Digital Commons Network^™

Parenting And Psychosocial Functioning In Youth With Spina Bifida: Making Connections With Other Cns-Related Chronic Health Conditions, Adrien M. Winning

Dissertations

Parenting practices have been linked to psychosocial outcomes in children who have chronic health conditions that affect the central nervous system (CNS), such as spina bifida (SB). However, there remains a need for (1) more evidence-based assessments that capture parenting in SB, (2) additional research focused on parenting in early childhood in SB, as this is a critical developmental period that has been understudied, and (3) systematic reviews that synthesize parenting research across CNS-related conditions to guide future work. This dissertation includes three papers that aim to address each of these gaps in the current literature. Specifically, the first study …

"To This You Were Called": Discipleship, Suffering, And Social Identity In First Peter, Shane Patrick Gormley

Dissertations

At the center of First Peter’s rhetoric stands an exhortation to “follow” in Christ’s footsteps (2:21). Several scholars have suggested (sometimes off-handedly or in a singular footnote) that this specific exhortation utilizes the technical language of “discipleship,” but only to support a particular piece of the letter’s paraenesis (2:18–25). I contend that such a suggestion, while a helpful place to start, does not go far enough. With this study, I propose that we may read First Peter comprehensively as a summons to discipleship in accord with ancient understandings of education, exemplified in the multifaceted system of Hellenistic paideia. I argue …

Implementation And Evaluation Of A Pain Assessment Tool In A Dementia Care Facility: A Quality Improvement Project, Cynthia A. Carbo

Dissertations

Pain has been under-detected and under-treated in patients with dementia. Signs of distress can be misinterpreted in this population, and patients can be inappropriately given psychotropic medication. Various pain assessment tools for patients with moderate to severe dementia have been devised, and all require further study.

The purpose of this evidence-based project was the selection of a pain assessment tool, training of staff in pain management and tool use in a dementia care facility, and monitoring of pain assessment to comply with regulatory guidelines. Benzodiazepine and neuroleptic doses per patient were monitored before and after the training intervention in an …

Disaster Movies And The Perception Of Human Behavior Myths In Disasters, John Carr

Dissertations

This study explored if disaster movies change the perceptions viewers hold regarding human behavior in disasters, and if so, whether these effects are observable six weeks after watching the disaster movie. The study documented the anticipation of disaster myths in human behavior for 121 respondents, providing data that can better inform the discussion of disaster myths and realities. The study found changes to anticipation of disaster myths in human behavior and realities across multiple categories, with statistically significant results related to the factor of Looting Myth. Limitations for this study include a small sample size, and the external influence of …

Administrator Perspectives On Teacher Recruitment And Retention During A Pandemic, Matthew Aaron Carr

Dissertations

The global COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed education across the United States leaving a shortage of highly qualified teachers to fill positions in classrooms (Nguyen et al., 2022; Schmitt & deCourcy, 2022). This research study utilized the theoretical framework of the Four-Capital Theoretical Model of Teacher Retention and Attrition (Mason & Matas, 2015). This qualitative study utilized open-ended survey questions and follow-up interviews to elicit the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and to determine effective strategies to the recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers. Sixty-two public school administrators shared their perspectives through the survey, while eight administrators participated in follow-up interviews. …

Factors Affecting The Success And Persistence Of Pre-Nursing Students, Leslie A. Jennings

Dissertations

This article-based dissertation consists of two manuscripts related to factors affecting the success and persistence of pre-nursing students. The first manuscript was a matched cohort study that compared selected academic variables between two groups of pre-nursing students admitted to a pre-licensure baccalaureate nursing program via two different routes. The purpose of this study was to determine if there were any differences in academic performance between these two groups of students in the first semester of a formal nursing program. Analyses of the data revealed a difference in semester grade point average (GPA), but no significant differences in the RN Fundamentals …

A Focused Ethnographic Study Of Nurses' Role In The Early Mobilization Program In The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Chelsea E. Noone

Dissertations

Early Mobilization (EM) in Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICU) is safe and feasible, but there are issues preventing the adoption of EM into clinical practice. The objective of this study was to describe the patient safety concerns and how nurses develop strategies to safely deliver EM to their patients. The second objective was to explore, describe and analyze nurses' perceptions of barriers and facilitators to performing EM, and to identify strategies nurses perceive would assist them to overcome barriers and increase adoption of EM within the PICU. This focused ethnographic study included 15 in-depth interviews with 10 PICU nurses. Data …

Pneumococcal Vaccination In Adult Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Samjhana Thapa

Dissertations

Problem: Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) are at risk for exacerbations due to pneumonia which could lead to unwanted outcomes. Despite the existence of evidence regarding phone call reminder usage as a communication strategy about vaccinations as an effective preventive measure that can minimize the likelihood of contracting pneumonia. In a primary care facility in Kentucky, phone call reminders are not being used to promote vaccinations.

