The Mediating Role of Staffing on Quality of Care in Nonprofit and For-Profit Nursing Homes in Indiana

This study attempts to disentangle the relationships between ownership, staffing, and nursing home quality using Indiana nursing home data. Typical Indiana nursing homes are known to be below average on health inspection and overall quality ratings. This is alarming because Indiana’s population aged 85 years or older is increasing and these individuals are likely to need long-term care services. With an ultimate goal of addressing the poor quality of long-term care institutions, this study analyzed the Nursing Home Compare data collected from 2010 to 2012 by utilizing chi- square tests, one-way ANOVAs, and correlation analysis. The results revealed that nonprofit nursing homes have superior quality and record a greater number of registered nurse and certified nursing assistant hours per resident day compared to for-profit nursing homes. In addition, higher staffing hours were positively associated with overall rating. These findings imply a possibility that higher staffing levels in nonprofit nursing homes have a mediating effect on the relationship between ownership and nursing home quality. In order to improve nursing home quality, registered nurse and certified nursing assistant staffing levels need to be boosted. Enactment of state staffing standards and the Medicaid wage pass-through policy could help to address this issue

Improved single-swab sample preparation for recovering bacterial and phage DNA from human skin and wound microbiomes.

BackgroundCharacterization of the skin and wound microbiome is of high biomedical interest, but is hampered by the low biomass of typical samples. While sample preparation from other microbiomes (e.g., gut) has been the subject of extensive optimization, procedures for skin and wound microbiomes have received relatively little attention. Here we describe an improved method for obtaining both phage and microbial DNA from a single skin or wound swab, characterize the yield of DNA in model samples, and demonstrate the utility of this approach with samples collected from a wound clinic.ResultsWe find a substantial improvement when processing wound samples in particular; while only one-quarter of wound samples processed by a traditional method yielded sufficient DNA for downstream analysis, all samples processed using the improved method yielded sufficient DNA. Moreover, for both skin and wound samples, community analysis and viral reads obtained through deep sequencing of clinical swab samples showed significant improvement with the use of the improved method.ConclusionUse of this method may increase the efficiency and data quality of microbiome studies from low-biomass samples

Early childhood preservice teachers’ perception on play

This study examined preservice early childhood education (ECE) students’ perceptions of play as part of the classroom experience. An analysis of 67 preservice students’ answers to three open-ended questions designed to elicit their perception of play, revealed respondents overall were “encouraged” by the use of play as a teaching tool. In addition, they held a favorable view of incorporating play into the classroom experience. This study showed that educational experiences had a significant impact on encouraging preservice early education teachers to incorporate play into the curriculum

Idiothetic Path Integration in the Fruit Fly Drosophila melanogaster

After discovering a small drop of food, hungry flies exhibit a peculiar behavior in which they repeatedly stray from, but then return to, the newly discovered resource. To study this behavior in more detail, we tracked hungry Drosophila as they explored a large arena, focusing on the question of how flies remain near the food. To determine whether flies use external stimuli, we individually eliminated visual, olfactory, and pheromonal cues. In all cases, flies still exhibited a centralized search behavior, suggesting that none of these cues are absolutely required for navigation back to the food. To simultaneously eliminate visual and olfactory cues associated with the position of the food, we constructed an apparatus in which the food could be rapidly translated from the center of the arena. Flies continued to search around the original location, even after the food was moved to a new position. A random search model based on measured locomotor statistics could not reproduce the centered nature of the animal’s trajectory. We conclude that this behavior is best explained by a form of path integration in which the flies use idiothetic cues to search near the location of the food. We argue that the use of path integration to perform a centered local search is not a specialization of Drosophila but rather represents an ancient behavioral mode that is homologous to the more elaborate foraging strategies of central place foragers such as ants

Developing cultural competence in working with Korean immigrant families

The authors provide an in-depth examination of the historical background, cultural values, family roles, and community contexts of Korean Americans as an aid to both researchers and clinicians in developing cultural competence with this particular group. First, the concept of cultural competence is defined. A brief history of Korean immigration patterns to the United States and demographic information about Korean Americans are reviewed. Second, Korean cultural values, family structure, and family roles are examined as they impact relationships in research and clinical contexts. Three indigenous concepts (cf. L. Kim, 1992) that may be useful in developing cultural competence include haan (suppressed anger), jeong (strong feeling of kinship), and noon-chi (ability to evaluate social situations through implicit cues). Clinical case examples and accounts from a community-based research perspective illustrate these cultural values. Third, important community resources in the Korean American context are highlighted. Links between cultural competence and “ecological pragmatism ” (Kelly, Azelton, Burzette, & Mock, 1994) are discussed. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Testing a Multiple Mediation Model of Asian American College Students’ Willingness to See a Counselor

Adapting the theory of reasoned action (TRA), the present study examined help-seeking beliefs, attitudes, and intent among Asian American college students (N = 110). A multiple mediation model was tested to see if the relation between Asian values and willingness to see a counselor was mediated by attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help and subjective norm. A bootstrapping procedure was used to test the multiple mediation model. Results indicated that subjective norm was the sole significant mediator of the effect of Asian values on willingness to see a counselor. The findings highlight the importance of social influences on help-seeking intent among Asian American college students