Workplace Violence in the Healthcare Setting

Workplace Violence (WPV) is an all-encompassing term used to describe abusive behaviours directed at another with the intent to cause harm. Although the definition varies according to situations and practice settings, there is agreement that WPV has a negative impact on the health and wellbeing of nurses and the delivery of quality nursing care (Choiniere, MacDonnell, & Shamonda, 2010; Higgins & MacIntosh, 2010; Registered Nurses Association of Ontario [RNAO], 2008; Hsinag-Chu & Lee, 2011; Vessey, DeMarco, Gaffney, & Budin, 2009). The growing epidemic of violence in the workplace is of great concern for employees, employers and government agencies and is recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Council of Nurses (ICN) as a major health priority (Hinchberger, 2009). WPV occurs between nurses, between nurses and physicians and between nurses and patients and their families. In order to implement effective strategies aimed at diminishing WPV an investigation of the multi-layered risk factors must first be explored. The RNAO (2008) suggests taking “a broad approach, examining societal, workplace, and individual factors and recognizing the dynamic relationship between them” (p.2). This literature review aims at identifying and examining the risk factors for WPV; the psychological and physical effects experienced by nurses due to WPV; the strategies nurses employ to decrease violence in the workplace; and the personal and professional costs associated with WPV. Understanding the risk factors and associated consequences of WPV on the healthcare sector could potentially lead to effective interventions aimed at decreasing WPV and increasing productivity within the health sector

A Political Economy of Privatization Contracts : The Case of Water and Sanitation in Ghana and Argentina

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Hulya Dagdeviren, Simon A. Robertson, 'A Political Economy of Privatization Contracts: The Case of Water and Sanitation in Ghana and Argentina', Competition & Change, Vol. 18 (2): 150-163, April 2014. The final, published version is available online at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1179/1024529414Z.00000000053. Published by SAGE.In general, the process and outcomes of privatization have been studied from the point of view of efficiency. In this article, we consider issues in the course of contract design, implementation, management and enforcement in privatized public services and utilities. The study is based on two case studies, involving several water concessions in Argentina and a management contract in the urban water sector in Ghana. Three key arguments are presented on the basis of these case studies. The first is that an individualistic analytical framework is often utilized by the mainstream economic perspectives, but these are inadequate for a comparative assessment of private versus public provision in public services where there are distinct collective or group interests and hence a wider socio-economic context and representation of different interests becomes highly important. Instead, the article proposes a political economy perspective, which pays due attention to distributional issues, group interests, ideology of states and power relations for the assessment of privatization contracts. Second, the administrative capacity of states and their resources play a key role for the outcomes of privatization. Finally, while some contractual issues could be resolved through resourcing and experience over time, others are inherent to the contractual relations with little prospect of remedy.Peer reviewe

Self-consistent calculation of total energies of the electron gas using many-body perturbation theory

The performance of many-body perturbation theory for calculating ground-state properties is investigated. We present fully numerical results for the electron gas in three and two dimensions in the framework of the GW approximation. The overall agreement with very accurate Monte Carlo data is excellent, even for those ranges of densities for which the GW approach is often supposed to be unsuitable. The latter seems to be due to the fulfillment of general conservation rules. These results open further prospects for accurate calculations of ground-state properties circumventing the limitations of standard density-functional theory

OPTIMIZING DISCHARGEABLE EFFLUENT PRODUCTION FROM PALM OIL MILL EFFLUENT: AN EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

This paper describes the research findings conducted with palm oil mill effluent and Nano membrane. This research investigated the performance of the Nano membrane (NM) in separating total organic materials (TOM) from POME. The performance of NM is measured in the scale of productivity and efficiency in producing dischargeable effluent from POME. Three NM of different pore sizes and primary POME treatment machinery have been used for the conducting of the experiment. The feed pressure of POME to NM was from 60 psi to 120 psi. The research findings demonstrated the optimum performance of NM in separating TOM about 90% at operating pressure 80 psi. The findings of this research would be useful in producing environmentally friendly effluent from POME. The novelty of this research is to use a POME feedstock of pH 7.0 with a Nanomembranes system in optimizing dischargeable effluent production performance

Phenolic composition and cell-based biological activities of ten coloured potato peels (Solanum tuberosum L.)