Method: This quality improvement (QI) pilot project used a descriptive, comparative, and retrospective design with the aim to increase the pneumococcal vaccination rate by 10% over 3 months by implementing a phone …

Cultural Competence In Nursing School Curricula, Mayra P. Toney

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the benefit of both classroom instruction and an immersive clinical experience for the development of cultural competence skills among student nurses. The 3-D Model for Culturally Congruent Care was the framework used for this quantitative descriptive correlational study. The premise of the model is to draw upon the knowledge that culturally competent care derives from the healthcare provider and client level, an essential factor to the delivery of culturally competent healthcare. A convenience sample of 74 student nurses from two separate cohorts enrolled in a diploma-based program were asked to complete the …

Exploring Relationships Between Psychological Capital And Perceived Stress Among Newly Graduated Nurses, Rita J. Jarvis-Isaac

Dissertations

Stress among the newly graduated nurses has been linked to physical and emotional distress, high turnover rates, and the quality of patient care. Psychological capital is a positive state of mind that consists of four components (hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism). Higher levels of psychological capital have been linked to improvements in the work environment, and the psychological and emotional state of nurses. Despite the extensive work of researchers exploring psychological capital among nurses, its relationship to stress among new graduate nurses has not been well studied. The purpose of this quantitative, correlational study was to explore the relationship between …

It Is What It Is...Enduring The Never-Ending: The Lived Experiences Of Parenting Adult Children With Developmental/Intellectual Disabilities, Siri Gurunam Kaur Khalsa

Dissertations

The parental home is the predominant place of residence for adults with developmental disabilities/ intellectual disabilities (DD/ID) (Heller et al., 2007). More than 75% of the adult population with DD/ID, living in the US, continue to have their basic needs provided by parents (Williamson & Perkins, 2014). This is based on the estimated statistic of 1.0 to 1.58% of the entire U.S. adult population has a developmental disability (Anderson et al., 2019; Fox et al., 2015). About 2.9 million adults with DD/ID live with a parent 55 years (Byun et al, 2006), with more than 25% of these parents older …

The Magnet Journey: Understanding The Role Of Unit Culture In Evidence-Based Practice Adoption, Kim Schippits

Dissertations

The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify salient cognitive beliefs and cultural assumptions that affect the emergence and maintenance of evidence-based practice (EBP) in the hospital setting.

Feasibility Of A Telehealth-Delivered Breathing Intervention For Patients With Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, Aubree Carlson

Dissertations

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a debilitating chronic lung disease that affects approximately 100,000 individuals in the United States (US), with 30,000 to 40,000 new cases diagnosed each year. Dyspnea is experienced by 90% of patients with IPF and is correlated with reduced quality of life, anxiety, depression, and decreased survival time in this patient population. Breathing management techniques such as pursed lip and diaphragmatic breathing can reduce perceived dyspnea, however this symptom management strategy is not readily taught to patients outside of inpatient hospital settings and pulmonary rehabilitation programs, the latter of which only being accessed by 3% of …

The Nursing Process And Allegations Of Malpractice Against Perinatal Registered Nurses In Florida, Genifer Jones Johnson

Dissertations

The nursing process as a foundation of professional nursing practice organizes care around the components of assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation as required for professional registered nurses by the Florida Nurse Practice Act. Nurses who fail to comply with the Nurse Practice Act risk poor outcomes for their clients, disciplinary action from the State regulatory body, and legal action from the clients. This study was an examination of litigation claims against professional registered nurses in Florida who practice perinatal nursing seeking to identify and categorize allegations of negligence within the components of the nursing process. The expectation of this …

Exploring Nurse Faculty Decisions Related To Virtual Simulation During A Global Pandemic: A Quantitative Descriptive Study, Karen Braccialarghe

Dissertations

This research evaluates academic nurse faculty' decisions while implementing virtual simulation as a teaching method before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondary purposes of this study were to explore nurse faculty perceptions of the effectiveness of virtual simulation, the barriers and challenges faced while implementing virtual simulation, and perceived effectiveness of student learning outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic while utilizing virtual simulation. A survey, the Virtual Simulation Implementation Evaluation Tool (Braccialarghe, 2021) was developed by the researcher to answer the research questions. The tool was sent to nine simulation experts to rate content validity.

