The Nurse to Patient Ratio is Important Essay -- Nursing Essays

An English Nurse who laid the foundation for professional nursing, Florence Nightingale stated, â€Å"It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.† Acute care facilities try to maintain low costs and employ quality nurses, making the nurse-to-patient ratio become more of an issue with patient care. Nearly every person’s health care experience involves the contribution of a registered nurse, and the effects of not having an appropriate nurse to patient minimum ratio affects not only the patient and nurse physically, medically, but also the hospital financially. Determining nurse-to-patient ratios is a difficult task with no single or definite solution and many variables exist to develop guidelines to cover every possible situation in an acute care facility. There are two boards of the state of Ohio that help with patient safety and keeping a safe workplace for the healthcare professional such a nurse. The first board is the Ohio board of Nursing, and the following is their description of what they are responsible for: The Board exists solely to enforce the law and rules regulating practice. The Board has authority to establish requirements individuals must meet to obtain a license or certificate to practice nursing or provide dialysis care in Ohio. The Board approves pre-licensure nursing education programs and dialysis training programs, oversees the licensure examination of nurses, and takes disciplinary action when a licensee or certificate holder violates the law. These activities help to assure that only qualified individuals provide care to the public. The Board does not exist to advance the interests of the nursing profession or dialysis t... ...s, C., & Hess, R. (2009). Registered Nurses' Perceptions of Nurse Staffing Ratios and New Hospital Payment Regulations. Nursing Economic$, 27(6), 372-376. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database. Costello, M. (2002). JCAHO workforce report says staff levels affect quality, safety. AHA News, 38(31), 1. Retrieved from Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition database. Garretson, S. (2004). Nurse to patient ratios in American health care. Nursing Standard, 19(14-16), 33-37. Griffiths, P. (2009). Staffing levels and patient outcomes. Nursing Management - UK, 16(6), 22-23. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Political science as a social science Essay

