Anxiety: An Epidemic Through the Lens of Social Media

Anxiety: An Epidemic was originally inspired by the mental health crisis in my hometown, Palo Alto, California, and evolved to specifically focus on social media-related anxiety. I examined the question: How has social media evolved over the last decade and what effect does the proliferation of social media have on the young adult population? I hypothesized that social media would have a predominately negative effect, especially on young women, and set out to create a theatrical piece inspired by my research. In my meta-analysis of studies conducted, I found that more data needs to be collected on the relatively new phenomena surrounding social media usage both as positive and negative forces. The research I conducted inspired two new artistic works: a physical theatre piece entitled MASKS: An Ode to Young Women, and a children’s story entitled “The King Who Lost His Smile” (both artistic works can be found in full in appendix A). I discovered that while more research needs to be conducted to definitively find if social media usage has a predominantly positive or negative effect, the artistic works I created can serve as a forum to start important conversations between young adults and their communities at large about their experiences with anxiety, stress, and depressive symptoms

Measuring the Consequences of Rules: Holly M. Smith

Recently two distinct forms of rule-utilitarianism have been introduced that differ on how to measure the consequences of rules. Brad Hooker advocates fixed-rate rule-utilitarianism, while Michael Ridge advocates variable-rate rule-utilitarianism. I argue that both of these are inferior to a new proposal, optimum-rate rule-utilitarianism. According to optimum-rate rule-utilitarianism, an ideal code is the code whose optimum acceptance level is no lower than that of any alternative code. I then argue that all three forms of rule-utilitarianism fall prey to two fatal problems that leave us without any viable form of rule-utilitarianism

Perceptions of Professional Practice and Work Environment of New Graduates in a Nurse Residency Program

New nurses continue to face challenging work environments and high expectations for professional competence as they enter practice. Nurse residency programs are gaining prominence as a mechanism to ease new graduates’ transition to practice. This study examined new graduates’ perceptions of their professional practice competence and work environment throughout a yearlong nurse residency program. Employing a repeated measures design, data were collected at baseline, at 6 months, and at 12 months. Results showed that job satisfaction was significantly lowest at 6 months and highest at 12 months. Job stress was found to be lowest at 12 months and organizational commitment was highest at baseline. Of the variables related to professional practice, clinical decision-making was highest at 12 months and quality of nursing performance significantly increased at each measurement point. These data add to the growing evidence supporting the efficacy of nurse residency programs

Predictors of New Graduate Nurses’ Organizational Commitment During a Nurse Residency Program

Retaining newly graduated nurses is critical for organizations because of the significant cost of turnover. Since commitment to an organization is associated with decreased turnover intent, understanding factors that influence new graduates’ organizational commitment is important. In a sample of nurse residency program participants, predictors of organizational commitment over time were explored. Perceptions of the work environment, particularly job satisfaction and job stress, were found to be most influential. Nurse residency programs provide extended opportunities to model professional role behaviors for new nurses, enhance knowledge development and clinical application, and promote successful integration to the work environment (Bratt, 2009). Despite these benefits, only 21% of new graduates reported having a formal internship or residency program and 6% had no formal orientation (Kovner et al., 2007). In a national survey of registered nurses (RNs) conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services (2010), it was revealed that almost 40% of new graduates plan to leave their current position within 3 years and almost 22% had already changed position or employer. For those new nurses who left their position, most of the reasons (73%) centered on issues related to the characteristics of the workplace, with stressful work environment being cited most frequently, followed by lack of good management and inadequate staffing. Accreditation organizations including the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (2008) and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (2009a) have advocated for the development of transition to practice programs for newly graduated nurses. In addition, the recently released report of the Institute of Medicine (2010) put forth a key recommendation for organizations to provide nurse residency programs for newly licensed nurses. This report also advocates for the need to evaluate the outcomes of these programs, including their influence on patient outcomes and the retention and competency development of new nurses

A Spatio-Temporal Model of House Prices in the US

In this paper we model the dynamic adjustment of real house prices using data at the level of US States. We consider interactions between housing markets by examining the extent to which real house prices at the State level are driven by fundamentals such as real income, as well as by common shocks, and determine the speed of adjustment of house prices to macroeconomic and local disturbances. We take explicit account of both cross sectional dependence and heterogeneity. This allows us to find a cointegrating relationship between house prices and incomes and to identify a small role for real interest rates. Using this model we examine the role of spatial factors, in particular the effect of contiguous states by use of a weighting matrix. We are able to identify a significant spatial effect, even after controlling for State specific real incomes, and allowing for a number of unobserved common factors