Digital Commons Network^™

Quality Improvement Project: Early Screening For Kidney Disease In Primary Care Clinics, Binsy Easow

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a common complication of diabetes. Evidence-based guidelines recommend urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) screening for early identification of albuminuria in patients with diabetes; however, screening was inconsistently completed in an outpatient primary care clinic. This quality improvement project evaluated the impact of a standardized, provider-focused intervention on UACR screening completion and therapy intensification in patients with microalbuminuria. The Iowa Model served as the evidence-based practice framework, Lewin’s Change Theory provided the theoretical framework for practice change, and the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle guided implementation and evaluation. A quasi-experimental pre- and post-intervention design was used. The intervention was delivered …

The Impact Of Implementing A Discharge Tool On Nurses’ Confidence And Press Ganey Patient Survey Scores In Discharge Planning, Cristan Ledbetter

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

A needs assessment at a rural hospital revealed an opportunity for improvement in discharge planning. The purpose and aim of this project was to improve nurses’ confidence in the discharge process and improve Press Ganey survey scores in communication about medicine domain and discharge information domain. Inadequate discharge planning leads to poor patient outcomes, concern for patient safety, increased healthcare costs, and inferior patient satisfaction. The quality improvement (QI) project utilized a one-group pretest/posttest QI design. An evidence-based, standardized discharge tool was implemented. The Susan Grundy confidence scale (C-Scale) was used to evaluate nurses’ confidence in the discharge process pre- …

Enhancing Healthcare Provider Confidence And Accuracy In Performing And Documenting The Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale, Victoria Okoani-Nneji

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Monitoring for medication-related movement disorders is essential for adults with schizophrenia receiving antipsychotic medications; however, inconsistent Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale (AIMS) assessment and documentation can limit timely recognition of abnormal movements. This quality improvement project evaluated a six-week structured AIMS education program designed to improve provider confidence and documentation accuracy in an outpatient behavioral health setting in Central Ohio. Guided by Benner’s Novice-to-Expert Model and Kotter’s Eight-Step Change Model, the project used a one-group pretest-posttest design with 15 licensed behavioral health providers. Weekly sessions included instruction, demonstration, guided practice, case-based learning, scoring, interpretation, and electronic health record (EHR) documentation. Descriptive …

Integration Of The Kidney Failure Risk Equation To Guide Nephrology Referral In Adults With Chronic Hypertension, Shawn A. Siddiqi

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Chronic hypertension is an established risk factor for chronic kidney disease (CKD). Baseline chart review at a Texas family practice clinic showed inconsistent renal risk documentation, and providers did not use a standardized renal risk-stratification tool to guide nephrology referral. The aim of this quality improvement project was to implement a standardized Kidney Failure Risk Equation (KFRE) workflow to improve renal risk documentation, nephrology referral decision-making, and provider self-efficacy for adults with chronic hypertension over eight weeks. Lewin's Change Theory guided practice change, the Donabedian model guided quality evaluation, and the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle structured implementation. Three providers (one physician, …

Standardizing Discharge Communication In Urgent Care: A Teach-Back Quality Improvement Initiative, Pearlean Smith

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Deficits in health literacy and inconsistent discharge education contribute to patient misunderstanding and avoidable return visits. This quality improvement project evaluated a standardized teach-back discharge education process at a community urgent care clinic. Lewin's Change Theory guided the change process, the Iowa Model guided implementation, and Donabedian's Structure-Process-Outcome Framework guided evaluation. A quantitative one-group pretest-posttest design included eight participants: three nurse practitioners, two licensed practical nurses, and three medical assistants. Participants completed a 30-minute teach-back educational session followed by a 12-week implementation period. Measures included the five-item Confidence Scale, discharge audits, and aggregate electronic medical record data on seven-day return …

Sociodemographic Predictors Of Patient Adherence To Timely Follow-Up Colposcopy/Leep After Abnormal Pap Screening, Gigi Baer

Summer Research Program Abstracts

No abstract provided.

