Adjusting to duty hour reforms: residents’ perception of the safety climate in interdisciplinary night-float rotations

Background: New scheduling models were needed to adjust to residents’ duty hour reforms while maintaining safe patient care. In interdisciplinary night-float rotations, four to six residents from most residency programs collaborated for after-hours cross-coverage of most adult hospitalised patients as part of a Faculty-led rotation. Residents worked sixteen 12-hour night shifts over a month.                                                                                Methods: We measured residents’ perception of the patient safety climate during implementation of night-float rotations in five tertiary hospitals. We surveyed 267 residents who had completed the rotation in 2015-2016 with an online version of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire. First year residents came from most residency programs, second- and third-year residents came from internal medicine.Results: One-hundred-and-thirty residents completed the questionnaire. Scores did not differ across hospitals and residents’ years of training for all six safety-related climate factors: teamwork climate, job satisfaction, perceptions of management, safety climate, working conditions, and stress recognition.Conclusion: Simultaneous implementation in five hospitals of a Faculty-led interdisciplinary night-float rotation for most junior residents proved to be logistically feasible and showed similar and reassuring patient safety climate scores._____Contexte: De nouveaux horaires de garde en établissements hospitaliers étaient nécessaires pour s’adapter aux réformes des heures de travail des résidents tout en maintenant des soins sécuritaires pour les patients. Dans les stages cliniques de nuit interdisciplinaires, quatre à six résidents de la plupart des programmes de résidence ont collaboré pour assurer une couverture croisée, après les heures normales de travail, de la plupart des patients adultes hospitalisés. Les résidents ont travaillé seize nuits de 12 heures durant un mois.Méthodes: Nous avons mesuré la perception des résidents du climat de travail lié à la sécurité des patients lors de la mise en place de stages de nuit dans cinq hôpitaux universitaires. Nous avons interrogé 267 résidents ayant terminé le stage en 2015-2016 avec une version numérique du Safety Attitudes Questionnaire. Les résidents de première année provenaient de la plupart des programmes de résidence, les résidents de deuxième et troisième années provenaient du programme de médecine interne.Résultats: 130 résidents ont complété le questionnaire. Les scores ne différaient pas entre les hôpitaux et les années de formation des résidents pour les six facteurs liés à la sécurité des patients: climat de travail en équipe, satisfaction au travail, perceptions des supérieurs, climat de sécurité, conditions de travail et reconnaissance du stress.Conclusions: La mise en place simultanée, dans cinq hôpitaux, de stages cliniques de nuit réunissant des résidents juniors de la majorité des programmes de résidence fut logistiquement possible et a montré des résultats similaires et rassurants sur le climat de travail lié à la sécurité des patients

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants - determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits - almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Organic Carbon Accumulation in Topsoil Following Afforestation with Willow: Emphasis on Leaf Litter Decomposition and Soil Organic Matter Quality

Short-rotation intensive cultures (SRICs) of willows can potentially sequester carbon (C) in soil. However, there is limited information regarding the factors governing soil organic C (Corg) accumulation following afforestation. The objectives of this study were to: (i) determine whether willow leads to Corg accumulation in the topsoil (0–10 cm) two to six years after establishment in five SRICs located along a large climatic/productivity gradient in southern Quebec, and (ii) assess the influence of leaf litter decomposition and soil organic matter (OM) quality on Corg accumulation in the topsoil. Topsoil Corg concentrations and pools under SRICs were, on average, 25% greater than reference fields, and alkyls concentrations were higher under SRICs. On an annualized basis, Corg accumulation rates in the topsoil varied between 0.4 and 4.5 Mg ha−1 yr−1. Estimated annual litterfall C fluxes were in the same order of magnitude, suggesting that SRICs can accumulate Corg in the topsoil during early years due to high growth rates. Leaf litter decomposition was also related to Corg accumulation rates in the topsoil. It was positively correlated to growing season length, degree-days, and growing season average air and topsoil temperature (r > 0.70), and negatively correlated to topsoil volumetric water content (r = −0.55). Leaf litter decomposition likely occurred more quickly than that of plants in reference fields, and as it progressed, OM became more decay resistant, more stable and accumulated as Corg in the topsoil

Plasma Excitation using Tailored Voltage Waveforms for the Deposition of Thin Film Silicon for Photovoltaics: From Plasma Physics to Devices

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