Digital Commons Network^™

It’S Hapi Hour: An Action Plan On Preventing Hospital-Acquired Pressure Injuries, Emira Maureen A. Romero

Master's Projects and Capstones

Hospital-Acquired Pressure Injuries (HAPIs) are detrimental to both the hospital and the patient as they are costly, painful, and can lead to further infection and an increased length of stay. Although this problem is seen across the country, this action plan focuses on a microsystem (i.e. medical-surgical telemetry unit) in Hospital A in the San Francisco Bay Area. The target population includes medical-surgical telemetry patients at high risk for HAPIs (i.e. Braden score <18, moisture/mobility scores <2, patients with devices at risk for device-related pressure injuries). The proposed intervention is an evidence-based HAPI prevention bundle that includes utilization of wound care champions and turn teams, increasing attendance of daily huddles, implementing a standardized algorithm for escalation and documentation, and reinforcement of evidence-based HAPI prevention measures. Effectiveness of this bundle will be measured through chart audits, nursing questionnaires, and staff interviews. These measures will be conducted 12 months post-implementation and findings will be compared to the baseline data in order to investigate whether there is a reduction in HAPI incidence. Since this project is currently in the Study phase of the proposed Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycle, this action plan concludes with recommendations of how the team can continue to move forward in addressing the project’s specific aim.

Hapi Prevention Bundle: An Initiative To Prevent Hospital-Acquired Pressure Injuries, Karla D. Penilla Lozano

Master's Projects and Capstones

Problem: Hospital-Acquired Pressure Injuries (HAPI) are a serious health problem as they increase patient morbidity and mortality. They are detrimental to patients, families, and healthcare systems. Context: Research supports HAPI prevention bundles are a way to standardize care processes and reduce the incidence of pressure injuries. This evidence-based practice intervention was initiated to develop a HAPI prevention bundle in an adult Medical-Surgical Telemetry unit. A literature review was conducted to identify the best HAPI prevention practices. Intervention: The evidence-based pressure injury preventive bundle includes interventions consistent with proper skin assessments and documentation, patient risk identification, development of Wound Care Champions, …

The Relationship Between Surgical Site Infections And Hand Hygiene Discharge Teaching, Eishlee Renel A. Jasa

Master's Projects and Capstones

Problem: In the span of a nine-month period, the incidence of surgical site infections (SSIs) in a singular perioperative unit reached 13. SSIs have been linked with negative consequences for both the patient and healthcare system, decreasing quality of life and increasing costs.

Context: The 20-bed post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) primarily serves adult patients in the East Bay Area, where a variety of surgeries including elective and emergent procedures are performed. This facility specializes in general surgeries, where laparoscopic excisions and hernia repairs were the most commonly observed.

Intervention: The Standardized 3-Step Hand Hygiene Discharge Teaching is aimed to improve …

Aidet And Commit To Sit Implementation In The Outpatient Surgical Setting, Olivia V. Meehan

Master's Projects and Capstones

Problem: This quality improvement project implements AIDET and commit to sit to improve communication and increase the patient satisfaction of an outpatient surgery microsystem. The microsystem’s patient satisfaction is assessed, and it is currently scoring below the reach goal of 85^th percentile. The detractors from their overall score mainly stem from the patient not feeling listened to, informed, or updated on the timeline. AIDET and commit to sit are ideal tools for addressing those deficits.

Context: The microsystem being addressed is an outpatient surgery unit that specialized in general surgery for the pediatric population. The pediatric population that the …

Poor Acclimation To Experimental Field Drought In Subalpine Forest Tree Seedlings, Alex Goke, Patrick H. Martin

Biological Sciences: Faculty Scholarship

The ability of tree species to acclimate and tolerate projected increases in drought frequency and intensity has fundamental implications for future forest dynamics with climate change. Inquiries to date on the drought tolerance capacities of tree species, however, have focused almost exclusively on mature trees with scant in situ work on seedlings, despite the central role that regeneration dynamics play in forest responses to changing conditions. We subjected naturally established seedlings of co-dominant subalpine conifer species (Abies lasiocarpa and Picea engelmannii) in the southern Rocky Mountains to 2 years of in situ summer precipitation exclusion, simulating summer drought …

