A new paradigm for the online management of global placements using OPUS

There is a growing awareness that graduates for a global economy need to have a greater emphasis on work-integrated learning (WIL) in out-of-country locations. Such experiences develop the student in many aspects beyond their study specialism. Many leading Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have developed strong international relationships with employers over a long period, but realise that new relationships must be developed continually. Many other HEIs need to develop similar relationships, but need time and resources to achieve similar success. However, it is recognised that every HEI has well-developed relationships with many employers in their immediate hinterland, many of which are global operators. Further, from year to year each HEI may have an imbalance of WIL opportunities and students seeking a WIL experience.This paper presents a new paradigm for an agreed online sharing of WIL opportunities among participating HEIs so that their students may apply for and gain a placement overseas. The participating HEIs support the incoming student and undertake identified responsibilities on behalf of the sending HEI. This proposal is a new feature of the open source product, OPUS (Online Placement University System), which has been developed at the University of Ulster to manage all aspects of WIL placements online. The paper presents the concept for placement exchange managed online and early implementation by participating universities from three countries around the world. This new paradigm for the online management of global placements is shown to present students and providers with a global marketplace

Caring in residential aged-care. Qualitative findings from an e-cohort sub-study

Aim. The aim of this e-cohort sub-study was to explore and describe nurses' understandings of 'caring' in residential aged-care. Background. The quality of the work environment is an important issue for recruitment, retention and workforce planning. Knowledge about the people in and the place that is the residential aged-care facility may assist with the problems surrounding the recruitment and retention of nurses in the workforce. Design. Qualitative electronic cohort sub-study. Methods. This paper presents the qualitative research findings from an electronic cohort sub-study of 58 registered and enrolled nurses working in the residential aged-care sector in 2007. Data were collected through an open ended question and a qualitative content analysis was used to generate the core categories. Results. The concept of caring was grounded in and constrained by, the everyday reality of the nurses in the study. Organisational imperatives for the completion of documentation necessary for accreditation and funding combined with under-staffing restricted the time available for caring practices. Some nurses represented residential care faculties as devoid of care, others as a place where the resident was central to their work and care. The staff perceived of themselves as an ageing workforce in need of rejuvenation and resourcing. Conclusion. The concept of caring is manifest in nurses' language as they describe their workplace, the residents, themselves and the structures that impact on what they do. Good caring manifests itself when the residents are central to the business of the aged care facility. However, nurses in this study describe a range of restrictive factors impeding caring practices and diminishing workforce morale and motivation to create environments that can truly be called a 'home-away-from-home' and one that all people would find acceptable. Relevance to clinical practice. These findings have implications for aged-care sector recruitment, retention and workforce planning within residential aged-care facilities. © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Cohort profile: The nurses and midwives e-cohort study: A novel electronic longitudinal study

Nurses and midwives comprise the largest professional group in most national health systems, so shortfalls in numbers can have a substantial impact on health care delivery. A scarcity of human resources in health has been internationally recognized and has led the International Council of Nurses to launch the Global Workforce Project in 2004, and the World Health Organization to announce the Health Workforce Decade 2006–15 in 2006.1,2 Efforts to address workforce needs through coherent workforce planning and policy setting are hampered by the complexity of predicting the supply of and demand for nurses and midwives, and the challenges associated with understanding drivers of workforce retention.3 Available workforce descriptors among regulatory authorities vary considerably; and collections are mostly cross-sectional, frequently incomplete and typically limited to administrative databases. In Australia and New Zealand, workforce issues include the migration of staff between states and countries, and critical personnel shortages in rural and remote communities; although data limitations preclude clear delineation.3,4 One response to the problem of insufficient available information on which to base workforce planning, the Nurses and Midwives e-cohort study, was conceived by its director and developed by a team of researchers at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. In the first instance the study focused on an investigation of the Queensland workforce. Pilot data and other findings,5–7 suggested a desirable initial aim was to conduct a longitudinal examination of recruitment and retention in the Queensland nursing and midwifery workforce to better understand time-related patterns affecting retention and loss. Encouraged by the planned move of professional registrations to an on-line format, we attempted to maximize efficiency by adapting traditional longitudinal research methods to a novel electronic cohort (e-cohort) design. We envisioned that participants would primarily engage with and respond to the study using email and the Internet; a strategy which has not yet entered mainstream epidemiology.8 From the project's inception, professional associations and industry partners committed funds and other support and helped establish credibility and relevance to stakeholders and potential participants. As the Queensland component was being developed, the value of expanding the cohort to increase sample size and to cover a variety of settings was apparent so academic colleagues elsewhere in Australia and in New Zealand were invited to join the research team. All nursing and midwifery councils in Australia and the Nursing Council of New Zealand were then approached to seek their collaboration to enable this expansion

The future nursing workforce in Australia : baseline data for a prospective study of the profile, attrition rates and graduate outcomes in a contemporary cohort of undergraduates.

To gather data from ten universities across two Australia states in order to: provide a descriptive demographic profile of undergraduate Australian nursing students; provide baseline data for a prospective analysis of attrition within undergraduate nursing programs; and to facilitate student recruitment into a prospective cohort study to examine graduate outcomes

Parasitic nematodes of the genus Syphacia Seurat, 1916 infecting Muridae in the British Isles, and the peculiar case of Syphacia frederici

Syphacia stroma (von Linstow, 1884) Morgan, 1932 and Syphacia frederici Roman, 1945 are oxyurid nematodes that parasitize two murid rodents, Apodemus sylvaticus and Apodemus flavicollis, on the European mainland. Only S. stroma has been recorded previously in Apodemus spp. from the British Isles. Despite the paucity of earlier reports, we identified S. frederici in four disparate British sites, two in Nottinghamshire, one each in Berkshire and Anglesey, Wales. Identification was based on their site in the host (caecum and not small intestine), on key morphological criteria that differentiate this species from S. stroma (in particular the tail of female worms) and by sequencing two genetic loci (cytochrome C oxidase 1 gene and a section of ribosomal DNA). Sequences derived from both genetic loci of putative British S. frederici isolates formed a tight clade with sequences from continental worms known to be S. frederici, clearly distinguishing these isolates from S. stroma which formed a tight clade of its own, distinct from clades representative of Syphacia obvelata from Mus and S. muris from Rattus. The data in this paper therefore constitute the first record of S. frederici from British wood mice, and confirm the status of this species as distinct from both S. obvelata and S. stroma. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017