Are Hospital Pharmacies More Efficient if They Employ Nurses?

This paper assesses the efficiency of utilizing nurses in Washington State hospital pharmacies. We take the perspective of a pharmacy department manager and model an input oriented hospital pharmacy production process. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to examine both scale efficiency and technical efficiency, and differences across hospital pharmacies that use and do not use nurse staffing are analyzed using cross-tabulations and nonparametric hypothesis tests. The results indicate that the use of nurse staffing does not significantly impact either scale or technical efficiency. Thus, permitting nurses to play a greater role in hospital pharmacies does not adversely affect efficiency. This paper has important policy implications for hospital administrators and pharmacists.

Viscoelastic characterization of collagen-GAG scaffolds

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 43-45).An experimental study was performed to determine whether or not collagen-GAG scaffolds exhibit linear viscoelastic behavior. Tension tests were performed on dry and hydrated engineered collagen-GAG scaffolds in order to develop a stress-strain curve. Strains that fell in the linear elastic region of these curves were selected and then used in stress relaxation tests that were also performed on dry and hydrated specimens. The relaxation modulus was calculated from the resulting stress relaxation curves at different strain levels and compared to each other to determine viscoelastic linearity. In addition to the determination of viscoelastic linearity, a water bath was designed in the hopes of performing stress relaxation tests in hydrated environment with the temperature maintained at 37°C, the temperature of the human body. These tests will aid in the future studies of how cells contract and apply force to the scaffolds since no previous studies have looked at the time dependent mechanical properties of these scaffolds. Moreover, the data can be used in the future to determine whether the viscoelastic response contributes to cellular processes such as migration speeds, attachment, and contraction.by Matthew Q. Wong.S.B

The Pills Aren\u27t Working

Arthur Cunningham is a newly famous writer, living in North Carolina. Demand for Arthur’s next novel is high from his burgeoning fanbase. Struggling to meet his publisher’s deadline, he decides to make a one-week retreat to an old, lake house to overcome his creative block and finish the story

Constitutional Law - Procedural Due Process - Employment - Suspension - State Employees

The Supreme Court of the United States held that a state university employee suspended without pay due to his arrest on drug-related charges was not entitled under the Due Process Clause to notice and a hearing prior to his suspension. Gilbert v. Homar, 117 S. Ct. 1807 (1997)

The effects of quantitative easing in the United States: Implications for future central bank policy makers

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effects of the Federal Reserve’s recent bond buying programs, specifically Quantitative Easing 1, Quantitative Easing 2, Operation Twist (or the Fed’s Maturity Extension Program), and Quantitative Easing 3. In this study, I provide a picture of the economic landscape leading up to the deployment of the programs, an overview of quantitative easing including each program’s respective objectives, and how and why the Fed decided to implement the programs. Using empirical analysis, I measure each program’s effectiveness by applying four models including a yield curve model, an inflation model, a money supply model, and an economic activity model. By and large, each stimulus effort added value in varying proportions, albeit QE1 negatively influenced the economy in some regards

Visual Attention in Stroke Patients Returning to Driving

The UK along with many European countries lacks a standardised test to objectively test visual attentional deficits in drivers of vehicles, particularly following stroke injury. Detecting motion components in the visual scene may be the first indication of an impending collision, however, this is often overlooked in current assessment procedures. The series of experiments presented here used a semi-immersive virtual reality paradigm and eye gaze monitoring technology, to identify deficits in peripheral processing and extend the concept of useful field of view (UFOV) (Ball et al. 1988; 1993). We used displays that tested peripheral attention with brief (90ms) episodes of relative motion, changing size, luminosity and colour. Participants were presented with different sets of stimuli on a large video screen at 10°, 20°, and 30° eccentricities and used a natural gaze response to look to the cued location. Gaze response was monitored using an ASL 504 eye movement tracking system, and the dependant measure was accuracy of saccade to the eccentric target. Six stroke participants (mean age = 61.16) were tested, and their results compared against previously gathered data for the same experiments from three healthy aging groups of drivers (Young: N=21, mean age = 25.29, Middle aged: N=20, mean age = 50.25, and Elderly: N=20, mean age = 70.50). The systematic decrease in performance with increasing age that was previously found for the healthy aging participants (p\u3c 0.001) was also found in the stroke group, who performed worse than the healthy aging groups in the same tasks (p\u3c 0.001). The results underpin our previous finding of deficits in processing basic components of visual control that go beyond current UFOV tests. These current results highlight the compounding effects of stroke injury on the ability of attention to be captured by motion components that may be the first and only indication of an impending collision event. We discuss the implications of treating stroke patients as though they belong to a homogenous group when assessing suitability to return to driving; our results indicate that they clearly do not. Younger stroke drivers made recoveries that placed their performance alongside that of their age-matched healthy controls, unlike older stroke patients who remained more impaired than their age-matched healthy controls. We conclude that assessment of visual attention as it relates to moving objects in a visually cluttered environment should be part of any assessment criteria for measuring fitness to drive in stroke patients making a return to driving