Home Health Aides\u27 Performance and Home Health Clients\u27 Quality of Life

Home health aides\u27 performance can help home health clients achieve quality of life. This quantitative, cross-sectional study examined which work-related factors of home health aides influence home health clients\u27 quality of life. A socioecological perspective was used to understand influences on behaviors. Participants in this study were 400 home health clients who received services from home health agencies. A binary logistic model was used to determine the predictor variables of home health aides that contributed to home health clients\u27 quality of life. Findings indicated that psychosocial skills were among the most predicted work-related performance of home health aides that lead to quality of life for home health clients. All independent variables (professional care; teaching clients about medication management, pain, and home safety; and social and communication skills) showed significance (p \u3c .05). The implications of this study for positive social change include contributing evidence to support improving home health practices and informing policies, which might increase the quality of life for home health clients

Seven steps to successful change: How a large academic medical center prepared patients for organizational change

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) launched a new electronic health record (EHR) in a “big bang” implementation that saw the new software go live across multiple hospitals, clinics and geographic locations in a single morning. The organization rightly focused most of its energy on preparing its nearly 25,000 employees for the impacts of the transition, but it also considered the effects that would be felt by its patients and families. Survey data indicate that patient satisfaction scores demonstrably dip before, during and after an EHR implementation, and take approximately a year to recover. A team at DMC employed a seven-step approach to preparing patients for the impacts of the transition, which led to a return to pre-implementation patient satisfaction scores in about half the time of its peer institutions. The article explores these seven steps in detail and offers recommendations for how healthcare organizations facing large-scale change can use a similar structured approach to mitigate negative impacts to patients. Experience Framework This article is associated with the Culture & Leadership lens of The Beryl Institute Experience Framework. (http://bit.ly/ExperienceFramework) Access other PXJ articles related to this lens. Access other resources related to this len

The Interplanetary Network Supplement to the BeppoSAX Gamma-Ray Burst Catalogs

Between 1996 July and 2002 April, one or more spacecraft of the interplanetary network detected 787 cosmic gamma-ray bursts that were also detected by the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor and/or Wide-Field X-Ray Camera experiments aboard the BeppoSAX spacecraft. During this period, the network consisted of up to six spacecraft, and using triangulation, the localizations of 475 bursts were obtained. We present the localization data for these events.Comment: 89 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Serie

Dynamics of DNA Ejection From Bacteriophage

The ejection of DNA from a bacterial virus (``phage'') into its host cell is a biologically important example of the translocation of a macromolecular chain along its length through a membrane. The simplest mechanism for this motion is diffusion, but in the case of phage ejection a significant driving force derives from the high degree of stress to which the DNA is subjected in the viral capsid. The translocation is further sped up by the ratcheting and entropic forces associated with proteins that bind to the viral DNA in the host cell cytoplasm. We formulate a generalized diffusion equation that includes these various pushing and pulling effects and make estimates of the corresponding speed-ups in the overall translocation process. Stress in the capsid is the dominant factor throughout early ejection, with the pull due to binding particles taking over at later stages. Confinement effects are also investigated, in the case where the phage injects its DNA into a volume comparable to the capsid size. Our results suggest a series of in vitro experiments involving the ejection of DNA into vesicles filled with varying amounts of binding proteins from phage whose state of stress is controlled by ambient salt conditions or by tuning genome length.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure

A Longitudinal Study of Teaching Practice and Early Career Decisions: A Cautionary Tale

Although the turnover rate among beginning teachers has been a major concern for some time, most studies do not link teacher retention with teaching practice. In contrast, this study looks specifically at career decisions coupled with practice. Guided by a view of teaching as social and cultural practice, the study used multiple qualitative data sources, including extensive observations, interviews, and samples of teachers’ and students’ work. Based on within and cross-case analysis of 15 cases at four distinct time points within a 5-year period, the authors identified multiple patterns of teaching practice linked to early career decisions, which reflect considerable variation in quality of teaching and career trajectory. The authors argue that ‘‘stayers’’ and ‘‘leavers’’ are not homogeneous groups, as is often assumed in research and policy. Rather, there are multiple variations of practice coupled with career decisions, some desirable and others not, with different implications for policy and practice

