Community- and hospital-based nurses' implementation of evidence-based practice: are there any differences?

The aim of this paper is to discuss the impact of nurses’ beliefs, knowledge and skills on the implementation of evidence-based practice (EBP) in hospital and community settings. EBP refers to the implementation of the most up-to-date robust research into clinical practice. Barriers have been well-documented and traditionally include negative beliefs of nurses as well as a lack of time, knowledge and skills. However, with degree entry nursing and a focus on community health care provision, what has changed? A comprehensive search of contemporary literature (2010-2015) was completed. The findings of this review show that the traditionally acknowledged barriers of a lack of time, knowledge and skills remained, however, nurses’ beliefs towards EBP however were more positive, but positive beliefs did not affect the intentions to implement EBP or knowledge and skills of EBP. Nurses in hospital and community settings reported similar barriers and facilitators

Mentors' attitudes, beliefs and implementation of evidence based practice when mentoring student nurses in the community: a qualitative study

Background: Nursing practice based on evidence improves patient care. Mentors supporting student nurses are in clinical placements are in a unique position to demonstrate evidence based practice (EBP). The NMC (2008) suggest mentors must be able to identify and apply research and EBP, increase or review the evidence-base used to support practice and support student nurses in applying an evidence base to their own practice. However, there is limited literature on nurse mentor’s attitudes, beliefs and implementation of EBP when mentoring student nurses in the community. Methods Data were collected via 7 focus groups in 2015 with 33 community nurse mentors from one NHS Foundation Trust. Community settings of the mentors included: community hospital inpatients and outpatients, minor injury units, and district nurse teams including specialist teams such as long term conditions, tissue viability, respiratory and cardiac rehabilitation. The interview schedule was based on information from a pilot group and previous literature. Data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Results Emergent super-ordinate themes from community nurse mentors included: 1) implementation of EBP 2) community nursing versus acute hospital nursing 3) implications of degree entry nursing 4) bidirectional learning 5) being part of the students’ journey a role model 6) EBP versus practice based evidence 7) barriers: IT, time, student attitudes, agency staff, mentorship course, paperwork 8) facilitators: IT, time, student attitudes, resources. Discussion All nurse mentors believed their clinical practice to be informed from evidence, specifically the structure provided from guidelines and policies both nationally and locally. Reviewing guidelines occurred in job descriptions of more senior roles. Mentors invested time and energy in supporting students to implement EBP as recognised the importance of educating the next generation of nurses. Issues regarding the mentorship course arose including; accessibility, length of the course and content

“The problem was dying badly, and the answer was dying well” Assisted Dying: A policy briefing

This briefing summarises research about assisted dying, conducted by Dr Jaimee Mallion, Lauren Murphy and colleagues, between January and May 2022. Interviews were conducted with eighteen people who had experience of terminal illness, were family members of those who had experienced a ‘bad death’ or had travelled abroad for an assisted death

"Ending death, not ending life": Understanding Positive Attitudes toward Assisted Dying in the UK

Over 200 million people worldwide have access to a form of assisted dying, with the number of countries legalising assisted dying growing. Yet, in the UK, assisted dying is not available and those that help a loved one to die are at risk of prosecution. This research explored why people hold positive attitudes toward assisted dying. Eighteen individuals who are terminally ill, family members of those who experienced a bad death, and family members who helped take a loved one abroad for an assisted death were interviewed. Findings suggest that assisted dying allows quality of life, enabling people to fulfil their basic human needs of Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness at the end of life. Furthermore, feeling like a burden was not the driving factor behind the pursuit of an assisted death, instead pain, suffering, loss of diginity and autonomy were the most important reasons. Importantly, participants indicated that assisted dying legislation will enable more safeguards than current unregulated processes, with some terminally ill individuals attempting to end their suffering alone or travelling abroad to access an assisted death. Overall, findings are supportive of a law change in favour of assisted dying in the UK

In Memoriam: Edward Cameron Kirby (1934 – 2019)

Edward Cameron Kirby (August 25th 1934–January 19th 2019) was a Scottish scientist, a Fellow of the (British) Royal Society of Chemistry and a member of the International Academy of Mathematical Chemistry, who made contributions to a unique combination of areas: problem solving in practical Chemistry, editorial work in Nutrition and Health, Chemical Graph Theory, and the use of small personal computers in Computational Chemistry, of which he was an early pioneer. For a period of some forty years, he was a keen and dependable supporter of Mathematical Chemistry in Croatia, even in the dark days of 1991–1995 and the post-war years 1996–2000. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

An Analytical Illustration of the Relevance of Molecular Topology to the Aufbau Process

The ideas of Mallion and Rouvray (1978), concerning the relevance of molecular topology to the prospects of obtaining, on the basis of the Aufbau Principle, a unique, n:-electronic ground-state configuration for an existent or hypothetical conjugated-system, are extended by considering a series of networks introduced by Balaban in 1978. It is shown by exploiting the properties of the eigenvalues of circulant matrices that the graph spectrum of a general member of this series may be found analytically in closed form. From this it is further deduced that application of the Aufbau process to the »Balaban graphs«, BN, will lead to the establishment of a unique, ground-state configuration if, and only if, N is divisible by 4. The Balaban graphs are thus shown to constitute a series in which networks that give rise to a unique, ground-state configuration when the Aufbau Principle is invoked alternate with ones that do not. As a result of these observations, it is emphasised that, despite what is often assumed to the contrary, the existence of a unique and unambiguous »n-electronic, ground-state configuration « for an arbitrary network should not be taken for granted

