Digital Commons Network^™

Student Nurses' Perception Of Preceptors' Authentic Leadership Effect On Self-Efficacy, Venise D. Bryan

Dissertations

The study examined the relationship between final year nursing students' perceptions of preceptor authentic leadership and self-efficacy. Nursing students are required to engage in a preceptorship experience at the end of their nursing education for socialisation into the profession and learning consolidation to facilitate optimum transition from student to nurse. Unfortunately, preceptorship has been identified as the most stressful experience that nursing students engage in and poor relations with clinical staff and low competence beliefs to nurse have led to attrition after graduation. To date, a limited number of studies have examined preceptors' leadership style, particularly authentic leadership and student …

The Influence Of Knowledge And Value On Nursing Students' Quality Of Supportive Feedback To Peers, Joni L. Tornwall

Dissertations

Peer review in nursing is an expectation of every registered nurse in the workplace, and it is essential to accountability and self-regulation of practice in the nursing discipline. However, the literature reveals that professional nurses and nursing students feel peer review is not their responsibility. Research has shown that they state they do not have time to do it, and they feel unprepared for and anxious about the process of providing good feedback to peers. Academic nursing programs should be teaching future nurses to participate in peer review and recognize its value to professional nursing practice. Training in peer review …

Women's Lives After An Induced Abortion: A Phenomenological Study Of The Long-Term Post Abortion Experience, Rosanna Formanek Hess

Dissertations

Most previous research investigations on the post abortion experience studied women up to two years post abortion. The findings of many of these short-term studies indicate that 5-20% of women have severe psychiatric distress two years after the abortion. Little is known about the long-term effects of an abortion in women who experienced the event.

The purpose of this study was to explore the abortion experience in women who had a legal, elective, first trimester, induced abortion > 5 years before the interview. The main objective of the study was to learn how each woman was affected by the abortion and …

Faculty Caring Behaviors: A Quantitative Examination From The Ethnically Diverse Student's Perspective, Donna M. Hedges

Dissertations

The increase in patient ethnic diversity in the health care environment has not been mirrored by an increase in ethnic diversity within the nursing profession. There is a need for increased focus on the retention of ethnically diverse nursing students in order to meet the needs of an ethnically diverse patient population. The quality of caring demonstrated by faculty in the faculty - student relationship can have significant influence on the student's successful completion of the nursing program. Faculty understanding of how ethnically diverse students perceive caring faculty behaviors may assist faculty to mitigate attrition of these students. The purpose …

Influence Of Leadership Styles On Expatriate Nurses' Professional Integration In The Uae, Emmah Ncube

Dissertations

Transnational nurse migration has evoked a growing interest in the phenomenon of professional integration of expatriate nurses into their host societies. Despite research connecting employee and organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior to the quality of leadership styles, there remains a lack of research linking professional integration of expatriate nurses to nurse leadership styles in the UAE. The purpose of this grounded theory study was to develop a theory that would explain how nurse leadership styles and behaviors impacted the professional integration of expatriate nurses into the multicultural work environment of the UAE. The research questions …

Influence Of Learning Style And Learning Flexibility On Clinical Judgment Of Prelicensure Nursing Students Within A Human Patient Computer Simulation Environment, Elizabeth Sharon Robison

Dissertations

Nursing education is experiencing a transition in how students are exposed to clinical situations. Technology, specifically human patient computer simulation, is replacing human exposure in clinical education (Nehring, 2010b). Kaakinen and Arwood (2009) discuss the need to apply learning theories to instructional designs involving simulation for successful learner-centered outcomes. Developing effective teaching strategies using technology to support enhancing student performance outcomes requires a paradigm shift from traditional, clinical-based models.

The purpose of this study was to begin to close research gaps and support development of evidence-based practice in implementing simulation by examining prelicensure nursing students' learning styles and flexibilities relative …

The Impact Of Using Relevant Context On Student Comprehension And Attitude In A Collegiate Introductory Statistics Unit On Probability, Ryan F. Rzeszutko, Jennifer L. Petrie, Dwayne T. James

Dissertations

The typical collegiate introductory statistics course poses significant challenges for students. Many do not fully comprehend key course skills, and it is common for students to exit the class with a neutral or negative attitude toward statistics. To measure the impact of using relevant contextual examples as an instructional strategy during a probability unit, in-class activities were designed to align with areas of interest for participants as identified by a student interest inventory. It was hypothesized that the use of relevant context would create a significant difference in the comprehension or attitude of students enrolled in an introductory statistics course …

Probing Amyloid-Beta Protein Structure And Dynamics With A Selective Antibody, Shikha Grover

Dissertations

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder. The AD brain is characterized by significant neuronal loss and accumulation of insoluble fibrillar amyloid-β protein (Aβ) plaques and tau protein neurofibrillary tangles in the brain. However, over the last decade, many studies have shown that the neurodegenerative effect of Aβ may in fact be caused by various soluble oligomeric forms as opposed to the insoluble fibrils. Furthermore, the data suggest that a pre-fibrillar aggregated form, termed protofibrils, mediates direct neurotoxicity, and triggers a robust neuroinflammatory response.

