The nature of collegial relationships in nursing: perceptions of novice practitioners

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship development, the level of support afforded, and the communication style of novice nurses. This study was chosen to assist with clarification of the concept that nurses eat their young . The study was conducted in a metropolitan health care system in the mid-west with participants from a variety of settings within this system, including acute care and community service. Participants were volunteers from a convenience sample, all with less than eighteen months of experience. The study utilized a qualitative research methodology with semi-structured interviews employed to collect data. The study was limited by size of sample and location, however consistent themes emerged from the interviews. It is important to note that all participants had both positive and negative experiences to share. The study revealed that participants had an unrealistic expectation of their new role. Participants felt unprepared for their role as professional nurses and the majority of participants felt inadequate when it came to professional communication. The data strongly suggested that they felt unsupported by colleagues, more so by the senior staff. The study revealed information regarding negative offenses committed by senior staff when it came to mentoring and support of new nurses. A strong lack of support and mentoring by senior staff was very evident throughout the data. Many of the participants had difficulty assimilating into their work environments, related to difficulty in developing collegial relationships, and several were already in their second position. The study does pose some meaningful suggestions for nursing related to professional relationships, mentoring, and education. The need to make the transition from student to practitioner easier was obvious. The level of professional communication could be strengthened and the capability to support and mentor new nurses within the profession needs to be improved

Inference and Evolutionary Analysis of Genome-Scale Regulatory Networks in Large Phylogenies

Changes in transcriptional regulatory networks can significantly contribute to species evolution and adaptation. However, identification of genome-scale regulatory networks is an open challenge, especially in non-model organisms. Here, we introduce multi-species regulatory network learning (MRTLE), a computational approach that uses phylogenetic structure, sequence-specific motifs, and transcriptomic data, to infer the regulatory networks in different species. Using simulated data from known networks and transcriptomic data from six divergent yeasts, we demonstrate that MRTLE predicts networks with greater accuracy than existing methods because it incorporates phylogenetic information. We used MRTLE to infer the structure of the transcriptional networks that control the osmotic stress responses of divergent, non-model yeast species and then validated our predictions experimentally. Interrogating these networks reveals that gene duplication promotes network divergence across evolution. Taken together, our approach facilitates study of regulatory network evolutionary dynamics across multiple poorly studied species. Keywords: regulatory networks; network inference; evolution of gene regulatory networks; evolution of stress response; yeast; probabilistic graphical model; phylogeny; comparative functional genomicsNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant DBI-1350677)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01CA119176-01)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant DP1OD003958-01