Digital Commons Network^™

The Ideas Of Empathy In Nursing: A Conceptual Analysis, Philip A. Greiner

Dissertations

The term empathy has long been of interest in nursing, since empathy is one way in which nurses move from generalized knowledge to particular knowledge of another. Empathy enables the nurse to comprehend the situation of the other in order to improve the health or situation of that other. The focus of this conceptual analysis is the ideas of empathy within the discipline of nursing. An analysis of the nursing literature on empathy from 1960 to 1988 led to the categorization of empathy into four ideas: empathy as receptivity, empathy as emotional contagion, empathy as relationship, and empathy as communication. …

Access: Effects Of A State-Funded Policy In One Community, Betty Smith-Campbell

Dissertations

America is in the midst of a health care crisis, and access to health care is a significant problem. As this crisis has escalated with little response from the federal government, state governments have begun to respond. For example, Kansas enacted a law in 1991 (HB 2019) to provide funding for primary care services for the medically indigent. Health Care Access (HCA), a community based volunteer clinic in Douglas County, KS, received this state funding and the services they provided increased dramatically. Little research has been done to assess the impact of organizations, such as HCA, on access to care. …

The Colin Kaepernick Effect: Socio-Cultural Tension Over Patriotic Views Within K-12 Education, George Calhoun

Dissertations

One of the biggest and most controversial issues facing this country is the police brutality towards African – Americans. Many African – Americans have been killed by the police even while being unarmed. The opinions on this topic has further divided a nation that has already had its racial parameters stretched with the 2016 Presidential Election. However, the most unlikely professional athlete decided to endanger his career and take a stance against these heinous acts of violence. Colin Rand Kaepernick, a biracial man who was adopted at an early age by a white couple; attended the University of Nevada, and …

Evolution Of The Professional Nursing Organization: Development Of Power, Lorraine Freitas

Dissertations

The issue of power of the nursing profession has been an ongoing concern to nurses. Early nursing leaders believed that the most effective way to obtain power was through the formation of organizations for nurses. They also believed that collectively nurses could address such issues as self-regulation of nursing education and nursing practice. The attainment of this regulation would give both the profession and the association power. Thus in 1896, the American Nurses' Association (ANA) was organized as the association to represent professional nursing in the United States. Today, it represents the largest group of registered nurses. The purposes of …

Joining The Academic Community: The Lived Experiences Of New Teachers In Nursing Education, Patricia K. Young

Dissertations

Contemporary academic communities in nursing are experiencing an increasing number of new teachers, particularly those who teach part-time, at the same time that they are experiencing a growing shortage of faculty members prepared at the doctoral level. The presence of large numbers of new teachers in the face of a shortage of experienced teachers underscores the necessity of graduate preparation for teaching in nursing. However, increasingly, the pool of new teachers in nursing is comprised of nurses academically prepared for advanced nursing practice or research, not teaching. This preparation is important but is not sufficient for teaching in contemporary academic …

Fostering Critical And Creative Thinking In The Elementary Social Studies Classroom: Teaching Social Justice Through The Lenses Of Power And Oppression And Site-Based Experiences, Julia R. Wilkins, Chelsea D. Witwer

Dissertations

This joint study in the elementary school social studies setting enacted the explicit intention of facilitating student understanding of social justice. The first study was conducted in a second grade classroom to assess how exploring historical neighborhoods in St. Louis impacted students’ understandings of diversity. Student writings, interviews, artwork, and adult interviews and surveys provided evidence of the impact the curriculum had on the school community and larger city. This study revealed that it is possible for young students to explore hard histories and present day social justice topics through the use of place-based learning and community partnerships. Their learning …

Exploring The Perceptions Of Citizens Of The Impact Of Community Policing In Two Ethnically Diverse, Low-Income Communities That Have National Safety Ratings Between 0% And 25% In San Diego County: A Phenomenological Study, Eric O'Neal

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to describe citizen perceptions of the impact of community policing in 2 selected, ethnically diverse, low-income communities that have national safety ratings between 0% and 25%. The study explored the 8 pillars of community policing: partnerships, problem solving, procedural fairness, proscribed scope, protection, professionalism, purpose, and principles and their impact on citizens’ perception of their local law enforcement agencies.

Methodology: The study was qualitative with a phenomenological approach to research.

