The lack of effective demand forecasting strategies can result in imprecise inventory replenishment, inventory overstock, and unused inventory. The purpose of this single case study was to explore successful demand forecasting strategies that leaders of a small, retail, medical supply business used to increase profitability. The conceptual framework for this study was Winters's forecasting demand approach. Data were collected from semistructured, face-to-face interviews with 8 business leaders of a private, small, retail, medical supply business in the southeastern United States and the review of company artifacts. Yin's 5-step qualitative data analysis process of compiling, disassembling, reassembling, interpreting, and concluding was applied. Key themes that emerged from data analysis included understanding sales trends, inventory management with pricing, and seasonality. The findings of this study might contribute to positive social change by encouraging leaders of medical supply businesses to apply demand forecasting strategies that may lead to benefits for medically underserved citizens in need of accessible and abundant medical supplies.

The type of cancer pain management used may have an effect on the quality of life (QOL) of cancer patients. Researchers have determined that cancer patients are inadequately treated for pain and pain management is an essential determinant of patient survivability and QOL. Numerous clinical studies have been accomplished concerning opioid administration and noncancer and cancer pain management exist. Previous studies have examined the relationship between cannabinoid products, noncancer pain, cancer pain, and related QOL for patients but have not focused on the QOL of cancer patients while also moderating for gender. These relationships were investigated using the health belief model. The cancer pain management treatments (opioids and/or marijuana [cannabis]) and QOL, measured with World Health Organization Quality of Life Survey (WHOQOL-BREF), of 236 cancer patients were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA), planned contrasts, post hoc tests, and moderated ANOVA (PROCESS tool) in the causal-comparative research. Research findings indicated significant benefit in cancer patient physical and psychological QOL in participants using marijuana when compared to participants using opioids and physical QOL for participants using marijuana over participants using both opioids and marijuana combined. Enhanced pain management options for cancer patients in order to reduce opioid side effects, increase pain treatment effectiveness, and improve patient QOL could yield positive social change. Growing rates of opiate addiction, abuse, and mortality are public health concerns and cannabis may be an effective pain treatment to reduce these social costs. This research may be of use to legislators considering rescheduling marijuana to less than Schedule I.

This ethnographic study investigated nurses’ experiences of managing nurses and being managed by nurses within the context of a critical care unit. The four specific aims of the study were to: valorise and make space from which nurses could speak of their management perceptions and experiences; investigate and interrogate the cultural practices and knowledges that comprised and reinscribed the discourses of nursing management; identify the marginal, contradictory or subjugated discourses in the form of alternate or oppositional knowledges and practices embedded in nurses’ experience; and reveal how participants were inscribed by or resisted the various discourses, including the multiple and mobile subject positions they adopted. The ethnography was theoretically informed by critical, feminist, and postmodern perspectives. Utilising the strategy of writing from the authorial position of occupying a mobile or nonunitary subjectivity, the research highlighted the methodological tensions so as to struggle for social justice whilst contesting the romance of knowledge as cure (Lather, 2000). Music was metaphorically appropriated to interrupt, subvert, and draw attention to the partial, interpretive, and intertextual nature of ethnographic representation and to represent the feminine other in a thesis normatively privileging written text. Conducted over a period of ten months, direct participant observation, individual interviews, and reflective field notes comprised the data. Eleven registered nurses, from all levels of the nursing hierarchy, participated in the study, in addition to the researcher. The findings of this research revealed nurses experienced feeling abnormal, lonely, angry, and rejected. Interprofessional relations reflected a lack of individual valuing and predominantly vertical violence. Shifting subject positions were primarily informed by dominant instrumental, patriarchal, managerialist, and modernistic discourses that homogenised the identity of nurses and defined the meaning of progress and normal. Management activities were deemed superior to the activities and being of a clinical nurse. Alternate and subjugated discourses included notions of teamwork, equality, mateship, and viewing management as superfluous and contemptuously. Patriarchal behaviours separating personal life from work life were contested, and behaviours often denigrated and stereotyped as female were valued. Valuing and sharing being human within ordinary nursing work, valuing work for the enjoyment of the work itself, and viewing power as with rather than over were further alternate discourses. The major implications from this study for nursing as a profession relate to nurses explicitly and foremost valuing their own practice and fostering a culture that genuinely permits individual diversity to alter the existing pre-scripted relations that constrain nurses’ ability to engage in more meaningful interpersonal relations. Questioning current discourses and practices that value specific economic and scientific knowledges, support patriarchal behaviours, and silence nurses is essential. The articulation of alternative discourses that value women and nursing is crucial for reconstructing a reality that does not result in women and nurses feeling abnormal, rejected, and alienated; particularly within the context of a nursing shortage.

