Adult and Continuing Education Administration Commons^™

Addressing Psychosocial Barriers To Participation In People Experiencing Homelessness: An Occupational Therapy Workshop, Preston Bender, Steven M. Gerardi, Lacey Spark

Summer 2025 OTD Capstone Symposium

Despite the occupational therapy (OT) profession's emphasis on holistic, person-centered care, many OT practitioners and students report feeling a lack of self-efficacy and preparedness to navigate the complex psychological, social, and systemic barriers that hinder occupational participation in people experiencing homelessness (PEH). This capstone project aimed to address the perceived unpreparedness among clinicians through the creation of an 8-hour interactive educational workshop aligned with Experiential Learning Theory. The content is grounded in the Model of Human Occupation (MOHO) and informed by the Bridging the Transition from Homelessness: A Social Justice Framework (BTTF), trauma-informed care (TIC), harm reduction, and diversity, equity, …

A Cancer Education Needs Assessment: Informing Middle-Aged Female Patients About The Relationships Between Obesity And Women’S Health Concerns In The Reproductive System, Breast, And Endometrial Health, Batul Mirza

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Obesity significantly impacts women’s health, particularly among middle-aged women, by increasing the risk of hormone-sensitive cancers such as breast, endometrial, and reproductive system cancers. This study examines the educational needs of this demographic group regarding obesity-related cancer risks and explores effective intervention strategies. Obesity-induced mechanisms – hormonal imbalances, chronic inflammation, and insulin resistance – drive cancer susceptibility, emphasizing the need for targeted health education. The study employs a qualitative design, which includes interviews with subject matter experts (SMEs) and surveys of middle-aged women. The goal is to assess awareness, perceived barriers, and preferred learning methods. Findings suggest that with many …

Nursing Faculty Perceptions Of Stress, Coping, And Intent To Leave The Profession In The Ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic: A Quantitative Study, Lynlee Morgan

Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted all of society to varying degrees; this impact was especially true in higher education due to an overnight transition to distance learning and incessant pivots to meet new guidelines and overcome obstacles. Nursing faculty were significantly impacted due to the responsibility of producing safe, qualified, competent practitioners to provide care in the clinical setting. The limitations in or exclusions from clinical experiences combined with the fact that faculty were managing personal concerns and had never encountered these unprecedented conditions exacerbated the challenge of preparing new nurses. This study was critical due to the faculty role and …

Telemedicine And Healthcare Implications For Central Virginia: A Systematic Review Of The Literature, Patricia A. Lynch, Charletta H. Barringer-Brown, Daniel N. Brown, Taneisha D. Brown

Journal of Research Initiatives

Background: Uncertainties and challenges associated with COVID-19 have affected the efficient delivery of health care in Central Virginia. Integrating and redesigning health systems could boost the quality and efficiency of care delivery. Telemedicine has been suggested as a viable solution to increase virtual access to patient advocacy healthcare education and training programs and has the potential to help facilitate the delivery of health services to rural and remote areas. It is projected that access to quality telehealth services can minimize the need for in-person hospital visitation amid the pandemic. The innovation also facilitates remote assessment of patients and monitoring of …

Exploring Saudi Emergency Room Nurses’ Perceptions About Their Disaster Preparedness, Fadiyah Alshahrani

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Background: Disasters can overwhelm the capacities of health care facilities quickly. In recent years, the world has been affected by an increasing number of significant disasters. These include natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tornados, storms, fires, and epidemic outbreaks. There are man-made disasters such as terrorist attacks, transportation accidents, and stampedes at mass gatherings. The resulting deaths and property damages have enormously affected countries’ economies, particularly on a health care system’s preparedness. In a major disaster, health care professionals must respond, manage, and prevent additional harm to victims. Nurses are the largest group of health care professionals …

Raw And Pure Education In The Society, Iwasan D. Kejawa

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

What does education mean to individuals in the world today? Education is a way one can attain or improve his or her ability to lead and survive in the society of ours. Without educational training of the mind, it may be impossible to realize the importance of adaptability of living in the environment. Without education, It may also be difficult to embellish the use of both the mental and physical attributes possessed by individual beings.

What really is education? Education is the training of the mind to perform desire functions or to perpetuate the modality of obtaining an end or …

Radiologic Technology Advanced Placement, Stacy Gosselin

Instructional Design Capstones Collection

The radiologic technology field is rapidly changing. Its technologists and students need to be prepared for these alterations. All students and technologists must pass the national board exam administered by the American registry of Radiologic Technologist. This exam assesses the participant in patient care, image acquisition, radiation safety and imaging procedures. The performance problem identified is the increased amount of radiologic technologists and radiologic technology students either failing the registry due to being unprepared, or due to insufficient continuing education credits. Many of these technologists have been out of the classroom for 20 years, seemed adapted to their own imaging …

Promoting Nurses Management Of Night Shift Sleepiness, Sunday Iken Okundolor

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Nurses are largely unaware of the problems of night-shift-nurse sleepiness and available strategies to manage night-shift sleepiness. The purpose of this project was to examine nurses' self-perception, awareness of sleepiness, and current strategies to manage this problem in the emergency medicine department of a major academic hospital in the western United States. The validated de-identified Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) was used to measure the prevalence and intensity of night shift nurses' sleepiness prior to the development of an educational program on strategies to manage sleepiness. Of the 164 registered nurses surveyed, 72 (43.9%) reported sleepiness greater than 7 on the …

Wright's Competency Model And Quality And Safety Competencies, Staci Shanks

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Competent nurses are instrumental in assuring that a patient receives safe patient care of the highest quality. Patient care that lacks quality places patients at risk of poor health outcomes and results in negative financial impacts for the organization. The purpose of this staff education project was to develop nurse competency education for a facility's competency program, which merged the Wright competency model with quality and safety education for nurses' competencies. The nurse competency staff education program was evaluated by the organization's stakeholders for inclusion in the competency program. The whole-part-whole model, Knowles's adult learning theory, and Lewin's change theory …

Optimizing Student Retention: Measurement And Analysis Of Strategies Implemented Within Traditional Bachelor’S In Nursing Programs, Bethanie K. Gamble Dr.

Nursing Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an exploration of strategies that optimize nursing student retention. While college students experience a degree of personal and social challenges toward degree completion, nursing students experience higher incidences of attrition due to the academic rigors, clinical scheduling, and high stresses of nursing programs. While few institutional contributions can address personal and social issues impacting retention, nursing programs have a unique opportunity to develop interventions to strengthen social connections to the academic institution and facilitate early connections to the profession. These professional integration factors are central domains of the Jeffreys’ Nursing Universal Retention and Success (NURS) model and …

Nurse Practitioners' Experiences With Role Transition: Supporting The Learning Curve Through Preceptorship, Viktoriya Y. Pleshkan

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The nurse practitioner (NP) role transition is difficult and ill-supported before and after graduation. Although preceptorships are essential in supporting a NP's role transition, there is a paucity of data on student and novice NPs' experiences with their role transition and how it is supported through preceptorships. The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to understand and describe the meaning of NPs' role transition experiences while in a preceptorship before and after graduation. Schlossberg's transition theory and the cognitive apprenticeship models were used to guide the exploration of concepts of role transition and preceptorship. One face-to-face, 3 Skype, and …

Counselors' Knowledge And Attitudes Of The Recovery Paradigm, Kathleen Ruscitto

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

As of 2014, an estimated 18.1% or approximately 43.6 million adults, 18 years of age or older in the United States experienced a form of mental illness. Professional counselors subscribe to a wellness or holistic paradigm; however the recovery paradigm, using collaborative strategies and unique treatment planning is the directed approach of mental health services in the United Stated. The purpose of this quantitative study was to understand what factors contribute to counselors' knowledge and attitudes of the recovery paradigm. Survey methodology was used to examine whether, among professional counselors, years of experience, gender, professional setting, and licensure status, as …

Education Plan To Empower Wound Care Nurses For Evidence-Based Practice, Patricia Stevenson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Non-healing wounds can claim thousands of lives and costs billions of dollars each year, and nurse-led wound clinics are becoming necessary to fill a gap in care for patients with wounds. Even among certified wound nurses using evidence-based clinical protocols, key considerations of care are being missed. Therefore, this project was focused on developing and validating a new biofilm education module for certified or certification eligible wound care nurses. The aim of the module was to boost clinical assessment knowledge and improve patient outcomes. Benners skill acquisition model informed the development of this project. The design of the project also …

Graduate Nurse's Perspective Of Simulation To Address The Theory-Practice Gap In Nursing, Joset Elaine Brown

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Graduate nurses are being employed to provide care in high acuity care areas, and this becomes a problem of significance as the literature suggests that graduate nurse's experience a deficit in integrating theoretical concepts in the clinical environment, described as the theory-practice gap; which can result in a risk to patient safety and the potential for negative outcomes. Cognitive constructivism was the conceptual framework that guided this study. A qualitative phenomenological design was used to explore the lived experiences of 13 graduate nurses employed at a community hospital in northern New Jersey. After recruiting the participants through purposive sampling, semi-structured …

Perceptions Of Nursing As A Career By African American College Students Attending Historically Black Colleges And Universities, Brenda Marie Owens