Findings: Findings from this study revealed that examination of study participant interviews, observations, and artifacts resulted in 22 themes and 689 …

Cultural Characteristics Of A Nursing Education Center Of Excellence: A Naturalistic Inquiry Case Study, Tona L. Leiker

Dissertations

Nursing education is at a crossroad today. Stressors in nursing programs include expanding enrollments to meet growing workforce demands for more registered nurses, demanding workloads with low average nursing faculty salaries compared to practice peers, and growing numbers of faculty retirements. The purpose of this study was to identify the cultural characteristics of a nursing education center of excellence. The primary research question was: What important factors constitute the culture of a nursing program previously determined to be a high-performing environment? Using naturalistic inquiry methods, one nursing program case study designated as National League for Nursing (NLN) Centers of Excellence …

Chemotherapy-Related Cognitive Impairment: The Breast Cancer Experience, Jamie S. Myers

Dissertations

The aims of this qualitative descriptive study were to describe the experience of chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) for women with breast cancer who received chemotherapy; and identify information about CRCI that women would find useful prior to chemotherapy and the onset of CRCI. In-depth interviews were conducted with 18 women who reported changes in cognitive function and were within 6-12 months of completing chemotherapy. Participants described issues with short term memory, trouble focusing, and difficulty with word finding, reading, and driving. Support and validation of the experience was acknowledged as important. Coping strategies included writing things down, depending on others, …

The Experience Of Families When A Child Is Diagnosed With Cancer With A Favorable Diagnosis, Laura Clarke-Steffen

Dissertations

The major objective of this longitudinal, descriptive study was to describe the family transition to living with childhood cancer, from the family's point of view, when a child is diagnosed with cancer with a favorable prognosis. The major research question was: What is the experience of families when a child is diagnosed with cancer with a favorable prognosis? A convenience sample consisted of 40 members of 7 families with a child recently diagnosed with cancer with a favorable prognosis at a northwestern health sciences university hospital. Cancer with a favorable prognosis was defined to be any subtype of cancer with …

Dual-Battery Empowered Green Cellular Networks, Xilong Liu

Dissertations

With awareness of the potential harmful effects to the environment and climate change, on-grid brown energy consumption of information and communications technology (ICT) has drawn much attention. Cellular base stations (BSs) are among the major energy guzzlers in ICT, and their contributions to the global carbon emissions increase sustainedly. It is essential to leverage green energy to power BSs to reduce their on-grid brown energy consumption. However, in order to furthest save on-grid brown energy and decrease the on-grid brown energy electricity expenses, most existing green energy related works only pursue to maximize the green energy utilization while compromising the …

An Investigation Into The Conceptualisations Of Leadership Among Early Childhood Teachers In Ireland., Edel Fenlon

Dissertations

Leadership in an Irish Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) context is a new and emerging ideology at a policy and practice level. This study aimed to gain an understanding of the conceptualisations of leadership held by early childhood teachers who work directly with children in Ireland. This study explored the associations of leadership held by participants, recognition of leadership potential and attributes of effective leadership; through an interpretivist paradigm. Within this paradigm, a qualitative research design was selected to capture the lived experiences of leadership of participants. Six semi-structured interviews we completed with early childhood teachers from rural Ireland. …

The Rebel Made Me Do It: Mascots, Race, And The Lost Cause, Patrick Smith

Dissertations

Public memory is commonly tied to street names, toponyms, and monuments because they are interacted with daily and are often directly associated with race, class, and regimes of power. Mascots are not thought of in the same manner although they are present as part of everyday life. The childish or sometimes comedic nature of the mascot discounts it from many considerations of its influence, symbolism and history. Nonetheless this research focuses on the term “Rebel” as a secondary school mascot. The term possesses the trappings of race because the American vernacular ties the word to the Confederate States of America …

Identifying Potential Predictors Of Health Literacy And Steps Taken To Pursue Kidney Transplant Among African-Americans On Dialysis, Stacy Skelton

Dissertations

The dissertation attempts to address the disparity seen in all transplant centers today, the low number of African-American end-stage renal disease(ESRD) patients pursing kidney transplant as renal replacement therapy. Currently, there are two renal replacement options, dialysis or a kidney transplant. Research has shown that kidney transplant provides the best health care outcomes in terms of quality of life and decrease mortality. While African-Americans carry the burden of the disease by being four times more likely to have ESRD they only represent 1/3 of the kidney transplants done in the United States. There have been three attempts to increase access …

School Connectedness: Teachers’ Perspectives On The Effects Of A Small Learning Community On Ninth-Grade Student Transition And Dropout, Brittany Richey

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore ninth grade teachers’ perspectives’ of a small learning community and its impact on student connectivity, transition and dropout. The following overarching research question framed this study: (Given the 15-year history of this freshman academy, what are the teachers’ perspectives on the impact of a small learning community on ninth grade transition? (a) What are teachers’ perceptions of how the freshman academy affects students’ sense of interpersonal connectedness? (b) What are teachers’ perceptions of how the freshman academy affects students’ sense of physical and emotional safety? (c)What are teachers’ perceptions of how the …

Physician Stress: Is The Electronic Health Record To Blame?, Zack Ward

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the potential relationship between Family Medicine physician burnout and the electronic health record. To do so, this study utilized the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory to assess burnout among physicians, along with specific questions regarding usage of the electronic health record and measurement of physician perceptions of the electronic health record. Members of the Kentucky Academy of Family Physicians were sent two separate invitations to participate in the study twice over a one-month period via email.