The present study provides an in-depth characterisation of the non-anthocyanin and anthocyanin phenolic compounds of potato peels from ten coloured potato varieties. Furthermore, the underexplored bioactive potential (antioxidant, cytotoxic and anti-inflammatory capacities) of the studied peels is comprehensively analysed. Among non-anthocyanin phenolics, caffeic and a caffeoylquinic acid were found in the highest concentrations in all samples, which also showed the presence of O-glycosylated flavonol derivatives and polyamine derivatives. Acylated anthocyanins were identified in red and purple varieties, being pelargonidin, peonidin, and malvidin the most prominent aglycones. All samples revealed antioxidant and antitumor activities, and no toxic effect. The extract of the Rosemary variety presented the best antioxidant and antitumor outcomes and was the only sample to reveal anti-inflammatory activity. These results are valuable for the food-industry by adding value to an important bio-residue, particularly concerning its potential as natural ingredients in novel food and pharmaceutical formulations.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support by national funds FCT/ MCTES to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020); the national funding by FCT, P.I., through the institutional scientific employment program-contract for L. Barros, Maria Inês Dias and C. Pereira contracts; to FEDER-Interreg España-Portugal programme through the project TRANSCoLAB 0612_TRANS_CO_LAB_2_P; to the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Regional Operational Program North 2020, within the scope of Project Mobilizador Norte-01-0247-FEDER-024479: ValorNatural ®; and also to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Republic of Serbia (451-03-68/2020-14/200007). GIP-USAL is financially supported by the Spanish Government through the project AGL2015-64522-C2-2-R. S. Sampaio acknowledges CAPES Foundation (Ministry of Education, Brazil) for her PhD grant no. 99999.001423/2015-00.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Location of crossings in the Floquet spectrum of a driven two-level system

Calculation of the Floquet quasi-energies of a system driven by a time-periodic field is an efficient way to understand its dynamics. In particular, the phenomenon of dynamical localization can be related to the presence of close approaches between quasi-energies (either crossings or avoided crossings). We consider here a driven two-level system, and study how the locations of crossings in the quasi-energy spectrum alter as the field parameters are changed. A perturbational scheme provides a direct connection between the form of the driving field and the quasi-energies which is exact in the limit of high frequencies. We firstly obtain relations for the quasi-energies for some common types of applied field in the high-frequency limit. We then show how the locations of the crossings drift as the frequency is reduced, and find a simple empirical formula which describes this drift extremely well in general, and appears to be exact for the specific case of square-wave driving.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. Minor changes to text, this version to be published in Physical Review

Prevalence and costs of hospitalizations for poisoning and accidental intoxication in Brazilian elderly

A cross-sectional study of secondary data/information obtained from the Hospital Information System (HIS) spanning the years 2008 - 2009 was performed. The distribution of the main hospital admissions by gender, age, color/race, region and federal unit of residence, average expenditure and average length of hospital stay, year of hospitalization and mortality rates (MR) were studied. The data collected were tabulated by TabNet and keyed into Microsoft Excel 2007. It was verified that elderly males (54.3%), from 60 to 69 years old (50.6%), nonwhites (36.3%) and residents of Southeast and North regions of the country had the highest rates of hospitalization. Seniors were hospitalized for an average of 4.8 days, and the major causes were exposure to alcohol (43.7%) and to drugs (33.9%). Expenses related to hospital admissions were, on average, R$ 529,817.70. The highest mortality rates were recorded among females (MR = 4.34), in elderly, 80 years or older (MR = 10.16) and Caucasians (MR = 3.95), where pharmacological substances with action on the Autonomic Nervous System were the leading cause of death. There are demographic differences in morbi-mortality of these elderly since, although men and younger elderly were the main victims, women and elderly of advanced age have greater mortality. The leading causes of hospitalization were alcohol and drugs