Antibodies targeting the various conformation of Aβ are important therapeutic agents to prevent the progression …

A Phenomenological Study: The Perceived Impact Of The Intersectional Barriers Created By Gender And Race On African American Female's Advancement To A K-12 Central Office Leadership Position, Mariyon Thompson

Dissertations

Purpose: This phenomenological study aimed to explore the perceived impact of the intersectional barriers created by gender and race on African American females' advancement to a K-12 central office leadership position. The second purpose of this study was to identify strategies African American females leverage to overcome barriers due to intersectionality while advancing to a K-12 central office leadership position.

Methodology: This qualitative research study employed a phenomenological approach to describe the lived experiences of eight African American women leaders employed in K-12 central office leadership positions in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Data collection included an interview protocol of …

Lived Experiences And Insight On Development Of Emotional Intelligence In Professional Nursing Practice, Jennifer L. Jessen

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative, experiential narrative study was to examine how emotional intelligence is applied in clinical nursing practice and how a nurse develops those skills in professional practice using a qualitative, experiential narrative design. The selected research participant was asked to verify her emotional quotient (EQ) score with the MSCEIT emotional intelligence test and participate in repeated interviews detailing the major events, patients, coworkers, mentors, and support systems in her life from her first experiences in healthcare to the present. Evidence of emotional intelligence (EI) was identified in her stories and applied to the Salovey and Mayer model …

Emotional Intelligence And Empathy Of Nursing Students In An Immersive Capstone Clinical Course, Michelle L. Finch

Dissertations

Today's baccalaureate nursing students need to be prepared to care for patients in an ever-changing, high acuity environment. Many programs offer a capstone immersive clinical experience. However, the benefits of this experience have not been fully explored, and the effect on patient care is unknown.

The purpose of the study was to determine if there was a change in levels of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and empathy in senior students who completed a capstone immersive clinical experience in the final semester of a baccalaureate nursing program.

A Salutogenic Framework To Understand Disparity In Breast Cancer Screening Behavior In African American Women, Regina Conway-Phillips

Dissertations

African American women (AAW) have a higher breast cancer mortality rate and a lower survival rate than any other racial or ethnic group. Research has demonstrated that limited access to care reduces mammography screening for AAW. Despite barriers, some AAW do access mammography and engage in breast cancer screening behaviors. The salutogenic theory of health focuses on factors that support well-being and increase positive health behaviors. Given this perspective, salutogenesis offers a novel framework to understand personal factors that allow some AAW to surmount barriers and to engage in health behaviors. Sense of coherence (SOC) is central to salutogenesis. Individuals …

Impact Of Authentic Leadership On Team Psychological Safety As Mediated By Relationship Quality, Mechelle J. Plasse

Dissertations

Leadership is a dynamic process with a far-reaching impact. Leadership is the process of guiding a group of individuals towards the achievement of a common goal. Healthcare leaderships looks to guide staff towards the common goal of positive patient outcomes. The literature has demonstrated that staff outcomes related to the health of their work environment can impact patient outcomes. A contributor to the health of the work environment is the relational tone of the unit; this tone is partly shaped by the skill and philosophy of the leader. Relational dynamics can influence several processes, including psychological safety which is a …

Quasi-Experimental Study With The Undergraduate Nursing Program Using Simulation Learning To Reduce Medication Errors, Georgette R. Lohrman

Dissertations

Medication errors in the nursing practice are not only costly but may harm or kill a patient. The problem addressed in this study is the relationship that exists between the lack of medication administration skills taught to students in an undergraduate nursing program. The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental study with a two-group pretest-posttest design was to examine if the addition of medication-simulated learning was associated with improved medication administration knowledge compared to a traditional Pharmacology classroom setting.

Living As A Dying Child: A Gadamerian Analysis Of The Poetry Of Mattie J. T. Stepanek, Corinne A. Settecase-Wu

Dissertations

Yearly, approximately 500,000 children live with life-limiting conditions in the United States; 50,000 die. Yet, details regarding children's days of living as dying are unknown. The aim of this qualitative hermeneutic study is to gain understanding of the phenomenon of living as a dying child. A Gadamerian-inspired approach was implemented to underpin the study, and to analyze poetic text to address the research question: What is it to be living as a dying child? The text sample included 499 poems written by Mattie J. T. Stepanek, a dying child. The Settecase-Wu Conceptual Guide was developed and implemented to ensure …

