This study explores the experiences of retirement village residents as they move from an independent to a supported living environment within a retirement village. It focuses on residents’ perceptions of their transitions and adopts a qualitative approach to understand the nature of their transitions and the way in which they are experienced. A grounded theory framework is used in order to capture the meanings that participants apply to concepts such as home, and to the physical, social, personal and veiled spaces in which they live. The findings from the study reveal that as residents’ health fails, the impact of increasing dependence is such that their sense of social and personal autonomy is gradually eroded. The research also provides insights into residents’ expectations and fears surrounding end of life. In many ways the experiences of the residents in supported living environments do not differ greatly from those of residents in any aged care facility. One major finding of this research, however, is the debilitating impact on well-being that occurs as a consequence of these transitions from independent to supported living, taking place within one physical location – the retirement village – a physical space which promises prospective residents the opportunity for active and positive ageing.

This study explores and examines the roles of caregivers within rest home facilities in New Zealand; and specifically, how they unpack and deal with managing the tensions associated with end of life (EOL) care. It adopted a qualitative perspective to enable an exploration of how the experiences of caregivers help guide their practice and understanding of their roles in relation to EOL care. A grounded theory framework was utilised in order to explore how caregivers make meaning and find value in the roles they perform within rest home facilities. This study offers insights into some of the tensions that caregivers face in a working environment where life and death occur simultaneously. It was apparent that caregivers are aware of the many social taboos they must negotiate in order to conduct their work. It was also apparent that they understood that others might perceive their work as dirty but that this did not prevent them from finding job satisfaction and create meaning in their work. Instead, they created meaning by using the conceptual tool the imagination of care. This involved utilising their imagination and past experiences to enable EOL care which represented the dying rites of individual residents but also fitted within their ethic of care.

Neural recording systems have attracted an increasing amount of attention in recent years, and researchers have put major efforts into designing and developing devices that can record and monitor neural activity. Understanding the functionality of neurons can be used to develop neuroprosthetics for restoring damages in the nervous system. An analog front-end block is one of the main components in such systems, by which the neuron signals are amplified and processed for further analysis. In this work, our goal is to design and implement a field-programmable 16-channel analog front-end block, where its programmability is used to deal with process variation in the chip. Each channel consists of a two-stage amplifier as well as a band-pass filter with digitally tunable low corner frequency. The 16 recording channels are designed using four different architectures. The first group of recording channels employs one low-noise amplifier (LNA) as the first-stage amplifier and a fully differential amplifier for the second stage along with an NMOS transistor in the feedback loop. In the second group of architectures, we use an LNA as the first stage and a single-ended amplifier for implementing the second stage. Groups three and four have the same design as groups one and two; however the NMOS transistor in the feedback loop is replaced by two PMOS transistors. In our design, the circuits are optimized for low noise and low power consumption. Simulations result in input-referred noise of 6.9 ??Vrms over 0.1 Hz to 1 GHz. Our experiments show the recording channel has a gain of 77.5 dB. The chip is fabricated in AMS 0.35 ??m CMOS technology for a total die area of 3 mm??3 mm and consumes 2.7 mW power from a 3.3 V supply. Moreover, the chip is tested on a PCB board that can be employed for in-vivo recording.

The purpose of this study was, first, to further our understanding of the experience of dying in a long-term care (LTC) facility from the perspective of family members and second, to identify the relationships between the various factors which may influence satisfaction with end-of-life care. Using a sequential mixed methods design, a convenience sample of 87 family members completed a survey interview using a modified version of the Toolkit of Instruments to Measure End-of-life Care (TIME) Nursing Home Version in the first phase of the study. Findings from the parametric and non-parametric analyses indicated that family satisfaction with end-of-life care was best predicted by contact and communication with nursing staff, feeling that care provided at the end of life met expectations, staff providing consistent care, feeling that the health care aide listened to their concerns about care and that respondents felt they had received enough emotional support. Being transferred to hospital in the last month of life, dying in a place other than the LTC facility, and respondent age and employment status were all associated with significant mean differences in satisfaction scores. In the second phase, three focus groups were conducted to further explore areas of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with end-of-life care. Focus groups provided confirmation of the findings of the first phase of the study and were instrumental in developing a list of ten recommendations for improvements in end-of-life care delivery. Recommendations for future research are made based on the study results.

Emergency departments (EDs) are often thought of solely as places where life-saving interventions occur. However, EDs are also places where dying patients receive end of life care. Though research examining expert nurse behaviours in care of the dying has been conducted in a variety of care settings, little is known about this topic as it relates to care of the dying adult in the ED. A descriptive exploratory study was conducted with registered nurse experts (n = 6) in two urban EDs in Western Canada. Five expert nurse behaviours deemed essential in care of the dying adult patient in the ED were identified: 1) providing comfort; 2) honouring the personhood of the patient; 3) responding to the family; 4) responding after the death of the patient; and 5) responding to colleagues. These findings contribute to the empirical evidence concerning expert nursing care of the dying.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 275-283). Also available on the Internet.

Jena, Universiẗat, Diss., 2008.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 275-283). Also available on the Internet.

Issued also as dissertation, Frankfurt a. M. / Reprint of the 1932 ed. "Literatur": p. vi-viii.