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Identifying Ways That Institutional Staffing And Scheduling Committees Engage Nursing Staff In Resource Allocation At The Unit And Institutional Levels, Kevin M. Shimp

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Final Clinical Projects, 2016-2019

The American Nurses Association (ANA) recommends that at least fifty percent direct care providers are involved in staffing and scheduling decisions at the institutional level (ANA Staffing, 2015). This recommendation coincides with Magnet recommendations for the staff most impacted by staffing levels. Magnet organizations are recognized for superior nursing processes and quality patient care, which lead to the highest levels of safety, quality, and patient satisfaction (ANCC, 2015). Existing research, largely at the unit level, shows that registered nurses in acute care environments have higher general work satisfaction and morale when they are engaged in decision making around staffing (Ellerbe …

Lean Construction Teaching Module: Push/Pull Planning, James M. Iroz

Construction Management

The Construction Management Department at California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo has taken interests into the topics of Lean Construction to be a part of its curriculum. Lean Construction is a methodology in the built environment that tries to establish a leaner and more efficient work place in the industry. Within this broad spectrum of methodology, scheduling and more specifically, “push pull scheduling” is one of its many trademark applications. As the demand for more efficient projects rise, it is increasingly important for the next generation of construction students to be aware and educated with efficient skills. This experimental …

Project Management: Skills, Tools, And Knowledge Construction Professionals Consider Important For Keeping Projects On Schedule, Lyle Scott Davies

Theses and Dissertations

Project managers have a major role in the construction and completion of projects. Much of their work consists of reviewing, clarifying, and coordinating information required by the field management and subcontractors performing the work on the job site. The assistance they give with the transfer of information helps with successfully completing projects. For many people, the largest indicator that a project was successful is that construction activities were completed on schedule. While finishing on schedule may be the primary focus of those involved with construction activities, projects still struggle to finish on time. The purpose of this study is to …

Optimization Of Residential Battery Energy Storage System Scheduling For Cost And Emissions Reductions, Zachary Olivieri

Theses

The introduction of dynamic electricity pricing structures such as Time of Use (TOU) rates and Day Ahead Pricing (DAP) in residential markets has created the possibility for customers to reduce their electric bills by using energy storage systems for load shifting and/or peak load shaving. While there are numerous system designs and model formulations for minimizing electric bills under these rate structures the use of these systems has the potential to cause an increase in emissions from the electricity system. The Increase in emissions is linked to the difference in fuel mix of marginal generators throughout the day as well …

Methodologies For Solving Integrated Transportation And Scheduling Problems, Fereydoun Adbesh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research proposes novel solution techniques to optimize two real-world problems in the area of scheduling and transportation. We first consider a model for optimizing the operations of dredges. In this problem, scheduling and assignment decisions are integrated across a finite planning horizon. Additional constraints and problem elements explicitly considered include, but are not limited, to environmental work window restrictions, budget limitations, dredge operation rates and schedule-dependent dredge availability. Our approach makes use of Constraint Programming (CP) to obtain quality and robust solutions within an amount of time small enough to be useful to practitioners. The expanded feature set of …

Influencing Factors For Academic Tracking In High School Mathematics, Matthew Minowitz

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this capstone thesis is: What are prominent influencing factors related to academic tracking in mathematics? The thesis discusses influencing factors through a qualitative analysis of archival school data, student surveys, and student interviews. The research takes place in a “fringe rural” suburban public high school of a Midwest city with graduating class sizes between 200 and 250 students. This research identifies factors which have influenced student placement into high school mathematics tracks which are one year behind grade-level and two years ahead of grade-level. Conclusions from the study include findings related to family influences (eg. …

Readiness For Improving Safe Care Delivery Through Web-Based Hospital Nurse Scheduling & Staffing Technology: A Multi-Hospital Approach, Lisa Massarweh

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Hospital scheduling and staffing practices are linked to patient safety, nurse satisfaction, and cost outcomes (Steege & Rainbow, 2017). Staffing, while complex, is ultimately central to the overall success of the hospital. Demands to eliminate events that cause death or serious harm, produce high patient satisfaction scores while maximizing workforce productivity, test any administrator’s skillset. Providing qualified staff in the right place at the right time can be challenged by restrictive union contracts, variable patient acuities, staff attendance, and mandated staffing ratios. These demands may lead to overtime utilization. There is a growing understanding of the negative effects of healthcare …

Balancing And Sequencing Of Mixed Model Assembly Lines, Anas Alsayed Alghazi

All Dissertations

Assembly lines are cost efficient production systems that mass produce identical products. Due to customer demand, manufacturers use mixed model assembly lines to produce customized products that are not identical. To stay efficient, management decisions for the line such as number of workers and assembly task assignment to stations need to be optimized to increase throughput and decrease cost. In each station, the work to be done depends on the exact product configuration, and is not consistent across all products. In this dissertation, a mixed model line balancing integer program (IP) that considers parallel workers, zoning, task assignment, and ergonomic …