Prediction Equations To Determine Induced Force On Reinforcing Elements Due To Laterally Loaded Piles Behind Mse Wall And Lateral Load Test On Dense Sand, Pedro David Garcia Montesinos

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers performed 35 full-scale lateral load tests on piles driven within the reinforcement zone of a mechanically stabilized earth wall (MSE wall). Data defining the induced tensile force on the reinforcements during lateral pile loading was used to develop multi-linear regression equations to predict the induced tensile force. Equations were developed by previous researchers that did not consider the diameter of the pile, the fixed head condition, relative compaction, or cyclic loading. The purpose of this research was to include this tensile force data and develop prediction equations that considered these variables. Additionally, a full-scale lateral load test was performed …

Effective Cancer Detection Using Higher-Order Genome Architecture And Chromatin Interactions, My Chung

Master's Projects

Cancer is a complex disease which requires interactions between cell-intrinsic alterations and tumor microenvironment. The connection between epigenetics and genomic structure plays a key role in chromatin interaction which promotes enhancer-promoter interactions for transcriptional activities. Alterations of chromatin states in oncogenic signaling pathway potentially cause cancer cell-intrinsic changes and inappropriate instructions to normal cell cycles, leading to abnormal cell growth. Resulting phenotypic changes are correlated to underlying changes in higher-order chromatin structure such as topologically associating domains (TADs) and compartments. In cancer cells, TAD structure is usually altered to facilitate the communication between enhancers and promoters in addition to higher …

Increase Access To Community-Based Health Care For Underserved Individuals: A Quality Improvement Project, Piper Oneal

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Manuscripts

Abstract

Background: Health care access disproportionately affects certain populations. Health care opportunities for uninsured adult members of a rural community can be limited. Suwannee County is a rural community with a population of 43,814 of which 40.8 % live below the 200% poverty income level (WellFlorida Council, 2020). Problem: In 2016, 23.8% of adults in Suwannee County were unable to see a doctor in the past year due to the inability to pay and lack of insurance (Florida Department of Health, 2020). Community-based health care initiatives can address such issues by targeting underserved individuals, reducing barriers, and making health services …

Achieving Fairness Through Load-Balancing In Social Cloud Computing Networks, Kaiyi Huang

Master's Projects

Cloud-based computing networks have taken over the digital landscape. From small non-profits to large multinational corporations, more and more entities have been offloading computing effort to the cloud in order to take advantage of the increased cost-efficiency and scalability of cloud computing. One of the new types of cloud that have emerged is the P2P cloud, which disengages from a traditional datacenter setup by allowing users to instead share their own computing hardware into a cloud to take advantage of cloud computing’s advantages at an even lower cost. However, this new paradigm comes with a slew of challenges, notably, security …

The Impact Of Programming Language’S Type On Probabilistic Machine Learning Models, Sherif Elsaid

Master's Projects

Software development is an expensive and difficult process. Mistakes can be easily made, and without extensive review process, those mistakes can make it to the production code and may have unintended disastrous consequences.

This is why various automated code review services have arisen in the recent years. From AWS’s CodeGuro and Microsoft’s Code Analysis to more integrated code assistants, like IntelliCode and auto completion tools. All of which are designed to help and assist the developers with their work and help catch overlooked bugs.

Thanks to recent advances in machine learning, these services have grown tremen- dously in sophistication to …

Privacy Preserving For Multiple Computer Vision Tasks, Amala Varghese Wilson

Master's Projects

Privacy-preserving visual recognition is an important area of research that is gaining momentum in the field of computer vision. In a production environment, it is critical to have neural network models learn continually from user data. However, sharing raw user data with a server is less desirable from a regulatory, security and privacy perspective. Federated learning addresses the problem of privacy- preserving visual recognition. More specifically, we closely examine and dissect a framework known as Dual User Adaptation (DUA) presented by Lange et al. at CVPR 2020, due to its novel idea of bringing about user-adaptation on both the server-side …