The study yielded no significant differences in Family Medicine physician demographics and their degree of burnout, or the …

Perceptions Of Rural High School Professional School Counselors Regarding The Impact Of Strategies To Help At-Risk Learners Graduate, Beth Duvall Fleming

Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to study the perceptions of school counselors regarding the impact of the school counseling program, interventions, and other strategies to help at-risk learners persist to graduate. A qualitative research design employing an interpretive phenomenological analysis methodology was used. Semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions allowed the respondents to share insights into the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of their individual experiences as school counselors. The results suggest students with various risk factors choose not to persist to graduate, transferring to homeschool or withdrawing from school as a dropout. Academic deficiency, severe misbehavior, poor attendance, and social …

Technology, Professional Development, And Student Achievement: Using The Tell Survey In A Study Of Low Socioeconomic Schools In Kentucky, Holly Mcleod Ross

Dissertations

In order to compare the accessibility, need, and extent of professional development, technology, and its relationship to low socioeconomic (SES) schools and achievement, data were accessed from the Kentucky Department of Education, Division of School and Community Nutrition Qualifying Data Report to identify schools with a greater than 50% free and reduced lunch rate. Data also came from the TELL Kentucky survey instrument results specific to questions related to professional development and technology. Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (KPREP) school rankings were also utilized to determine the highest and lowest ranked schools among those with greater than 50% free …

A Collaborative Perspectives Approach For Understanding Effective Care Coordination In Autism Spectrum Disorder, Rachel Severs

Dissertations

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that causes significant impairment in social and communication areas. The severity of the disorder can often result in a substantial degree and amount of service access and expenditures relating to a child’s needs. This study examined the experiences of how family caregivers and service providers of children with ASD view service delivery using a basic qualitative research design. For the study, 10 participants (five family caregivers and five service providers) were enrolled and interviewed. Interview data were collected and coded to produce a qualitative analysis of the experiences of these individuals who …

A Case Study Of A Jail Participating In An Animal-Assisted Crisis Response Program, Erica Schlau

Dissertations

A crisis state is often the result of being admitted to jail, due to the catastrophic impact incarceration can have on personal and professional lives. Unlike other studies, the present study focuses on inmates in jail rather than in prison. To address jail inmates in a crisis state, the current best practice is suicide prevention, which does not effectively consider the needs of jail inmates. Recently emerging in the literature is the use of animal-assisted crisis response (AACR) to serve individuals experiencing a crisis. There is a lack of research on the use of animal-assisted interventions (AAI) with the population …

Are We Globalized? Transformative Education And Internationalization Within Naspaa Programs, Li Cheng

Dissertations

In a globalized world, curriculum internationalization is gradually becoming important to higher education institutions. The importance of teaching and learning with a global perspective has been addressed in public service education. In particular, the purpose of having a global perspective in public service education is to broaden the knowledge, open the mind, and guide the future actions of public service students. Transformative learning theory has been developed over the past three decades to study the transformation of people’s perspectives and actions through learning experiences. The primary goal of this study is to understand the efforts that American public service programs …

Serial And Concurrent Response Presentation: Their Effects On Resurgence, Michael P. Kranak

Dissertations

Serial response training (SRT) may mitigate resurgence of a target response when compared to teaching a single alternative response. However, the necessity of the serial presentation of alternatives is yet to be determined. We hypothesized teaching alternative responses at the same time (concurrent response training [CRT]) may be as effective as, and more efficient than, SRT. We used a multielement design embedded within an ABC resurgence arrangement in a human operant arrangement in three studies. Twenty-seven undergraduate students enrolled in a psychology course participated. In Study 1, we compared CRT to differential reinforcement of a single alternative response (traditional DRA). …

High-Performance Reductive Strategies For Big Data From Lc-Ms/Ms Proteomics, Muaaz Gul Awan

Dissertations

Mass Spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics utilizes high performance liquid chromatography in tandem with high-throughput mass spectrometers. These experiments can produce MS data sets with astonishing speed and volume that can easily reach peta-scale level, creating storage and computational problems for large-scale systems biology studies. Each spectrum output by a mass spectrometer may consist of thousands of peaks, which must all be processed to deduce the corresponding peptide. However, only a small percentage of peaks in a spectrum are useful for further processing, as most of the peaks are either noise or are not useful. Our experiments have shown that 90 to …

Developing Early Warning Systems For Debris Flows And Harmful Algal Blooms, Sita Karki

Dissertations

This study focused on developing early warning systems for two types of geohazards using methods that heavily rely on remote sensing data. The first investigation attempted to develop a prototype version of an early warning system for landslide development, whereas the second focused on harmful algal bloom prediction.

