Be Seen and Heard Being Clean: A Patient-Centered Approach to Hand Hygiene at Concord Hospital

Background: Regular hand washing is recognized as the most effective means to combat the spread of infectious illness; however hand washing behavior amongst health care workers (HCW’s) is inconsistent. Furthermore, measurement of hand washing behavior is subject to bias. Aim: This quality improvement project aimed to remove the Hawthorne effect and improve the behavior of HH at Concord Hospital. Methods: A quasi-experimental, pre-posttest design was used to evaluate HH rates on a 32 bed med-surge unit at Concord Hospital. Baseline data was collected for 30 days by asking patients if they had seen or heard staff cleaning their hands. Using Lewin’s change theory and the hospitals quality improvement model, data were presented to staff, motivating them to seek out new ways to improve HH on the unit. “Be SEEN and HEARD Being Clean,” was implemented, followed by post intervention data collection. Results: Sixty-five percent of patients reported seeing or hearing staff perform HH before the intervention, and 93% reported observations of HH after the intervention (p \u3c.001). Staff reported being more aware of personal HH behavior after the intervention. Conclusion and Implications for the CNL: To our knowledge, this is the first study to modify the behavior of HCW HH in an inpatient setting through incorporating a verbal message. Incorporating an auditory cue may lead to a memory formation and increased ability to recall events at a later date. This multimodal approach to HH; 1) engages the patient, while removing the burden placed on them to question HCW’s behavior, and 2) increases staff awareness of personal HH behavio

Jessica Pinkham, Horn

Adagio and Allegro op. 70 / Robert Schumann; Berceuse / Jean Michel Damase; Lament / Timothy Martin; Sonata for Horn in F and Piano / Paul Hindemith; West Side Story Suite for Brass Quintet / Leonard Bernstein; arr. Jack Gal

Funding Maine’s Mortgage Market (Or, Who Sets Mortgage Rates, Anyway?)

Some have argued that the state of Maine sits in a far away corner of the nation’s transportation system, and others feel that map makers have slighted our state in terms of its northern and eastern boundaries to accommodate large, flat maps of the country. Maine’s mortgage market may well be the opposite situation as both rates and a bank’s funding sources are not uniquely positioned as transportation or cartography may be. Rather, the mortgage business is part of a complex web of international markets that, for all practical purposes, has taken rate-setting away from Maine lenders and provided Maine consumers with choice rate

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in English Language Arts with a Focus on How to Make American Literature Culturally Sustaining and Relevant to Students of Color

This project analyzes the literature that is usually chosen in an English III classroom, which focuses on American literature, and specifically how these choices affect a classroom in a rural area. The literature that is chosen tends to lean towards authors that are white, middle-aged, and middle-class. This lens that teachers are using is limited to students with those experiences and those that can relate to being white, middle-aged, or middle-class. Rural areas often do not relate to this lens, and thus cannot relate to the literature that is provided in their English classrooms. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, which is a new theory in classroom management, encourages teachers to engage student’s backgrounds and cultures that they bring into the classroom. When using it to look specifically at English, this means that teachers must move past the white, middle-aged, middle-class lens they’ve been picking literature with and rather push to provide literature that relates to their students, especially when their students are students of color and/or are from a lower economic class. Using the theory of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, this project looks at how providing literature with a lens that differs from the students that are reading it could be limiting to the student’s abilities to engage with the class and maintain literacy in the long run. This project then offers different authors that could replace the literature that has been currently chosen, and how to approach the more culturally appropriate literature in the classroom

An Investigation into the Perceptions of International and Out-of-state Students on the University of Maine Campus

The present study was designed to investigate in-state students’ perceptions of two out-groups on the University of Maine campus: out-of-state students and international students and the experiences of international students. Two separate surveys were administered online over two semesters: the first’s goal was to evaluate perceptions host students might have of their peers and if these peers were perceived to be from distinct out-groups, while the second survey was an exploratory survey allowing international students to describe their experiences while studying at UMaine. Two hundred and fifty seven in-state students responded to the first survey. Results from this survey showed in-state students rated individuals from another state or country as members of distinct out-groups with different beliefs and worldviews than both each other and individuals from Maine. Participants also indicated they would experience anxiety, uncertainty, and other negative emotions if interacting with either out-group. Seventeen international students participated in a second, exploratory study. These student responses contained several common themes: a lack of transportation off campus, a desire to see more of the host culture, desire to befriend students from the United States, and positive encounters with host students. The results of the study may be connected: host students (those from Maine) may be hesitant to befriend international and out-of-state students because they perceive them as being different. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that the interactions between these out-groups on the University of Maine campus warrants further study

Conceptualizing Nature: New England Nature Writers

This thesis examines five New England nature writers and their works from three distinct historical literary periods―William Cullen Bryant’s poetry from the era before industrialism (up to 1830); Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays (1841-1844) and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854) from the Industrial Revolution (1830-1860); and finally Robert Frost’s poetry and Henry Beston’s The Outermost House (1929) from the modernist period (1920-1950). These writers are connected by a shared and intense love of nature; however, because they write during different moments in history, their approaches to and definitions of “nature” vary. This thesis engages with these writers and their times in light of the historical development of industrialism and how it has worked to undermine the importance of connecting with the natural world. Over the course of three chapters, this thesis traces the development of environmental thought among New England writers and takes account of how industrialism changes predominant attitudes about nature. Since each of these writers rejects certain cultural attitudes that prevail in their time, this thesis grapples with how and why they depart from the norm in terms of their thoughts about the natural world. In pre-industrial New England, Bryant is free to adopt a strong Romantic conception of nature—one that is largely absent of concerns about protecting or conserving the environment. His advocacy for a deep spiritual connection with nature clashes with the prevailing capitalist view of nature that would help industrialism to develop in New England. However, once the Industrial Revolution sweeps across New England, Emerson and Thoreau issue warnings about the dangers of industrialism severing humanity from the natural world. They rail against the institutions and customs of their times, arguing that those will contribute to a society-wide spiritual rot. By the twentieth century, Beston and Frost have to grapple with being lovers of nature in a world that is irreversibly industrialized. Frost is pessimistic about humanity’s ever-decreasing connection with the natural world, while Beston remains hopeful that we can engage meaningfully and spiritually with the environment even in modern times. These somewhat divergent views highlight the tensions of environmental thought in the modern, industrial world between the desire to live in harmony with the natural world and the bleak realities of modernity. Industrialism and its effects of alienating large swaths of our culture from engagement with the natural world have forced these authors to focus on how to protect New England environments and landscapes. This history of this grand conversation about nature delivers us into the present moment in which we must find a way to cope with global environmental crisis. Learning about the history of environmental thought and writing in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century New England helps us to better understand contemporary environmental concerns and gives us the chance to move forward in the best manner possible