This chapter addresses the key principles of sport, exercise, and performance psychology. It reflects the broadening of sport psychology studies to encompass more widespread human performance research. The topic of decision making has been covered in psychology, economics, and motor learning but addressed very sparsely in sport, exercise, and performance psychology. Rational decision making requires defining the problem, identifying criteria, weighing those criteria, generating alternative solutions, and ultimately computing the optimal decision. The chapter introduces the literature on decision making and provides examples of factors that influence the choices people make. The decision to act, move, or what move to make is decided in the response selection stage, and the final stage is when one’s brain and muscles are organized to make the actual move. The key to improve the decision-making over time is to increase personal awareness of own limitations and keep learning and collecting information from reliable sources.

This chapter demonstrates how social work ethics apply to ethical and legal decision making in forensic social work practice. It discusses the context of social work practice in legal systems. The chapter also details the basic structures of the United States (U.S.) civil and criminal legal systems. It lays the foundation for the criminal and civil court processes in the United States and introduces basic terminology and a description of associated activities and progression through these systems. The chapter focuses on providing an introductory, and overarching, picture of both civil and criminal law in the U.S. and introduces the roles social workers play in these systems. It focuses on the ETHICA model of ethical decision making as a resource and tool that can be used to help forensic social workers process difficult and complex situations across multiple systems.

This chapter explores how three successful nursing leaders, using different leadership approaches, demonstrate traditional leadership attributes such as strategic vision; risk-taking and creativity; interpersonal and communication effectiveness; and inspiring and leading change. It discusses the opportunities and implications for nursing leaders and those external to the profession to develop collaborative and transformative partnerships to advance quality health care. Pragmatic leaders demonstrate leadership excellence by effectively translating their nursing care assessment skills into the ability to approach organizational problem solving and decision making in a systematic, logical manner. In contrast to the present-needs focus of pragmatic leaders, charismatic leaders are vision-based leaders who predicate their leadership agenda on attaining future goals. Each of the three nursing leaders profiled understands the importance of being politically astute and effectively leveraging power and influence to make value-added contributions. To varying degrees, the various constituents of the nursing leaders profiled view them as socialized leaders.

This chapter describes an overview of the procedures that a neuropsychologist may apply to a range of similar referrals in the area of civil capacities. It explores the presentation of a framework developed by the American Bar Association/American Psychological Association (ABA/APA) working group on capacity issues and provides more specific guidance regarding assessment tools. Decision making is a complex cognitive process that involves multiple brain regions and brain systems. Injuries to the prefrontal cortex are common in dementia and are often linked to changes in decision-making abilities. Key differences between clinical assessments and those for capacity evaluations include knowledge of relevant legal and ethical issues, a functional assessment, and an ability to present neuropsychological data to lay readers. Research on medical consent capacity and financial capacity highlight the importance of the assessment of calculation, executive function, and verbal memory as part of any test battery.

This chapter provides definitions and scope of the problem of eliminating disparities in end-of-life (EOL) care. It provides a translation of the theories and research that can be used to guide social work practice with minority older adults. The chapter suggests that when working with minority elderly, the psychosocial needs of the patient and family become even more critical in decisions that may affect the timing of death. The term end-of-life care traditionally refers to the last phases of an illness before death; however, experiences across the earlier course of the illness are critical to shaping the anticipation, expectations, and preparedness for care during the terminal phases of illness. In terms of EOL care decision making and the disparity in hospice utilization across racial groups, Critical Race Theory (CRT) offers insight for looking at race relations in a broader context than the traditional perspective.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related cortical dementias are a major health problem. Patients with AD and related dementia have more hospital stays, have more skilled nursing home stays, and utilize more home health care visits compared to older adults without dementia. This chapter discusses the role of family caregivers and how they interact with in-home assistance, day care, assisted living, and nursing homes in the care of an individual with dementia. It also discuss important transitions in the trajectory of dementia care, including diagnosis, treatment decision making, home and day care issues, long-term care placement, and death. It highlights the importance of caregiver assessment, education, and intervention as part of the care process. Dementia caregivers are at risk of a variety of negative mental health consequences. Another important moderating variable for dementia caregiver distress is self-efficacy.

The care management nurse faces a different task than the nurse in the inpatient or outpatient setting. The focus for the latter is typically narrow: care for the patient during the acute treatment, then releases the patient to home, a nursing facility, a step-down unit, and so on. This chapter discusses the Triple Aim of care, health, and cost, which serves as a framework to discuss other key dimensions of leadership in managed care. A nurse leader’s basic skill set is similar to that of a nurse leader in any role. Innovative organizations are realizing that successful clinical management can be a huge competitive advantage for both employers and health plans. This sector of the medical industry is poised for explosive growth as population health management takes center stage in the era of health reform.

Students may enter higher education with a strong set of ideals, firm models of career options, and certain confidence in their ultimate direction; however, it is not uncommon for students to begin college unprepared for life after graduation, let alone housing assignments and first semester coursework. This chapter focuses on the difficulties surrounding the major choice, the factors that influence decision making, career theories in student affairs, and campus and community resources available to assist students in gathering important data about their major and career choices. Selecting a college major and making career decisions are not easy, and require self-knowledge, self-examination, and research on what is available in the world of work. Essential to student success is the ability of student affairs professionals to accurately recognize when students are struggling and make an appropriate referral for career counseling, academic support services, or personal counseling.

This chapter discusses the concepts, underlying principles, benefits, and challenges of using “whole-family” approaches in social work. It articulates the theory and skills associated with family engagement as part of a human rights and social justice framework for social work practice in forensic settings. The chapter describes the ethical imperatives and evidence base supporting the use of family group decision making (FGDM) in regulatory settings. It engages whole families as partners in the use of FGDM in child protection and youth justice. The chapter also describes the theory, empirical support, and skills in use of FGDM, or family group conferencing (FGC). It concluded with an example of how alert forensic social workers must be to the potential for their best intentions to collide with the tenants of responsive practice and a quote from a child protection social worker who worked closely with the author on a pilot project using FGC.

The Essentials of Doctoral Education for Advanced Nursing Practice describes the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for successful doctor of nursing practice (DNP) graduates. Obviously, conceptual and computational mastery of basic data analysis techniques is an “essential” skill for the DNP graduate that can be used in a variety of practice settings. This chapter reviews basic quantitative data analysis techniques that are commonly used for informed financial decision making and analysis. These approaches include frequencies, measures of central tendency, measures of dispersion, and measures of association. The chapter differentiates “data analysis” from statistics and emphasizes the importance of the nurse leader’s comfort and competence to transform data from a variety of sources into usable information. It also provides some advice about visual representations of data for communicating results. An understanding of the differences among statistical, practice, and clinical significance is essential for effective financial stewardship and safe patient care.