A qualitative evaluation of the impact of a palliative care course on preregistration nursing students' practice in Cameroon

Background Current evidence suggests that palliative care education can improve preregistration nursing students’ competencies in palliative care. However, it is not known whether these competencies are translated into students’ practice in the care of patients who are approaching the end of life. This paper seeks to contribute to the palliative care evidence base by examining how nursing students in receipt of education report transfer of learning to practice, and what the barriers and facilitators may be, in a resource-poor country. Methods We utilised focus groups and individual critical incident interviews to explore nursing students’ palliative care learning transfer. Three focus groups, consisting of 23 participants and 10 individual critical incident interviews were conducted with preregistration nursing student who had attended a palliative care course in Cameroon and had experience caring for a patient approaching the end of life. Data was analysed thematically, using the framework approach. Results The results suggest that nursing students in receipt of palliative care education can transfer their learning to practice. Students reported recognizing patients with palliative care needs, providing patients with physical, psychosocial and spiritual support and communicating patient information to the wider care team. They did however perceive some barriers to this transfer which were either related to themselves, qualified nurses, the practice setting or family caregivers and patients. Conclusion The findings from this study suggest that nursing student in receipt of palliative care education can use their learning in practice to provide care to patients and their families approaching the end of life. Nevertheless, these findings need to be treated with some caution given the self-reported nature of the data. Demonstrating the link between preregistration palliative care education and patient care is vital to ensuring that newly acquired knowledge and skills are translated and embedded into clinical practice. This study also has implications for advocating for palliative care policies and adequately preparing clinical placement sites for students’ learning and transfer of learning

Exploring the effect of mono- and di-fluorinated triphenylamine-based molecules as electron donors for dye-sensitised solar cells

Dye that is consisting of donor-π-π-linkers-acceptor (D-π-π-A) is characterised by enhancement of light-harvesting capability in dye-sensitised solar cell (DSSC) applications. In this work, the DFT and TDDFT using the CAM-B3LYP XC-functional with 6-31G+(d) basis set and were used to study the geometrical, electronic, and photovoltaic properties of four dyes. Two of the investigated dyes are previously reported as successful photosensitisers with power conversion efficiencies of 8.22 and 7.0%, and two are novel designed ones. The investigated dyes are based on triphenylamine (TPA) as electron-donor and cyanoacrylic acid (CA) as electron-acceptor groups, and two π-linkers, i.e. dihydrothieno-dioxine (DHO) and fluorophenylene (FP). The four dyes are different in the FP unit which has Fluorine (F) atom/s in different position and with a different number. The study aims to: (1) justify the reported superiority performance of T2FC (with one F atom at the ortho-position with respect to the CA unit) over the T3FC (with one F atom at the meta-position), and (2) explore the effect of incorporating another F atom at the second ortho-position (T26FC) or at the meta-position (T35FC). The results are supported by the data obtained from calculations of adsorption parameters of dyes adsorbed on (TiO2)24 anatase (1 0 1).</p