Heart failure nursing in Australia: Challenges, strengths, and opportunities

Australia has a land mass similar to the United States of America, supporting a population of just over 20 million, which is distributed predominantly across the coastal perimeter. The Australian society is rich in cultural diversity fostered by decades of migration. Both these factors present challenges for health care. First, because resources are scare in rural and remote regions, health outcomes are poorer in these regions, especially among indigenous populations. Second, the cultural diversity of Australians is a challenge to providing evidence-based treatment recommendations. In Australia, in parallel with international trends, there is a strong association between socioeconomic status, chronic conditions, and health outcomes

A More Powerful Familywise Error Control Procedure for Evaluating Mean Equivalence

When one wishes to show that there are no meaningful differences between two or more groups, equivalence tests should be used, as a nonsignificant test of mean difference does not provide evidence regarding the equivalence of groups. When conducting all possible post-hoc pairwise comparisons, C, Caffo, Lauzon and Rohmel (2013) suggested dividing the alpha level by a correction of k2/4, where k is the number of groups to be compared, however this procedure can be conservative in some situations. This research proposes two modified stepwise procedures, based on this correction of k2/4, for controlling the familywise Type I error rate. Using a Monte Carlo simulation method, we show that, across a variety of conditions, adopting a stepwise procedure increases power, particularity when a configuration of means has greater than C - k2/4 power comparisons, while maintaining the familywise error rate at or below . Implications for psychological research and directions for future study are discussed

Orientation Online: The Surprising Benefits of Virtual New Faculty Orientation

This design case documents the reimagination of new faculty orientation for a mid-sized public university due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. This fully virtual iteration was facilitated during the summer of 2020 and is compared both to previous in-person iterations of new faculty orientation as well as a blended modality version of the orientation program offered in 2021. The redesign is explained using language from Puntedura’s (2006) Substitution- Augmentation- Modification- Redefinition (SAMR) model of technology application in distributed learning. Such terminology provided a helpful common vocabulary for a design team pressured to determine which elements of orientation needed to be fully reimagined for successful virtual implementation and where simple substitution would suffice. A description of synchronous elements from the fully virtual orientation as well as artifacts from the asynchronous portions is included. A lack of formal evaluation for the reimagined new faculty orientation space is shared as an element of design failure. The informal evaluation uncovered attendee appreciation of both flexibility and recursiveness, feedback our design team used to combat criticism of a lack of attention during virtual events. The paper concludes with a reflection on the need for transparent communication between event attendees, event designers, and other key invested partners (such as university administration) if the benefits of virtual orientation programming are to be adopted for our institution beyond emergency modalities

The caregiving perspective in heart failure: a population based study

Background: Heart failure (HF) is a frequent condition in the elderly and mortality is high. This study sought to describe the profile of those providing care in the community and their needs. Methods: The South Australian Health Omnibus is an annual, random, face-to-face, cross sectional survey conducted within the state. Having standardized data to the whole population, the study describes the subset of the population who identify that they actively cared for someone at the end of life with HF in the five years before survey administration