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Previous studies and official organizations have indicated that African Americans are underrepresented in the healthcare workforce and that patients belonging to minority groups feel they are treated slightly differently in healthcare settings. Limited research examines perceptions of the nursing profession among a variety of demographic groups, and exploratory investigations into the perceptions of nursing as a career by African Americans are limited. The purpose of this quantitative descriptive study was to explore perceptions of nursing as a career by African American students who attend an undergraduate program at a historically black college or university (HBCU) in an attempt to further …

Understanding The Importance Of Culturally Appropriate Patient-Provider Communication In Diabetes Self-Management, Anita Mwalui

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 29.1 million people in the United States have diabetes. Among those 29.1 million people, 21 million have been diagnosed, but 8.1 million have not. Changing demographics in the United States and the prevalence of diabetes are projected to be burdens on the health care system through 2050. Guided by the social cognitive theory, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand the importance of culturally appropriate patient-provider communication to the self-management of Type 2 diabetes by patients who are African immigrants. Culturally based health care has unique challenges when …

Factors Related To Nursing Student Persistence In An Associate Degree Program, Patricia Ann Farley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The retention of nursing students remains a challenge in higher education, and the need for nurses in the United States is projected to increase. The purpose of this study was to investigate nursing student persistence in an associate degree program by examining differences in the presence of key social, environmental, and academic factors across 2 types of students: completers and non-completers of the 1st course in a registered nursing program. The study framework was based on Tinto's Student Integration Model and the Nursing Undergraduate Retention and Success Model, which identify key social, environmental, and academic factors as critical to student …

Development Of A Guideline For Hospice Staff, Patients, And Families On Appropriate Opioid Use, Trenika Alexander-Goreá

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There is an identified problem with patients receiving suboptimal pain management at a hospice agency in the northwestern United States. At this agency, undertreatment of pain is prevalent. Evidence indicates that this may be a result of a lack of guidelines, education, and knowledge of appropriate prescribing. Known barriers to the correct prescription and administration of potent opioids in the hospice setting include prevailing beliefs, knowledge, skills, and attitudes, all of which can impact care negatively. Contextually, hospice principles mandate patient comfort and caregiver involvement in continuous quality improvement, which includes adequate and informed pain management. Moreover, hospice metrics demand …

Relationship Between Educational Leisure Motivation And Recovery From Mental Illness Among Members Of Clubhouse International, Dianna Rene Pearce

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) exhibit low motivation to participate in educational leisure activities at Clubhouses accredited by Clubhouse International (CI). This correlational study examined the relationship between each of 4 motives, intellectual, social, competence-mastery, and stimulus-avoidance, to engage in leisure activities, and the perception of recovery from SMI. Knowles's theory of andragogy supported the concept of informal self-directed learning, which occurs with leisure activities. Literature indicates that participating in leisure activities such as those offered at Clubhouses aids in the recovery from SMI. Quantitative data were collected from a convenience sample of 75 individuals at 4 CI clubhouses …

Experiences And Barriers For Patient Safety Officers Conducting Root Cause Analysis, Cynthia Lightner

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research shows that, when unintentional harm to patients in outpatient and hospital settings occurs, root cause analysis (RCA) investigations should be conducted to identify and implement corrective actions to prevent future patient harm. Executives at a small healthcare consulting company that employs patient safety officers (PSOs) responsible for conducting RCAs were concerned with the low quality of RCA outcomes, prompting this postinvestigation assessment of PSOs' RCA training and experiences. Guided by adult learning theory, the purpose of this study was to assess PSOs' RCA training and investigation experiences by examining self-reported benefits, attitudes, barriers, and time since training, and the …

Relationship Between Student Characteristics And Attrition Among Associate Degree Nursing Students, Wendy Elizabeth Watson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

High nursing student attrition has been a pervasive problem in the nursing program at the research site of this study. The purpose of this project study was to investigate the relationship between attrition and nursing student characteristics, including age, gender, ethnicity, English as Second Language (ESL) background, licensed practical nurse (LPN) licensure, grade point average (GPA), the number of preadmission college credits, and the Test of Essential Academic Skills (TEAS) scores. This correlational study of archival data was guided by Jeffreys's nursing undergraduate retention and success model and included a convenience sample of 240 students admitted to the program between …

Relationship Between Admission Criteria And Program Completion In A Radiation Therapy Program, Adrienne Mae Dougherty

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Poor completion rates in the radiation therapy associate's degree program offered through a community college did not meet the standards set by the college and damaged the program's reputation. The relationship between admission criteria and program completion was not known. The purpose of this study was to determine if there were any relationships between the admission criteria (GPA in prerequisite courses, interview scores, writing sample scores, and preadmission testing scores) and students' completion of a radiation therapy associate's degree program. This correlational study used 2 stages of Tinto's retention theory: (a) recruitment and admission to college and (b) pre-entry assessment …

