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Three hundred-forty lesbians and 62 gay males, largely from North America and in partnered relationships, completed online surveys that explored what handholding means to same-sex couples. The data suggest that lesbians in the United States are more likely now than ¼ century ago to hold hands in public spaces. Younger lesbians are more likely to hold hands in public than older lesbians, and Canadian lesbians hold hands more often in public than American lesbians. In response to the question, "What does handholding mean to you?," 26% of the female respondents from North America overtly referred to public handholding as either a political act or a risky behavior. The number of comments of that nature was similar, regardless of whether the lesbians resided in the United States or Canada. Data suggest that full acceptance of same-sex couples in public spaces has not yet occurred, even in jurisdictions where same-sex couples have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. Although the sample size for males was too small to analyze the influence of age or political jurisdiction on public handholding, males, in general, were significantly less likely than females to view handholding as a means of staying "connected" with their partners.

Objective: Existing investigations on medical error disclosures have neglected the fact that a disproportionately large amount of the meaning in messages is derived from nonverbal cues. This study provides an empirical assessment of the verbal and nonverbal messages physicians communicate when disclosing medical errors to standardized patients., Methods: Sixty hypothetical error disclosures by a volunteer sample of attending physicians were videotaped, coded, and statistically analyzed., Results: Physicians used friendly, smooth, approaching and invested nonverbal styles as they disclosed medical errors to standardized patients. Female physicians smiled more and were more attentive to patients than male physicians, and physicians tended to exhibit more positive affect in the form of facial pleasantness toward angry female patients than toward angry male patients. Furthermore, physicians touched and smiled at patients more frequently at the beginning and at the end of their error disclosures, and displayed decreased attentiveness and interactional fluency., Conclusion: Future research needs to examine which disclosure styles patients perceive as competent, and to assess their causal impacts on objective and relational disclosure outcomes., Practice Implications: This study provides an important baseline understanding of medical error disclosures that is essential for the successful implementation of empirically based training programs., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Compared with more explicit racial slurs and statements, biased facial expressions and body language may resist conscious identification and thus produce a hidden social influence. In four studies, we show that race biases can be subtly transmitted via televised nonverbal behavior. Characters on 11 popular television shows exhibited more negative nonverbal behavior toward black than toward status-matched white characters. Critically, exposure to prowhite (versus problack) nonverbal bias increased viewers' bias even though patterns of nonverbal behavior could not be consciously reported. These findings suggest that hidden patterns of televised nonverbal behavior influence bias among viewers.

Transcultural nursing is an essential aspect of healthcare today. The ever-increasing multicultural population in the United States poses a significant challenge to nurses providing individualized and holistic care to their patients. This requires nurses to recognize and appreciate cultural differences in healthcare values, beliefs, and customs. Nurses must acquire the necessary knowledge and skills in cultural competency. Culturally competent nursing care helps ensure patient satisfaction and positive outcomes. This article discusses changes that are important to transcultural nursing. It identifies factors that define transcultural nursing and analyzes methods to promote culturally competent nursing care. The need for transcultural nursing will continue to be an important aspect in healthcare. Additional nursing research is needed to promote transcultural nursing.

Speeches and presentations offer an interesting catch-22: executives don't want to spend long hours creating them, and people don't want to sit for long hours listening to them. Ultimately, though, executives can't live without them. That's because a good speech or presentation has the power to inspire people to act on the speaker's behalf and create change. Author Nick Morgan, a longtime speech-writer and speaking coach, says what's most often lacking in today's speeches and presentations is what he calls the "kinesthetic connection." Many good speakers connect aurally with their audiences, telling dramatic stories and effectively pacing their speeches to hold people's attention. Others connect visually, with a vivid film clip or a killer slide. Some people do both, but not many also connect kinesthetically. Morgan says the kinesthetic speaker feeds an audience's primal hunger to experience a presentation on a physical, as well as an intellectual, level. Through awareness of their own physical presence--gestures, posture, movements--and through the effective use of the space in which they present, kinesthetic speakers can create potent nonverbal messages that reinforce their verbal ones. In this article, Morgan describes techniques for harnessing kinesthetic power and creating a sense of intimacy with an audience--a closeness that is more widely expected from speakers since the advent of television. For instance, kinesthetic speakers should make use of audience proxies--individuals in the crowd who serve as representatives for the others. Ultimately, the author says, a speech or presentation offers something of great value to business executives: it's the best vehicle for winning trust from large groups of people--be they employees, colleagues, or share-holders.

A chaplain shares his learning in his attempts to deliver meaningful pastoral care to premature babies in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of a hospital. Explicates some of the parallels between pastoral communication with adults and with babies, noting especially the necessity of recognizing the need for creative modification of adult modes of care.

Threats to the safety of security officers by persons they encounter in confrontational or potentially confrontational situations are an ever-present danger. This potential for physical violence can take place in the lobby, cafeteria, halls, elevators, or the parking lot of any corporate entity, not just hospitals. In hospitals, however, this danger is compounded by psychiatric patients and other hospital patients under stress. Hospital security personnel are often called to defuse potentially violent patient situations. Further compounding this risk of violence are increases in cutbacks in hospital personnel. Therefore, programs that teach hospital staff members how to control aggression will become increasingly important. Among the organizations have made a reputation for training security professionals and others in preventing and dealing with violence are R.E.B. Security Training, Inc., Avon, CT, and Wickersty & Associates, Inc., Bladensburg, MD. R.E.B. offers a two-day course in nonverbal communication that is taken by police officers and security directors. According to Ronald W. Ouellette, president, the course has also been attended by nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, and psychologists. Wickersty & Associates has been conducting "Controlling Aggression" workshops in health care facilities for the past 12 years. According to Dr. Allan Wickersty, more and more hospitals are hiring consultants to teach staff members how to deal with aggressive behavior. But hospital violence remains an underreported problem. "One thing I have noticed is that the type of hospital experiencing violence is changing.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

A speech pathologist developed a program with language goals which included spontaneous communication, focus, attention span, auditory memory, receptive and expressive vocabulary, and concepts such as body image, spatial relationships, and same and different polarities. The services of a professional mime were used to translate these goals into mimetic activities and to perform the activities in group sessions with the children. In addition, the mime taught the speech clinicians some simple mimetic activities. The subjects were five children with mental retardation, language delay, lack of spontaneity, short attention span and very poor visual and auditory memory. The results suggested increase in spontaneity and attention span in all the children and a facility to remember the illusions depicted for them by the mime. The experience with the mime training for clinicians was also positive.

If a manager in an organization talks about making an "end run," what is he saying? Is he seeing life in the organization as a game; is he seeing it as hazardous and maybe nominating himself for a hero role; or is he merely saying he's going all the way with a project, regardless. The truth is we don't know what he's saying. It is all too easy both to interpret the metaphors others use to fit out own meanings and to ignore the fact that metaphors have idiosyncratic meanings that should be listened to. The author describes three ways managers convey messages about themselves and the ways they see the world. He encourages the reader to see these ways--their metaphors, office settings, and body language and tones that accompany their speech--as means of communicating. Just as speech or mathematics, these are languages that can be learned. With skill in them, a manager can see or hear what is really going on when people talk, what hidden messages we are sending all the time. The author gives some hints on what to look and listen for in trying to understand others, but he warns against simplistic interpretations: all messages occur in context.