Topological Ring-Currents in Condensed Benzenoid Hydrocarbons

Topological ring-currents are defined as being pi-electron ring-current intensities in condensed, benzenoid hydrocarbons that (i) are calculated by the simplest Hückel-London-Pople- McWeeny method, (ii) are based on a molecular geometry of regular hexagons of carbon atoms, and (iii) are expressed as a ratio to the corresponding ring-current intensity calculated, by the same method, for benzene. Once a particular benzenoid hydrocarbon has been specified, such topological ring-currents are predetermined and do not further depend on any subjective (or other) parameters; they are, therefore, purely graph-theoretical indices, reliant solely on knowledge of a vertex-adjacency matrix for the graph representing the connectivity of the carbon atoms in the benzenoid molecule under study. For convenient reference, tables of all known topological ring-current intensities – some published, and others so-far unpublished – are presented for future evaluation and possible comparison with other graph-theoretical indices that characterise the individual rings of a condensed, benzenoid hydrocarbon

An Analytical Illustration of the Relevance of Molecular Topology to the Aufbau Process

The ideas of Mallion and Rouvray (1978), concerning the relevance of molecular topology to the prospects of obtaining, on the basis of the Aufbau Principle, a unique, n:-electronic ground-state configuration for an existent or hypothetical conjugated-system, are extended by considering a series of networks introduced by Balaban in 1978. It is shown by exploiting the properties of the eigenvalues of circulant matrices that the graph spectrum of a general member of this series may be found analytically in closed form. From this it is further deduced that application of the Aufbau process to the »Balaban graphs«, BN, will lead to the establishment of a unique, ground-state configuration if, and only if, N is divisible by 4. The Balaban graphs are thus shown to constitute a series in which networks that give rise to a unique, ground-state configuration when the Aufbau Principle is invoked alternate with ones that do not. As a result of these observations, it is emphasised that, despite what is often assumed to the contrary, the existence of a unique and unambiguous »n-electronic, ground-state configuration « for an arbitrary network should not be taken for granted

On the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of certain finite, vertex-weighted, bipartite graphs

AbstractThe established, spectral characterisation of bipartite graphs with unweighted vertices (which are here termed homogeneous graphs) is extended to those bipartite graphs (called heterogeneous) in which all of the vertices in one set are weighted h1 , and each of those in the other set of the bigraph is weighted h2. All the eigenvalues of a homogeneous bipartite graph occur in pairs, around zero, while some of the eigenvalues of an arbitrary, heterogeneous graph are paired around 12(h1 + h2), the remainder having the value h2 (or hl). The well-documented, explicit relations between the eigenvectors belonging to “paired” eigenvalues of homogeneous graphs are extended to relate the components of the eigenvectors associated with each couple of “paired” eigenvalues of the corresponding heterogeneous graph. Details are also given of the relationships between the eigenvectors of an arbitrary, homogeneous, bipartite graph and those of its heterogeneous analogue

Ring-current properties of bispentalenes and related structures - Comparison of Ab initio and Hückel-London-Pople-McWeeny (HLPM) 'topological' calculations

Two different groups (Cao et al. (2015) and Sundholm et al. (2016)) have recently reported (a) experimental Nuclear Magnetic Reso-nance data and ab initio Nucleus Independent Chemical Shift (NICS) calculations, and (b) GIMIC (Gauge Including Magnetically Induced Cur-rents) ab initio computations, on the magnetic properties of some derivatives of [4n+2]-π-electron conjugated systems called 'bispentalenes'. These are formed by annellating two pentalene groups with a benzene or a naphthalene moiety. The same structures are here subjected to calculations based on the simple, pseudo graph-theoretical, Hückel-London-Pople-McWeeny (HLPM) 'topological' ring-current approach. In addition, HLPM calculations are presented on some structures with [4n]-perimeters that were also studied by Cao et al., as well as some other related, specially 'designed', [4n]- and [4n+2]-perimeter structures of our own choosing. The aim is to see whether there is qualitative, or even semi-quantitative, agreement between a (presumably) numerically accurate but necessarily complex ab initio calculation and a conceptually simple, quasi graph-theoretical one - the HLPM approach - whose predictions depend only on the carbon-carbon connectivity of the struc-ture being investigated, and on the (geometrical) areas of its individual constituent rings. The HLPM calculations agree with the more-sophis-ticated studies that all the structures examined, whether they be [4n]- or [4n+2]-perimeter systems, bear paramagnetic π-electron currents around their perimeters. Furthermore, all the many pentalene moieties in these conjugated systems appear to undergo incorporation into these bispentalene structures with - to greater or lesser extents - their characteristic perimeter circulations in the paramagnetic sense sur-viving intact. Quantitative regression comparisons between GIMIC ab initio integrated bond-current susceptibilities and HLPM bond-current intensities in a small sample of bonds in the structures studied by Sundholm et al. are found to have a correlation coefficient of 0.94 - not as high as that obtained (0.98) when similar data for a larger sample of bonds in several alternant, condensed, benzenoid were previously com-pared. It is again emphasised that Pople and Untch's rule about [4n+2]-annulenes being diamagnetic and [4n]-ones being paramagnetic - like the famous Hückel Rule itself - rigorously applies only to monocycles