Measuring Cultural Distance With Cultural Classification Models: A Tutorial In R, Kongmeng Liew, Igor De Almeida

Online Readings in Psychology and Culture

Cross-cultural psychological research is essential to address the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) bias in psychology. Traditional cross-cultural research often relies on Western-centric theories which may not adequately capture cultural differences beyond East-West comparisons. This tutorial introduces Cultural Classification Models (CCMs), interpretable machine learning models designed to explore cultural differences between countries by distinguishing between participants from different cultures on a cross-cultural dataset. CCMs offer a data-driven approach to quantify cultural distances and identify key variables that differentiate cultures. This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide in R to build CCMs using Random Forests, and derive indices of cultural …

The Great Right North: Inside Far-Right Activism In Canada, By Stéphane Leman-Langlois, Aurélie Campana, And Samuel Tanner. Mcgill-Queen’S University Press, 2024. 288 Pages. $29.95. Isbn978-0228022848, Carmen Celestini

Journal of Hate Studies

Carmen Celestini, a scholar of religion, reviews The Great Right North: Inside Far-Right Activism in Canada, co-authored by Stéphane Leman-Langlois, Aurélie Campana, and Samuel Tanner. The Great Right North traces the history of the far right in Canada, mapping hate groups by their relationships to political and social institutions and violence as well as their construction of otherness, thereby revealing how such groups are not insular but are in fact responsive to social phenomena. After defining groups as ultra right, racial right, xenophobic right, anti-state militias, freedom conspiracists, or nostalgic racists, The Great Right North identifies commonalities and differences …

Klandamentalism: Bob Jones At The Intersection Of Revivalism, Politics, And White Supremacy, By Camille Kaminski Lewis. Clemson University Press, 2025. Rhetorics Of Conflict. 352 Pages. $128.00. Isbn 978-1638041566, Anderson Rouse

Journal of Hate Studies

A historian by training, Anderson Rouse reviews Camille Kaminski Lewis’s Klandamentalism: Bob Jones at the Intersection of Revivalism, Politics, and White Supremacy, a study of twentieth century religion and race that examines the fusion of Protestant fundamentalism and Ku Klux Klan activity and ideology. Klandementalism focuses on the work of Bob Jones through archives beyond that of the university that bears his name, illustrating how Bob Jones University became an example of the institutionalization of racialized Protestant politics.

Sharing Their Journey: A Conversation With Aziz Abu Sarah And Maoz Inon, Laura Morlock

Journal of Hate Studies

Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon, a Palestinian and an Israeli, have both lost loved ones to violence. Together, they advocate for peace. Interviewer Laura Morlock speaks with them about their shared journey, including the difficulties they face, how they handle criticism, and the validity of anger.

Poisonous And Injurious Vascular Plants Of The United States: An Introduction, James P. Smith Jr

Botanical Studies

No abstract provided.

The Campus Flora, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, James P. Smith Jr

Botanical Studies

No abstract provided.

Medicinal Plants: An Introduction, James P. Smith Jr

Botanical Studies

No abstract provided.

On Antisemitism: A Word In History, By Mark Mazower, Penguin Press, 2025. 274 Pages. $26.56. Isbn 978-0241722909, Beth A. Griech-Polelle

Journal of Hate Studies

Historian Beth A. Griech-Polelle reviews Mark Mazower’s On Antisemitism: A Word in History which explores how the term came emerged in Germany in the last 1800s and how its definition has changed over time and across cultures, including in the US, the USSR, and the Arab world. Mazower considers the roles of geography, Christan and antisemitic Zionism, intellectual and political antisemitism, Nazism, anti-Zionism, imperialism, conspiracy theories, and anti-Israel sentiment in shaping how people have historically understood and do today understand the concept—and how such differences in understanding frustrated efforts to end antisemitism.

A Fate-And-Transport Model For Diclofenac From Wastewater Treatment Plants To The Diyala–Tigris Rivers, Baghdad, Iraq, Mohammed A. Al-Ameri, Ghyda Y. Al Kindi, Noor S. Mahdi

Engineering and Technology Journal

Diclofenac is a widely used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that is incompletely removed by conventional wastewater treatment. This study evaluates its fate and transport from consumption and excretion, through the three Al-Rustamiyah wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) units in Baghdad, to the Diyala River, the Tigris River, and the Al-Tuwaitha drinking-water intake. Discrete ``grab'' samples were collected during 12–14 November 2020 from WWTP influent and effluent streams and from river and intake sites. Diyala River concentrations ranged from 0.094 to 2.184 μg/L. At the Tigris confluence, diclofenac was 0.052 μg/L; the two immediate downstream measurements were below 0.01 μg/L …

The Lingering Effects On Junk Bond Spreads Of The Fed’S 2020 Corporate Bond Backstop Facilities, John V. Duca, An Nguyen