A convenience sample of nurse faculty …

Why We Work: Exploring The Relationships Between Work Rewards, Burnout, And Intention To Leave For Professional Nurses, Jacqueline Christianson

Dissertations

Nurse burnout leads to attrition from hospital nursing positions and the nursing profession prior to typical retirement age. Yet some nurses choose to stay despite burnout. Previous research indicates that nurses stay due to the rewards they receive from work but the relationships between different types of work rewards, work-related burnout, and intention to leave are poorly described. The ability to implement or execute altruistic behaviors may also represent an under-recognized work reward. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between work rewards, work-related burnout, and intention to leave nursing positions and the nursing profession and …

What’S The Big Fat Deal?: The Experience Of Fat Students In College, Andrea Marie Melrose

Dissertations

Weight-based discrimination is considered the last acceptable form of discrimination in the United States. Fat bias and stigma are present in healthcare, employment, and education. This dissertation study explores the experiences of fat students on college campuses, examining their experiences of anti-fat bias and discrimination. Additionally, this study explores policy and practice implications for improving the experiences of fat college students and supporting body diversity on campus. This dissertation has four overarching research questions that focus on the following topics: fat students’ experiences of weight-based stigma and discrimination in college, the limitations of physical space on college campuses, perceptions of …

The Relationship Between Self Reflection And Clinical Decision Making Skills In Undergraduate Nursing Students Enrolled In A Health Assessment Course, Joan Richards

Dissertations

Nurses' decision-making abilities and clinical judgment skills impact their patients' lives and are critical to their survival rates. Although new nurse graduates are expected to have these skills, they do not enter into their new practice with this ability. (Hart et al, 2013; Thompson, Aitken, Doran & Dowding, 2013; Bussard, 2014; Benner, Sutphen, Leonard, & Day, 2009). Reflective journaling is a teaching strategy identified to help students develop clinical judgment and decision-making skills and its practice have been associated with improved clinical decision making. (Lasater & Nielsen, 2009, Tanner, 2006; Wainwright et al, 2010; Goethals, deCasterle & Gastmans, 2012; Lavoie, …

Trauma Mediating The Severity Of Depressive Symptoms In Veterans With Ptsd, Meghan Curtin

Dissertations

Trauma serves as a risk factor for developing both posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. The purpose of this study was to examine trauma type as a mediator in the relationship between gender and severity of depressive symptoms among veterans with PTSD. The literature shows trauma type plays a role in developing PTSD and depressive symptoms. The first hypothesis was that female veterans who met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD would report higher levels of depressive symptoms than their male counterparts. The second hypothesis was that this gender difference would be partly mediated by levels of interpersonal trauma experience. Self-report …

Supervisory Impact On Counselor-In-Training Wellness, Erin Brumfield Grima

Dissertations

Counselors being able to engage in self-care practices to establish and maintain their wellness is a well-documented need. The risks of neglecting self-care are also well documented, yet counselors struggle to engage in consistent self-care practices (Baker & Gabriel, 2021; Posluns & Gall, 2020). When demand for counselors is constant (Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, 2020) an examination of how to impact counselor wellness through supervision discussion of self-care is needed. The purpose of the study was to examine supervision discussion of self-care, support of mastery of counselors-in-training’s emotions and any resulting impact on counselor wellness. Data …

Predicting Nurse Faculty Intent To Stay: A Quantitative Study Of Contributing Factors And Their Influence, Erica Frost

Dissertations

The United States faces a shortage of nursing faculty members, impacting the nation's ability to meet the demand for more nurses in the workforce. The purpose of this study was to identify factors that predicted nurse faculty members' intent to stay in academe. Dozens of factors were identified in the literature and grouped using Herzberg's (1966) motivation-hygiene theory of job satisfaction. An online questionnaire was administered to 402 full-time prelicensure baccalaureate nursing faculty in the United States. The survey measured personal, job, and organizational factors including demographics, emotional intelligence, resilience, educational preparation, self-efficacy, mentoring and orientation, interpersonal relationships, and satisfaction …

Molecular Mechanisms Of Amyloid-Like Fibril Formation, Sharareh Jalali

Dissertations

Proteins play a critical role in living systems by performing most of the functions inside cells. The latter is determined by the protein's three-dimensional structure when it is folded in its native state. However, under pathological conditions, proteins can misfold and aggregate, accounting for the formation of highly ordered insoluble assemblies known as amyloid fibrils. These assemblies are associated with diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Strong evidence suggests that three mechanisms are critical for forming amyloid fibrils. These mechanisms are the nucleation of amyloid fibrils in solution (primary nucleation) as well as on the surface of existing fibrils (secondary nucleation) …

Models And Algorithms For Promoting Diverse And Fair Query Results, Md Mouinul Islam

Dissertations

Ensuring fairness and diversity in search results are two key concerns in compelling search and recommendation applications. This work explicitly studies these two aspects given multiple users' preferences as inputs, in an effort to create a single ranking or top-k result set that satisfies different fairness and diversity criteria. From group fairness standpoint, it adapts demographic parity like group fairness criteria and proposes new models that are suitable for ranking or producing top-k set of results. This dissertation also studies equitable exposure of individual search results in long tail data, a concept related to individual fairness. First, the dissertation focuses …

