I would like to take a moment to thank all of you who attended the NY
conference who so willingly shared time, talent, and philosophy! This was
the third Rogerian Conf. I have attended, and I always come away renewed in
my convictions, and challenged to take time to reflect on the principles of
the SUHB.

As an emerging scholar and researcher, and a Doc Candidate at Wayne State,
where I had the wonderful opportunity to be challenged in growth by Effie
Hanchett, I have a question to pose for discussion. I am in the midst of
proposal writing, which of course means defense. The focus of my research is
pain assessment in the Newborn ICU. Our current methods focus on pattern
manifestation but do not provide the specificity and sensitivity to truly
inform us about this experience. Additionally, there is very little research
to date about the long term effects of the pain experience for infants
exposed to repetitive pain. The guiding principles are to improve our
approach to assessing the pain experience, and introducing a developmental
support researched by Dr. Heidelise Als for use as a means decreasing the
pain response, and fostering harmonious development in what can be a very
stressful environment. I'm aware of Als' Newborn Individual Developmental
Care Program (NIDCAP) and while I believe this approach offers a rich field
for furthering our understanding of patterning to enhance harmony. She uses
patterning of the environmental field to support the infant in appropriate
development. "Nesting" of the infant is a component of her approach, which
encourages supporting the infant in the position she/he would likely be in
within the uterus. In my research I am planning to use this positioning
approach to reduce the pain experience related to heel-stick for blood
sampling, but the positioning will be provided by human hands - thus
providing not only the physical support towards self-comfort, but adding
human touch and human presence. I will employ the primary approaches to
assessing the response currently included in our cadre of response patterns,
but will be adding measurement of salivary cortisol in an attempt to better
reflect the response at a deeper level.

The chief presenting challenge of my study thus far are "how can you defend
the use of such a cellular measure like salivary corts, as Rogerian?"
I have my own thoughts on this, as well as others to be grappled with in the
proposal, but thought this might provide an excellent opportunity for those
of you much more steeped in Rogerian Science to dialogue on such an approach
to pattern identification, and patterning concepts for this population whose
own pattern manifestations we are so poorly able to recognize at this point
in time! And, of course, it can provide me the excellent opportunity to
learn at the every expanding "knee" of the master scholars.

I welcome your input, and hope some of you may find this an interesting
topic for discussion! Looking forward to Savannah again!

In full appreciation of your energies,
Carolyn Herrington

If you would like to send additional info directly to me: herring1@...