Stress in nurses : stress-related affect and its determinants examined over the nursing day

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Breaking psychological contracts with the burden of workload: a weekly study of job resources as moderators

This intra-individual study examined relationships over time of job demands and resources with employee perceptions of psychological contract breach and violation, or the emotional impact of breach. Based on Conservation of Resources Theory, we expected job demands to increase the susceptibility of experiencing contract breach and violation over time, and we expected this relationship to be moderated by available job resources. In particular, autonomy and social support were expected to buffer relationships of job demands with breach, while development was expected to intensify relationships between job demands and breach. For violation, we expected job resources to intensify the relationships between job demands and breach, in line with the betrayal hypothesis. Analyses on weekly diary data showed that weekly job demands were related to higher contract breach perceptions in the following week when autonomy and social support were low and when development was high. Moreover, weekly job demands were related to higher violation in the next week, especially when social support was high. The study shows that job demands may be related to higher odds of experiencing a breach and higher violation, and job resources may play opposite roles in moderating the relationships of job demands with breach and violation

The Assessment of Safe Nursing Care: development and psychometric evaluation

This paper discusses the development of an instrument to assess safe nursing care snd the process of evaluating its reliability and valdit

Applying the Common Sense Model to predicting quality of life in alopecia areata: The role of illness perceptions and coping strategies

Item does not contain fulltextApplying the Common Sense Model, this cross-sectional study examines associations between illness perceptions and quality of life and the mediating role of coping in 243 adults with alopecia areata, a chronic dermatological condition. At least some QoL impairment was reported by 84 percent of participants, with 31 percent reporting very to extremely large impairment. Stronger perceptions of consequences, emotional representations, identity, and lower attribution to chance were related to more impairment, with avoidant coping acting as (partial) mediator. Illness perceptions and avoidant coping seem to play an important role in QoL and are relevant intervention targets in alopecia areata

Assessing brain immune activation in psychiatric disorders:Clinical and preclinical PET imaging studies of the 18-kDa translocator protein

Accumulating evidence from different lines of research suggests an involvement of the immune system in the pathophysiology of several psychiatric disorders. During recent years, a series of positron emission tomography (PET) studies have been published using radioligands for the translocator protein (TSPO) to study microglia activation in schizophrenia, bipolar I disorder, major depression, autism spectrum disorder, and drug abuse. The results have been somewhat conflicting, which could be due to differences both in patient sample characteristics and in PET methods. In particular, further work is needed to address both methodological and biological sources of variability in TSPO levels, a process in which the use of animal models and small animal PET systems can be a valuable tool. Given this development, PET studies of immune activation have the potential to further increase our understanding of disease mechanisms in psychiatric disorders, which is a requisite in the search for new treatment approaches. Furthermore, molecular imaging could become an important clinical tool for identifying specific subgroups of patients or disease stages that would benefit from treatment targeting the immune system

How do Tanzanian hospital nurses perceive their professional role? A qualitative study

Aim To describe the experiences of Tanzanian nurses, how they perceive their role as a professional nurse and their experience with nursing care in a general hospital. Design This study is explorative, descriptive and qualitative. Methods The data were collected in 2015 by means of 10 semi‐structured interviews and was analysed using qualitative content analysis. Results The data analysis revealed two themes with corresponding sub‐themes related to Tanzanian nurses' perception with their professional role and experiences with nursing care: (1) Feeling professional pride; (2) Experiencing limitations and inadequacy. The findings indicate that the Tanzanian nurses possess a strong professional pride and commitment to serve and care for their patients. The nurses do their best to provide high quality nursing care but are faced with staffing shortages and limited materials that are beyond their control. Such limitations leave them feeling unable to fulfil their role and responsibilities.publishedVersio

Hooked on mushrooms:Preparation and mechanics of a bioinspired soft probabilistic fastener

Probabilistic fasteners are known to provide strong attachment onto their respective surfaces. Examples are Velcro® and the "3M dual lock"system. However, these systems typically only function using specific counter surfaces and are often destructive to other surfaces such as fabrics. Moreover, the design parameters to optimize their functionality are not obvious. Here, we present a surface patterned with soft micrometric features inspired by the mushroom shape showing a nondestructive mechanical interlocking and thus attachment to fabrics. We provide a scalable experimental approach to prepare these surfaces and quantify the attachment strength with rheometric and video-based analysis. In these "probabilistic fasteners,"we find that higher feature densities result in higher attachment force; however, the individual feature strength is higher on a low feature density surface. We interpret our results via a load-sharing principle common in fiber bundle models. Our work provides new handles for tuning the mechanical attachment properties of soft patterned surfaces that can be used in various applications including soft robotics.</p