Acute psychiatric ward rules: a review of the literature

This literature review forms a background element of a comparative study of two acute psychiatric wards in the East End of London. The research focused on ward rules as a means of investigating the relationship between the flexibility/inflexibility of ward nursing regimes and patient outcomes. Previous studies identified a relationship between ward rules and patient aggression. Other studies identified a link between absconding by inpatients and nurses’ attitudes towards rule enforcement. However, an in-depth exploration of psychiatric ward rules from the perspective of nurses and patients has not been undertaken previously

Sinc-Galerkin estimation of diffusivity in parabolic problems

A fully Sinc-Galerkin method for the numerical recovery of spatially varying diffusion coefficients in linear partial differential equations is presented. Because the parameter recovery problems are inherently ill-posed, an output error criterion in conjunction with Tikhonov regularization is used to formulate them as infinite-dimensional minimization problems. The forward problems are discretized with a sinc basis in both the spatial and temporal domains thus yielding an approximate solution which displays an exponential convergence rate and is valid on the infinite time interval. The minimization problems are then solved via a quasi-Newton/trust region algorithm. The L-curve technique for determining an approximate value of the regularization parameter is briefly discussed, and numerical examples are given which show the applicability of the method both for problems with noise-free data as well as for those whose data contains white noise

Library Anxiety of Law Students: A Study Utilizing the Multidimensional Library Anxiety Scale

Abstract The purpose of this study was to determine whether law students experienced library anxiety and, if so, which components contributed to that anxiety. The Multidimensional Library Anxiety Scale (MLAS) developed by Dr. Doris Van Kampen was used to assess library anxiety levels of law students. The MLAS is a 53 question Likert scale instrument that measures the construct of library anxiety. Participants in the study were law students enrolled in a private Midwestern university during the 2009-2010 academic year who completed the survey instrument. Law students are a unique graduate school population who undergo an extremely rigorous and competitive course of study, which often involves detailed legal research. As a result, they frequently utilize the library, whether on-site or online. If law students suffer from high levels of library anxiety, it could impact their ability to complete assignments and achieve high academic excellence. Through better understanding of law students\u27 library anxiety levels, law school educators and librarians may be in a position to begin reducing or alleviating those anxieties. Due to the fact that this was the first time the MLAS was used with law students and only its second use, a confirmatory factor analysis was performed. The confirmatory factor analysis resulted in an inadequate fit. As a result, a principal components analysis was undertaken, which resulted in six components that were somewhat similar, but not identical, to the prior research study using the MLAS instrument. The six identified components were named as follows: (i) general library and research anxiety (LibResearch); (ii) comfort with technology and online access (TechOnline); (iii) perceived value of the understanding how to use the library (ValueLib); (iv) comfort with the library as a physical place (ComfortLib); (v) perceived value of using the library in-person (LibInperson); and, (vi) comfort with the library staff (LibStaff). The findings of this study indicated that law students exhibit moderate levels of overall library anxiety and varying levels of library anxiety on the six components. In particular, evening division law students had higher levels of library anxiety as it pertained to comfort with the library staff. Also, law students who used the library in person one or fewer times per semester encountered greater library anxiety as it pertained to general library and research anxiety. Additionally, law students who used the library online one or fewer times per semester had higher library anxiety related to comfort with technology and online access. Results indicated that overall library anxiety and on the six components did not differ based upon gender or year in law school. Lastly, library anxiety on the six components did not differ based upon law students\u27 age or grade point average ranges