CNL Led Meditation Session to Reduce Stress Levels in Kaiser Permanente’s Case Management Department

ABSTRACT PROBLEM: Stress in the workplace has a significant impact on patients and the healthcare system, but, just as importantly, it can also negatively impact the well-being of the healthcare professional. Based on PSS results, 67% of nurses at Kaiser OURS felt “stressed” in the unit and 100% felt they could not cope with daily work tasks CONTEXT: KP OURS is a microsystem of nursing staff who work together to bridge the gap between the non-Kaiser and Kaiser hospitals, assisting in the transfer of patients when medically stable. Meditation has been proven to have a variety of different health benefits, including stress reduction. The improvement project described in this paper focused on decreasing stress levels among nurses through practicing deep breathing meditation as a group. INTERVENTIONS: The CNL will implement deep breathing meditation exercises among nursing staff during morning huddles. The exercise will require 3 minutes to complete over a course of an 8-month period. MEASURES: The “show me” technique was used to determine if the teaching was affective and the changes in the scores from the PSS was used to determine outcome measures. RESULTS: The results of the improvement project demonstrated a decrease in stress levels among nurses, proving the meditation exercises to be effective. CONCLUSIONS: The intervention of practicing deep breathing meditation was found to be effective and sustainable

Trust, Credibility And Authenticity: Race And Its Effect On Audience Perceptions Of News Information From Traditional And Alternative Sources

The purpose of this study is to investigate audience perceptions of trust, credibility and authenticity in news information coming from traditional and social media sources, especially focused on how securitization amplifies the effects of news frames regarding race and culture. Research in race and media suggests that citizens of nations who look like the other will be framed differently than those of nations that look like us. The study examines the effects of securitization and how exceptionalism coupled with framing can create an atmosphere where American culture has become securitized, in particular the ways in which multiculturalism due to increased immigration, especially from South Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American countries, has led to a racially charged space post-9/11. The study employed an experiment comparing traditional and social media to determine the ways in which audiences perceive news information and found that story type (securitized and nonsecuritized) played an important role in how audiences percieved trust, credibility and authenticity in the information, the presenter and the modality. Overall, securitized stories were trusted and perceived more credible than nonsecuritzed stories. Race played a larger role in the way audiences perceived the presenter, with the Brown presenters generally being perceived as more authentic than their White counterparts. Audiences also perceived traditional media more trustworthy and credible compared to social media. But news from social media was perceived as more authentic than traditional media. Further, this dissertation focused on how securitization has a framing function with the news media as an important intermediary between political actors and the public. Broadcast news can provide a multilayered look at how audiences perceive information from on-air personalities. But in recent years, the growth of social media has provided consumers an alternative place to get their news, such as video blogs and/or podcasts. Thus, this study examines perceptions of news information from multiple channels, presenters of different ethnicities and modality due to the drastically changed ways in which the American public, politicians and the media talk about security

Exploring Cloud Computing Implementation Issues in Healthcare Industry

Nowadays, cloud computing—as a flexible, collaborative, cost effective and scalable computational approach—is being applied within different public and private organizations. Furthermore, the use of cloud-based applications is becoming more widespread on both the organizational and individual level than it has been in the past. Healthcare is one discipline that could benefit from cloud-based applications; however, because of various privacy and security issues, it has been adopted more slowly than in many other disciplines. The purpose of this preliminary study is to investigate the related literature in order to explore the cloud computing implementation issues in the healthcare industry. Technological, Organizational, Environmental and Human factors are considered as the most important factors in implementing cloud computing in healthcare. The early framework for implementing cloud applications in healthcare is addressed to administrators and healthcare managers at the end of this study; however, the complementary study will be needed in the future to examine our hypotheses and research questions with collected data

Appraisal of Ground Water Potential through Remote Sensing in River Basin, Pakistan

Groundwater is an important source of water supply throughout the world and is one of the vital parts of the hydrological cycle. Its availability depends on the precipitation and recharge conditions. In arid regions, recharge amount is smaller than semiarid regions. Recharge is the basic phenomenon for the sustainability of ground water resources. Pakistan has inadequate water resources and inflow pattern due to arid climate. There are so many factors which make the conditions gradually worst such as increasing population, change in climate condition and misuse of water resources etc. These factors lead to the situation of water scarcity rather than any addition. watershed is positioned at the boundary of Sindh and Balochistan, Pakistan. It is the most important water supply source to Industrial area and the mega city of Karachi, which is getting only about 50 percent of water supply against its fast-increasing requirement. Hab watershed is therefore considered for this study. Remote Sensing and GIS are very effective tools for the assessment and exploration of potential sites of groundwater in any of the watershed. A case study was conducted for the assessment of groundwater potential sites in study area. For this purpose, different thematic layers were created like drainage map, structural and geological map and Overlay analysis was performed and to determine the potential zone of groundwater in the study area

