Private Accreditation as a Substitute for Direct Government Regulation in Public Health Insurance Programs: When Is It Appropriate?

The appropriateness of the use of private accreditation in regulating and defining the quality of health care providers under government health insurance programs is examined. The characteristics of health care institutions and the patients they serve are important considerations

Students' epistemological framing in quantum mechanics problem solving

Students' difficulties in quantum mechanics may be the result of unproductive framing and not a fundamental inability to solve the problems or misconceptions about physics content. We observed groups of students solving quantum mechanics problems in an upper-division physics course. Using the lens of epistemological framing, we investigated four frames in our observational data: algorithmic math, conceptual math, algorithmic physics, and conceptual physics. We discuss the characteristics of each frame as well as causes for transitions between different frames, arguing that productive problem solving may occur in any frame as long as students' transition appropriately between frames. Our work extends epistemological framing theory on how students frame discussions in upper-division physics courses.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review -- Physics Education Researc

An annotated bibliography of materials suitable for use in teaching French in the elementary school

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Involved, Inputting or Informing?: ‘Shared’ Decision Making in Adult Mental Healthcare

Background A diagnosis of serious mental illness can impact on the whole family. Families informally provide significant amounts of care but are disproportionately at risk of carer burden when compared to those supporting people with other long-term conditions. Shared decision making (SDM) is an ethical model of health communication associated with positive health outcomes, however there has been little research to evaluate how routinely family are invited to participate in SDM, or what this looks like in practice. Objective This UK study aimed to better understand how the family caregivers of those diagnosed with SMI are currently involved in decision making, particularly decisions about treatment options including prescribed medication. Objectives were to:- • Explore the extent to which family members wish to be involved in decisions about prescribed medication • Determine how and when professionals engage family in these decisions • Identify barriers and facilitators associated with the engagement of family in decisions about treatment. Participants Open-ended questions were sent to professionals and family members to elicit written responses. Qualitative responses were analysed thematically. Results Themes included the definition of involvement and ‘rules of engagement’. Staff members are gatekeepers for family involvement and the process is not democratic. Family and staff ascribe practical, rather than recovery-oriented roles to family, with preoccupation around notions of adherence. Conclusions Staff members need support, training and education to apply SDM. Time to exchange information is vital but practically difficult. Negotiated teams, comprising of staff, service users, family, peers as applicable, with ascribed roles and responsibilities could support SDM

Quantum operations that cannot be implemented using a small mixed environment

To implement any quantum operation (a.k.a. ``superoperator'' or ``CP map'') on a d-dimensional quantum system, it is enough to apply a suitable overall unitary transformation to the system and a d^2-dimensional environment which is initialized in a fixed pure state. It has been suggested that a d-dimensional environment might be enough if we could initialize the environment in a mixed state of our choosing. In this note we show with elementary means that certain explicit quantum operations cannot be realized in this way. Our counterexamples map some pure states to pure states, giving strong and easily manageable conditions on the overall unitary transformation. Everything works in the more general setting of quantum operations from d-dimensional to d'-dimensional spaces, so we place our counterexamples within this more general framework.Comment: LATEX, 8 page

An item analysis of Nason phonics test in grades one and two

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit