Magnet designation: What does it mean for me? Essay

Magnet designation â€Å"recognizes health care organizations for quality patient care, nursing excellence and innovations in professional nursing practice.†(AACN, 2014). As a nurse going through this process in one of the facilities I work at, It means mire education and accountability. I only work Per Diem at this facility but have to chair on one of the nursing committees, I have to have a certification in my specialty and also a bachelors degree in 5 years of starting my employment or I am terminated as an employee(yes contract was signed or no employment). This has increased my educational requirements and time requirements for this facility. I am on the employee recognition committee and as an employee that works long hours in an emergency room this committee is actually very important. Many feel that this is the â€Å"party† committee but we are more than that. We recognize the employees that don’t often get recognized for all their hard work. As an employee that rarely gets recognized I realized that this is important to our health and care of the patients. I work hard but as a per diem employee I often get left unrecognized. I have large shoulders and can bear that brunt because I know my nursing care is excellent, my patients are taken care of and if they cant remember my name that is ok. Sometimes its the ones that you butt heads with and they complain from the time they set foot in the door that remember your name-thats ok also because it means that you made an impression on them- sometimes good sometimes not so good. We don’t always recognize the same people over and over we try to disperse the compliments and recognize not just nurses but also ancillary staff as they make up our hospital also. As a committee we celebrate monthly birthdays and try to correlate outings into volunteer fun days. These can be hard to correlate with schedules but we use baseball games for BP checks and fair days for health screenings. It has brought our department and our hospital closer to magnet status. The magnet program has three goals or principles: †¢Promote quality in a setting that supports professional practice †¢Identify excellence in the delivery of nursing services to patients/residents †¢Disseminate best practices in nursing services. This is achieved by increasing employee satisfaction and education through training and education. The benefits of magnet status are that the hospital designated will attract and retain top talent, improve care, safety and satisfaction, foster a collaborative culture and advance nursing standards and practice, and grow business and financial success. Shared governance is a way of incorporating all those goals. on other shared governance teams they look at certain aspects of care that we can improve such as lift teams, rapid response teams, specific equipment to help decrease our fall rates and also employee injuries. These teams are made up of management and floor nurses along with the CNO/CEO/CFO. we all have an input into what needs to be changed and how we are going to change the need. Along with the education that is needed to make that change. I have enjoyed the education that has come with attaining our magnet status. The hospital that I am at does not have JCHAO but we have DNV-Det Norske Veritas. â€Å"DNV works with national healthcare authorities and healthcare providers around the world to effectively manage risk and improve healthcare delivery. Our team of healthcare and risk management specialists has an innovative, advanced approach to help healthcare providers globally in identifying, assessing and managing risk, enhancing patient safety and quality, while ensuring sustainable business practice.†(DNV, 2013) They come yearly and assess our facility, we actually learn from this yearly visit and am not rushing to ‘clean and organize a facility for an upcoming visit from joint commissions’. The DNV has increased patient safety and quality along with helping us get accredited, and reduce infection risk. The DNV is an ISO9001 program and has certified many agencies around the world and is designated as the best in healthcare and proactively manages risks and best practices. Our sister hospital Norfolk General has been redesignated as a Magnet  facility and all but our 1 stand alone facility are heading to magnet status. For me Magnet status is an achievable goal for many facilities and designates the best nursing practice, and higher retention and nursing satisfaction. References: ANCC MAGNET RECOGNITION PROGRAM. (2014, January 1). . Retrieved July 26, 2014, from http://www.nursecredentialing.org/magnet/programoverview DNV:Managing Risk:Healthcare. (2013, January 1). . Retrieved July 25, 2014, from http://www.dnvusa.com/industry/healthcare/

My Hurricane Katrina Experience Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

My Hurricane Katrina Experience - Essay Example Finally my family was able to move into our home only in October 2007. My family left New Orleans on August 28, 2005 to live with my uncle in Livonia, Louisiana. We stayed there until the Christmas Break. I attended the Livonia High School for one month, transferred to Catholic High in New Roads, Louisiana. While attending Livonia High School I had a very sad experience of being treated unfairly on the basis of my race. I was even called racist names by some of the fellow students. This was tearing me apart as I had never undergone such a nasty experience. At times, I used to feel very angry and started losing my temper. I felt like fighting with those students. The Peer pressure almost would have resulted in my doing something that I would have surely regretted later. I Prayed to GOD and asked him to control my temper and change the hearts of those who were treating me wrongly. My prayers were answered and after some time those who treated me wrongly became my friends. This was indeed a very frightening, fearful, and furious experience for me.

Sector Matrix for Ford Motor Company Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Sector Matrix for Ford Motor Company - Essay Example Literature review and discussions will be centered on the Ford Motor Company which is, apart from being one of the Detroit Three (Sperling & Gordon, 2009, P. 55), also a significant player in the global automotive industry. The essay will also try to discuss the significance of the said tools at firm level as well as a sectoral level by taking into consideration the changes in organizational activities at the firm level and their impacts on the intermediate as well as the macro levels. Propounded by Michael E. Porter (1985), the Value Chain model is centered on organizational processes. Generally, the manufacturing facility is categorized into subsystems – each having its own inputs, throughputs, and outputs. The efficiency of activities aligned through value chain determines the cost of production and hence influences the profitability of the organization. The activities are grouped into primary activities and secondary/support activities (Needle, 2010, P. 275). The five main primary activities are inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and after-sales service, while the secondary activities comprise procurement, human resource management, technological development, and infrastructure. It has been observed that Ford Motor Company (Ford) being a foremost player in the global automobile industry, its business activities have extensive influence on almost all aspects of its environment. The figure appended above represents the interconnectivity of the main phases of Ford’s value chain. The management of Ford has recognized the fact that â€Å"these issues are interconnected at each stage and that positive and negative effects in one part of the chain can reverberate in the other parts† (Ford-website-a, n.d.), and hence, is trying to infuse the different phases with sustainability issues. Ford is aiming at improving its manufacturing efficiency and simultaneously reducing emissions. Moreover, the company is also using recycled materials and is trying to enhance the reusability of its vehicles as part of its environment-friendly operations.

Plato's design systems that reduce the apparent irregularities in the Essay

Plato's design systems that reduce the apparent irregularities in the motions of the planets to regular motions in perfectly re - Essay Example Plato's later dialogues abound in mathematical allegories. Timaeus begins with a very long one, Statesman contains a short one, the Republic has three, and both Critias and Laws are permeated with them from beginning to end. When Plato died in 347 B.C. his pupils and friends immediately began to argue about these mathematical constructions and about Plato's purpose in using them for models of souls, cities, and the planetary system. By the beginning of the Christian era much of Plato's mathematics had become a riddle. Many rivals clamored for recognition as the â€Å"single harmony† Socrates heard from the planets.1 A certain number which he confidently proclaimed â€Å"sovereign† in political theory was labelled â€Å"numero Platonis obscurius† by Cicero (c. 100 A.D.), with the hearty concurrence of later scholars; an interpretation which Nicomachus promised at about this time was either lost or never written. By the fifth century A.D., Proclus, one of the last to head the Platonic Academy, could not pretend to understand Plato's arithmetic, although he was astute enough to label as spurious a then popular interpretation of the Timaeus â€Å"World-Soul.† Down through history Plato's mathematical allegories defied Platonists either to reconstruct his arithmetic or to find in it the implications he claimed for it. In 1937 Francis Cornford, concluded that the difficulties which arise in abstracting a planetary system from Plato's musical arithmetic in Timaeus were due to a metal â€Å"armillary sphere† which the Academy possessed. â€Å"Plato probably had it before him as he wrote.†5 In 1945, in his translation of the Republic, Cornford not only omitted â€Å"the extremely obscure description† of Socrates' â€Å"sovereign number,† but he also allowed himself to â€Å"simplify the text† of the tyrant's allegory. The theoretical cosmic psychologies proposed by Plato found practical application in the wo rk of Claudius Ptolemy. Ptolemy has a claim to being the most influential of classical astronomers on account of the respect with which his encyclopaedic work on mathematical astronomy, the Syntaxis, or Almagest. While the Almagest, is usually the centre of attention when Ptolemy's astronomy is examined, if his cosmology is to be understood on its own terms, its purpose cannot be understood independently of two of his other works, the Harmonics and the Tetrabiblos, in both of which he raised the soul's relationship with the stars. Ptolemy his work in two phases, the first was concerned with the measurement of celestial positions and the second with the measurement of their effects which was foundations of western astrology. Those effects might be felt in the natural world but also in the psychological, the realm of the soul. Ptolemy's psychological astronomy can be divided into two forms, the contemplative and the analytical. Kepler was also influenced by Plato's Ideas. He used Plat o's regular solids to describe planetary motion. He assigned the cube to Saturn, the tetrahedron to Jupiter, the dodecahedron to Mars, the icosahedron to Venus, and the octahedron to Mercury. He is remembered in the history of sciences for his three planetary laws. Kepler's first law abolishes the old axiom of the circular orbits of the planets. The second law breaks with another axiom of traditional astronomy, according to which the

How is the theme of friendship developed in merchant of Venice Essay

How is the theme of friendship developed in merchant of Venice - Essay Example Friendship between Antonio and Bassanio is both deep and complex. Male friendship is usually formed in the course of life when men share particular experiences, for example, helping each other in difficult situations. In friendship, each person is willing to sacrifice his life to help his friend, and this makes the bonds even stronger. In The Merchant of Venice, the nature of friendship between Antonio and Bassanio is different. Indeed, it is possible to say that it seems to be one-sided with Antonio being a better and more devoted comrade. From the very first scene, the audience gets to know that all Antonio worries about is not his business, which is at stake, but his friend Bassanio. It is even possible to say that Antonio is in love with his friend; perhaps, he is jealous, and this is what causes his melancholy. While critics still argue on the issue of Antonio’s affection to Bassanio, the fact remains that Antonio cares about his friend more than Bassanio cares about him. Bassanio, in his turn, seems to take advantage of such affection. The matter is that he is used to live outside of his means and always relies on Antonio to give him money. As Shakespeare puts it into Bassanio words, â€Å"To you, Antonio, / I owe the most, in money and in love, / And from your love I have a warranty / To unburden all my plots and purposes / How to get clear of all the debts I owe† (I. I. 132-136). Apart from financing all the plans and affairs Bassanio has, Antonio also chooses to support his friend in quite an unusual way so that Bassanio is happy. In particular, despite the fact that all the assets Antonio has are spread out, he does not give up an idea to secure happiness of Bassanio. He goes to his enemy Shylock and agrees â€Å"seal unto this bond†, to give one pound of his flesh if he cannot pay off the debt (I. I. 169). At the same time, Bassanio tries to be a good friend as well. He remembers whom he owes his happiness and

Pseudomonas Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Pseudomonas - Essay Example The problems associated with this type of transient bacteria include infections such as Pseudomonas infections, especially those caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The bacteria also cause infections of the blood, pneumonia and post surgery infections, which may cause death. In addition, mild infections occur, especially after exposure to water, such as infections of the ear and the eye in children, skin rashes. These infections occur after exposure to water, which is inadequately chlorinated (CDC, 2013). The methods that are used to effectively remove this type of transient bacteria from hands include effective hand washing using soap and water because they act as emulsifying agents that dissolve grease and oils on the hands to remove transient bacteria. One should also dry hands after washing them with proper towels. Alternatively, alcohol-based instant hand sanitizers may be used after hand washing. Antiseptic lotions or creams soaps can be used when cleaning hands. Antiseptic soaps or detergents remove surface bacteria, and may have a residual effect while instant hand sanitizers do not have a residual effect (Marriott & Gravani, 2006). Aseptic hand wash and hand sanitizers can be used to prevent the spread of transient bacteria. Aseptic hand wash method involves the use of antiseptic soap and special techniques to cleanse the hands and forearms aseptically. It reduces bioload of bacteria on the skin surface to prevent transmission to the patient (Mulder, 1999). Hand sanitizers are made of chemicals such as alcohol. These chemicals kill pathogens, thus preventing disease transmission. Some of the diseases that are caused by bacteria include Acne, Pneumonia, Whooping Cough and Tuberculosis. Viruses cause mumps, AIDS and yellow fever while parasites cause diseases like amebiasis. Fungi cause candidemia while protozoa amebiasis. Among these diseases, AIDS can be detected with approved CLIA-waved testing (Parmet,