Optimized genomic DNA extraction by a modified organic phenol- chloroform method without using PCR for best results

Background:  The objective of the study was to design a cost effective, efficient and better protocol for genomic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) extraction.Methods: This was an experimental study, which is carried out ARID Research laboratory. The duration of study was four months from March 2015 to June 2015. White blood cells were used for extraction of DNA. Two procedures RBC lysis and extraction of DNA from the pellet was done. The goal was to obtain high quality and quantity DNA yield. Even the amount of blood less than 1 ml can be used for extraction. The extraction of DNA comprise of disruption of nuclear membrane and removal of protein from the pellet. After extraction DNA was purified. DNA was confirmed with the help of Nanodrop technology. Genomic DNA was also confirmed by using horizontal agrose gel electrophoresis and visualized using Gel Doc System. Whole blood approximately 10ml µg, yields 250 µg of DNA, using latest organic phenol chloroform method.Results: Successful extraction of DNA from the WBCs without compromising quality and quantity was the end result. Shelf life of DNA was increased. Current modified protocol of DNA isolation, extraction and purification of DNA is not only cost-effective and highly yielding but also reproducible.Conclusions: The DNA extracted with modified organic phenol- chloroform method was of high quality and quantity. The bands of DNA were confirmed with horizontal electrophoresis. Clear DNA band were visualized indicating the precision of latest protocol. Another important advantage was that very small amount of blood sample is required for DNA extraction and the protocol was cost effective and efficient. Present protocol will be very beneficial for genomic studies, requiring DNA extraction. It will enable researchers to work with fewer budgets and less sample size, obtaining best results

Monetary Policy Channels and Industrial Production in Pakistan: Evidences based on ARDL Approach

Monetary policy is a significant component of economic management, with which we can control higher inflation, boost the economic growth and stabilize the other macroeconomic activities. This study investigates the channels of monetary policy affecting the industrial production using monthly data of Pakistan. In this regard, we have applied Bound test for co-integration to investigate the dynamic behaviour of the variables. Our results indicate that the consumer prices, money supply and money market rates are negatively effective for industrial production in the short-run. On the other hand, exchange rate has positive effect in short-run. The results also indicate that there is statistically significant and positive relationship between industrial output and money supply in the long-run, too. The adjustment mechanism suggests stability in the system and is statistically significant. Our results imply that the authorities should use expansionary monetary stance through money supply channel to boost the industrial sector

Primary repair of an esophageal rupture using pleural flap

Esophageal perforation remains an important thoracic emergency. Aggressive operative therapy remains the mainstay for treatment. A case of esophageal perforation, consequent upon impacted food bolus, is presented. An 80 years old female, with multiple comorbidities, presented with dysphagia and right sided chest pain, who had a distal esophageal tear, secondary to accidental meat ball ingestion. Rigid esophagoscopy showed complete occlusion of the distal esophagus with a meat ball. Right thoracotomy was performed, which showed perforated esophagus with large meat ball protruding from it. Endoscopic removal of the food particles was done, and the rupture was repaired using a pleural flap. The entire postoperative stay was uneventful and the patient was discharged on the ninth post-operative day

3D-TexSeg: Unsupervised Segmentation of 3D Texture using Mutual Transformer Learning

Analysis of the 3D Texture is indispensable for various tasks, such as retrieval, segmentation, classification, and inspection of sculptures, knitted fabrics, and biological tissues. A 3D texture is a locally repeated surface variation independent of the surface's overall shape and can be determined using the local neighborhood and its characteristics. Existing techniques typically employ computer vision techniques that analyze a 3D mesh globally, derive features, and then utilize the obtained features for retrieval or classification. Several traditional and learning-based methods exist in the literature, however, only a few are on 3D texture, and nothing yet, to the best of our knowledge, on the unsupervised schemes. This paper presents an original framework for the unsupervised segmentation of the 3D texture on the mesh manifold. We approach this problem as binary surface segmentation, partitioning the mesh surface into textured and non-textured regions without prior annotation. We devise a mutual transformer-based system comprising a label generator and a cleaner. The two models take geometric image representations of the surface mesh facets and label them as texture or non-texture across an iterative mutual learning scheme. Extensive experiments on three publicly available datasets with diverse texture patterns demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms standard and SOTA unsupervised techniques and competes reasonably with supervised methods.Comment: This paper is accepted in 3DV-202