Journal of Financial Crises

The US corporate bond market is typically disrupted during financial crises, when uncertainty and risk premiums are high and bond issuance is depressed. During the COVID-19 recession, the Federal Reserve introduced two unprecedented interventions: the Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility and Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility. These backstop facilities stood ready to purchase corporate bonds when corporate bond spreads were wide. While existing literature highlights their effects on investment-grade bonds, the implications for high-yield (junk) bonds remain less well understood. We track uncertainty using the Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX; Jurado, Ludvigson, and Ng’s measures of macroeconomic uncertainty; and other …

Geotechnical Enhancement Of Noncohesive Coal Mine Overburden Using Microbially Induced Calcite Precipitation And Fly Ash Stabilization For Sustainable Pavement Applications, Atul Gautam, Laxmikant Yadu

Journal of Sustainable Mining

The majority of the waste generated from opencast mining, termed as overburden (OB), is dumped adjacent to the mine boundary and poses long-term stability issues. Various studies have been carried out to assess the risk of dump slope failure, and treatment strategies have been accordingly recommended to strengthen this OB dump. However, scant works are reported to sustainably utilize this OB for construction works. This study aims to quantify the performance of stabilized noncohesive coal mine OB collected from Gondegaon opencast mine (OCM) in India. Stabilization was achieved using two techniques, namely microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) through Sporosarcina pasteurii …

Nursing Practice Excellence Committee: Setting The “Right Table” For Npec-Able Practice Improvement, Cristina L. Ritzema

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Purpose: The Nursing Practice Excellence Committee (NPEC) initiative is intended to provide a structure for nurses to leverage their expertise in driving nursing practice, care quality and patient safety improvements. NPEC fortifies professional governance by setting the “right table” for decision-making.

Background: This Magnet-designated organization recognized that sustaining the Magnet nursing culture of excellence requires consideration and uptake of current best practices and structures. Accordingly, NPEC was designed to be a systematic, evidence-based approach to incident-based practice reviews that embeds and reinforces Professional Governance and Exemplary Professional Practice. NPEC positions bedside nurses as subject matter experts and leaders to translate …

Scheduling The Charging Of Battery-Electric Vehicles Under Heterogeneous Scheduling Constraints, Justin Whitaker, Greg Droge, Mario Harper

Electrical and Computer Engineering Student Research

Adopting battery electric vehicles (EVs) for vehicle fleets requires scheduling charging alongside day-to-day operations. This problem is complicated by complex utility cost structures, limited battery capacity, and competition for shared charging resources. Existing methods that simultaneously schedule routes and charging neither address the full cost structure nor employ high-fidelity charging models, and no prior work analyzes fleets containing vehicles with heterogeneous routing constraints. This work addresses these gaps by combining a state-of-the-art flexible-schedule formulation with time-of-use (TOU) demand costs and a non-linear, variable-rate charging model as drawn from additional state-of-the-art works. The proposed method is validated against two state-of-the-art methods, …

Quality Improvement Project: Implementing The 2025 Aha Hypertension Guidelines In Rural Primary Care, Johanna M. Alvarez

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Hypertension contributes to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, and delayed adoption of updated guidelines can increase therapeutic inertia in rural primary care. This Doctor of Nursing Practice quality improvement project addressed an evidence-to-practice gap at a rural Federally Qualified Health Center where clinicians used 2017 American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology hypertension protocols after release of the 2025 guideline. The purpose was to determine whether structured education and point-of-care visual decision aids improved provider knowledge, attitudes, self-reported practices, and selected clinical adherence metrics over 3 months. Guided by the Iowa Model, Lewin’s Change Management Model, and the Plan-Do-Study-Act framework, a quasi-experimental …

Determining Impact On Provider Adherence To Current Diabetes Guidelines: A Quality Improvement Project, Rashemia Suber

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

The delivery and documentation of evidence-based adult lifestyle counseling for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) were found to be inconsistent in a clinic that serves an underserved population. This quality improvement (QI) project assessed whether a provider education program based on the 2025 American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) Diabetes Guidelines would improve provider confidence and documentation of lifestyle recommendations. A quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design was guided by both Pender's Health Promotion Model as the theoretical framework and Lewin's Change Theory as the change theory. The Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) cycle guided this project as the implementation framework. …

Social And Psychological Well-Being Of Aps Clients With Elder Mistreatment And Self-Neglect, Thara Ayyar

Summer Research Program Abstracts

No abstract provided.