This ethnographic study investigated nurses’ experiences of managing nurses and being managed by nurses within the context of a critical care unit. The four specific aims of the study were to: valorise and make space from which nurses could speak of their management perceptions and experiences; investigate and interrogate the cultural practices and knowledges that comprised and reinscribed the discourses of nursing management; identify the marginal, contradictory or subjugated discourses in the form of alternate or oppositional knowledges and practices embedded in nurses’ experience; and reveal how participants were inscribed by or resisted the various discourses, including the multiple and mobile subject positions they adopted. The ethnography was theoretically informed by critical, feminist, and postmodern perspectives. Utilising the strategy of writing from the authorial position of occupying a mobile or nonunitary subjectivity, the research highlighted the methodological tensions so as to struggle for social justice whilst contesting the romance of knowledge as cure (Lather, 2000). Music was metaphorically appropriated to interrupt, subvert, and draw attention to the partial, interpretive, and intertextual nature of ethnographic representation and to represent the feminine other in a thesis normatively privileging written text. Conducted over a period of ten months, direct participant observation, individual interviews, and reflective field notes comprised the data. Eleven registered nurses, from all levels of the nursing hierarchy, participated in the study, in addition to the researcher. The findings of this research revealed nurses experienced feeling abnormal, lonely, angry, and rejected. Interprofessional relations reflected a lack of individual valuing and predominantly vertical violence. Shifting subject positions were primarily informed by dominant instrumental, patriarchal, managerialist, and modernistic discourses that homogenised the identity of nurses and defined the meaning of progress and normal. Management activities were deemed superior to the activities and being of a clinical nurse. Alternate and subjugated discourses included notions of teamwork, equality, mateship, and viewing management as superfluous and contemptuously. Patriarchal behaviours separating personal life from work life were contested, and behaviours often denigrated and stereotyped as female were valued. Valuing and sharing being human within ordinary nursing work, valuing work for the enjoyment of the work itself, and viewing power as with rather than over were further alternate discourses. The major implications from this study for nursing as a profession relate to nurses explicitly and foremost valuing their own practice and fostering a culture that genuinely permits individual diversity to alter the existing pre-scripted relations that constrain nurses’ ability to engage in more meaningful interpersonal relations. Questioning current discourses and practices that value specific economic and scientific knowledges, support patriarchal behaviours, and silence nurses is essential. The articulation of alternative discourses that value women and nursing is crucial for reconstructing a reality that does not result in women and nurses feeling abnormal, rejected, and alienated; particularly within the context of a nursing shortage.

This ethnographic study investigated nurses’ experiences of managing nurses and being managed by nurses within the context of a critical care unit. The four specific aims of the study were to: valorise and make space from which nurses could speak of their management perceptions and experiences; investigate and interrogate the cultural practices and knowledges that comprised and reinscribed the discourses of nursing management; identify the marginal, contradictory or subjugated discourses in the form of alternate or oppositional knowledges and practices embedded in nurses’ experience; and reveal how participants were inscribed by or resisted the various discourses, including the multiple and mobile subject positions they adopted. The ethnography was theoretically informed by critical, feminist, and postmodern perspectives. Utilising the strategy of writing from the authorial position of occupying a mobile or nonunitary subjectivity, the research highlighted the methodological tensions so as to struggle for social justice whilst contesting the romance of knowledge as cure (Lather, 2000). Music was metaphorically appropriated to interrupt, subvert, and draw attention to the partial, interpretive, and intertextual nature of ethnographic representation and to represent the feminine other in a thesis normatively privileging written text. Conducted over a period of ten months, direct participant observation, individual interviews, and reflective field notes comprised the data. Eleven registered nurses, from all levels of the nursing hierarchy, participated in the study, in addition to the researcher. The findings of this research revealed nurses experienced feeling abnormal, lonely, angry, and rejected. Interprofessional relations reflected a lack of individual valuing and predominantly vertical violence. Shifting subject positions were primarily informed by dominant instrumental, patriarchal, managerialist, and modernistic discourses that homogenised the identity of nurses and defined the meaning of progress and normal. Management activities were deemed superior to the activities and being of a clinical nurse. Alternate and subjugated discourses included notions of teamwork, equality, mateship, and viewing management as superfluous and contemptuously. Patriarchal behaviours separating personal life from work life were contested, and behaviours often denigrated and stereotyped as female were valued. Valuing and sharing being human within ordinary nursing work, valuing work for the enjoyment of the work itself, and viewing power as with rather than over were further alternate discourses. The major implications from this study for nursing as a profession relate to nurses explicitly and foremost valuing their own practice and fostering a culture that genuinely permits individual diversity to alter the existing pre-scripted relations that constrain nurses’ ability to engage in more meaningful interpersonal relations. Questioning current discourses and practices that value specific economic and scientific knowledges, support patriarchal behaviours, and silence nurses is essential. The articulation of alternative discourses that value women and nursing is crucial for reconstructing a reality that does not result in women and nurses feeling abnormal, rejected, and alienated; particularly within the context of a nursing shortage.