Farnesol Secretion As A Possible Driving Force For Maintaining Candida Albicans As A Diploid, Kenneth Nickerson, Cory Boone, Kory Parker

Kenneth Nickerson Papers

Candida albicans is a pathogenic dimorphic fungus which is invariably found as a diploid in patients. C. albicans secretes the sesquiterpene farnesol both as a quorum sensing molecule which blocks the yeast to hypha conversion and as a virulence factor for pathogenicity. 20-25 μM farnesol kills other competing yeasts and fungi, often by triggering apoptosis, and yet wild type diploid C. albicans tolerates 300-500 μM farnesol. The recent availability of 10 haploid strains of C. albicans (5 mating type aand 5 mating type α) allowed us to compare their production of and sensitivity to farnesol. On average, the heterozygous diploid …

Utility Of S100a12 As An Early Biomarker In Patients With St-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction, Xiaolin Zhang, Minghui Cheng, Naijing Gao, Yi Li, Chenghui Yan, Xiaoxiang Tian, Dan Liu, Miaohan Qiu, Xiaozeng Wang, Bo Luan, Jie Deng, Shouli Wang, Hongyan Tian, Geng Wang, Xin-Liang Ma, Gregg W Stone, Yaling Han

Department of Emergency Medicine Faculty Papers

Importance: S100A12 is a calcium binding protein which is involved in inflammation and progression of atherosclerosis.

Objective: We sought to investigate the utility of S100A12 as a biomarker for the early diagnosis and prognostication of patients presenting with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI).

Design, Setting, and Participants: S100A12 was measured in 1023 patients presenting to the emergency department with acute chest pain between June 2012 and November 2015. An independent cohort of 398 patients enrolled at 3 different hospitals served as a validation cohort.

Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary clinical endpoint of interest was major adverse cardiac and cerebral …

Chromatic Quasisymmetric Class Functions For Combinatorial Hopf Monoids, Jacob A. White

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

We study the chromatic quasisymmetric class function of a linearized combinatorial Hopf monoid. Given a linearized combinatorial Hopf monoid H, and an H-structure h on a set N, there are proper colorings of h, generalizing graph colorings and poset partitions. We show that the automorphism group of h acts on the set of proper colorings. The chromatic quasisymmetric class function enumerates the fixed points of this action, weighting each coloring with a monomial. For the Hopf monoid of graphs this invariant generalizes Stanley's chromatic symmetric function and specializes to the orbital chromatic polynomial of Cameron and Kayibi.

We also introduce …

Establishing Program Standards To Meet The Needs Of Postsecondary Trade And Industrial Education, Beno Rubin, Michael F. Kosloski Jr., Roberto Loya

Journal of Research in Technical Careers

The focus of this study was to develop standards that can be used for establishing and assessing high-quality postsecondary trade and industrial programs. A four-round Delphi technique was used to generate consensus regarding program standards. The panel of experts, comprised of postsecondary administrators of trade and industrial programs, was used to determine which program standards should guide the development and assessment of high-quality trade and industrial education programs. The result was a list of 17 standards and descriptions. The standards included Academic Integration, Advisory Committee, Curriculum, Employer Feedback, Faculty Qualifications, Meaningful Employment, Placement Rates, Program Design, Program Review, Safety, Soft …

21st-Century Skillset Perceptions Of Students In An Information Technology Career Academy Compared To Those At A Comprehensive School, Edward C. Fletcher Jr., Amber D. Dumford

Journal of Research in Technical Careers

In this study, we compared the perspectives of students’ 21st-Century competencies (critical thinking and communication, applied learning, and intrapersonal and interpersonal skills) based on participating in an urban magnet information technology (IT) career academy compared to a traditional, comprehensive high school. We utilized propensity score matching to match academy and comprehensive high school learners on various demographic variables. The propensity score matching resulted in 299 matched pairs (n = 598). Using the matched groups, we ran linear regression models to investigate the relationship between school participation and students’ perceptions of their 21^st-Century skill attainment. We found that …

A Survey Of Faculty Perceptions Of Community College Career And Technical Education, Thomas Gauthier Dr.

