Increasing the Number of Nurse Practitioner Preceptors by Increasing Preceptor Preparedness

Background: the healthcare provider shortage has resulted in increased enrollment in nurse practitioner programs. Traditionally, the clinical education of these students has occurred primarily in clinical settings with the guidance of a practicing nurse practitioner. There is currently a shortage of these preceptors. Research indicates part of the shortage may be attributed to hesitancy to precept due to feeling ill-prepared as a preceptor. It is proposed that a focus group will verify concepts found in the literature. In addition, creating a webinar to better prepare preceptors will result in an increase in prepared preceptors. Significance: The shortage of nurse practitioner preceptors not only impacts the student’s ability to obtain quality clinical education, it also affects the universities; enrollment will decrease as available preceptors decrease. This will further negatively impact the healthcare shortage. Methods: A focus group was held to confirm the concepts found in the literature. Further, concepts gleaned from the literature and the focus group will guide the development of a preparation webinar for preceptors. Results: the focus group did confirm the barriers found in the literature. Discussion: The shortage of preceptors for nurse practitioner students impacts completion of the nurse practitioner program. Creating a webinar using data from the focus group and the literature will better prepare nurse practitioners to precept, thereby, resulting in an increase in the number of available preceptors

The Victorian Newsletter (Fall 1995)

The Victorian Newsletter is sponsored for the Victorian Group of Modern Language Association by Western Kentucky University and is published twice annually.Oscar Wilde: Crime and the "Glorious Shapes of Art" / Peter Allan Dale -- Metamorphosis as Metaphor in Bram Stoker's Dracula / Pascale Krumm -- Flatness and Ethical Responsibility in Little Dorrit / Dominic Rainsford -- Intertextuality and Intratextuality: The Full Text of Christina Rossetti's "Harmony on First Corinthians XIII" Rediscovered / Mary Arseneau and Jan Marsh -- Pre-Raphaelite Paintings and Jungian Images in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White / Sophia Andres -- Crucifixes and Madonnas: George Eliot's Fascination with Catholicism in Romola / Michael Schiefelbein -- Gerard Manley Hopkins: Priest vs. Poet / A. R. Coulthard -- Coming in Victorian Newsletter -- Books Received -- Group New

Optimized placement of thermo-electric energy systems in city districts under uncertainty

Cities, as large energy consumers, offer great potential for greenhouse gas emission reduction. Urban energy system planning is important to identify low-emission, cost-efficient solutions to contribute to global emission reduction aims. However, the planning process is challenging due to uncertainty. Conventional approaches to deal with uncertainty mainly use robust optimization or stochastic programming, which are computationally intensive on urban scale and might not support the identification of energy systems with reduced sensitivity to uncertainty. The subject of this thesis is to identify urban energy systems, which are less sensitive to uncertainty. An optimization framework is developed, which combines a genetic algorithm for optimized energy system placement with an economic and ecological uncertainty calculator. Demand-related, technical, and economic uncertainties are taken into account. The effect of different risk attitudes, from risk neutral to high risk-aversity, is analyzed. Results show that a reduction of economic and ecological uncertainty is possible but at the drawback of worse mean cost and emission values. The uncertainty reduction within the given case study is achieved by increasing the nominal power of the combined heat and power (CHP) units as well as the capacity of the thermal storage systems and decreasing photovoltaic (PV) area sizes. Boiler-PV combinations define cost-efficient results. CHP usage with local heating networks generates further emission reduction. Reference optimizations without uncertainty and the optimization with uncertainty lead to comparable results. However, not all reference optimization results perform well under uncertainty. While many small-scale CHP configurations have a pareto-optimal behavior for the reference scenario, they lead to suboptimal performance under uncertainty. The presented framework enables the identification of energy systems, which perform well under uncertainty. Moreover, it enables a reduction of economic and ecological uncertainty for different risk-attitudes. However, the optimization process turns out to be computationally intensive, too. Thus, a reference optimization without uncertainty should be preferred for applications with low availability of computational resources. Still, the presented method provides deeper insights into the economic and ecological uncertainty of urban energy systems