Losing New Graduate Bedside Nurses, A Practice Improvement Initiative, Beverly Elaine Miller

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

New graduate nurses (NGNs) at bedside are faced with numerous challenges, which prompt them to leave jobs in their first year. The transition from being a student to competent nurse requires a NGN to have the necessary skills and experience. Subsequently, hospitals continue to face shortages of staff because of high turnover and low retention levels. Nonetheless, evidence from reviewed literature has indicated that the use of residency programs can increase NGNs' stay at bedside, improve retention, reduce costs of operations, and return employees' turnover. The purpose of this quality improvement project was to identify the likelihood of NGNs remaining …

Nursing Informatics Competency Program, Kristina Ann Dunn

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Currently, C Hospital lacks a standardized nursing informatics competency program to validate nurses' skills and knowledge in using electronic medical records (EMRs). At the study locale, the organization is about to embark on the implementation of a new, more comprehensive EMR system. All departments will be required to use the new EMR, unlike the current policy that allows some areas to still document on paper. The Institute of Medicine, National League of Nursing, and American Association of Colleges of Nursing support and recommend that information technology be an essential core competency for nurses. Evidence of the need for nursing informatic …

Facilitating Environmental Enrichment In Senior Care Activities With Professional Development, Celia Mary Ross

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There is little known about the current state of professional development and continuing education practices for empowering activity professionals to better enhance environmental enrichment in long term care. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the activity professional's perceived role and best strategies for professional development to enrich the long-term care environment. The study used social cognitive theory as its theoretical framework to develop research questions focused on the views of activity professionals concerning professional development and continuing education to support care for long-term care residents. Using a narrative approach, 9 activity professionals were recruited through networking at …

Fall Prevention In A Neurological Care Unit, Claudeth Jeffrey

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Patient falls are an ongoing concern for health systems in the US and in the setting where this project took place. Inpatient falls affect consumers and health providers because falls often result in patient morbidity and mortality, legal risk, increased length of stay, and increased costs. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the existing fall prevention protocol at the site where this project took place and to make recommendations for an evidenced-based fall prevention protocol. The professional practice model was the conceptual model that guided the exploratory descriptive project. A review of the site's fall prevention policies and …

The Development And Validation Of A Novice Nurse Decision-Making Skills Education Curriculum, Joanne Stephanie Simmons

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Novice nurses (NNs) are entering critical care environments with limited knowledge, skills, and decision-making expertise. They are expected to care for complex patients in a dynamic healthcare setting. The research question for this project examined whether NNs improve their knowledge and skills by participating in a nursing decision-making skills curriculum. The purpose of the project was to develop and validate a nursing decision-making skills education curriculum working in an intermediate critical care unit. Taba's instructional theoretical model was used to guide the new curriculum development along with current evidence based practice found in the current literature. Scaffolding approach theory encouraged …

The Effect Of Health Literacy In Low Estimated Glomerular Filtration And Diabetes, Nicklett Johnston Johnston

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Health literacy is widespread, but its potential is not recognized. By not recognizing health literacy, patients have the burden of coping with diabetes with renal complications without full knowledge of their responsibility to their health. The focus of the project was to assess participants with diabetes with low health literacy and low mean glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). The project goal was achieved by the assessment of the participants' health literacy and eGFR before and after education for their diabetes, then assessed to determine if teaching the participants would improve their health literacy, lab values, and overall health. Participants were recruited …

Mandated Continuing Education And The Competency Of Illinois Physical Therapists, Denise Lynn Hunter Ethington

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Continuing education (CE) mandate laws are passed by states because it is in the public interest. The intent behind the passage of Illinois's CE law for physical therapists is to protect public health and safety through ensuring the competency of providers. However, studies into the impact of mandated CE on competency have been mixed. The problem addressed by this study was whether Illinois's CE law was effective in improving the competency of physical therapists and its impact on patient care. The purpose of this study was to understand what role mandated CE played in developing the competency of physical therapists …

Videotaped Role-Play Simulation In Teaching Transcultural Self-Efficacy To Interprofessional Healthcare Students, Holldrid Aner Odreman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Increased demand for culturally sensitive healthcare services suggests that interprofessional beginning healthcare students need to gain the necessary cultural competency skills to be successful in delivering positive health outcomes for diverse patients. Bandura's theory of observational learning, Mezirow's theory of transformative learning, and Purnell's and Paulanka's model of cultural competence informed the framework for this research. The purpose of this quasi-experimental quantitative study was to determine the relationship between mode of instruction (observing role models in videotaped role-play simulation) and increased transcultural self-efficacy in cultural competence instruction. A convenience sample of 196 students enrolled in an interprofessional education (IPE) course …