Worldviews and the American West: The Life of the Place Itself

A diverse group of writers and scholars follow the lead of noted folklorist Barre Toelken and consider, from the inside, the ways in which varied cultures in the American West understand and express their relations to the world around them. As Barre Toelken puts it in The Dynamics of Folklore, \u27Worldview\u27 refers to the manner in which a culture sees and expresses its relation to the world around it. In Worldviews and the American West, seventeen notable authors and scholars, employing diverse approaches and styles, apply Toelken\u27s ideas about worldview to the American West. While the contributors represent a range of voices, methods, and visions, they are integrated through their focus on the theme of worldview in one region. Worldviews and the American West includes essays by Margaret K. Brady, Hal Cannon, Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer, James S. Griffith, Barry Lopez, Robert McCarl, Elliott Oring, Twilo Scofield, Steve Siporin, Kim Stafford, C. W. Sullivan III, Jeannie B. Thomas, George Venn, George B. Wasson, and William A. Wilson. Each of the authors in this collection attempts to get inside one or more of the worldviews of the many cultures that have come to share and interpret the American West. The result is a lively mix of styles and voices as the authors\u27 own worldviews interact with the multiple perspectives of the diverse peoples (and, in Barry Lopez\u27s The Language of Animals, other species) of the West. This diversity matches the geography of the region they all call home and gives varied life and meaning to its physical and cultural landscape.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1022/thumbnail.jp

The Effects Of Nurse\u27s Mental Health On Quality Patient Outcomes: A Quality Improvement Study

Morale among nurses is declining rapidly, this could be due to the rising mental illnesses like anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, stress, worry and post-traumatic stress disorder. Not to mention the rate of suicide in female nurses is 11.97/ 100,000 compared to non-nurse females having a rate of 7.58/ 100,000. Also, male nurses have an incidence of suicide at a rate of 39.8/ 100,000 compared to non-nurse males at 28.2/ 100,000. A thorough literature review was conducted and a total of 40 studies were reviewed. Common themes that emerged were A decrease in nursing staff retention related to low satisfaction, lack of resources, unfair compensation, and lack of communication,” the higher that staffing levels are, the better clinical outcomes and the better the patient\u27s experience is, frontline health care workers are at an increased risk for suffering from mental illness which directly affects work performance, patient care and outcomes, and life outside of work. An important conclusion showed that a nurse\u27s mental health status affects the quality of patient care and positive outcomes. As a result of this literature review an intervention was developed in the form of workshops for different coping strategies, stress and other information for support/ discussion groups that could be provided to nursing staff.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2021/1039/thumbnail.jp

Salary Negotiation among Dietetics Professionals: Lived Experiences and a Three-Pronged Approach to Advancing Negotiation Skills and Confidence

There is a lack of tools and training to assist in salary and benefit (S&B) negotiations within the nutrition profession. This study is the first to analyze thoughts, feelings, and experiences with S&B negotiations among nutrition and dietetics professionals. The 32-item, web-based, cross-sectional survey study was completed by English-speaking individuals of any gender who identified as a “nutrition and dietetics professional,” were 18 years of age or older in the United States or US Territory. Participant demographics, experience, confidence, and success with negotiation of S&B, value of negotiation, and interest in learning more were the primary outcome measures determined before data collection. Means, standard deviations, and ranges were calculated for ordinal data with frequencies on nominal data. ANOVAs were conducted to evaluate relationships between demographics and negotiation. Participants (N = 1239) were mostly white (90.2%), female (94.5%), registered dietitian (RD) (96.8%) members of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (96.1%). Clinical practitioners accounted for the largest practice area (38.5%). Non-RD professionals had a significantly higher mean for experience with negotiation than RD’s, DTR’s and participants eligible for the RD exam (P = 0.008) and had higher confidence (P = 0.001). Clinical dietitians had significantly lower satisfaction with current salary (P \u3c 0.001) and experience (P \u3c 0.001), confidence (P \u3c 0.001), and success (P \u3c 0.001) with negotiation but had significantly higher interest in advancing negotiation skills (P = 0.017) than all other practice areas. Early education, exposure, and empowerment are key factors in improving the negotiation experience that begins in the undergraduate experience and continues well into professional practice