Journal of Research in Technical Careers

Community colleges are the leaders in facilitating career and technical education (CTE), and faculty help develop program offerings on campus. This study explored faculty perceptions of community college CTE programs using the survey research method. Participants included 36 faculty members from various disciplines from 15 state colleges in Florida. Participants were sent a digital survey and asked to use a scale from 0 (do not agree) to 8 (agree) to score their agreement level with 43 statements of opinion. Data revealed that community college faculty perceive CTE as beneficial, but CTE programs must include the habits of mind and support …

Developing A Structured Ojt Program: The Case Of A Small Manufacturing Company In A Rural Region, Raymond A. Dixon Ph.D.

Journal of Research in Technical Careers

This study explored the process followed by a small manufacturing company in a rural area to implement a planned training program to develop the technical skills of its engineering/production workers as the company expands its operation. A case study design was used. Data was collected over an eight-month period by the examination of documents, direct observation, and interview. Findings indicate the process followed were consistent with elements of the Talent Development Architecture. The growth of the company presents learning opportunities for both the owner and his management team. The job analysis provided inputs to implement a planned training program and …

Paleohydrological Context For Recent Floods And Droughts In The Fraser River Basin, British Columbia, Canada, Becky L. Brice, Bethany L. Coulthard, Inga K. Homfeld, Laura A. Dye, Kevin J. Anchukaitis

Geoscience Faculty Research

The recent intensification of floods and droughts in the Fraser River Basin (FRB) of British Columbia has had profound cultural, ecological, and economic impacts that are expected to be exacerbated further by anthropogenic climate change. In part due to short instrumental runoff records, the long-Term stationarity of hydroclimatic extremes in this major North American watershed remains poorly understood, highlighting the need to use high-resolution paleoenvironmental proxies to inform on past streamflow. Here we use a network of tree-ring proxy records to develop 11 subbasin-scale, complementary flood-and drought-season reconstructions, the first of their kind. The reconstructions explicitly target management-relevant flood and …

Consideration In Curriculum Design For Teaching About Race And Racism In Gerontology, Darren Liu, Betty Burston

Healthcare Administration and Policy Faculty Research

The recognition of structural racism as a public health crisis has enlarged the breadth and depth of discussions of the unique “Isms” in higher education classrooms. A significant number of undergraduate or graduate level gerontology programs participate in the delivery of training through instruction on the topics of aging, gerontology, or long-term care administration to future labor market participants. Absent from these classroom conversations, however, has been an analysis of how syntax, the analytical vocabulary, and other framing of such conversations can impact learners. While these educational programs provide highly critical information on disease, illness and injury prevention, selfcare, population …

Code Blue Readiness: Improving Nurse Confidence And Performance, Michelle Zia Sultani

Master's Projects and Capstones

In the event of a code blue, otherwise known as a cardiac arrest, in a hospital setting, the nurse is usually the first to respond. A nurse must be confident in themselves and their skills to provide quality compressions and other BLS skills. Many nurses on medical surgical floors do not experience a code blue. This quality improvement project aims to improve the confidence, and quality of Code Blue readiness in nurses working on Medical Surgical units. The process begins with nurses answering a pre-survey about their current confidence in handling a code. The process ends with nurses answering a …

Beyoncé: A Powerful, Black Icon, Emma Kury

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Abstract

Beyoncé, one of the most powerful Black, female artists is able to use her power to share her feminist perspectives with all of her fans. Originally in Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé decided to go solo to create her own music and career. Today, Beyoncé empowers her audience with her music and extravagant performances. Although Beyoncé faces various personal challenges during her career, she is still able to attain her main goal of giving to her fans. Additionally, Beyoncé is able to pave the way for other artists who follow her by giving an example of how artists can interact with …

The Rise Of Femicide & Digital Activism, Hannah Micciolo

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Women’s voices are often silenced as compared to men, especially when it comes to speaking out against the injustice women have faced. In Mexico, women had been enduring femicide for decades, oftentimes being silenced and overshadowed by the government’s narrative. In this new wave of activism called digital activism, people are now using social media to inform their audience about specific issues. Florence Pugh is one of these people. Pugh uses digital activism to spread awareness for Femicide in Mexico and encourage her audience to also speak up on the issue in a time where women’s voices are silenced.