Tanglewood casebook Essay Example for Free

Tanglewood casebook Essay 1) Recruitment Guide Position: Store Associate Reports to:Shift Leader Qualifications:High school diploma or equivalent, Some college course work preferred 1 year retail experience preferred including experience in customer service Relevant Labor Market:West Washington Timeline:Week of 1/8Conduct interviews with qualified candidates 1/24Targeted hire date Activities to undertake to source well-qualified candidates: Post job opening on company website and on in store kiosks Request company referrals  Contact local colleges to notify them of available positions and see if they know of any students looking for employment Contact staffing agencies, if necessary, to fill position with temporary associate that may want to permanently work for the company Staff members involved: HR Recruiting Manager Department Managers Potential peers Budget: $3,000-$4,500 2) The store associate position is one that mainly deals with assisting customers, be it to find certain products, deal with issues, or to just make their experience a pleasant one while dealing with the daily operations of the store. The open method to recruiting means that we are casting a wide net to catch any applicants that we can and see what we get. It’s possible that we may get exactly what we are looking for, but it’s possible that it may just be wasted resources. I recommend the targeted method to recruitment, which means that we are going to go for a specific group of people with specific KSAOs. By using the targeted method we will address some of the staffs concerns about hiring new store associates. The first concern was to reduce turnover; by casting a smaller net, but getting more qualified individuals we may eliminate some of the turnover. This will also help with the lag time, which was the second issue, in that there will be less applicants to sift through, thus letting us get to the more qualified candidates more quickly. This will help us target the applicants we want, which were college to middle age individuals with at least a high school diploma, preferably some college course work, with retail and customer service experience. By getting employees that already have customer service experience, they will already know what they are getting themselves into and what the expectation may be. Hopefully this will also help to acquire people who fit into the culture and are looking for a career and not just a job. By using online applications with specific requirements we will better be able to target these applicants. The same goes for staffing agencies, though costly, we will more effectively acquire qualified individuals. Employee referrals may be a good way to keep up employee relations and morale, but it may not lead to the type of individuals we need. The same goes for open applications. 3) In Western Washington, the highest one year retention rate compared to the amount of applicants hired was by job service agency, followed by employee referrals. This seemed to be effective for them, because the most qualified individuals fell into the referral category, however the total cost was significantly higher for employee referrals at this site, though after a year of survival ended up being the most cost effective method of hiring. In Eastern Washington, the referral method came out the most effective as far as retention rates went, followed by the kiosk method. Following the same trend as the Western Washington region, these individuals seemed to be the most qualified. Again similar to the previous region it also was the most expensive as far as total cost went, but the most effective as far as cost per first year of survival. In Northern Oregon, the agency method had an extremely high retention rate after the first year of hire, followed by the kiosk method. In this region the kiosk method was the most expensive followed by hiring agencies. The hiring agency was the most effective after the first year of hire. In Southern Oregon, a similar trend happens compared to Northern Oregon. The agency method has a the highest post one year retention rate, followed by the referral method. And similar to Northern Oregon, it is the second most expensive as far as total cost goes, but the most effective as far as post first year hire cost is concerned. 4) It would be ineffective to follow the same hiring methods for all four regions in that in both Oregon based regions the best recruitment method seems to be agency based and in the Washington regions the referral method is most effective. If the company attempted to force all regions to have the same hiring standards they would incur higher cost, less effective recruitment methods, and would obtain less qualified individuals. 5) It has proven true for the company that cheaper is not always better, therefore getting the cheapest labor will not yield the most effective customer service. It would be beneficial to rate employee performance in accordance to high, middle, and low performers and to discuss with them how they feel they are doing in conjunction with suggestions on yielding better performance. Better performance should come with some type of reward, for example an extra vacation day, a more desirable assignment, or an annual pay increase. It also would be beneficial to employees to have additional training in customer service issues in order to prepare them for what issues they may run into. As far as the bottom line hiring requirements go, at least a year of customer service related experience should be required for employment. As previously stated this will ensure that these new candidates will know what to expect from their job, and what expectations an employer would have of them. (Please refer to question 2 for how managerial concerns will be addressed.) 6)  The targeted method would be aiming at a specific group of candidates. They may say that they are searching for a candidate with some completed college coursework and customer service experience looking to work as a store associate at Tanglewood. It also should state that if the associate seems promising they may be put on the fast track to management if they desire. The realistic method gives a real view of what the job would entail. It may say something like dealing with day to day store issues including customer complaints. It gives an employee a real look as to what they may be doing, but some argue that it may turn away good potential candidates before they actually have the opportunity to experience both the good and the bad. The branded recruitment strategy is searching for a candidate that will fit into your brand. They may say looking for a self starting individual who wants to be part of not just a company, but a family. By doing this employees feel a tie to the company’s brand and want to work for the company and not just the job. Work Cited Heneman III, Herbert G., Judge, Timothy A., and Kammemeyer-Mueller, John D. Staffing Organizations: 7th Edition. Middleton: Mendota House, 2012. Print. Kammemeyer-Mueller, John. Tanglewood Casebook for use with Staffing Organizations: 7th Edition. Middleton: Mendota House, 2012. Print.