Improving Patient Outcomes With High Nurse To Patient Ratios: A Quality Improvement Study

According to the United States Registered Nurse Workforce Report Card and Shortage Forecast: A Revisit published in the May/June 2018 issue of the American Journal of Medical Quality, a shortage of registered nurses is projected to spread across the country between 2016 and 2030. Surveyed nurses see the shortage in the future as a catalyst for increasing stress on nurses (98%), lowering patient care quality (93%) and causing nurses to leave the profession (93%) (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2021). A thorough literature review was conducted, and 40 studies were reviewed. Common themes that emerged include: high nurse to patient ratios increased the risk for hospital acquired infections, higher levels of understaffing are associated with higher mistreatment rates, and there is a decrease in patient outcomes associated with nurse understaffing. A set of guidelines have been developed to assist the nursing staff during a shortage of nurses or nursing technicians.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2021/1026/thumbnail.jp

Opening the Woods: Towards a Quantification of Neolithic Clearance Around the Somerset Levels and Moors

Environmental reconstructions from pollen records collected within archaeological landscapes have traditionally taken a broadly narrative approach, with few attempts made at hypothesis testing or formal assessment of uncertainty. This disjuncture between the traditional interpretive approach to palynological data and the requirement for detailed, locally specific reconstructions of the landscapes in which people lived has arguably hindered closer integration of palaeoecological and archaeological datasets in recent decades. Here we implement a fundamentally different method for reconstructing past land cover from pollen records to the landscapes of and around the Somerset Levels and Moors — the Multiple Scenario Approach (MSA) — to reconstruct land cover for a series of 200-year timeslices covering the period 4200–2000 cal BC. Modelling of both archaeological and sediment chronologies enables integration of reconstructed changes in land cover with archaeological evidence of contemporary Neolithic human activity. The MSA reconstructions are presented as a series of land cover maps and as graphs of quantitative measures of woodland clearance tracked over time. Our reconstructions provide a more nuanced understanding of the scale and timing of Neolithic clearance than has previously been available from narrative based interpretations of pollen data. While the archaeological record tends to promote a view of long-term continuity in terms of the persistent building of wooden structures in the wetlands, our new interpretation of the palynological data contributes a more dynamic and varying narrative. Our case study demonstrates the potential for further integration of archaeological and palynological datasets, enabling us to get closer to the landscapes in which people lived

Worldviews and the American West: The Life of the Place Itself

A diverse group of writers and scholars follow the lead of noted folklorist Barre Toelken and consider, from the inside, the ways in which varied cultures in the American West understand and express their relations to the world around them. As Barre Toelken puts it in The Dynamics of Folklore, ""'Worldview' refers to the manner in which a culture sees and expresses its relation to the world around it."" In Worldviews and the American West, seventeen notable authors and scholars, employing diverse approaches and styles, apply Toelken's ideas about worldview to the American West. While the contributors represent a range of voices, methods, and visions, they are integrated through their focus on the theme of worldview in one region. Worldviews and the American West includes essays by Margaret K. Brady, Hal Cannon, Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer, James S. Griffith, Barry Lopez, Robert McCarl, Elliott Oring, Twilo Scofield, Steve Siporin, Kim Stafford, C. W. Sullivan III, Jeannie B. Thomas, George Venn, George B. Wasson, and William A. Wilson. Each of the authors in this collection attempts to get inside one or more of the worldviews of the many cultures that have come to share and interpret the American West. The result is a lively mix of styles and voices as the authors' own worldviews interact with the multiple perspectives of the diverse peoples (and, in Barry Lopez's ""The Language of Animals,"" other species) of the West. This diversity matches the geography of the region they all call home and gives varied life and meaning to its physical and cultural landscape

Tall Tales and Sales

Is there anything significant left to say about tall tales? The apparent simplicity of the genre and the vast literature already written about it, some of which will be addressed below, might lead one to think that the answer must be no. Yet, as is the case with folklore generally, just when we think our simple subject has been exhausted, we discover new layers of meaning tucked away in a tale, in silence, or in newly emerging uses