Building Efficient Large-Scale Big Data Processing Platforms, Jiayin Wang

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

In the era of big data, many cluster platforms and resource management schemes are created to satisfy the increasing demands on processing a large volume of data. A general setting of big data processing jobs consists of multiple stages, and each stage represents generally defined data operation such as ltering and sorting. To parallelize the job execution in a cluster, each stage includes a number of identical tasks that can be concurrently launched at multiple servers. Practical clusters often involve hundreds or thousands of servers processing a large batch of jobs. Resource management, that manages cluster resource allocation and job …

Nursing Assignments Based On Patient Acuity: The Road To Nursing Job Satisfaction, Kristina Tomic

Evidence-Based Practice Project Reports

Challenges in the healthcare industry, including nursing shortages and low nursing retention, have resulted in nurses’ job dissatisfaction. Improving work environment and workload can lead to improved and equitable nursing shift assignments, which may improve nursing job satisfaction. The purpose of this EBP project was to (a) implement a patient acuity tool in the hospital unit, (b) assess its effectiveness in appropriating nursing shift assignments, and (c) evaluate its effect on nursing job satisfaction. The Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) Model was used as a guide to facilitate the transition of the best evidence into practice. As suggested within the evidence, …

The Hidden Costs Of Scheduling: Temporal Structure Reduces Task Enjoyment And Contracts Time, Gabriela Nicole Tonietto

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Time is an important but limited resource, and consumers are constantly looking for ways to get more from their time. This has led to the popularity of scheduling as a strategy to help consumers manage and organize their time. Although scheduling is both highly recommended and widely adopted, surprisingly little is known about the psychological effects of scheduling. In this dissertation, I explore the potential effects of scheduling for task enjoyment, perceived time, and time consumption, finding that scheduling may have some important hidden costs. In the first chapter, I examine the effect of scheduling leisure activities. While prior research …

Percussion Instruction In Beginning Band For Programs With A Single Teacher, Micah A. Martin

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

PERCUSSION INSTRUCTION IN BEGINNING BAND

FOR PROGRAMS WITH A SINGLE TEACHER

An Abstract of the Thesis by

Micah A. Martin

The primary purpose of this study was to find the best methods for developing students into total percussionists in beginning band programs with only one band director on staff. A total percussionist is defined as one who is capable of playing keyboard percussion, snare drum, timpani, and the accessory instruments. The study consists of a survey to assess individual approaches to percussion instruction in beginning band.

A questionnaire was developed using Google Forms and a link was emailed to band …

Decision Support Models For A Few Critical Problems In Transportation System Design And Operations, Ran Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Transportation system is one of the key functioning components of the modern society and plays an important role in the circulation of commodity and growth of economy. Transportation system is not only the major influencing factor of the efficiency of large-scale complex industrial logistics, but also closely related to everyone’s daily life. The goals of an ideal transportation system are focused on improving mobility, accessibility, safety, enhancing the coordination of different transportation modals and reducing the impact on the environment, all these activities require sophisticated design and plan that consider different factors, balance tradeoffs and maintaining efficiency. Hence, the design …

Interference Mitigation, Resource Allocation And Channel Control Techniques For 4g And Beyond Systems, Mustafa Harun Yilmaz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The usage of the wireless communication technologies have been increasing due to the benefits they provide in our daily life. These technologies are used in various fields such as military communication, public safety, cellular communication. The current systems might not be sufficient to meet the increasing demand. Therefore, the new solutions such as the usage of smart antennas have been proposed to satisfy this demand. Among different solutions, cognitive heterogeneous networks (HetNets) have been recently introduced as a promising one to meet the high user demand. In cognitive Hetnets, there are secondary base stations (SBSs) with secondary users (SUs) and …

Decentralized Scheduling For Many-Task Applications In The Hybrid Cloud, Brian Lyle Peterson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

While Cloud Computing has transformed how we solve many computing tasks, some scientific and many-task applications are not efficiently executed on cloud resources. Decentralized scheduling, as studied in grid computing, can provide a scalable system to organize cloud resources and schedule a variety of work. By measuring simulations of two algorithms, the fully decentralized Organic Grid, and the partially decentralized Air Traffic Controller from IBM, we establish that decentralization is a workable approach, and that there are bottlenecks that can impact partially centralized algorithms. Through measurements in the cloud, we verify that our simulation approach is sound, and assess the …

Scheduling Strategies For Construction Project Managers Toward On Time Delivery, Paul Shamp

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Construction management projects involve complex, dynamic environments resulting in uncertainty and risk, compounded by demanding time constraints. Research indicated project managers have struggled to identify best practices for scheduling construction projects via critical path methodologies while searching for tools to increase timely job completions and budget profits. The purpose of this single case study was to explore the strategies that construction project managers used to manage scheduled construction project delivery on time. The constructivist philosophical worldview was used as the framework for this study. Data were collected from semistructured interviews from 7 project managers from 5 different construction companies selected …