Retaining older experienced nurses in the Northern Territory of Australia: a qualitative study exploring opportunities for post-retirement contributions

Introduction: Many countries are facing an ageing of the nursing workforce and increasing workforce shortages. This trend is due to members of the ‘baby boomer’ generation leaving the workforce for retirement and a declining pool of younger people entering the nursing profession. New approaches to engaging older nurses in the workforce are becoming common in nursing globally but have yet to be adapted to remote contexts such as the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia. This article reports findings from a qualitative study of 15 participants who explored perceived opportunities for and barriers to implementing flexible strategies to engage older nurses in the NT workforce after they resign from full-time work. Methods: The study used a descriptive qualitative design. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with NT nurses approaching retirement (six nurses aged 50 years and over) and their managers (n=9). Clinicians were employed in practice settings that included hospitals, community health and ‘Top End’ (north of and including the town of Katherine), as well as Central Australian remote area communities. One participant who was employed as primary health centre manager in a remote community also held a clinical role. Managers were employed in both senior and line management positions in community and remote health as well as NT hospitals. Results: Three major themes emerged from the data. First, interview participants identified potential for flexible post-retirement engagement of older nurses and a range of concrete engagement opportunities 'on and off the floor’ were identified. Second, the main barriers to post-retirement engagement were an existing focus on the recruitment of younger Australian and overseas-trained nurses, and the remoteness of nursing practice settings from the residential locations of retired nurses. Third, existing informal system of post-retirement working arrangements, characterized by ad hoc agreements between individual nurses and managers, is poorly suited to scaling up. Conclusion: A knowledge and change-management approach is required to change employers’ views of the value of older nurses. Better engagement of those nurses may assist the NT Department of Health address the severe nursing workforce shortages and prevent the loss of significant remote area nursing knowledge

Zusammenhänge zwischen Kalttestwert, Anbauverfahren und Ertragsbildung bei Vermehrungssaatgut von Winterroggen [Correlation between "coldtest" value, production method and yield in winter rye seeds for multiplication]

Proben von zertifiziertem Saatgut aus ökologischem Anbau werden bei 10°C einer speziellen Keimprobe (Kalttest) unterzogen, um bodenbürtige Krankheiten festzustellen. Proben mit einem Anteil von mehr als 80% gesunder Pflanzen (Kalttestwert) können als Saatgut verwendet werden. Proben unter 80% müssen als Nahrungs- oder Futtermittel verwendet werden. In einem Feldversuch wurden Proben mit Kalttestwerten unter 80% mit Proben der gleichen Sorte verglichen, deren Kalttestwert mindestens 80% betrug. Unter normalen Anbaubedingungen bestand kein Ertragsunterschied zwischen den Proben bis zu einem Wert von 60%. Unter Stresseinfluss (Getreide als Vorfrucht, späte Aussaat) bewirkten bereits wenig abgesenkte Kalttestwerte signifikante Ertragsverluste. Um gute Qualität von zertifiziertem Saatgut zu gewährleisten, sollte der Kalttestwert bei 80% bleiben

Magnetoconductance oscillations in quasiballistic multimode nanowires

We calculate the conductance of quasi-one-dimensional nanowires with electronic states confined to a surface charge layer, in the presence of a uniform magnetic field. Two-terminal magnetoconductance (MC) between two leads deposited on the nanowire via tunnel barriers is dominated by density-of-states (DOS) singularities, when the leads are well apart. There is also a mesoscopic correction due to a higher-order coherent tunneling between the leads for small lead separation. The corresponding MC structure depends on the interference between electron propagation via different channels connecting the leads, which in the simplest case, for the magnetic field along the wire axis, can be crudely characterized by relative winding numbers of paths enclosing the magnetic flux. In general, the MC oscillations are aperiodic, due to the Zeeman splitting, field misalignment with the wire axis, and a finite extent of electron distribution across the wire cross section, and are affected by spin-orbit coupling. The quantum-interference MC traces contain a wealth of information about the electronic structure of multichannel wires, which would be complimentary to the DOS measurements. We propose a four-terminal configuration to enhance the relative contribution of the higher-order tunneling processes and apply our results to realistic InAs nanowires carrying several quantum channels in the surface charge-accumulation layer.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Boundary Effects on Spectral Properties of Interacting Electrons in One Dimension

The single electron Green's function of the one-dimensional Tomonaga-Luttinger model in the presence of open boundaries is calculated with bosonization methods. We show that the critical exponents of the local spectral density and of the momentum distribution change in the presence of a boundary. The well understood universal bulk behavior always crosses over to a boundary dominated regime for small energies or small momenta. We show this crossover explicitly for the large-U Hubbard model in the low-temperature limit. Consequences for photoemission experiments are discussed.Comment: revised and reformatted paper to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. (Feb. 1996). 5 pages (revtex) and 3 embedded figures (macro included). A complete postscript file is available from http://FY.CHALMERS.SE/~eggert/luttinger.ps or by request from [email protected]