Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Heart Improvement Toolkit Program: A Pilot Project

Heart failure (HF) is a chronic, debilitating disease resulting in over one million hospitalizations with an estimated 30.7 million dollars in total health care cost per year (Go et al., 2014). Evidence shows that HF education programs that promote adherence to pharmacological and non-pharmacological provider recommendations are effective in reducing 30-day HF recidivism rates, increasing self-care behavior, and decreasing adverse clinical events. The purpose of this evidence-based project was to implement the Heart Improvement Toolkit (HIT) Program which is a one-on-one, comprehensive HF-specific education program, for patients with a HF diagnosis who have been admitted to non-cardiac specialty units. Program evaluation included 30-day recidivism rates, adverse clinical events, and self-care behavior (SCB)

Analysis of Small Airports within a One Hundred and Twenty Mile Radius of Medium and/or Large Airports

The purpose of this research is to investigate how income, population age, scheduled air carrier services, and distance between competing airports impact annual scheduled passenger enplanements for airports in smaller communities. Small airports located within a 120 miles radius of larger sized (medium or large) airports are considered to be within the shadow of larger airports with which they must compete for passenger enplanements. Two methods were employed to evaluate shadow airports within a 120 mile radius of larger airports. First, an historical view, analyzing each of the airports with regard to schedule passenger enplanements, median disposable incomes, median ages, and distances between competing air passenger cities was completed. Comparisons were done over a 13 year period from 1980 to 1993 and an average annual growth rate was computed for all the airports dependent and independent variables. The next step was to pinpoint those small airports experiencing declining enplanements. Following this process, eight airports were singled out with declining trends. Six of the eight airports were found to be within an hour\u27s driving time of a larger airport. The remaining two were nearer to a two hour drive. Notably, the southeastern region of the United States accounted for half of the shadow airports experiencing declines. Also of significance, when comparing all other shadow airports to these declining airports revealed that the overall group grew 2 1/2 times faster than the eight cited. Additionally, their competing large airport counterparts when compared to their larger airport overall peer group grew twice as fast, suggesting that market share is being transferred from the shadow airports to their nearby competing airports. Second, a double log multiple regression model was developed. The final results suggest that this model\u27s independent variables account for 12.45% of the enplanements at the small/shadow airports. The outcome indicated that these independent variables—median disposable income, median age, and distance between air passenger cities were statistically significant at 95% and support the null hypothesis which states that there is a relationship between small air passenger city\u27s median disposable income, median population age, competing airports scheduled passenger enplanements, and distance from small air passenger city to the larger air passenger city. The independent variable, enplanements at the larger airport, was not as strong statistically and fell within a confidence level of 88%. Enplanements at the large hub were included in an attempt to measure the impact of increasing growth at the large airports on its smaller competitors

Online Learning: Advantages and Challenges in Implementing an Effective Practicum Experience

Executing an effective clinical practicum experience for distance learners requires systems to be in place to ensure that all students receive a quality clinical experience and meet course and program objectives. Key to achieving these successful outcomes is recognizing and overcoming the challenges involved in designing graduate practica for Master of Science in nursing candidates. A systematic approach is presented for consideration

Common Grasses of Nebraska: Rangeland Prairie Pasture (Including Grass-Like Plants)

Introduction 3 • Plant Groups 4 • Parts of a Grass Plant 5 • Inflorescence Characteristics 5 • Vegetative Characteristics 5 • Parts of a Grass-Like • Plant 5 • Fruit and Floral Characteristics 5 • Vegetative Characteristics 5 • Warm-Season • Perennial Grasses • Bermudagrass 14 • Blowoutgrass 15 • bluestems: • Big bluestem 16 • Little bluestem 18 • Sand bluestem 20 • Silver bluestem 21 • Yellow bluestem 22 • Buffalograss 24 • dropseeds: • Alkali sacaton 26 • Prairie dropseed 27 • Sand dropseed 29 • Tall dropseed 30 • Eastern gamagrass 32 • gramas: • Blue grama 33 • Hairy grama 35 • Sideoats grama 36 • Indiangrass 38 • Inland saltgrass 40 • Johnsongrass 41 • lovegrasses: • Purple lovegrass 43 • Sand lovegrass 44 • muhlys: • Marsh muhly 45 • Plains muhly 47 • Sandhill muhly 48 • Scratchgrass 49 • Phragmites 50 • Prairie cordgrass 52 • Prairie sandreed 54 • Purple threeawn 55 • Purpletop 56 • Sand paspalum 58 • Switchgrass 59 • Tumblegrass 61 • Windmillgrass 62 Warm-Season • Annual Grasses • Barnyardgrass 66 • Bearded sprangletop 67 • crabgrasses: • Hairy crabgrass 68 • Smooth crabgrass 69 • Fall panicum 70 • foxtails: • Green foxtail 72 • Hooked foxtail 73 • Yellow foxtail 74 • Goosegrass 76 • Poverty dropseed 77 • Purple sandgrass 78 • Sandbur 79 • Stinkgrass 81 • threeawns: • Forktip threeawn 82 • Prairie threeawn 83 • Witchgrass 84 Cool-Season • Perennial Grasses • bentgrasses: • Redtop bentgrass 88 • Spike bentgrass 89 • Winter bentgrass 90 • bluegrasses: • Bulbous bluegrass 91 • Canada bluegrass 92 • Kentucky bluegrass 94 • Mutton bluegrass 95 • Plains bluegrass 96 • Sandberg bluegrass 98 • Bluejoint reedgrass 99 • bromegrasses: • Meadow brome 101 • Smooth brome 102 • Creeping foxtail 103 • Fowl mannagrass 105 • Foxtail barley 106 • Green needlegrass 108 • Indian ricegrass 109 • Needleandthread 111 • Orchardgrass 112 • Perennial ryegrass 114 • Porcupinegrass 115 • Prairie junegrass 116 • Prairie wedgescale 117 • Quackgrass 119 • Reed canarygrass 120 • rosettegrasses: • Scribner rosettegrass 121 • Wilcox rosettegrass 123 • Squirreltail 124 • Tall fescue 125 • Timothy 127 • Weeping alkaligrass 129 • wheatgrasses: • Crested wheatgrass 130 • Intermediate wheatgrass 132 • Slender wheatgrass 133 • Tall wheatgrass 135 • Western wheatgrass 136 • wildryes: • Canada wildrye 138 • Russian wildrye 139 Cool-Season • Annual Grasses: • American sloughgrass 142 • Annual bluegrass 143 • Cheatgrass 144 • Japanese brome 145 • Little barley 146 • Northern wildrice 148 • Sixweeksgrass 149 • Grass-Like • Plants: • American bulrush 152 • Field horsetail 153 • Schweinitz flatsedge 154 • sedges: • Nebraska sedge 155 • Needleleaf sedge 156 • Sun sedge 157 • Threadleaf sedge 158 • Yellow nutsedge 160 • Glossary 161 • Ecological Sites 170 • Selected References 173 • Index 17