Magnetic Interactions In Open-Shell Conjugated Polymers, Michael Steelman

Dissertations

Most materials are closed shell in which every electron participates in a bond, resulting in unremarkable magnetometry signatures and functionalities. While rare, modern technologies rely on magnetic materials in which unpaired electrons are localized to inorganic atomic centers. In recent decades, a collection of organic open-shell π-conjugated molecules have shown magnetic ordering, albeit at exceedingly low temperatures; a result of weak noncovalent intermolecular interactions limiting long range electronic exchange. Thus, practically applicable sp orbital magnetism that persists at or above room temperature remains a grand challenge for chemistry and physics. Despite the wide variety of chemical structures afforded by organic …

Leading Change: Generating Cultural Responsiveness And Competence In Nursing, Kerstin G. Hudgins

Dissertations

Culturally responsive teachings prepare students to support social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in and beyond the classroom. Rising reports of culturally insensitive care and the reported challenges that nurses experience when caring for culturally diverse patients warrant the advancement of the intercultural readiness of nursing students. The study investigated the cultural content taught, encompassing LGBTQ+ health education, at the School of Nursing at a historically black college and university (HBCU) in the Southeastern United States. The participant selection involved purposeful sampling of various stakeholders engaged in interviews and focus groups, including faculty, nursing students, and nurse managers with …

Nursing Faculty Experiences With Interactive Learning In The Associate Degree Nursing Classroom, Katheryn M. Csonka

Dissertations

The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore associate degree nurse faculty perceptions and experiences with the use of interactive learning in their classroom. Interactive learning is an approach to teaching and learning that promotes student learning with an active process. The implementation and continued use of interactive learning can be difficult for nurse educators who may be influenced by their previous perceptions and experience with use. There is a plethora of knowledge on the benefits of interactive learning with students, yet there is a gap in literature specific to nursing faculty experiences in the nursing classroom..

Strategies For The Improvement Of Healthcare Through Simulation, Roger C. Lankheet

Dissertations

Medical errors continue to plague the healthcare industry. The annual rates of morbidity are approximately 2.69 million (AHRQ, 2019), while mortality rates exceed 400,000 per annum (Makary & Daniel, 2016). There may be no panacea to combat these egregious rates. However, simulation of patient care events may better prepare healthcare professionals to prevent medical errors as it has been proven to be an effective learning strategy (Kirkham, 2018), enhancing skills while gaining experiential knowledge, without risk to actual patients.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain a better understanding of factors that impede or foster the frequent utilization …

Clinical Faculty Strategies To Decrease Nursing Students' Anxiety During Clinical Practice: A Qualitative Study, Elijah Z. Yarpah

Dissertations

Stress in the clinical learning environment is a psychological and physiological element that affects nursing students' learning outcomes and health. In clinical settings, nursing students encounter stressors that are critical to their academic success as well as their future professional performance. Nursing educators struggle to assist students in developing strategies to manage clinical stress. A review of relevant literature did not identify coping strategies clinical educators and nursing staff can promote to help learners deal with stressors. Therefore, to provide robust ideas to help nursing students manage stress in the clinical learning environment, this study was designed to answer one …

Examining The Effects Of A Rater Training Program On Interrater Reliability With The Lasater Clinical Judgment Rubric, Deborah A. Halliday

Dissertations

There is high demand for competent graduate nurses as they begin working in healthcare. However, the transition from classroom to professional practice can be difficult. Students and newly licensed entry-level practitioners must develop and possess suitable clinical judgments in order to demonstrate clinical competency in the delivery of safe patient care. Currently, there is a call for nursing education to provide increased rigor in performance evaluation of students' clinical judgment prior to graduation.

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if rater training had an effect on interrater reliability among raters with the Lasater Clinical Judgment Rubric (LCJR) …

Reconstruction Of The Professional Identity: The Mature Ad Nurse After Bsn Completion, Constance G. Demmery

Dissertations

In 2011, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) announced a key initiative to increase the number of registered nurses (RN) at the bedside prepared at the baccalaureate of science in nursing (BSN) level. For decades, the RN entry level into the profession has been debated, often lying dormant during nursing shortages. The profile of today's RN is age 50, has many years of clinical experience, and holds an associate degree in nursing (ADN). Many ADN-prepared nurses are returning to academia to earn their BSN. However, there is little research on how the mature, experienced ADN integrates years of clinical experience with …

Development Of A Hospital Discharge Planning System Augmented With A Neural Clinical Decision Support Engine, David Mulqueen

Dissertations

The process of discharging patients from a tertiary care hospital, is one of the key activities to ensure the efficient and effective operation of a hospital. However, the decision to discharge a patient from a hospital is complex, as it requires multiple interactions with nurses, family, consultants, health information records and doctors, which can be very time consuming and prone to error. This thesis descries how a neural network based Clinical Decision Support system can be developed, to help in the decision making process and dramatically reduce the time and effort in running the discharge process in a hospital. A …