Quantifying Balance: Computational And Learning Frameworks For The Characterization Of Balance In Bipedal Systems, Kubra Akbas

Dissertations

In clinical practice and general healthcare settings, the lack of reliable and objective balance and stability assessment metrics hinders the tracking of patient performance progression during rehabilitation; the assessment of bipedal balance plays a crucial role in understanding stability and falls in humans and other bipeds, while providing clinicians important information regarding rehabilitation outcomes. Bipedal balance has often been examined through kinematic or kinetic quantities, such as the Zero Moment Point and Center of Pressure; however, analyzing balance specifically through the body's Center of Mass (COM) state offers a holistic and easily comprehensible view of balance and stability.

Building upon …

Diversification And Fairness In Top-K Ranking Algorithms, Mahsa Asadi

Dissertations

Given a user query, the typical user interfaces, such as search engines and recommender systems, only allow a small number of results to be returned to the user. Hence, figuring out what would be the top-k results is an important task in information retrieval, as it helps to ensure that the most relevant results are presented to the user. There exists an extensive body of research that studies how to score the records and return top-k to the user. Moreover, there exists an extensive set of criteria that researchers identify to present the user with top-k results, and result diversification …

Human-Ai Complex Task Planning, Sepideh Nikookar

Dissertations

The process of complex task planning is ubiquitous and arises in a variety of compelling applications. A few leading examples include designing a personalized course plan or trip plan, designing music playlists/work sessions in web applications, or even planning routes of naval assets to collaboratively discover an unknown destination. For all of these aforementioned applications, creating a plan requires satisfying a basic construct, i.e., composing a sequence of sub-tasks (or items) that optimizes several criteria and satisfies constraints. For instance, in course planning, sub-tasks or items are core and elective courses, and degree requirements capture their complex dependencies as constraints. …

Fluid Dynamics Of Interacting Particles: Bouncing Droplets And Colloid-Polymer Mixtures, Lauren Barnes

Dissertations

Interacting particles are a common theme across various physical systems, particularly on the atomic and sub-atomic scales. While these particles cannot be seen with the human eye, insight into such systems can be gained by observing macroscopic systems whose physical behavior is similar. This dissertation consists of three different chapters, each presenting a different problem related to interacting particles, as follows:

Chapter 1 explores chaotic trajectories of a droplet bouncing on the surface of a vertically vibrating fluid bath, with a simple harmonic force acting on the droplet. The bouncing droplet system has attracted recent interest because it exhibits behaviors …

Colloidal Behavior Of Nanobubbles And Their Application In Enhancing Plant Growth: Mechanisms Of Nanobubble Interactions With Microbial And Soil Species, Shan Xue

Dissertations

Climate change has resulted in increasing uncertainties of water resources and disturbance on agricultural activities. For example, the shortage of water resources, land erosion and pollution from runoff significantly affect agricultural sustainability. This dissertation research focuses on the fundamental studies of nanobubble (NB) water and explores the benefits for irrigation to enhance plant germination and growth. Unlike bulk bubbles, NBs exhibit prolonged stability in water and possess large surface areas that facilitate efficient mass transfer and potential tailored reactions (e.g., disinfection). However, the enhancement mechanisms for NBs on seed germination and plant growth remain elusive.

This research first evaluated the …

Computational And Experimental Investigation Of Elemental Sulfur And Polysulfide, Jyoti Sharma

Dissertations

Petroleum processing results in the generation of significant quantities of elemental sulfur (S₈), leading to a surplus of sulfur worldwide. Despite its abundance and low cost, the use of sulfur in value-added organic compound synthesis is limited due to its unpredictable and misunderstood reactivity. This dissertation aims to address this issue by tackling it from two angles. Firstly, by utilizing Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations, the reactivity of sulfur in the presence of nucleophiles is studied. This facilitates the identification of organic polysulfide intermediates that can be generated under different conditions, as well as the corresponding reactivity for …

Synergistic Effect Of Air Sparging In Separation Via Nano-Carbon Immobilized Membrane Distillation Process And Optimization, Mitun Chandra Bhoumick

Dissertations

Membrane distillation (MD) has gained significant popularity as a separation and purification technique in diverse domains, such as saline/brackish water treatment, organic recovery, and wastewater treatment. The objective of this research is to advance MD by developing a novel air sparged membrane distillation in treating saline water, recovering solvents, and achieving preconcentration. To optimize the flux and selectivity in membrane distillation, the study also employed a response surface method based on a central composite rotatable design.

In this study, a novel air-sparged membrane distillation (ASMD) is introduced for the treatment of saline water, utilizing a nanocarbon immobilized membrane. The performance …