Not Merely A Workaround: Theorizing Asynchronous Math Talks As A Robust Instructional Routine For Visible Thinking, Participation, And Engagement In Mathematics Teacher Education, Simon Byeonguk Han

Dissertations and Theses

The sudden global shift due to COVID-19 accelerated the need for a better understanding of mathematics learning and teaching in an asynchronous format. Also, despite the popular use of mathematics instructional routines in mathematics classrooms, the field of mathematics education research has very limited empirical studies on instructional routines. This dissertation addresses this by examining Asynchronous Math Talks (AMTs), a structured instructional routine adapted from Number Talks. The central goal of this research is to develop and theorize AMTs not merely as an online workaround, but as a robust instructional model that leverages the unique affordances of digital platforms to …

Being Present: Elevating Patient And Nursing Satisfaction Through Leadership Presence, Miranda Marie Schmidt

International Nursing Research Congress (INRC)

Introduction: Predominant and notable themes currently being actively monitored in healthcare are nursing satisfaction, retention, and job performance. These variables have been identified as important areas to evaluate as to how they directly impact patient care outcomes. Use of the evidence-based Casey Fink Graduate Nurse Survey and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality- Quality Assurance Performance Improvement (QAPI) leadership rounding guide highlights that combining structured tools along with leadership presence, style, and interactions is associated with positive changes in patient care, nursing satisfaction, retention, and the overall quality metrics will improve in a specified unit.

Methodology: 26 articles were reviewed …

Shallow Margin Fish Biomass Estimates In Lake Victoria Using Horizontal-Beam Acoustics, Yang Yang, Roland Proud, Robert Kayanda, Collins Ongore, Mboni Elison, Hillary Mrosso, Benedicto B Kashindye, Andrew S Brierley, Alina M Wieczorek

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

No abstract provided.

When Three Points Aren't Enough: Parameter Estimation In Newton's Law Of Cooling, Alberto A. Condori, Cara D. Brooks, Madeline R. Goldberg

CODEE Journal

We begin with a paradoxical three-point problem where the standard parameter estimation formula fails because temperature data must satisfy a concavity condition reflecting Newton's Law of Cooling's exponential structure. Although a closed-form solution for A exists for equally-spaced measurements, high sensitivity to error motivates the use of overdetermined systems with many measurements. The "profiling over A" technique transforms this three-parameter nonlinear problem into a sequence of simple linear regressions, providing computational efficiency and conceptual transparency. This approach can be generalized to many parameter estimation problems in science and engineering, making it a valuable tool for undergraduates interested in applied mathematics. …

My Negotiation Chatbot Toby And Pedagogical Governance, Renee Henson

Journal of Science & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Building On Sand: Ai Law And The Failures Of Alignment, Claire Boine

Journal of Science & Technology Law

AI alignment is increasingly in the spotlight. However, from a technical concept, the term has been broadened to cover all sorts of potential harms by advanced AI systems. This Article disambiguates three different problems: ensuring that systems pursue intended objectives through acceptable means, deciding which values should guide their behavior, and governing private companies whose incentives diverge from those of society. Drawing on technical research and documented incidents, the Article explains why goal alignment deserves serious attention without requiring claims about human-like intelligence. It then shows how value alignment can reframe normative conflict as an engineering problem and divert attention …

The Impact Of Provider Medication Reconciliation Education On Hospital Readmissions In A Skilled Nursing Facility, Vivian Nwozu

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Aging causes frailty and multiple comorbidities, necessitating polypharmacy. Complicated drug regimens predispose patients to adverse drug events and hospital readmissions. The practice problem was high rates of medication-related readmissions due to inadequate provider knowledge of medication reconciliation and the lack of a standardized tool. This project aimed at evaluating the impact of provider medication reconciliation education on hospital readmissions in a skilled nursing facility. A pretest-posttest study design was utilized. The Donabedian Model of Healthcare Quality guided the translation of evidence into practice, whereas Lewin’s Change Model and Plan-Do-Study-Act models guided implementation. Eight providers were educated on medication reconciliation using …

Cartelized Parliament And The Decline Of Legislative Oversight In Indonesia’S Multiparty Presidentialism, Shanty Kartika Dewi, Anis Fuad

Jurnal Wacana Politik

This article examines the tendency of Indonesia’s House of Representatives (DPR RI) in the 2024–2029 term to move toward a cartelized parliament within Indonesia’s multiparty presidential system. It addresses how the dominance of an oversized governing coalition after the 2024 election weakens parliamentary opposition and reduces the effectiveness of checks and balances over the executive. The study employs a qualitative explanatory approach using a single-case study design, process tracing, and documentary analysis. The data are drawn from official state and parliamentary documents, KPU decisions, legislative agendas, democracy monitoring reports, credible media coverage, and public statements by political elites. The findings …