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Characteristics of successful interventions to reduce turnover and increase retention of early career nurses: a systematic review
Background
nurse shortages have been identified as central to workforce issues in healthcare systems globally and although interventions to increase the nursing workforce have been implemented, nurses leaving their roles, particularly in the first year after qualification, present a significant barrier to building the nurse workforce.
Objective
to evaluate the characteristics of successful interventions to promote retention and reduce turnover of early career nurses.
Design
this is a systematic review
Data sources
Online databases including Academic Search Complete, Medline, Health Policy reference Centre, EMBASE, Psychinfo, CINAHL and the Cochran Library were searched to identify relevant publications in English published between 2001 and April 2018. Studies included evaluated an intervention to increase retention or reduce turnover and used turnover or retention figures as a measure.
Review methods
The review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Studies were quality-assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal tools for Quasi Experimental and Randomised Controlled Trials. Retention/turnover data were used to guide the comparison between studies and appropriate measures of central tendency and dispersion were calculated and presented, based on the normality of the data.
Results
A total of 11, 656 papers were identified, of which 53 were eligible studies. A wide variety of interventions and components within those interventions were identified to improve nurse retention. Promising interventions appear to be either internship/residency programmes or orientation/transition to practice programmes, lasting between 27-52 weeks, with a teaching and preceptor and mentor component.
Conclusions
Methodological issues impacted on the extent to which conclusions could be drawn, even though a large number of studies were identified. Future research should focus on standardising the reporting of interventions and outcome measures used to evaluate these interventions and carrying out further research with rigorous methodology. Clinical practice areas are recommended to assess their current interventions against the identified criteria to guide development of their effectiveness. Evaluations of cost-effectiveness are considered an important next step to maximise return on investment
Electron Redistribution of Aromatic Ligands in (Arene)Cr(CO)\u3csub\u3e3\u3c/sub\u3e Complexes. Structural (Bond-Length) Changes as Quantitative Measures
Arene ligands experience significant ring expansion upon coordination with chromium tricarbonyl, as established by precise X-ray crystallographic analyses of various (η6-arene)Cr(CO)3 complexes. Such changes in ligand structures result from the charge (electron) redistribution, Ar+−Cr-, upon arene coordination, since they are closely related to those found in the intermolecular 1:1 complexes of the corresponding series of arenes with nitrosonium cation (NO+). The latter are prototypical examples of charge-transfer complexes as described by Mulliken. As such, they show enhanced degrees of charge (electron) transfer that approach unity, which is confirmed by quantitative comparison with the structural changes measured in the one-electron (oxidative) transformation of electron-rich arene donors (Ar) to the cation-radicals (Ar•+). Such a charge redistribution thus readily accounts for the enhanced reactivity to nucleophilic attack of the arene ligand in various ArCr(CO)3 complexes and related transition-metal/arene analogues
On the arithmetic of crossratios and generalised Mertens' formulas
We develop the relation between hyperbolic geometry and arithmetic
equidistribution problems that arises from the action of arithmetic groups on
real hyperbolic spaces, especially in dimension up to 5. We prove
generalisations of Mertens' formula for quadratic imaginary number fields and
definite quaternion algebras over the rational numbers, counting results of
quadratic irrationals with respect to two different natural complexities, and
counting results of representations of (algebraic) integers by binary
quadratic, Hermitian and Hamiltonian forms with error bounds. For each such
statement, we prove an equidistribution result of the corresponding
arithmetically defined points. Furthermore, we study the asymptotic properties
of crossratios of such points, and expand Pollicott's recent results on the
Schottky-Klein prime functions.Comment: 44 page
Protocols and quantum circuits for implementing entanglement concentration in cat state, GHZ-like state and 9 families of 4-qubit entangled states
Three entanglement concentration protocols (ECPs) are proposed. The first ECP
and a modified version of that are shown to be useful for the creation of
maximally entangled cat and GHZ-like states from their non-maximally entangled
counterparts. The last two ECPs are designed for the creation of maximally
entangled -qubit state
from the partially entangled -qubit normalized state
, where
and . It is
also shown that W, GHZ, GHZ-like, Bell and cat states and specific states from
the 9 SLOCC-nonequivalent families of 4-qubit entangled states can be expressed
as
and consequently the last two ECPs proposed here are applicable to all these
states. Quantum circuits for implementation of the proposed ECPs are provided
and it is shown that the proposed ECPs can be realized using linear optics.
Efficiency of the ECPs are studied using a recently introduced quantitative
measure (Phys. Rev. A , 012307 (2012)). Limitations of the measure
are also reported.Comment: 11 pages 7 figure
Fractal Spectrum of a Quasi_periodically Driven Spin System
We numerically perform a spectral analysis of a quasi-periodically driven
spin 1/2 system, the spectrum of which is Singular Continuous. We compute
fractal dimensions of spectral measures and discuss their connections with the
time behaviour of various dynamical quantities, such as the moments of the
distribution of the wave packet. Our data suggest a close similarity between
the information dimension of the spectrum and the exponent ruling the algebraic
growth of the 'entropic width' of wavepackets.Comment: 17 pages, RevTex, 5 figs. available on request from
[email protected]
Cycle Equivalence of Graph Dynamical Systems
Graph dynamical systems (GDSs) can be used to describe a wide range of
distributed, nonlinear phenomena. In this paper we characterize cycle
equivalence of a class of finite GDSs called sequential dynamical systems SDSs.
In general, two finite GDSs are cycle equivalent if their periodic orbits are
isomorphic as directed graphs. Sequential dynamical systems may be thought of
as generalized cellular automata, and use an update order to construct the
dynamical system map.
The main result of this paper is a characterization of cycle equivalence in
terms of shifts and reflections of the SDS update order. We construct two
graphs C(Y) and D(Y) whose components describe update orders that give rise to
cycle equivalent SDSs. The number of components in C(Y) and D(Y) is an upper
bound for the number of cycle equivalence classes one can obtain, and we
enumerate these quantities through a recursion relation for several graph
classes. The components of these graphs encode dynamical neutrality, the
component sizes represent periodic orbit structural stability, and the number
of components can be viewed as a system complexity measure
Measuring Coverage of Prolog Programs Using Mutation Testing
Testing is an important aspect in professional software development, both to
avoid and identify bugs as well as to increase maintainability. However,
increasing the number of tests beyond a reasonable amount hinders development
progress. To decide on the completeness of a test suite, many approaches to
assert test coverage have been suggested. Yet, frameworks for logic programs
remain scarce.
In this paper, we introduce a framework for Prolog programs measuring test
coverage using mutations. We elaborate the main ideas of mutation testing and
transfer them to logic programs. To do so, we discuss the usefulness of
different mutations in the context of Prolog and empirically evaluate them in a
new mutation testing framework on different examples.Comment: 16 pages, Accepted for presentation in WFLP 201
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