Framework for empowering student nurses for social justice praxis

INTRODUCTION Social justice is considered the root of nursing responsibilities due to historical and enduring practices of promoting health and redressing social barriers that impact on health. This statement is supported in the literature and philosophies of national and international nursing organisations. However, in the United Kingdom, scholarly interest and nursing organisational position is ambiguous on social justice. AIM AND OBJECTIVES My research aim was to explore ideas for empowering student nurses to engage in actions that promotes social justice practices. The objectives included understanding the meaning of social justice, recognising the impact of social injustice on health, ascertaining the visibility of social justice learning in nurse education, and developing ideas for incorporating social justice practices in nurse education. METHODS Research methods were situated in critical interpretivism and constructivism grounded theory qualitative research design. Data was collected from semi-structured interviews with eleven student nurses and focus groups with eleven nurse educators, in a City of London nurse education institution. Data was analysed using Charmaz’s grounded theory initial, focused, and theoretical coding levels. FINDINGS Firstly, social justice was understood as conditions that fosters health experience. Secondly, social injustice was recognised as conditions that hinders health experience. Thirdly, social justice learning was found to be equivocal in nurse education. Lastly, it was discovered that frameworks can be used to incorporate social justice learning into nurse education. DISCUSSION I have created a framework on Awareness for Social Justice Action for the purpose of developing the critical student nurse for social justice awareness and action. This is my unique contribution to knowledge that reconcile educational theories with aspirations of research participants in the context of nurse education. CONCLUSION Doing the Professional Doctor of Education programme provided opportunities for shaping my research ideas. Systematic processing of these ideas was demonstrated throughout my research and contributed to my framework on promoting social justice nurse education to address persisting health inequities

Let us be unequivocal about social justice in nursing.

A search for the phrase social justice on the website of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) will produce 406 results, however none of these results refer to the phrase. I did this search to collect information about references in the NMC documents that portrays the organisation's interest and position on social justice issues in nursing. A start with search for references to social justice in the NMC documents is justified by its statutory responsibilities and legal purposes to the public. One way that the NMC demonstrates this responsibility is by setting standards that schools or universities of nursing should adhere to in framing their curriculum. The failure of the NMC to make a clear reference to social justice challenges its stance on promoting public or social responsibilities of nurses. This contrast the significance that has been attached to social justice by other reputable national and international nursing organisations, such as, the Canadian Nurses Association, American Nurses Association and International Council of Nurses. The recognition of social justice as nursing responsibility by these organisations are evident in the forms of explicit references in documents and creation of specific documents on the topic. The failure of the NMC to make specific reference to and adopt definitive pronouncement on social justice contributes to the elusiveness of the topic in nursing scholarship in the United Kingdom

Using a Combination of Measurement Tools to Extract Metrics from Open Source Projects

Software measurement can play a major role in ensuring the quality and reliability of software products. The measurement activities require appropriate tools to collect relevant metric data. Currently, there are several such tools available for software measurement. The main objective of this paper is to provide some guidelines in using a combination of multiple measurement tools especially for products built using object-oriented techniques and languages. In this paper, we highlight three tools for collecting metric data, in our case from several Java-based open source projects. Our research is currently based on the work of Card and Glass, who argue that design complexity measures (data complexity and structural complexity) are indicators/predictors of procedural/cyclomatic complexity (decision counts) and errors (discovered from system tests). Their work was centered on structured design and our work is with object-oriented designs and the metrics we use parallel those of Card and Glass, being, Henry and Kafura's Information Flow Metrics, McCabe's Cyclomatic Complexity, and Chidamber and Kemerer Object-oriented Metrics

Structural and electronic properties of Si/Ge nanoparticles

Results of a theoretical study of the electronic properties of (Si)Ge and (Ge)Si core/shell nanoparticles, homogeneous SiGe clusters, and Ge$|$Si clusters with an interphase separating the Si and Ge atoms are presented. In general, (Si)Ge particles are more stable than (Ge)Si ones, and SiGe systems are more stable than Ge$|$Si ones. It is found that the frontier orbitals, that dictate the optical properties, are localized to the surface, meaning that saturating dangling bonds on the surface with ligands may influence the optical properties significantly. In the central parts we identify a weak tendency for the Si atoms to accept electrons, whereas Ge atoms donate electrons.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev.

