<p> Inefficiencies in leadership and limited leadership strategies in hospitals contribute to delayed hospital discharges and an increased financial burden on a hospital. Three administrators from 2 hospitals who are part of a hospital conglomerate in Chicago, Illinois were selected for interview in this qualitative multiple case study to explore how hospital discharge strategies reduce delayed hospital discharges and improve profitability. Contingency was the primary theoretical theory for this study. The purposive sampling consisted of the selections of individual who were knowledgeable and had experience to organize, manage, and implement processes in an organization. Data collection occurred using face-to-face semistructured interviews, direct observation, and a review of discharge documents. Data analysis took place using the modified van Kaam method. Two emergent themes were identified relating to strategies for efficient communications and facilitating effective leadership. Implications for positive social change include the potential to improve health services within the community where access to health care is limited or the need exists for additional hospital beds. Positive leadership strategies in hospitals tend to contribute to the success and wellbeing of employees, patients, communities, and the economy.</p><p>

Extreme professional nurse shortage exerts stress upon the conventional recruitment and retention efforts of administrators in health care institutions, causing administrators to seek alternative solutions, including the recruitment and hiring of foreign nurses. The productivity of the foreign nurse alternative, as evidenced by pass rates on registered nurse licensure examination and by retention of the recruited nurses at sponsoring institutions is low, raising questions about factors that contribute to lack of success and promulgate improvement of foreign nurse recruitment and orientation initiatives. This study describes and analyzes an attempt to assimilate Filipino nurses at a medical center in western Massachusetts of just under 1000 client beds during an 18% professional nurse position vacancy crisis, occurring in the mid 1980's. The initiative, involving the recruitment and socialization of a group of 37 graduate nurses from the Philippines to fill staff nurse position vacancies on a variety of clinical service units, is summarized in a case description. This study identifies significant factors to be considered by administrators who have responsibility for the planning and implementation of similar initiatives. The literature review relates cultural information in two areas necessary to understand the transcultural socialization of a Filipino nurse, the pre professional socialization and the professional socialization contexts. The literature review of the professional socialization area discusses important contextual factors in Filipino nurse employment, nursing practice and nursing education. The Wolf-Welsh Linkage Methodology and the Wolf Knowledge Diffusion/Utilization Inventory provided the framework for the study. The seven interrelated parts of the Methodology provided the basis for data collection and ex post facto analysis of the case data. Data sources included the researcher's own participant observations, available medical center documents, and interviewed persons. Periodicals and external reports supplemented these data. The analysis clarified key characteristics of the Filipino nurse socialization and related linkage activities that might have contributed to greater success in the medical center case. Nineteen recommendations for successful linkage in future foreign nurse initiatives comprise the concluding chapter of the study.

The effect of frequency of nursing home contact on family perceptions of quality care is the focus of this research. A family member characteristic, such as geographic distance from the nursing home, affects his or her frequency of contact with the nursing home. Frequency of contact, in turn, affects family perceptions of the care his or her loved one receives in the nursing home. The theoretical framework for this study is based on Allport's intergroup contact theory, which posits that when four contact conditions - institutional support, equal status, common goals, and intergroup cooperation - are present in an intergroup situation, a reduction in anxiety between groups is likely to occur. Regression analysis tested the stated hypotheses using survey data collected from 275 family members of residents in 10 Dallas-Ft. Worth area nursing homes. This study is among the first to quantify family geographic distance, finding that family geographic distance is a significant negative predictor of nursing home contact. Additionally, results build on Allport's theory by extending its' usefulness to nursing home organizations in two distinct ways. First, findings support Allport's premise that contact alone between groups - i.e., family members and nursing home staff - is insufficient for increasing or decreasing family perceptions of nursing home care. Second, three of the four contact conditions included in Allport's theory were statistically supported by the data. In sum, findings of this research provide nursing homes with an empirically tested model for improving family perceptions of quality nursing home care.

The assumption underlying this study is that a spatially well planned and appropriately furnished nursing home facility will help the nurses to perform their work more effectively and accordingly lead to more satisfaction for the residents. Research in the forms of a literature review, a movie analysis, and a field study of nursing homes in Germany and the USA, including plan annotations and observational mapping, trace study analyses and survey techniques, was conducted and revealed an unexpected urgent need for nursing home design improvement, especially in the U.S. The research results led to the development of a catalogue of patterns which are useful in the design and planning of a nursing home to improve nurses’ effectiveness in administering care to fulltime residents of nursing homes. With the help of the developed patterns, suggestions for building renovations of two of the researched nursing homes, one American and one German, were given. / Department of Architecture

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Simmons College, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (l. 238-247)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration, August, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of History, December 1997. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Dissertation (Ph.D.).--University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at San Antonio, 2007. / Vita. Briscoe Library received only one copy of this dissertation. It is shelved in the Archives for safekeeping. Includes bibliographical references.