Political Science is in part a social science, and in part a humanity. Both are important. In this topic, we will look at the basics of social science inquiry, and then proceed to show how this differs from, on the one hand, inquiry in the natural sciences and, on the other, inquiry in the humanities. Social Science Social science inquiry seeks to develop empirical theory. ?Empirical? refers to things that can be experienced through the five senses of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, or (in the case of political corruption) smelling. Theory? basically means explanation. An empirical theory of politics, then, is an attempt to explain why people behave the way they do politically. If a social scientist (or anyone else) observes people engaging in political behavior, he or she will need to focus on certain characteristics of the people being observed. The observer may wonder why some people differ from others in their political characteristics. Why, for example, are some people Liberals while others are Conservatives and still others are New Democrats. Characteristics that differ from one person to another are called one variables. Those that do not are called constants. Constants are generally less interesting than variables. There is not much point in trying to explain voting behavior in a country in which only one party appears on the ballot. Of course, we might then ask why some countries have only one party whereas others have multi-party systems, but now we are treating ? number of parties? as a variables. Everyday language is full of what are, in effect, hypotheses about political behavior. For example, talk about a ? gender gap? in voting hypothesizes that vote (the dependent variable) is in part a function of gender (the independent variable), with women more likely to vote for the Liberals or New Democrats and men more likely to vote Conservative. Social science research differs from everyday discussion of politics in two ways. The first is where hypotheses come from. Anyone who follows politics will likely carry around in his or her head a lot of ideas about what explains political behavior. Such ideas may come from personal experience, from conversations with others, or from following politics through the mass media. This is true as well for the ways social scientists think about politics. In addition, however, social scientists develop hypotheses more systematically by studying the scholarly literature for the results of previous research. This is important for at least a couple of reasons. For one thing, it is usually the case that the more you learn what is already known about a subject, the more new questions you are likely to have. A review of the literature helps generate new hypotheses. Even more important, social science seeks not merely to describe raw facts, but to explain why people behave the way that they do. To accomplish this, we need to put our ideas into a broader theoretical context that offers such an explanation. It is a fact that in the United States, from 1936 through 2000, the incumbent party has always won the presidency whenever the Washington Redskins won their last home game before the election, and lost whenever the Redskins lost. However, since there is no reasonable explanation for why this should be the case, it is merely an interesting bit of trivia, and no serious observer of politics would rely on it in analyzing the next presidential contest. A second difference is that, for many people, ideas about patterns of political behavior remain merely assumptions. Social science insists that the validity of assumptions must be tested against data. Conceptual definition. We need to know, and be able to communicate to others, what our independent and dependent variables mean. What, in other words, is the idea in our mind when we use a term? Definitions found in dictionaries are examples of conceptual definitions. Sometimes, the idea that is in our mind when we use a term will be obvious, but often it will not. Many concepts used in political science are anything but clear. If we are to study political ideology, for example, we need to spell out with as much precision as possible what that concept means in the context of our research. Operational definition. For hypotheses to be tested, we will need to come up with measurements of our variables. An operational definition is one stated in a way that can be directly measured by data. We strive for a one-to-one correspondence between our conceptual definitions and our measurements (operational definitions) of them. If we succeed, then our measurements have validity and reliability. Data needed to provide operational definitions of our variables come from a wide variety of sources. We may gather the data ourselves. Analysis of data that we gather in order to test hypotheses that we have formulated is called primary analysis. Often, however, this approach would be totally beyond our resources of time, money, and expertise. A nationwide survey of public opinion, for example, would take months to design and carry out, would cost many thousands of dollars, and would require the services of a large survey research organization. Often, secondary analysis of data (that is, analysis of data originally gathered for other purposes) will suit our needs far better. Indeed, very important databases are used almost exclusively in secondary analysis. The Census Canada data is a good example. Other surveys such as the Canadian National Election Study and the General Social Survey were created, in part, for the express purpose of providing quality survey data for secondary analysis by students of Canadian politics. Indeed much of the work using the Canadian National is based on secondary analysis. To facilitate secondary analysis, the University of Toronto Data Library, and other university-based data archives have been established throughout the world. The largest of these is the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) established in 1962. Today, over 500 colleges and universities from all over the world, including the University of Toronto are member institutions. Students and faculty at these institutions obtain datasets that provide the basis for numerous scholarly books, articles, and conference papers, graduate theses and dissertations, and undergraduate term papers. The Social Sciences and the Natural Sciences What we have described as the social science method ? the effort to explain empirical phenomena by developing and testing hypotheses ? could as easily be called simply ? the scientific method,? without the ?  social? qualifier. There are, however, differences between social sciences, including political science, and the natural sciences. Though these are differences in degree, they are important. One difference is that the natural sciences rely much more heavily on experimental design, in which subjects are assigned randomly to groups and in which the researcher is able to manipulate the independent varia ble in order to measure its impact on the dependent variable. Often, when people think about the scientific method, what they have in mind are these sorts of controlled laboratory experiments. In political science, we for the most part are not able to carry out experimental designs. If, for example, we wish to study the impact of party affiliation on decisions by judges, we cannot very well assign judges to different parties, but rather have to take the data as they come to us from observing judges in their natural setting. Experimental design, however, does not define the natural sciences, nor does its absence define the social sciences. Astronomy, for example, must of necessity rely on observation of things that cannot be manipulated. ?Epidemiological?  medical research also relies on non-experimental data. Conversely, the social science discipline of social psychology has been built in large part from experiments in small group laboratories. In political science, a great deal of laboratory research on the impact of campaign commercials has been carried out in recent years. Field experiments are also common, as when survey researchers will test the impact of alternativ e question wordings by splitting their sample and administering different questionnaire forms to different subsets of respondents. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that experimental designs are much less common in the social sciences, including political science, than in the natural sciences. Most of our research design is, in effect, an effort to approximate the logic of experimental design as closely as possible. Other differences, also differences in degree, have to do with lower levels of consensus in the social sciences. There is less consensus about conceptual definition. Even if we agree that power is a key concept for the study of politics, we may not agree on what power means. Chemists, on the other hand, not only agree that molecules are important, they also mean pretty much the same thing when they use the term. There is less consensus about operational definition. Chemists also agree on how to measure the atomic weight of a molecule. Social scientists are far from unanimous in the ways they go about measuring power. It bears repeating that these differences are ones of degree. In the natural sciences there are also disputes at the frontiers of the various disciplines about what concepts are important, what they mean, and how they should be measured. In the social sciences, consensus is likely to break down from the start. Even if we can agree that a particular concept is important, on what it means, and on how it should be measured, we will encounter far larger problems of measurement error than those in the natural sciences, where measurement is not without error, but is typically much more precise. Finally, remember that we are involved in trying to explain human behavior. People do not seem to behave as predictably as molecules. Philosophers are not in agreement on this point, but it may be that human behavior is inherently less predictabl The fact that we deal with tendencies rather than with laws means that, for the most part (and despite impressive work by ? rational choice? theorists to develop formal mathematical models of political behavior), political science makes relatively little use of elegant systems of deduction, but considerable use of statistics, which provides us with valuable tools for dealing with probabilities. Despite its unavoidable limitations, political science as a social science has produced an explosion in our knowledge about politics. This has had important practical consequences. For example, no serious aspirant for a major elected office in an economically developed democracy would consider embarking on a campaign without consulting experts in survey research, a signature social science technique. In addition to being, in part, a social science, political science is also in part a humanity. Political science as a humanity means at least a couple of different things.

Essay on the Way the Internet Will Develop

In What Way Will Internet Develop? Internet is the phenomenon without which I cannot imagine my life. And according to statistics, almost two billion people (28,7% of population) around the world also can’t. It became an integral part of people’s daily lives, being a means of communication, work, entertainment, shopping and anything else. It is hard to believe that about 50 years ago it only started to develop. While it took 38 years for radio and 13 years for TV to reach 50 million users, Internet coped in 5 years. Everybody who uses Internet on the daily basis understands why. It is so convenient to communicate with your friends or business partners who live far away from you without the necessity to write long letters and wait many days before their delivery. Moreover, many people are typing faster than they write, so, it is a great time-saving method, as well as a great way to express your thoughts in the full extent. One out of eight married couples in the US met online, which represents another positive feature of the Web – it can unite not only people’s minds, but also their hearts. Population statistics shows that the Internet penetration grew by 444,8% in the last 10 years, which is a great trend. It clearly shows that the future of the Internet is doomed to success. It gets more and more convenient each day, offering more and more interesting services, which becomes a motivation for many intelligent people never to stop developing and improving services’ quality. I am sure that in ten years there won’t be a person in civilized countries who is not advanced Internet user.