on documentation was developed and implemented for nurses attending medical and surgical specialty training during the academic year 2008-2009. The programme duration was 18 hours, divided into six sections following the stages of nursing process (2-hour theory and 1-hour workshop). The competence of the participants was evaluated with a questionnaire developed for the purposes of the study, consisting of: (a) demographic and educational characteristics, (b) 22 items evaluating the attitude of the participants towards documentation according to nursing process, and (c) 16 closed knowledge questions. The questionnaire was administered at the beginning and the end of the educational programme. Parametric and non-parametric tests were applied for data analysis and the cut-off level for statistical significance was taken at p<0.05. Results: The study sample consisted of 110 registered nurses attending medical and surgical specialty training programmes in Athens and Thessaloniki. Most of the trainees were women (n=95, 88.8%), mean age 37.35±4.42 years, married (n=78, 70.9%) with two children (n=49, 44.55%). The time since their graduation was 14.07±4.96 years and their duration of professional experience was 13.89±4.73 years. After the training programme, nurses reported that their knowledge on how to apply the nursing process in the documentation of nursing care increased significantly [Z= -5.75, p(Wilcoxon)<0.001]. Improvement was demonstrated in the nurses' answers on the knowledge questions (right or wrong and correspondence) [p(Wilcoxon)<0.001] and their attitudes towards nursing documentation [p(Wilcoxon)<0.001]. No demographic or educational feature was found to correlate with the overall improvement of knowledge or attitude. Conclusions: A significant effect was demonstrated of an educational programme on nursing documentation addressed at registered nurses. Such a programme with further evaluation and improvement could be the basis for continuing education, along with evaluation of its effectiveness in the therapeutic outcome of patients in nursing care in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The aim of present study was to evaluate the effects of interdisciplinary approach in math performance and in the motivational climate. One hundred and ninety three pupils (97 boys & 96 girls), aged 9-11 years, from 10 different schools, took part in this study. The evaluation was held through questionnaires which the students completed before and after the intervention. Eight interdisciplinary PE lesson plans were designed, combining motor skills and math. The statistical analysis revealed that pupils of the experimental team had statistically significant higher scores in lesson satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, and also in the specific math test. Also, pupils of the experimental group had lower scores in ego orientation, extrinsic motivation and amotivation. The findings of present research imply that an interdisciplinary approach in physical education classes can be possibly applied effectively in combination with the teaching of mathematical principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study was to evaluate two teaching styles for the more effective teaching of tennis at the elementary level. 307 students participated in this study (5th and 6th graders, 160 boys, 147 girls) from 7 elementary schools of Northern Greece, with age ranging from 11–12 years old (?=11±6). The pupils were divided into three groups: a) the first experimental group attended 10 tennis lessons (once a week) based on the command teaching style, b) the second experimental group attended 10 tennis lessons based on the selfcheck teaching style and c) the control group followed the typical PE curriculum. There were two times of measurement before and after the completion of the intervention. The internal consistency of subscales was at an acceptable level (α>.60). The results deriving from the analysis of repeated measurements showed that there were statistically significant differences between the two genders with regard to a) ego orientation and b) perceived athletic ability. Also, differences were found between the initial and final measurement with reference to the attitudes towards tennis lessons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropometry is a field of physical anthropology which studies the anthropometry characteristics, and contributes to the field of sport science. The aim of this study was to review the literature about somatotype and anthropometric characteristics of known elite athletes in team sports (waterpolo, handball, volleyball, football, basketball) and also to clarify the relation between these characteristics and athletic performance. The research findings showed that the athletes' somatotype and anthropometric characteristics are related to the type of each sport. In addition there is a relation between high athletic performance and physical characteristics like high height, low percentage of body fat and high muscle mass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Training has an important influence on children's development of motor skills and physical abilities, on the consolidation of technical and tactical elements, as well as on the formation of morphological characteristics. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of a six-month handball and a physical education programs on the formation of morphological characteristics. The sample consisted of 121 pupils aged 12-14 years, which were divided in two groups (51 as experimental group and 70 as control group). To evaluate morphological characteristics, the children's weight, height, BMI, skin folds of arm, hip and thigh, arm ex- tension, hand length, and acromional distance were measured. ANCOVA was conducted to examine the differences in the morphological characteristics between the groups, using the first measurement as a covariate. According to the analysis, children who attended the hand-ball program had a significant superiority in the weight, BMI (p<.05), skin folds of the arm, hip and thigh, hand length and acromional distance (p<.001). These differences are probably attributed to the characteristics of hand ball sport such as the continuous physical activity, many jumps and throwing, frequent sprints, various removals, ball handling and body contact with the opponent. Furthermore, the intensity and the training characteristics of the hand-ball program in sport schools apparently contributed in the improvement and adaptation of the morphological characteristics of the children who attended this program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined whether expertise in soccer affects the performance and learning of a novel task requiring continuous postural adjustments to dynamic visual information. A group of 10 soccer experts (mean age: 21.4±1.7, training years: 8.6±3) and 10 age-matched controls (mean age: 20.4, ±0.8) were asked to stand on two adjacent force platforms (ERBE BALANCE SYSTEM), while on-line visual feedback about each foot's force vector was provided on a computer screen ahead of them. The aim of the task was to shift weight between sides so as to always maintain each foot's vector within the visually specified force constraints. Training consisted of 3 blocks of 5 trials separated by 1-minute intervals and followed by 5 retention trials (24 hours after training). Learning was reflected in the mean movement time (MT) and number of errors (E) calculated over the 5-trial blocks. Soccer experts exhibited significantly less number of left side errors (p<0.05) more stable performance (p<0.05) and learned the specific task faster compared to untrained individuals (p<0.05). It is concluded that specific soccer training reinforces perception-action coupling in postural tasks facilitating learning of tasks requiring on-line linking of optical information to motor commands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine sport motivation of wheelchair basketball athletes in terms of win orientation, goal orientation and competitiveness. Participants were 45 male wheelchair basketball players from different teams of the Greek National Championship. They completed the Sport Orientation Questionnaire (Gill & Deeter, 1988), which assesses scores for three factors: competitiveness, goal orientation and win orientation. The results of the study revealed low levels of competitiveness and goal orientation along with a moderate level of win orientation. Based on the findings concerning sport orientation of wheelchair basketball athletes, further recommendations were made for the formulation of more effective goal-setting programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]