Maintaining a safe environment reflects a level of compassion and vigilance for patient welfare that is as important as any other aspect of competent health care. The way to improve safety is to learn about causes of error and use this knowledge to design systems of care to “... make errors less common and less harmful when they do occur” (p.78). As a result, researchers, policymakers, and prov...

OBJECTIVE The service type offered by a home care agency contracted by the Queensland government is not based on the qualifications of the worker providing the service, but the service itself. This allows agencies to substitute certain levels and categories of labour in order to provide a service to meet their contract obligations. This study investigated evidence of labour substitution between...

Single-molecule spectroscopy can monitor transitions between two microscopic states when these transitions are associated with the emission of photons. A general formalism is developed for obtaining the statistics of such transitions from a microscopic model when the dynamics is described by master or rate equations or their continuum analog, multidimensional reaction-diffusion equations. The f...

Compassion fatigue is the emotional exhaustion and stress that nurses can feel when caring for terminally ill patients. This can contribute to high nursing turnover rates, result in poor job satisfaction, and lead to decreased ability to provide quality care. Oncology nurses are vulnerable to compassion fatigue because they develop relationships with patients battling life-threatening illnesses...

Horizontal violence and bullying are pervasive throughout nursing. New graduate nurses are at higher risk. Challenged with the task of making the transition from student to practitioner, new graduates often lack the confidence and social connectivity that may ward off interpersonal conflict. Continued interpersonal violence directed at new graduates may lead to negative physical and psychologic...

AIM The aim of this study was to examine the influence of empowering work conditions and workplace incivility on nurses' experiences of burnout and important nurse retention factors identified in the literature. BACKGROUND A major cause of turnover among nurses is related to unsatisfying workplaces. Recently, there have been numerous anecdotal reports of uncivil behaviour in health care setti...

AIM To examine the role that work relationships have on two long-term care outcomes: job satisfaction and turnover intention. BACKGROUND It is easy to overlook the impact that human relations have in shaping work environments that are conducive to organizational effectiveness. Employee job satisfaction and retention are important organizational outcomes. METHODS Six hundred and seventy-five...

BACKGROUND Clinical guidance and support of nursing students in rural hospitals is a challenge for novice nurses, who rotate amongst accredited hospitals throughout the province for clinical exposure, and find themselves in an unfamiliar environment. Theory learned at the training college is integrated with clinical exposure at hospitals and supplemented through teaching by hospital staff. Nurs...