M.Tech.

Purpose: To describe an educational workshop delivered to travel nurses, with analysis of the shared discussion. Background: Travel nurses work beyond the realm of traditional nursing positions as they typically are contracted for short periods of time, fill positions created by nursing shortages, and are willing to work in various capacities. As currently conceptualized, compassion fatigue is comprised of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. Travel nurses are at risk for compassion fatigue as they often work on high acuity units such as emergency room and ICU. Additionally, travel nurses lack natural support systems as they often work far from usual supports such as family, which may increase the risk of compassion fatigue. Method: A two-part educational workshop was developed to reduce the risk of compassion fatigue among travel nurses (N=3). Workshops included education and skills training. Participants discussed their experiences, symptoms, and strategies they used to cope with the negative constructs of compassion fatigue. They journaled and make notations of personal and professional experiences including symptoms, triggers, and self-reflection of compassion fatigue and skills learned. Findings: Commonalities included symptoms of fatigue, isolation, disassociation, second-hand grief, physical pain, dysfunctional communication, and questioning role as a nurse. Triggers to compassion fatigue included limited resources, patient complexity, length of shift, patient influences such as gratitude for nursing service, and witnessing loss. Outcomes included self-medicating with alcohol, self-isolating, working extra shifts, and not debriefing with clinical professionals. Implications: Travel nurses experience symptoms of compassion fatigue including burnout and secondary traumatic stress that is consistent with other nursing professionals. The participants did not understand the phenomenon and had no knowledge of how to protect against compassion fatigue. Travel nurses would benefit from incorporating skills and strategies to address the phenomenon of compassion fatigue, burnout and secondary traumatic stress. The data from this educational intervention project magnify the knowledge currently known about the impact and experience of compassion fatigue in nursing populations, specifically travel nurse populations. It provides insight into the possible benefit of focus group discussions and self-care strategies in lessening the impact of compassion fatigue in travel nurse populations.

M.A. / From the conceptualisation of burnout in the 1970’s until present day, burnout has been recognised as a significant problem for both individuals and organisations. Although originally confined to the helping professions, the notion that burnout can also occur in university students has recently emerged. University students experience a myriad of stressors on a daily basis, and may develop burnout and several of the symptoms of burnout. This in turn may have deleterious consequences for both the student and the university. With the recently developed Maslach Burnout Inventory - Student Survey, the examination of burnout in university students has received increasingly more research attention. However, the psychometric properties of this instrument has received limited research attention in South Africa. The relationship between burnout and personality has also received limited attention, both internationally and in South Africa. The role of personality in burnout is considered pertinent to a complete conceptualisation of the antecedents to burnout. Recent research suggests that Neuroticism and Extroversion tend to consistently demonstrate a relationship with burnout. The present study aimed to explore the notion of burnout in university students in the South African context, relying on the three-factor structure definition of burnout as forwarded by Maslach and Jackson (1981). These three factors, namely emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment were complemented with a fourth structure, namely professional inefficacy, as suggested by Bresó, Salanova and Schaufeli (2007) and Schaufeli and Salanova (2007).

