GSTF Digital Library (GSTF-DL): Open Journal Systems (Global Science and Technology Forum)
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The transition challenges faced by new graduate nurses in their first year of professional experience
Full text linkThough nurses form the largest group of healthcare professionals in most of the healthcare systems, the transition from an academic to a real-world setting is characterized by high stress and reality shock, which contributes to a high turnover rate during the first year of practice. This qualitative study aimed to illustrate the transition experience of new graduate nurses and to identify the factors affecting their adaptation processes. Registered nurses who had completed university nursing training program and possessed about a year of professional nursing experience in Hong Kong were recruited for semi-structured, face-to-face individual interviews. The data was saturated after 14 new graduate nurses had been interviewed. The participants experienced complicated perceptions with fluctuating feelings ranging from frustration to a sense of accomplishment during the transition period. Four interrelated human and work related factors were illuminated to influence their adaptation to transition: 1) professional accountability and competency, 2) personal adaptation attitude and ability, 3) interpersonal relationships with colleagues and 4) institutional/workplace support and orientation. The findings demonstrated a close link between perceptions and the interrelated factors affecting transition experiences and adaptation processes. Education and healthcare institutions should provide more training and support in the promotion of emotional well-being, the improvement of professional knowledge and skills, and in-service adaptation enhancement programs before and during the transition. Further comprehensive studies with longitudinal designs are recommended to explore the perceptions of new graduate nurses. Keyword
Vicarious Exposure to Trauma in Australian Migration Agents: The Role of Empathy and Psychological Capital in Compassion Satisfaction
Full text linkAustralian migration agents may be under pressure in their work helping migrants affected by the global refugee crisis obtain their visas. The present research explored the factors that facilitate positive outcomes from work with traumatised people. Compassion satisfaction is essential for helping professionals, as it enables them to obtain pleasure from being able to help others and to sustain in their work. The current cross-sectional study aimed to examine how empathy and psychological capital affect compassion satisfaction in migration agents. Online survey data was collected from 158 Australian Registered Migration Agents aged 18 to 78 years who had worked with trauma-exposed people. The current research suggested psychological capital as a predictor of compassion satisfaction and it was the first to test a population of migration agents. The present study found evidence that empathy and psychological capital may be important means for promoting compassion satisfaction. Further studies are recommended with larger and more representative samples to confirm the findings and further explore the complex relationship between empathy, psychological capital, and compassion satisfaction
Tailored Intervention for Parents to Promote their Adolescents’ Vaccination against HPV
Full text linkWe conducted a pilot study to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effects of a computer-tailored intervention for parents to promote their adolescents’ HPV vaccination. Among 29 parents recruited from clinics (n = 24; 83%) and the community (21%) who completed intervention and pre- and post-intervention assessments, all (100%) intended to vaccinate their adolescents aged 11-17 after the intervention. Furthermore, all parents recruited from the clinics consented to their adolescents receiving the first HPV vaccine, except for one parent who wanted to wait until the child turned 13 years old. Regarding the theoretical mediators, results of Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test suggested significant positive changes in HPV-related knowledge and facilitators over time. Nearly all (97%) of the parents reported that the intervention helped them make a decision about their child’s HPV vaccination and was a good way for the parents to learn about HPV and the vaccines. All parents stated that they would recommend this intervention to other parents who had unvaccinated adolescents
Functioning of psychiatric daycare users in Japan and the background factors that affect their abilities
Full text linkThe present study aimed to clarify the state of and background factors affecting functioning in Users of psychiatric daycare centers in Japan. A questionnaire survey based on the Self-Rating Scale for Functioning of Individuals with Mental Disorders was conducted on 1,176 Users and 916 psychiatric hospital outpatients between September 2008 and February 2009. The mean functioning score of Users was 91.4±19.1 points, which was higher than that of Patients. Functioning scores were higher in Users with goals compared to those without goals. Background factors that led to improvement in functioning scores of Users were short duration of daycare use, having a goal other than to control symptoms, high assertiveness, and doing most of the cleaning at hom
Energy Consumption Towards a Better Future: Knowledge Practice and Attitude of college students in UAEU
Full text linkEnergy exists in many different forms such as light energy, heat energy, mechanical energy, gravitational energy, electrical energy, sound energy, chemical energy, Nuclear or atomic energy and so on. These forms of energy can be relocated and converted between one another. When source of energy end up as electricity, it moves with many Transformations before it can power the light bulb. The aim of this study was to explore the level of student’s awareness on the importance of saving energy as well as to investigate knowledge practice and attitude towards energy consumption.Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect the data through interview among students of the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) in Al Ain. Secondary data’s were collected from Al Ain Municipality. The first outcome of the research was the key cause of overuse of energy consumption is a lack of awareness. The second was that consumers are unable to assess whether their consumption is low, average or high and lastly most of the respondents understand how the energy consumption effects the environment and they will try their best to help manage and control this issue. Overall the results show the negative effects of overuse of energy consumption to our environment and suggest that to bridge the gap; human beings should change their behavior to save our environment. Therefore, major challenge will be to introduce a set of uniform energy policies to address specific constraints to the household adoption of energy conservation practice
Congestion; Delay; Origin and Destination; Traffic; Travel Time
Full text linkThis study attempts to make use of traffic behaviour on the aggregate level to estimate congestion on urban arterial and sub-arterial roads of a city exhibiting heterogeneous traffic conditions by breaking the route into independent segments and approximating the origin-destination based traffic flow behaviour of the segments. The expected travel time in making a trip is modelled against sectional traffic characteristics (flow and speed) at origin and destination points of road segments, and roadway and segment traffic characteristics such as diversion routes are also tried in accounting for travel time. Predicted travel time is then used along with free flow time to determine the state of congestion on the segments using a congestion index (CI). A development of this kind may help in understanding traffic and congestion behaviour practically using easily accessible inputs, limited only to the nodes, and help in improving road network planning and management
Shifting pedagogical priorities in facilitating mixed methods research including postgraduate student’s reflections.
