Agility is important for sport performance and potentially injury risk; however, factors affecting this motor skill remain unclear. Here, we evaluated the extent to which lower extremity dexterity (LED) and muscle performance were associated with agility. Fourteen male and 14 female soccer athletes participated. Agility was evaluated using a hopping sequence separately with both limbs and with ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE The importance of patient safety is growing worldwide, and every day, health care professionals face various challenges in how to provide safe care for their patients. Patient safety skills are one of the main tools to ensure safe practice. This study looks to describe health care professionals' skills regarding patient safety. MATERIALS AND METHODS Data were collecte...

We introduce CST, an algorithm for constructing skill trees from demonstration trajectories in continuous reinforcement learning domains. CST uses a changepoint detection method to segment each trajectory into a skill chain by detecting a change of appropriate abstraction, or that a segment is too complex to model as a single skill. The skill chains from each trajectory are then merged to form ...

BACKGROUND A competitive Carrick Institute Competitive Grant (CG7-523) was obtained to explore what skills were taught and what assessment of practice approaches were used in nursing programmes in Australia. The intention was twofold; firstly to identify what skills were being taught which would contribute to the development of an assessment of practice toolkit for eligibility to practice progr...

We tested the assumptions of Attentional Control Theory (ACT) by examining the impact of anxiety on anticipation using a dynamic, time-constrained task. Moreover, we examined the involvement of high- and low-level cognitive processes in anticipation and how their importance may interact with anxiety. Skilled and less-skilled tennis players anticipated the shots of opponents under low- and high-...

The aim of the present study was to conduct within-gymnast analyses of biological movement variability in impact forces, elbow joint kinematics and kinetics of expert gymnasts in the execution of the round-off with different hand positions. Six international level female gymnasts performed 10 trials of the round-off from a hurdle step to a back-handspring using two hand potions: parallel and T-...

Medical curriculum revisions all over the world in the last 20 years have increased the number of teaching hours in communication skills. This article describes a concrete communication skills teaching programme focused on general practice. Since the spring of 1992, more than 2,000 physicians from Denmark, Sweden and Finland have attended courses within this programme in Kalymnos, Greece. The t...

BACKGROUND Due to the increasing demand on primary care, it is not only debated whether there are enough general practitioners (GPs) to comply with these demands but also whether specific tasks can be performed by other care providers. Although changing the workforce skill mix care by employing Physician Assistants (PAs) and Nurse Practitioners (NPs) has proven to be both effective and safe, th...