The type of cancer pain management used may have an effect on the quality of life (QOL) of cancer patients. Researchers have determined that cancer patients are inadequately treated for pain and pain management is an essential determinant of patient survivability and QOL. Numerous clinical studies have been accomplished concerning opioid administration and noncancer and cancer pain management exist. Previous studies have examined the relationship between cannabinoid products, noncancer pain, cancer pain, and related QOL for patients but have not focused on the QOL of cancer patients while also moderating for gender. These relationships were investigated using the health belief model. The cancer pain management treatments (opioids and/or marijuana [cannabis]) and QOL, measured with World Health Organization Quality of Life Survey (WHOQOL-BREF), of 236 cancer patients were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA), planned contrasts, post hoc tests, and moderated ANOVA (PROCESS tool) in the causal-comparative research. Research findings indicated significant benefit in cancer patient physical and psychological QOL in participants using marijuana when compared to participants using opioids and physical QOL for participants using marijuana over participants using both opioids and marijuana combined. Enhanced pain management options for cancer patients in order to reduce opioid side effects, increase pain treatment effectiveness, and improve patient QOL could yield positive social change. Growing rates of opiate addiction, abuse, and mortality are public health concerns and cannabis may be an effective pain treatment to reduce these social costs. This research may be of use to legislators considering rescheduling marijuana to less than Schedule I.

No description available.

The objective of this study was to investigate the quality of clinical outcomes in the surgical setting. Results of the study showed that there is no difference in infection rates between inpatient and outpatient hernia repair patients.

Healthcare managers who are unaware of the various strategies that exist for reducing turnover could adversely affect patient care, organizational morale and performance, and the achievement of organizational goals. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies healthcare supervisors used to reduce employee turnover. The participants comprised 3 senior healthcare managers located in central Texas responsible for hiring, firing, training, supervising, and successfully using strategies to reduce employee turnover. Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory provided the conceptual framework. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and a review of company documents. Thematic analysis of the data resulted in 5 emergent themes: peer-to-peer feedback, valuing employees, rewards and incentives, opportunities for growth, and training programs. The results of this study might contribute to social change by enhancing healthcare managers' understanding of the strategies that can be used to reduce employee turnover and improve existing conditions among patients, their families, staff, communities, and organizations.

Healthcare managers who are unaware of the various strategies that exist for reducing turnover could adversely affect patient care, organizational morale and performance, and the achievement of organizational goals. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies healthcare supervisors used to reduce employee turnover. The participants comprised 3 senior healthcare managers located in central Texas responsible for hiring, firing, training, supervising, and successfully using strategies to reduce employee turnover. Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory provided the conceptual framework. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and a review of company documents. Thematic analysis of the data resulted in 5 emergent themes: peer-to-peer feedback, valuing employees, rewards and incentives, opportunities for growth, and training programs. The results of this study might contribute to social change by enhancing healthcare managers' understanding of the strategies that can be used to reduce employee turnover and improve existing conditions among patients, their families, staff, communities, and organizations.