More Than An Athlete: A Qualitative Analysis Of How Student-Athletes Develop Self-Authorship Through Their Experiences In Athletics, Haley Kate Webb

Honors Theses

Within the context of the newly instituted NCAA Name, Image and Likeness legislation, student-athletes are able to profit from their personal brands. This legislation presents newfound exposure to student-athletes. In order to assess the preparedness of student-athletes to benefit monetarily from their personal brands, an analysis of student-athlete development provides beneficial insight regarding their cognitive development. Using self-authorship theory as a guide, this qualitative research used long interviews to explore how student-athletes are developing their identities through their journeys with athletics. The research analyzes the lived experiences told by five athletes from a medium-sized faith-based NCAA Division II university. The …

Team Learning Within Nurse Teams In A Home Care Organization, Carol A. Gavan

Dissertations

The purpose of this interpretive case study was to determine whether the team learning model (Dechant, Marsick, & Kasl, 1991), which served as a framework, aptly described team learning as it took place among professional service teams in a home health care environment. The learning effectiveness of two teams, of 12 and 14 home care nurses respectively plus their managers and administrators, was described using observations, document analysis, interviews, a literature review, and the Team Learning Survey (Dechant & Marsick, 1993) to gather data.

Factors Affecting The Outcome Of The National Council Licensure Examination Among Nontraditional Learners From Associate Degree Nursing Programs, Angela C. Gaud

Dissertations

The composition of student population in higher education is a reflection of a globalized society and current socioeconomic conditions. Characteristics of nontraditional adult learners have a significant impact in the achievement of their academic goals. A more diverse composition of students enrolled in nursing programs poses an important challenge to NCLEX-RN pass/fail outcomes. Studies that explore or predict the factors associated with NCLEX-RN performance amongst nontraditional adult learners after graduation are limited.

This study analyzed how the demographic, social, and psychological factors observed in the characteristic profile of the nontraditional adult learner are related to NCLEX-RN performance for graduates of …

Systems And Methods For Scalable Retinal Screening Programs, Jeremy Richard Benson

Computer Science ETDs

This dissertation addresses gaps in artificial intelligence-based computer vision tasks in the medical image processing field. We demonstrate effective methods for standardizing and augmenting digital fundus photographs so that robust convolutional neural network-based systems can perform high-throughput disease classification and generalize to never-before-seen data from novel camera technologies, scaling with the changing hardware landscape, as well as keeping up with vast amount of incoming data from the ever-increasing population. We also tackle the problem of discovering relevant samples in an unlabeled cohort of image data, thus widening the bottleneck to all downstream supervised machine learning tasks.

Engineering Advanced Micro And Nanofiber Materials For Biomedical Applications, Alec D. Mccarthy

Theses & Dissertations

At the functional crossroads of engineering and biomedical sciences lies the interdisciplinary field of biomedical engineering. Principles of biomedical engineering are vast, and the rigorous application of engineering towards clinically-relevant medicine has the ability to take novel concepts from bench to bedside. Arguably one of the most promising and productive sub-fields within the biomedical engineering discipline is biomaterial engineering. Here, novel biomaterials, synthesized from natural, synthetic, or hybrid materials, can be used in tissue repair and regeneration, hemostasis, as anatomical support and drug delivery vessels, or as diagnostic devices.

Of particular interest are applications of nanofiber and microfiber objects, which …

Pentagonal Extensions Of The Rationals Ramified At A Single Prime, Pablo Miguel Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we define a certain group of order 160, which we call a hyperpentagonal group, and we prove that every totally real D5-extension of the rationals ramified at only one prime is contained in a hyperpentagonal extension of the rationals. This generalizes a result of Doud and Childers (originally conjectured by Wong) that every totally real S3 extension of the rationals ramified at only one prime is contained in an S4 extension.

Uk Supreme Court Rejects “X” Gender Marker On Passport, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.