City manager government in Massachusetts as illustrated by the Medford experience

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University"CITY MANAGER GOVERNMENT IN MASSACHUSETTS AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MEDFORD EXPERIENCE" is an illustrative account of the council-manager plan's struggle for survival in a New England bedroom community located on the inner fringe of a great metropolitan area. The reform movement in Medford was launched in 1945 when local "captains of industry, who envisioned council-manager government as a vehicle which would restore prudent, efficient and economical government to the city, inspired and led the battle for adoption of the Plan "E" form of government. With ardor and enthusiasm they organized a Plan E Charter Committee which educated the citizens of the potential benefits to be derived from a change of government. They did their work so well that when the question of adopting Plan E was placed on the ballot for popular acceptance, the voters responded in the affirmative by a margin of almost 4-l. [TRUNCATED

Rate base determination for a public utility company

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston Universit

SYMPHOSIUS, A NORTH AFRICAN MARTIAL?

The late-Latin compendium known as the Latin anthology includes a carefully composed verse collection of a hundred riddles. It was probably called the Aenigmata and written by a man called Symphosius, who might have come from North Africa; but very little is known for certain. The collection was, however, to have a profound influence on later riddle-writing and deserves attention for this reason alone. It is clear, however, that Symphosius was greatly influenced by the Xenia and Apophoreta of Martial, although this further reason has not been widely appreciated. This article sets Symphosius’ Aenigmata in its Martialian context before exploring its debts both in terms of form and arrangement and, by comparing individual riddles, explaining how Symphosius has varied, developed and extended his model. It concludes that he succeeded admirably in his self-appointed task of challenging comparison with his predecessor, and that he was a ‘Martial’ in his own right

The Cassandra Project- building a sustainable workload activity model for future community and district nursing workforce capacity planning

Purpose This paper presents work in progress from a two year mixed methods study in the UK to evaluate the impact of a community nursing workload activity tool as a mechanism for modelling optimum caseloads to underpin decisions about safe staffing levels. Current methods of measuring workload and output in the community context are not robust enough to capture the complexity of care differences in rural and urban populations. Many teams have heavy caseloads, poor/inappropriate referrals, and an inability to state when capacity has been reached. . Research Aim To develop and evaluate a robust model to predict and plan for optimum community nursing caseload activity within a whole system. Research Objectives 1. To develop a taxonomy and associated database that provides a consistent language for describing community nursing interventions that can be used to provide reliable and comparable metrics. 2. To determine the utility of the Cassandra tool in capturing community nursing interventions. 3 To use the data collected to build an inter-relational model of community nursing practice that can be used to determine, case-load, activity and develop a predictive model. 4. To evaluate the usability of the model in assisting managers and local decision-makers in workforce planning. 5. To assess the effectiveness of the model in capturing community nursing care left undone or missed 6. To explore how the model interrelates community nursing caseload activity with other care provision in a whole system. Methods Informed by critical realism, which attempts to understand real world issues, the design is guided by optimum caseload modelling, and given the multivariate nature of the environment in which workload activity takes place, a multiple case study evaluation across six NHS Pilot sites in England. Full ethical approval is in place. Results Results from case study sites demonstrated we have created a robust tool that captures an accurate picture of the multidimensional complexity of community nursing intervention, context of care, users of care and care left undone and are beginning to mine the data to identify patterns and relationships to build and test more accurate predictive optimum caseload activity tools to support workforce planning around patient acuity and skill mix, and provide an economic analysis of the cost of care left undone. Application in international contexts will be considered. Conclusions The tool can accurately capture a representative picture of how community and district nurses spend their time by generating both individual and organisational level reports. This reporting is speedy and enables workforce planners to work with robust evidence to make decisions about commissioning education for nurses, identifying skills shortages to target recruitment and retention activities, and to underpin decision making about commissioning services and the workforce required to provide high quality care

Developing a caseload model to reflect the complexity of district and community nursing

A study by the England Centre for Practice Development proposes to develop and evaluate an optimum caseload model for district and community nursing, building on two rounds of funded pilot research in the south east of England using the Cassandra MatrixTM. It addresses national calls for a strategic capacity-and-demand model to measure and reflect the multidimensional complexity of the community nursing workload, maximising the potential of the workforce to meet the needs of clients with increasingly complex comorbidities and interdependencies. It also addresses the ambitions of the NHS Five Year Forward View to enable planned growth of the workforce for the future