Construction of intensity-duration (ID) thresholds, and early warning and nowcasting systems for landslides (EWNSL) are hampered by the paucity of temporal and spatial archival data. This work represents significant steps towards the development of prototype EWNSL to forecast and nowcast landslides over Faifa Mountains in the Red Sea Hills. The developed methodologies …

Analyzing Unemployment, Education-Occupation Mismatch, And Immigrant’S Participation In The Us Labor Market, Riyadh Naeem Arooq Arooq

Dissertations

Analyzing the factors that determine any labor market’s outcomes is important. That is because the results of these analyses can help policy makers to adopt effective labor market policies, and thus achieve the best outcomes of that labor market. In this study, I analyze three important factors: unemployment, education-occupation mismatch, and immigrants’ participation in the US labor market.

First, I analyze the problem of slow decline in the rate of U.S. unemployment after the last recessions. In this chapter, I examine whether the slow movement in U.S. unemployment is due to cyclical or structural factors. I contribute to the literature …

The Role Of Sampling Variability In Developing K-8 Preservice Teachers’ Informal Inferential Reasoning, Omar Abu-Ghalyoun

Dissertations

Recent influential policy reports, such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS-M, 2010) and Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education Report, (GAISE, 2007), have called for dramatic changes in the statistics content included in the K-8 curriculum. In particular, students in these grades are now expected to develop Informal Inferential Reasoning (IIR) as a way of preparing them for formal concepts of inferential statistics such as confidence intervals and testing hypotheses. Ben-Zvi, Gil, & Apel, (2007) describe IIR as the cognitive activities involved in informally making statistical inferences. Over this path from informal to formal inference, many important …

Uniformly Connected Graphs, Nasreen Almohanna

Dissertations

Perhaps the most fundamental property that a graph can possess is that of being connected. Two vertices u and v of a graph G are connected if G contains a u-v path. The graph G itself is connected if every two vertices of G are connected. The well-studied concept of connectivity provides a measure on how strongly connected a graph may be. There are many other degrees of connectedness for a graph. A Hamiltonian path in a graph G is a path containing every vertex of G. Among the best-known classes of highly connected graph are the Hamiltonian-connected graphs, …

Embedded Fault Class Detection Methodology For Condition-Based Machine Monitoring And Predictive Maintenance, Nagdev Amruthnath

Dissertations

Ever since the Second Industrial Revolution, manufacturing firms have continuously been working on minimizing the inefficiencies and maximizing the productivity of their system. This objective led to the creation of the Toyota Production System which follows the motto of “making [the] highest quality products at the least cost in the shortest lead time. (Ohno, 1988)” This philosophy is widely recognized and is utilized by various industries today.

Currently, we are going through the Fourth Industrial Revolution (also called, Industry 4.0) where internet technologies are utilized to additionally maximize the productivity in the production processes. Process synchronization is one of the …

Social-Emotional Intelligence (Ei), Graduates And The Workplace – A Study Of A Tailored Approach To Ei Competency Development For Final Year Engineering Students, Ailish Jameson

Dissertations

Previous research has demonstrated that higher social and emotional competence (EI) results in increased life and career success. To date, EI coaching programmes have been delivered in higher education and in the workplace and have demonstrated success in terms of increased EI competence, post intervention. However, to date no attempt has been made in an Irish context to design and deliver a tailored EI coaching programme, based on the stated needs of employers. This study aimed to address this gap in EI research. It was exploratory in nature with a mixed method design being employed. In Phase One, a survey …

A Collaborative Case Management Model In An End Stage Renal Disease Patient Population, Linda Q. Everett

Dissertations

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the effectiveness of a collaborative case management (CCM) model on an end stage renal disease (ESRD) patient population. The study attempted to confront some of the conceptual and methodological issues surrounding the study of case management. Those issues included: absence of a theoretical framework; the omission of operational definitions of case management; lack of clear specification and measurement of sample selection criteria; the frequent use of weak pre-post designs; and the use of unstandardized instruments. The following strategies to address these issues were presented: a theoretical framework was developed in which …