Are We Practicing What We Are Taught in Health Professions’ Education? Coproducing Health Care

Health-care providers and educators are inherently empathetic, compassionate, experienced professionals who entered their profession to assure the complementary missions of public health and health care. These missions work to ensure conditions in which people can be healthy via disease and injury prevention, health promotion, and timely, effective, coordinated care (1). The skills necessary to achieve these crucial outcomes (ie, listening to the patient and their family, exhibiting empathy, and understanding the significance of the social determinants of health, etc) are routinely taught in health professions’ education. To highlight the necessity for these representative competencies covered throughout the course of health professions’ education, the personal experience of one of the author’s children is reported as a narration. The purpose of communicating this patient experience is to remind health-care providers: (a) about the importance of not only listening but hearing the parents of our patients and the patients themselves, (b) to actively practice the art and skill of empathy as the health-care setting can be overwhelming for patients and their families, and (c) to consider the impact of the social determinants of health on one’s health status to date. This 5-part patient experience serves to strengthen our commitment to assure that we practice what we are taught with the goal to coproduce health with our patients and their families

Bearing Responsibility:Reconceiving RU486 and the regulation of women's reproductive decisions

This thesis explores the status of abortion in Australia and analyses the representations of women that are produced and relied upon in public discourse on this issue. Drawing predominantly on the field of corporeal feminist theory I examine the historical and political-legal context of abortion in Australia over time, and in particular debates concerning the medical abortion drug RU486. I argue that the debate has been informed by dualistic understandings of women as irrational, maternal vessels requiring paternalistic regulation in the interests of the reproduction of the nation. This thesis questions the assumption that oppostion to abortion is primarily motivated by concern for the foetus, and explores and elaborates the gendered and politico-cultural constructions of sexuality, the nation and women's 'natural' role that inform the debate. Finally, I demonstrate that constructs of morality, rationality, sexuality and the nation have: been informed and limited by dualistic imaginaries of women and in response I argue for the feminist potential of an alternative embodied ethical framework

Power-Assist Wheelchair Attachment

This senior design project sought to combine the best characteristics of manual and power wheelchairs by creating a battery-powered attachment to propel a manual wheelchair. The primary customer needs were determined to be affordability, portability, and travel on uneven surfaces. After the initial prototype, using a hub motor proved unsuccessful, so a second design was developed that consisted of a gear reduction motor and drive wheel connected to the back of the wheelchair by a trailing arm that could be easily attached/detached from the frame. The prototype of the second design succeeded in meeting most of the project goals related to cost, off-road capability, inclines, and range. Improvements can be made by reducing the attachment weight and improving user control of the device

Utilizing Blue Ocean Strategies for Electronic Health Care Documentation to Navigate the Red Ocean Waters of Health Care Reform

Health care is adrift in a sea of change. In order to navigate challenges, such as health care reform and meaningful use, new strategies are needed. This paper examines the application of health care informatics and leveraging of the electronic health record (EHR) as a strategic tool to impact documentation accuracy and charge capture outcomes in a large academic medical center’s surgical services department. UAB Hospital is a 1056 bed hospital located in Birmingham, Alabama with a perioperative department consisting of 32 general operating rooms located on the main campus. This emergent work from June of 2014 and ongoing examines a multifactorial approach using structural system factors combined with process and workflow redesign to improve outcomes. Preliminary results are promising with a reduction in documentation errors and a process redesign that includes data collection of error types for re-education and engagement of the end-user of the EHR, the staff nurses

Using a Computer Science-based Board Game to Develop Preschoolers\u27 Mathematics

Abstract is available to download

Using a Computer Science-Based Board Game to Develop Preschoolers\u27 Mathematics

There is a critical need to teach computer science (CS) in order to assure that our nation remains competitive globally [6]. CS is a new basic skill necessary for economic opportunity [6] but is rarely taught before age 6 and only using electronic devices [1]. This presents a challenge for those concerned with “screen time” inherent in electronic devices [2] and for children in poverty with little access to electronic devices [3]. Coding, creating a series of commands that a computer carries out, is a component of CS and can be introduced as early as preschool age and results in increased logical sequencing [5] (putting action commands in order). Missing from the research is the impact of coding with non-electronic formats on logical sequencing with children younger than age 6. Our study fills this need by using a non-electronic format with 4-year-olds. The purpose is to see if playing Robot Turtles, a board game designed to teach coding, will increase logical sequencing skills. Our hypothesis is that we will see a 10 times greater increase in logical sequencing in the children who play Robot Turtles than those playing Candy Land, a board game with no measurable effect on math skills [4

Overpumping Leads to California Groundwater Arsenic Threat

Water resources are being challenged to meet domestic, agricultural, and industrial needs. To complement finite surface water supplies that are being stressed by changes in precipitation and increased demand, groundwater is increasingly being used. Sustaining groundwater use requires considering both water quantity and quality. A unique challenge for groundwater use, as compared with surface water, is the presence of naturally occurring contaminants within aquifer sediments, which can enter the water supply. Here we find that recent groundwater pumping, observed through land subsidence, results in an increase in aquifer arsenic concentrations in the San Joaquin Valley of California. By comparison, historic groundwater pumping shows no link to current groundwater arsenic concentrations. Our results support the premise that arsenic can reside within pore water of clay strata within aquifers and is released due to overpumping. We provide a quantitative model for using subsidence as an indicator of arsenic concentrations correlated with groundwater pumping

Development and Application of a 1D Compaction Model to Understand 65 Years of Subsidence in the San Joaquin Valley

High rates of land subsidence, caused by groundwater overdraft, are resulting in millions of dollars of infrastructure damage in California\u27s San Joaquin Valley (SJV). In recent years, the use of interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) has enabled us to substantially improve our understanding of this subsidence. However, only very occasionally have the InSAR data been integrated with a physical model of subsurface compaction. Here, we have used InSAR and other data to parameterize and calibrate a 1D compaction model. We applied our model to a study area in the SJV where we had access to the necessary information on hydraulic head to develop model inputs. Our model simulated subsidence in the three aquifer system layers over the period 1952–2017, and is the first 1D compaction model in the SJV to simulate multiple aquifer system layers from the 1950s to 2017. The results from our model suggest that previous studies have significantly underestimated the time constants governing the slow, residual compaction of subsurface clays. We suggest that residual compaction of clays is a process that continues for decades-to-centuries, indicating that to significantly reduce subsidence requires some recovery of head, not just a stabilization. We also show how compaction in the lower, confined aquifer has accounted for over 90% of subsidence in the past 20 years. Although our study area is small, our findings are likely representative of the subsiding regions of the SJV, and our methodology can be applied to unconsolidated aquifer systems exhibiting subsidence worldwide