Full text linkTeaching mixed methods research for quality improvement and translating evidence base practice to address meaningful change has become increasingly popular. In times of evidence-based and data-driven calls for improvement it is important to provide students with knowledge and skills about mixed methods research that will help with translation of research into practice. The literature identifies diverse pedagogical challenges that students face within mixed methods classrooms. Students are not usually equipped in both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The knowledge gap can result in deep pedagogical challenges compromising student’s ability to fully understand the mixed methods paradigm. Although we are shifting from a teacher centred (pedagogical) to a learner centred, self-directed approach (andragogical) student reluctance to engage with blackboard activities and critical appraisal of mixed methods design and papers persists.The present study explores the student perception about learning mixed methods research by collecting written reflections at the end of a mixed methods post graduate study day and across a post graduate module on mixed methods research. A reflective teaching-learning methodology was employed aligned to the self-inquiry model. Using a systematic framework for content data analysis, two distinct categories were revealed. These relate to ‘barriers’ and ‘enablers’ that influenced the quality of the learning event. This yielded four themes including ‘grappling with mixed methods research’, ‘classroom challenges’ moving to ‘creative engagement with mixed methods’ and ‘pedagogic teacher –student interactions’. To tackle the myriad of challenges encountered, innovative teaching strategies and the sustainability of student centred approaches will be considered to lever up and empower the learning climate in mixed methods classrooms and build a pedagogical culture.  Â
Misguided oversupply of dwellings causes housing affordability problem in Sydney
Full text linkIn most cases, an oversupply of dwellings will reduce house prices and therefore will make them more affordable. However, in Sydney, building more new housing supply causes an upward pressure on residential property prices and thus making home unaffordable. Even most parties such as politicians encourage more supply in an oversupply condition as an effort to ease or reduce exuberance house prices. This paper has revealed an evidence-based on series data of statistic that shows this situation. The finding is significant as empty houses or excess supply do exist and being held by investors to inflate house prices further while the government policy is to build more supply that could increase risks beyond financial risk. Understanding the demand for home ownership is therefore important to solve housing affordability problem
BIM Standards Around The World A Review of BIM Standards in the Global AEC Industry and BIM Roles of Project Stakeholders
Full text linkThis paper investigates the nature of national BIM standards amoung various countries and examine the presence of standards that clarify the BIM roles of project stakeholders such as project management consultant (PMC) at the various stages of the construction project lifecycle, including inception, design and construction. A research has been conducted which case BIM studies from UK, Norway, Finland, US, Canada, Singapore and Australia were reviewed. The study indicates that current BIM standards have mainly focused on explaining the model standards and BIM requirements. There are only a few national standards, such as the case of Singapore, which highlight the BIM objectives at each stage of the construction process, the project stakeholders that should be involved, and the deliverables. The specific roles of the various project stakeholders for each objective are not adequately clarified and hence likely to vary from one project and organization to anothe
HadoopSec: Sensitivity-aware Secure Data Placement Strategy for Big Data/Hadoop Platform using Prescriptive Analytics
Full text linkHadoop has become one of the key player in offeringdata analytics and data processing support for any organizationthat handles different shades of data management. Consideringthe current security offerings of Hadoop, companies areconcerned of building a single large cluster and onboardingmultiple projects on to the same common Hadoop cluster.Security vulnerability and privacy invasion due to maliciousattackers or inner users are the main argument points in anyHadoop implementation. In particular, various types of securityvulnerability occur due to the mode of data placement in HadoopCluster. When sensitive information is accessed by anunauthorized user or misused by an authorized person, they cancompromise privacy. In this paper, we intend to address theapproach of data placement across distributed DataNodes in asecure way by considering the sensitivity and security of theunderlying data. Our data placement strategy aims to adaptivelydistribute the data across the cluster using advanced machinelearning techniques to realize a more secured data/infrastructure.The data placement strategy discussed in this paper is highlyextensible and scalable to suit different sort of sensitivity/securityrequirements