Slash and burn shifting (Chitemene) cultivation has been the dominant traditional land use system in the Miombo woodlands of Northern Zambia. The land use system adopted by farmers depends on the interaction between biophysical and socio- cultural and economical resources available to them. Socio economic resources also include policies, which influence the farmers’ decisions. Despite the so many interventions that have been done and condemnation of this system, this practice of cultivation still persist up to today. It is estimated that Northern Province has lost 35% of its biomass, representing about 43000 km2 of forests land over the past 40 years. The continuation of Chitemene system is in the long term unsustainable. This is because if the rural population continues to grow and if the current trend in Chitemenecontinues, complete deforestation may occur in a few decades. This study tried to investigate the factors that determine this practice in Zambia. The study employed a binomial logit model in order to identify the factors that influence the farmers’ decision to practice chitemene and to quantify the relative importance of these factors. This was employed on data collected from a survey of 90 farmers from Kasama district in the Northern Province of Zambia.</p.> It was hypothesized that the farmers’ behavior is influenced by a complex set of socio economic, demographic, technical, institutional and biophysical factors. Some of the determinants of slash and burn practice found in studies done are structural adjustment programme in Zambia, population growth land tenure system, infrastructure, necessary support services, number of household members, age, gender, education level and amount of available land. It was also hypothesized that the traditional way of life of the people has more influence on the farmers’ decision to practice slash and burn than other factors such as land tenure and even availability of agricultural inputs. This is because despite the so many interventions the practice has continued. Also the older the farmer is in his farming practice and age the more likely he is to practice chitemene. The reason is that farmers usually base their practice on experience and older farmers are a bit conservative and often tend to perpetuate the practice. The other one was that farmers with bigger land area are more likely to practice chitemene than those with less total land area. Farmers with bigger land area have more woodland and therefore more likely to practice. The study revealed from the bivariate analysis results that availability of land increases the chances of the farmer practicing chitemene. It was also shown that non-availability of credit influences farmers’ decision to practice chitemene positively. Lack of money to acquire inputs contributed more to farmers’ decision to practice chitemene. In the econometric analysis, age of the farmer, effect of non-availability of credit facility, effect of household size and influence of tradition had a significant influence on chitemene practice. It was found that the main reason for chitemene practice is lack of money for acquisition of inputs. Policies that facilitate provision of credit and infrastructure development like roads are necessary if slash and burn is to be reduced. This study identified some entry points for policy. Poverty may prevent poor farmers from investing in land conservation due to imperfections in credit markets and high subsistence requirements. So unless the government employs policies that target these factors, there is every reason for the farmers to continue the practice of slash and burn. This study brings to light that practicing of Chitemene depends upon a number of factors that dictate its continued practice. It is imperative that the policy makers and all those involved in agricultural development and policy formulation understand these factors and their relative importance in order to have targeted policies. Moreover although a number of studies have been done on slash and burn and its effects in Zambia, these studies have not analysed the significance of these factors. This study has considered this. Apart from this, it has also contributed to the bulk of research literature on chitemene that might be relevant for future research. / Dissertation (MSc (Agricultural Economics))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / unrestricted

This study sought to determine whether there is a significant difference in the level of burn-out between general elementary music educators employed by Miami-Dade County Public Schools and general elementary music educators from the rest of Florida. Burn-out can be defined as a state where a professional feels completely fatigued, dehumanized, reduced in regard to achievement, chronic despair, and withdrawn (Dworkin, 1987). Previous studies of this syndrome have used a Maslach Burn-out Inventory (M.B.I) to assess burn-out indicators. This study examined morale in the current educational atmosphere, using a modified M.B.I. to identify differences between two sample sets: one from Miami-Dade County Public Schools and another from other Florida counties. Applying the Mann-Whitney U test to the results revealed significant differences between the two populations on four items. In conclusion, areas of high stress for teachers were related to the FCAT, administrative support, and job security.

This thesis explores the relationship between work environment and burnout by examining the question: Do workers experiencing burnout see their work environment more negatively than co-workers who are not burned-out? The goal is to explore the potential usefulness of measures of work environment and burnout to guide efforts at burnout intervention and prevention. Thirty-nine family and childcare workers from five sites in the Vancouver area responded to a survey to test hypotheses addressing this question. The work environment and burnout were found to be highly interactive with the work environment variables of supervisor support and clarity identified as key factors in burnout. The Maslach Burnout Inventory and Moos (1981) Work Environment Scale were found to be useful instruments for intervention and future research. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

M.A. (Psychology) / The purpose of the· analysis was to translate the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) into Afrikaans and to evaluate the metrical qualities of the translated and adjusted questionnaire, as well as to establish the difference between ministers with high and low burn-out, with regard to specific personality traits, anxiety, selfactualization and demographical and workrelated variables. The research design was of an ex post facto nature. The test sample consisted of 82 ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church of the Ring of Western Transvaal. They were randomly selected. The MBI was used to determine burn-out, the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16-PF) to measure the primary personality traits, the IPAT Anxiety Scale to measure free floating manifested anxiety and the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) for the measurement of selfactualization. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to obtain information about the demographical, workrelated and other variables of the experimental subjects. To determine the reliability of the inventory, Kuder Richardson coefficients were computed for the various subscales of the adjusted MEl. Determination of validity involved the calculation of Bravais-Pearson correlation coefficients between the various subscales in relation to each other and between other criterion measurements. to determine burn-out vary The U-test of Mann-Whitney was conducted whether persons with low and high with regard to specific personality

