Improving Discharge Outcomes: Telephone Follow Up for Heart Failure Patients

Congestive heart failure is one of the leading causes of hospitalization and readmission in the United States. The readmission rate at an acute care hospital in San Diego is 22%, and readmissions occur within an average of 6 days after discharge. The purpose of this pilot project is to improve discharge outcomes among heart failure patients using telephone follow up. The two objectives of this project are to reduce heart failure readmission rates over 3 months and improve patient knowledge to prevent decompensation, as rated by the Self Care of Heart Failure Index. Follow up calls were completed by the Doctor of Nursing Practice student or heart failure registered nurse at 72 hours and 30 days after discharge. The readmission rate for the project cohort was 12%, which is 10% less than the organizations average readmission rate. Of the participating patients, there was a 20% increase in Self Care of Heart Failure Index scores from pre to post intervention. There are potential positive impacts when implementing a telephone follow up program for heart failure patients. Telephone follow up is an evidence-based strategy for reducing readmissions, but there are many barriers to the successful implementation of a phone follow up program. It will be important to look at a larger sample size over a longer period to determine if there are significant benefits

Collegiate Flight Training Programs: In Search of Cognitive Growth

Collegiate professional pilot training programs are designed to prepare the graduate for a variety of employment opportunities within the air transportation industry. An advantage of the collegiate format is the potential to foster intellectual and ethical growth as well as professional pilot skills. Advances in flight training technology and proven methods of flight instruction serve to effectively train a diverse student pilot population who attend university flight programs and civilian flight academies. Flight training programs traditionally focus on repetitive learning structures and psychomotor skill mastery. Despite the cognitive growth structures in place on a college campus, flight students may experience significant difficulty with the transition from simplistic general aviation training to more relativistic upper division work. In some cases, this stressful transition may be a byproduct of flight training schemes that unintentionally hinder cognitive development. Kolb\u27s learning style model is one of many cognitive schemes that may provide insight to instructional initiatives to facilitate the cognitive growth of student pilots and enable graduate pilots to think in a more holistic manner

Collegiate Aviation in China: Opportunities and Challenges

The rapid growth of the aviation industry in China over the last ten years has led to a dramatic shortfall in supporting personnel and infrastructure. By 2010, the need for commercial pilots, in particular, is predicted to far outstrip current levels of production. Chinese officials have focused on collegiate aviation programs as a primary source of new pilots for their evolving aviation industry, but those institutions are already hard pressed to meet the demand. This paper examines the current structure of collegiate aviation in China as well as challenges for production growth that include the absence of a general aviation culture, insufficient national aviation infrastructure, and endemic airspace constraints

How Educator Attitudes, Knowledge, and Practice Impact the Academic Achievement of Students Who Have Epilepsy: A Phenomenological Investigation of Canadian Secondary School Teachers

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover how teacher attitude, knowledge, and practice with epilepsy impact the academic achievement of students who have epilepsy. This study assumed that middle school teachers perceive students diagnosed with epilepsy as lower academic achievers when compared to students who do not have epilepsy. The stigma associated with labels, such as epileptic, can negatively impact the academic performance of children with this disorder. For this study, stigma was generally defined as the negative perceptions about epilepsy held by middle school teachers. The participants included six middle school teachers from the Anglophone West School District in New Brunswick, Canada. The data collection techniques for the study were (a) interviews, (b) surveys, and (c) a focus group. The phenomenological analysis based on Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen\u27s method was used to analyze the data. The study results revealed that middle school teachers who teach in the Anglophone West School District need training in how to properly teach and care for students who have epilepsy

Stress and Coping as a Function of Experience Level in Collegiate Flight Students

Aviation as an industry requires a high degree of precision at all times. Large amounts of stress have been known to decrease performance to undesirable levels. While stress reactions and the coping skills used after encountering stressful situations differ from person to person, generalities can be made by comparing differences between groups. A large number of pilot applicants receive initial training within a university flight program each year. In order to better understand the perceived stress level and the coping skills used by these students, the current research project administered a perceived stress test and a coping skills inventory to two groups of collegiate pilots: a first-year group (n = 50) and a junior/senior group (n = 32). Differences were found between the stress levels and coping skills used by this sample population. High risk industries such as aviation require consistently high levels of performance from employees, regardless of environmental pressures. This is especially the case in flight training, where flight students must adapt to the risks and hazards of the flight environment while learning a new, complex skill set. This can easily leave aviation students feeling overwhelmed. While individual differences play a large role in determining how students respond when placed in stressful situations, generalities can be made using larger groups of students. The current research study measured perceived stress levels and coping skills utilized by two groups of collegiate aviation students drawn from a large Midwestern university

Training Levels and Methodologies for Glass Cockpit Training in Collegiate Aviation

Modern commercial aircraft use extremely complex and sophisticated flight instrumentation systems that present training concerns for the aviation industry and collegiate aviation programs. The authors sampled 42 four-year collegiate flight-training programs to determine their current program emphasis on glass cockpit training and plans for curriculum enhancements in that area. Although nearly fifty percent of sampled program administrators believe instruction in flight automation is critical to the success of their graduates, most cite cost of materials and competing curriculum priorities as reasons to defer such instruction to future employers. The authors suggest that program enhancements are within the reach of modern college aviation programs and offer suggestions for three different levels of glass cockpit training

Embracing complexity: Co-creation with retired immigrant women

This paper discusses a co-creation project carried out between a post-secondary, immigrant-serving agency and retired immigrant women. We posit that, by engaging with immigrant women in co-creation, we not only deepen our understanding of the challenges they face in retirement, but also generate valuable insights into the process of participatory design and collaboration; namely, the importance of recognizing complexity as a productive, rather than challenging, aspect of knowledge co-creation and collaboration. We show that, by intentionally embedding methods which address issues related to reflexivity, power and difference into the co-creative process, the challenges posed by complexity can by mitigated, leading to positive outcomes for all partners. KEYWORDS Co-creation, participatory research, immigrant women, seniors, post-secondary community partnerships, collaboratio