Search

Teamwork and collaboration among healthcare professionals has been identified by the Institute of Medicine and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as a national priority that can be used to improve quality and safety in healthcare (AHRQ, 2000, IOM, 1999). Care that is delivered in collaborative teams has been associated with better patient outcomes including decreased medical error (Morey, et al., 2002), decrease ICU length of stay (Pronovost, Berenholtz, & Dorman, 2003), decreased complications (Sexton, 2006), and decreased adverse patient outcomes (Mann, et al., 2006). Educating the next generation of health care providers to function in collaborative teams is an important step in achieving the goal of lower medical error for patients in all settings. Team skills are not inherent but must be learned. Well-designed interprofessional team training can provide an effective way to educate healthcare students for the ultimate goal of providing patient centered care as part of interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP). Best practices in team training have not been determined in the research, therefor this study was designed to address what is the best length of time for team training for developing teamwork attitudes and skills as part of overall teamwork competency. Two different team training time delivery models were provided to interprofessional teams of undergraduate nursing, medicine, and respiratory therapy students, culminating in an interprofessional simulation for 19 teams. One model was delivered over one immersive session of four hours, the other was delivered over several weeks. Results of team attitude and teamwork skills revealed some differences related to training models. Using a liberal level of significance of p < .10 to account for small sample size, immersive one day training was associated with higher team skills when compared to extended time delivery (p = .077, d = .09). Team attitude was equally positively effected by both models of team training from pre- to post-simulation measures (p = .001) with a moderate effect size ( partial ¿2 = .40). Multiple regression analysis to determine prediction of teamwork skills revealed background variables of team anxiety, and team feelings of preparation were statistically significant (p = 0.092), but baseline teamwork attitude was not a significant predictor of skills. A multiple regression to determine teamwork attitude predictors revealed pre-existing teamwork attitude to be the strongest (p < .001), with little contribution of team anxiety or or team feelings of preparation levels. Results can be used by healthcare educators to inform their decisions for use of time and other resources for training students for teamwork that contributes to interprofessional collaborative practice.

Scope and Method of Study:

This study explores the ways a small group of girls, ages 11-13, spoke about courage over a two-year period. Using Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as a guide, the purpose of the present study is to discover how courage is present in the lives of a select group of girls, what their thoughts and perceptions are on courage, and how these thoughts and perceptions explain the operation of emotion and rationality in producing courage. This last question is based off Marcia Homiak's (1993) suggestion that Aristotle offers a way to explain how emotion and rationality operate together to develop positive, caring, independent and strong individuals. Differing from the predominant framework of Carol Gilligan's theory of an "ethic of care" in girls' developmental research, the present study uses and suggests that the practice of returning to the classical work of Aristotle offers a different approach to studying girls' development. The girls were interviewed in an effort to discover personal conceptions of courage, their thoughts on the relevance of intention, experience, emotion, sanguinity, and ignorance to courage, as Aristotle describes these terms, and how courage is present in their lives. The girls also performed an essay-writing task to clarify their thoughts. Several dominant themes resulted from this study. These included the participants stating that (1) a courageous act must stem from good intentions; (2) courage comes as a matter of experience or practice; (3) with enough practice courage can become a habit and thus part of your character; (4) while emotion is a precursor to courage, a courageous act cannot be done rashly and requires a degree of rationality to act in order to be considered true courage; and (5) their own recollections of acting courageously are in early development and thus far have been minimal. An additional finding was the degree to which participants found overly aggressive girls spur opportunities for courage. Implications for a model of active learning, character education, and further research on girls' development are suggested.

This study primarily examines the cultural and commercial practices of editors and publishers who commission and acquire content in independent Australian publishing houses. My research spans a 30-year transitional period in book publishing from 1970 to 2000 - a period marked by rapid and unstable shifts in publishing culture, reflecting wider social, political, economic and technological change. In a global market economy, more than ever before, the acquisition of local content is critical in fostering original ideas and works by Australian authors. A series of semi-structured interviews with editors and publishers provides a direct source of personal experience and professional industry-based knowledge. These narratives address and engage with individual and collective values, beliefs, assumptions and attitudes which reflect particular personalities and publishing styles. They also contribute to an understanding of the editors' and publishers' commissioning role, where knowledge and content are taken up and developed and publishing decisions are made. An analysis of editors' and publishers' responses further explores the diversity of commissioning and acquisitions environments in which they live and work. Publishing houses are profiled and works of fiction and non-fiction are identified and discussed in an attempt to unpack how and why they were commissioned and developed for publication, and to what social and cultural effect. The dynamics of organisational structure and publishing culture are explored by analysing general and specific publishing models. Editors and publishers discuss how publishing companies operate and offer insights into, and perceptions of, organisational structure and publishing culture and, importantly, how both impact on commissioning practice. Issues of identity, representation and institutionalisation are identified as they relate to developments and trends within publishing and public culture, as a whole, and the ways in which they intersect. This nexus of culture and power is explored through the cultural production of Australian content, and in particular, in Chapters Five and Six, with the impact of second-wave feminism on Australian publishing culture and cross-currents in the production and publication of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander works.

This study explored attitudes of occupational therapy faculty toward tenure and selected alternatives to tenure. A survey method was employed, and the Tenure Attitude Survey Instrument, (TASI), was created for use in the study. Additionally, a questionnaire sought information regarding respondents' rank, tenure and administrative status, institutional type, and years in academia. Participants were accredited occupational therapy professional program faculty who identified their primary work setting as "Academic" on the 2000-2001 American Occupational Therapy Association membership survey. Factor analysis of 577 surveys examined the structure of scores on the TASI, and the instrument consisted of 4 scales, and 18 items, as follows: Scale One: Attitude toward academic freedom and job security protection, 7 items; Scale Two: Attitude toward tenure in general, 6 items; Scale Three: Attitude toward stop-the-tenure clock provisions, 2 items; and Scale Four: Attitude toward post-tenure review, 3 items. Cronbach's alpha was conducted, as follows: TASI overall alpha = .7915; Scale 1 alpha = .7884; Scale 2 alpha = .8420; Scale 3 alpha = .7020; Scale 4 alpha = .4229. Proportional analysis showed that most respondents were full time faculty (88.1%); taught full time at public institutions (52.8%); were tenured or tenure-track (55.5%); had no administrative duties (70.5%); with a rank of instructor or lecturer (17.5%), or assistant professor (45.7%). Time in academia ranged from 1-40 years, with a mean of 11.27 years, median of 9.25 years, and mode of 4 years. Attitudes toward, and support for, the continuation of tenure and for selected proposed alternatives to tenure were analyzed according to the following: faculty rank, administrative status, and tenure status. Respondents held generally favorable attitudes toward tenure as measured by Scales 1 and 2 of the TASI, and the best predictors of faculty attitude toward tenure were tenure status and rank. Due to low reliability scores on Scales 3 and 4, no conclusions can be drawn regarding respondents' attitudes toward alternatives to tenure.

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the extent to which graduates from the Bachelor of Nursing (BN) program at the University of Technology, Sydney were adequately prepared for the nursing role in the current Australian health care system. This question was examined by adapting the illuminative evaluation method developed by Parlett and Hamilton (1977), and a meta-evaluation is provided of the model that was developed. Data were gathered from academic staff, clinical facilitators, curriculum and clinical experts and students. Course mileau and documentation were also assessed. The results indicate that graduates from the BN were adequately prepared to fulfil the nursing role. However, during the research a number of critical issues emerged which led to the development of an alternative model of curriculum. Although the conclusions support the continuance of a generic preparatory course, a number of changes to the course are recommended and two areas of future research identified. The first relates to exploring the depth, breadth and extent of knowledge that is required of a beginning registered nurse. The second involves evaluating the curriculum changes proposed here to assess whether this model is able to achieve improved outcomes in graduates

The informal reading inventory was explored in conjunction with: (1) the teacher assigned reading level, (2) the cloze procedure to evaluate comprehension, and (3) the rate of silent and oral reading. Sixty children in grades two through six were given the informal reading inventory to determine their independent, instructional, and frustration levels. The children were also given written cloze tests on the basis of their school assigned grade level to evaluate their independent, instructional, and frustration levels. During the oral and silent reading selections of the informal reading inventory, the children were timed, and their rate of reading was determined and expressed in “words per minute.” The comparison of the informal tests and the teacher assigned level revealed that sixty-eight per cent of the sixty children in the study were reading at a level that did not correspond to their instructional level as determined by the informal reading inventory. Only thirty-two per cent of the children had a teacher assigned level that exactly match their instructional level.