M.Cur. (Nursing Management) / The largest and most expensive asset of any health care institution is its human resources. Mol [1984 : 1J quite correctly says that no organization can reach its full potential when these resources are not utilized effectively. The researcher has noticed certain behavior patterns amongst the nursing staff in intensive care units. These behaviour patterns include an increase in staff turnover and absenteeism. The question that arose was whether it could be ascribed to professional burnout and whether nursing managers could be contributing to the cause thereof. Th. burnout syndrome is a slowly developing psychologically destructive process, which is in relation to the effect the work environment· has on the individual. The consequences of professional burnout has many negative effects on the nurse, ·the patient, the profession and the health care delivery system. The concept of professional burnout is described with reference from the literature and by means·of a survey the following was determined, that:- all nurses working in intensive care units in the hospital were the research was conducted, had experienced symptoms of professional burnout; the majority of these nurses perceive their work situation as severely stressful; and - nursing managers are overwhelmingly applying the autocratic leadership style. Some of the important conclusions culminating from this study are that:- all these nurses experience one or other degree of professional burnout as a result of experiences resulting from unresolved stress in the work environment; and the nursing manager possibly uses ineffective management strategies due to a lack of management training, thus contributing to professional burnout.

Recentemente, pesquisadores têm descrito resultados promissores oriundos da Biomembrana de Látex Natural (BML). Estudos vêm sendo desenvolvidos para comprovar as características indutoras de neovascularização e regeneração tecidual que foram atribuídas a esse material. Entretanto, a biocompatibilidade tem sido considerada um dos mais importantes itens para validar um biomaterial para sua aplicação em humanos. A proposta deste estudo foi investigar qualitativa e quantitativamente os efeitos deste biopolímero, confeccionado à partir da extração de látex vegetal oriundos da árvore da borracha, Hevea brasiliensis, em pele de ratos escaldados. Foram usados 22 ratos, Wistar machos, com pesos entre 200 e 300g, divididos em três grupos: Controle negativo - normais (GI), Controle positivo - queimados (GII) e Tratados com a BML (GIII). A lesão térmica foi realizada por escaldamento (LTE), padronizada pelo peso corpóreo e usando água quente (85ºC for 10 segundos), e a ortoeutanásia dos animais ocorreu nos períodos de 4 e 14 dias pós-lesão. Os animais foram mantidos sob as mesmas condições de alojamento, alimentação, temperatura, umidade e luz. O grupo GIII apresentou melhor cicatrização comparado àqueles do grupo GII. Observou-se que as fibras colágenas e elásticas apresentaram-se em uma rede melhor organizada no grupo GIII e observou-se, ainda, que o número de vasos também foi maior neste grupo. Como vistos em estudos anteriores, a BML favoreceu a cicatrização em áreas queimadas e a neoangiogênese, sugerindo que este biomaterial é um promissor recurso terapêutico para a cicatrização da pele, particularmente nos casos em que a revascularização tecidual seja importante. / Recent investigations have described promising results obtained with the Natural Latex Biomembrane (BML). Several studies had been performed to prove the inductive characteristics of vascularization and tissue regeneration that has been attributed to this material. However biocompatibility has been considered one of the most important items to validate a biomaterial for its application in human beings. The aim of this study was to investigate qualitatively and quantitatively the effects of a biopolymer based on vegetal latex extracted from the Hevea brasiliensis rubber tree in scalded rat skin. Twenty two male Wistar rats weighing between 200 300 g, were divided in three groups: Negative control - normal (GI), Positive control - scalded (GII), and Treated with the BML (GIII). The thermal burn standardized with the body weight, was made using hot water (85ºC for 10 seconds). Euthanasia was performed at 4, and 14 days pos-burn. Animals were kept under the same conditions of accommodation, feeding, temperature, humidity, and light. The burn area with satisfactory healing was greater in GIII than in GII. Collagen and elastic fibers could be seen in a very organized fashion in GIII group, in a similar arrangement that GI. The number of vessels was higher in GIII that others groups. Similar to earlier studies, the BML seemed to benefit cicatrization and neoangiogenesis in the burn skin, suggesting that this biomaterial might be a new type of therapeutic resource for skin burn replacement, especially in cases of desirable tissue revascularization.

Livestock management influences the extent to which grazing lands provide resources for native species. We compared how livestock species – sheep or cattle – affected floral resources and bee and butterfly communities in low-diversity, post-Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) pastures managed with patch-burning. We sampled bees and butterflies three times per season 2017-2019 and counted flowering stems within 1 m of transects. Pastures grazed by sheep had significantly fewer flowers and significantly lower floral richness than cattle pastures. Native bees were three to sixteen times more abundant in cattle pastures compared to sheep. Butterfly communities were similar between grazing treatments, because agricultural-tolerant, habitat generalists comprised the majority of the butterfly community. Grassland-obligate butterflies comprised only 2% of observations. The dearth of grassland-obligate butterfly species and low native bee abundances suggest that post-CRP fields, especially those grazed by sheep, do not provide abundant and diverse floral resources for native bees and imperiled butterfly species.