Social justice in nursing education: A review of the literature

Background Social justice is a cornerstone of nursing because nurses have responsibilities for providing equal and fair care for people from all background. Social justice as nursing imperative is clearly recognised by some professional nursing organisations, but not so by others. Aim and objectives The aim of this review was to establish the current state of the literature on social justice and nursing education. The objectives included to understand the meaning of social justice for the nursing profession, assess the visibility of social justice learning in nursing education, and explore frameworks for integrating social justice learning in nursing education. Methods The SPICE framework was applied to identify the phrases social justice and nursing education. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to search the EBSCOhost database, set email alerts on three databases, and search the grey literature. Eighteen literatures were identified for evaluation of predetermined themes on meaning of social justice, visibility of social justice learning, and frameworks for social justice nursing education. Findings Firstly, the meaning of social justice relates to general theories rather than practical issues in nursing. Secondly, social justice is embraced as an imperative in nursing profession. Lastly, critical pedagogies can support social justice learning in nursing education. Discussion There is consensus on need for social justice issues to be incorporated in nursing education. This would create paths for nurses to engage in actions that change health inequalities. Conclusion Nursing organisations embrace social justice as nursing imperative in different ways. It is important to explore how this imperative is upheld by nursing professional organisations and education institutions

A comparative study of density functional and density functional tight binding calculations of defects in graphene

The density functional tight binding approach (DFTB) is well adapted for the study of point and line defects in graphene based systems. After briefly reviewing the use of DFTB in this area, we present a comparative study of defect structures, energies and dynamics between DFTB results obtained using the dftb+ code, and density functional results using the localised Gaussian orbital code, AIMPRO. DFTB accurately reproduces structures and energies for a range of point defect structures such as vacancies and Stone-Wales defects in graphene, as well as various unfunctionalised and hydroxylated graphene sheet edges. Migration barriers for the vacancy and Stone-Wales defect formation barriers are accurately reproduced using a nudged elastic band approach. Finally we explore the potential for dynamic defect simulations using DFTB, taking as an example electron irradiation damage in graphene

Graphene edge structures: Folding, scrolling, tubing, rippling and twisting

Conventional three-dimensional crystal lattices are terminated by surfaces, which can demonstrate complex rebonding and rehybridisation, localised strain and dislocation formation. Two dimensional crystal lattices, of which graphene is the archetype, are terminated by lines. The additional available dimension at such interfaces opens up a range of new topological interface possibilities. We show that graphene sheet edges can adopt a range of topological distortions depending on their nature. Rehybridisation, local bond reordering, chemical functionalisation with bulky, charged, or multi-functional groups can lead to edge buckling to relieve strain, folding, rolling and even tube formation. We discuss the topological possibilities at a 2D graphene edge, and under what circumstances we expect different edge topologies to occur. Density functional calculations are used to explore in more depth different graphene edge types.Comment: Additional figure in published versio

Differential susceptible and staged progression model for HIV

In this paper we first review the mathematical formulation of the original differential infectivity DI and staged-progression SP models, then we formulate a HIV new model with differential susceptibility and staged-progression DSSP to account for variations in viral loads and in the rate of disease progression in infected individuals. Then we derive an explicit formula for the reproductive number of infection for this model, then we provide numerical example for it

Ionization of oriented targets by intense circularly polarized laser pulses: Imprints of orbital angular nodes in the 2D momentum distribution

We solve the three-dimensional time-dependent Schr\"{o}dinger equation for a few-cycle circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulse interacting with an oriented target exemplified by an Argon atom, initially in a $3\text{p}_{x}$ or $3\text{p}_{y}$ state. The photoelectron momentum distributions show distinct signatures of the orbital structure of the initial state as well as the carrier-envelope phase of the applied pulse. Our \textit{ab initio} results are compared with results obtained using the length-gauge strong-field approximation, which allows for a clear interpretation of the results in terms of classical physics. Furthermore, we show that ionization by a circularly polarized pulse completely maps out the angular nodal structure of the initial state, thus providing a potential tool for studying orbital symmetry in individual systems or during chemical reactions