The "Othering" Of America: How The Strategic Use Of Crisis And Ressentiment Succeeded In The Trump Era, Laura J. Franklin

Dissertations

The establishment of a crisis theme through public rhetoric often triggers widespread attention, resulting in public concern and media coverage of an issue that could potentially be overblown or deceptive. In right-wing political discourse, this crisis warning is typically delivered by a White male leader with ready access to the powerful news media. An “us versus them” theme often occurs. Within this mode of a hegemonic exclusion, a culture of immigrants or an American minority are often depicted, perhaps aggressively, as a threat: A threat used to motivate, enrage and create the frustrations inherent in ressentiment. This dissertation explores the …

Variation In Organizational Factors Influencing The Implementation Of The Pediatric Annual Physical Therapy Visit, Katherine Anne M. Smith

Dissertations

Hypothesis and Research Question

The research hypothesis is “Organizational Factors influencing the implementation of the Pediatric Annual Physical Therapy Visit (PAPTV) vary by practice setting, geographic location, and experience implementing the PAPTV.” The related research question is “How do organizational factors influencing the implementation of the PAPTV vary by geographic location, practice setting, and therapists experience with the PAPTV?

Problem and Purpose of Research

While health promotion and wellness (HPW) initiatives are widely accepted as beneficial to both the patient and the healthcare system, the rollout of new initiatives is often challenging. The PAPTV has been a significant HPW initiative …

Perceptions Of The Grant Decision-Making Process: A Study Of Foundation Grantmakers And Grant Seekers Who Focus On Youth Violence In Chicago, Illinois, Patiya Freely

Dissertations

Local partners like churches, schools, and community organizations are often at the front lines of addressing the problem of recurring deadly violence against Black urban youth. Foundation grants are frequently used to fund their work. While foundations annually award millions of dollars in grants to community-based organizations addressing youth violence, there is little detailed information available about the foundation grantmaking decision-making process. Notably, there is a lack of research on the determinants of the grant decision-making process that may inadvertently affect grantee outcomes and ultimately the of beneficiary organizations and communities.A sample of ten decision-makers who had funded or sought …

Contributions To Data Compression Research For Various Media Formats Using Particle Swarm Optimization And Neural Networks, Reetu Hooda

Dissertations

Advancement in high resolution devices used to capture images and videos has put strain on data storage and transmission. For their practical usage, efficient data compression techniques becomes essential. In this context, we conducted a study on compression of two media formats, including ROI maps of hyperspectral images, and 3D point clouds. For lossless compression of ROI maps, we proposed novel schemes that can achieve high compression ratios by partitioning the intricate regions of the image into smaller blocks. Our analysis of a linear predictive model applied on the original images showed that the resulting residual images tend to have …

Semantic Deduplication Of Redundant And Non-Conformant Data In Temporal Domains, Jon C. Rogers

Dissertations

Semantic deduplication is the process of identifying records that describe or are derivative of the same entity and is a crucial task when merging data pulled at different times and/or from multiple sources. Failure to resolve these duplicates may bias the data and the applications and models that use them. Duplicates may range in nature from exact matches to more interesting cases where the data differs due to syntactic representation, missing or updated information, or adversarial transforms. The implications of duplication may go beyond redundancy to include recognizing critical information updates, error detection, and identifying similar behaviors. This task is …

Airborne Passive Microwave Geophysical Retrievals And Applications In Assessing Environmental And Aerosol Impacts On Maritime Convection, Corey G. Amiot

Dissertations

Improvements to NASA’s Advanced Microwave Precipitation Radiometer (AMPR) have yielded physically realistic brightness temperatures (T_b) from the Olympic Mountains Experiment / Radar Definition Experiment (OLYMPEX/RADEX) and Cloud, Aerosol and Monsoon Processes Philippines Experiment (CAMP²Ex). Multi-linear regression equations, developed to retrieve integrated cloud liquid water (CLW), water vapor (WV), and 10-m wind speed (WS), were tested using simulations, deconvolved AMPR T_b from OLYMPEX/RADEX, independent retrievals, and in situ data. Simulated retrievals yielded average CLW, WV, and WS root-mean-square deviations (RMSD) of 0.11 kg m^-2, 1.28 kg m^-2, and 1.11 m s^{-1 …}

Ultrafast Photoelectron Transportation In Gaas And Gaas-Based Devices, Rui Zhou

Dissertations

Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) is one of the most important semiconductors in the field of photonics and has been the focus of extensive studies since the 1960s. In particular, GaAs photonic devices such as GaAs diode lasers and GaAs photocathodes have attracted tremendous interest owing to their superb features and wide ranges of applications. Despite the success of past research, the advancement of new theoretical models and experimental techniques continues to offer new insights into the properties of GaAs and the potentials of GaAs photonic devices. The work presented in this dissertation represents our most recent effort towards understanding the ultrafast …