A Longitudinal Study of Teaching Practice and Early Career Decisions: A Cautionary Tale

Although the turnover rate among beginning teachers has been a major concern for some time, most studies do not link teacher retention with teaching practice. In contrast, this study looks specifically at career decisions coupled with practice. Guided by a view of teaching as social and cultural practice, the study used multiple qualitative data sources, including extensive observations, interviews, and samples of teachers’ and students’ work. Based on within and cross-case analysis of 15 cases at four distinct time points within a 5-year period, the authors identified multiple patterns of teaching practice linked to early career decisions, which reflect considerable variation in quality of teaching and career trajectory. The authors argue that ‘‘stayers’’ and ‘‘leavers’’ are not homogeneous groups, as is often assumed in research and policy. Rather, there are multiple variations of practice coupled with career decisions, some desirable and others not, with different implications for policy and practice

Interpreting Early Career Trajectories

Career decisions of four teachers are explored through the concept of figured worlds in this qualitative, longitudinal case study. Participants were purposefully chosen for similarity at entry, with a range of career trajectories over time. Teacher career paths included remaining in one school, repeated changes in schools, attrition after relocation, and nonrenewal of contract. Data included interviews, observations, participants’ assessments, and pupils’ work. Cross-case analysis suggests that no single teacher attribute or workplace condition determined teachers’ career decisions; rather, teachers’ ability to refigure their identity within the figured world of teaching shaped career trajectory. Key factors such as ability to address disequilibrium, teacher identity, agency, and collaborative capacity are examined. Implications call for pre-service preparation and professional development to navigate cultures of schools, amended administrative involvement in teacher retention, and policy reform acknowledging the complexity of teachers’ figured worlds

APASS Landolt-Sloan BVgri photometry of RAVE stars. I. Data, effective temperatures and reddenings

We provide APASS photometry in the Landolt BV and Sloan g'r'i' bands for all the 425,743 stars included in the latest 4th RAVE Data Release. The internal accuracy of the APASS photometry of RAVE stars, expressed as error of the mean of data obtained and separately calibrated over a median of 4 distinct observing epochs and distributed between 2009 and 2013, is 0.013, 0.012, 0.012, 0.014 and 0.021 mag for B, V, g', r' and i' band, respectively. The equally high external accuracy of APASS photometry has been verified on secondary Landolt and Sloan photometric standard stars not involved in the APASS calibration process, and on a large body of literature data on field and cluster stars, confirming the absence of offsets and trends. Compared with the Carlsberg Meridian Catalog (CMC-15), APASS astrometry of RAVE stars is accurate to a median value of 0.098 arcsec. Brightness distribution functions for the RAVE stars have been derived in all bands. APASS photometry of RAVE stars, augmented by 2MASS JHK infrared data, has been chi2 fitted to a densely populated synthetic photometric library designed to widely explore in temperature, surface gravity, metallicity and reddening. Resulting Teff and E(B-V), computed over a range of options, are provided and discussed, and will be kept updated in response to future APASS and RAVE data releases. In the process it is found that the reddening caused by an homogeneous slab of dust, extending for 140 pc on either side of the Galactic plane and responsible for E(B-V,poles)=0.036 +/- 0.002 at the galactic poles, is a suitable approximation of the actual reddening encountered at Galactic latitudes |b|>=25 deg.Comment: Astronomical Journal, in press. Resolution of Figures degrated to match arXiv file size limit

Understanding Spectral Variability and Time Lags in Accreting Black Holes

I review the temporal/spectral data of accreting black hole sources paying most attention to the properties of the temporal variability such as photon energy dependent auto- and cross-correlation functions, average shot profiles and hardness ratios, and the Fourier frequency dependent time/phase lags. These statistics characterize spectral changes at short time scales that are otherwise impossible to study by direct spectral analysis. The data provide strong constraints on the theoretical models for X-ray production in accreting black holes. Models for the spectral variability of the Comptonized component are briefly reviewed. It is also shown that Compton reflection can have significant impact on the observed temporal characteristics.Comment: 14 pages; Invited review at the 33rd COSPAR Scientific Assembly, Warsaw, Poland, July, 2000. Accepted for publication in Advances in Space Researc