Health and human services currently face a series of challenges – such as aging populations, chronic diseases and new endemics – that require highly complex responses, and take place in multiple care environments including acute medicine, chronic care facilities and the community. Accordingly, most modern health care interventions are now seen as ‘complex interventions’ – activities that contain a number of component parts with the potential for interactions between them which, when applied to the intended target population, produce a range of possible and variable outcomes. This in turn requires methodological developments that also take into account changing values and attitudes related to the situation of patients’ receiving health care. The first book to place complex interventions within a coherent system of research enquiry, this work is designed to help researchers understand the research processes involved at each stage of developing, testing, evaluating and implementing complex interventions, and assist them to integrate methodological activities to produce secure, evidence-based health care interventions. It begins with conceptual chapters which set out the complex interventions framework, discuss the interrelation between knowledge development and evidence, and explore how mixed methods research contributes to improved health. Structured around the influential UK Medical Research Council guidance for use of complex interventions, four sections, each comprised of bite-sized chapters written by multidisciplinary experts in the area, focus on: - Developing complex interventions - Assessing the feasibility of complex interventions and piloting them - Evaluating complex interventions - Implementing complex interventions. Accessible to students and researchers grappling with complex interventions, each substantive chapter includes an introduction, bulleted learning objectives, clinical examples, a summary and further reading. The perspectives of various stakeholders, including patients, families and professionals, are discussed throughout as are the economic and ethical implications of methods. A vital companion for health research, this book is suitable for readers from multidisciplinary disciplines such as medical, nursing, public health, health services research, human services and allied healthcare backgrounds.

Designated a Doody's Core Title and Essential Purchase! "Without question, this book should be on every nurse educator's bookshelf, or at least available through the library or nursing program office. Certainly, all graduate students studying to be nurse educators should have a copy." --Nursing Education Perspectives "This [third edition] is an invaluable resource for theoretical and practical application of evaluation and testing of clinical nursing students. Graduate students and veteran nurses preparing for their roles as nurse educators will want to add this book to their library." Score: 93, 4 stars --Doody's "This 3rd edition. . . .has again given us philosophical, theoretical and social/ethical frameworks for understanding assessment and measurement, as well as fundamental knowledge to develop evaluation tools for individual students and academic programs." -Nancy F. Langston, PhD, RN, FAAN Dean and Professor Virginia Commonwealth University School of Nursing All teachers need to assess learning. But often, teachers are not well prepared to carry out the tasks related to evaluation and testing. This third edition of Evaluation and Testing in Nursing Education serves as an authoritative resource for teachers in nursing education programs and health care agencies. Graduate students preparing for their roles as nurse educators will also want to add this book to their collection. As an inspiring, award-winning title, this book presents a comprehensive list of all the tools required to measure students' classroom and clinical performance. The newly revised edition sets forth expanded coverage on essential concepts of evaluation, measurement, and testing in nursing education; quality standards of effective measurement instruments; how to write all types of test items and establish clinical performance parameters and benchmarks; and how to evaluate critical thinking in written assignments and clinical performance. Special features: The steps involved in test construction, with guidelines on how to develop test length, test difficulty, item formats, and scoring procedures Guidelines for assembling and administering a test, including design rules and suggestions for reproducing the test Strategies for writing multiple-choice and multiple-response items How to develop test items that prepare students for licensure and certification examinations Like its popular predecessors, this text offers a seamless blending of theoretical and practical insight on evaluation and testing in nursing education, thus serving as an invaluable resource for both educators and students.

Confidently provide best practices in patient care, with the newly updated Lippincott® Nursing Procedures, 9th Edition. More than 400 entries offer detailed, evidence-based guidance on procedures ranging from the most basic patient care to assisting with intricate surgeries. The alphabetical organization allows you to quickly look up any procedure by name, and benefit from the clear, concise, step-by-step direction of nursing experts. Whether you’re a nursing student, are new to nursing, or are a seasoned practitioner, this is your go-to guide to the latest in expert care and positive outcomes.

This volume provides readers with a broad view on the variety of issues related to the educational research and practices in the field of Creativity in Mathematics and Mathematical Giftedness. The book explores (a) the relationship between creativity and giftedness; (b) empirical work with high ability (or gifted) students in the classroom and its implications for teaching mathematics; (c) interdisciplinary work which views creativity as a complex phenomena that cannot be understood from within the borders of disciplines, i.e., to present research and theorists from disciplines such as neuroscience and complexity theory; and (d) findings from psychology that pertain the creatively gifted students. As a whole, this volume brings together perspectives from mathematics educators, psychologists, neuroscientists, and teachers to present a collection of empirical, theoretical and philosophical works that address the complexity of mathematical creativity and giftedness, its origins, nature, nurture and ways forward. In keeping with the spirit of the series, the anthology substantially builds on previous ZDM volumes on interdisciplinarity (2009), creativity and giftedness (2013).

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Simulated Patient Methodology is a timely book, aimed at health professional educators and Simulated Patient (SP) practitioners. It connects theory and evidence with practice to ensure maximum benefit for those involved in SP programmes, in order to inform practice and promote innovation. The book provides a unique, contemporary, global overview of SP practice, for all health sciences educators. Simulated Patient Methodology: • Provides a cross-disciplinary overview of the field • Considers practical issues such as recruiting and training simulated patients, and the financial planning of SP programmes • Features case studies, illustrating theory in practice, drawn from across health professions and countries, to ensure relevance to localised contexts Written by world leaders in the field, this invaluable resource summarises the theoretical and practical basis of all human-based simulation methodologies.

This volume presents the most comprehensive, balanced, and up-to-date coverage of theory and research on cognitive, thinking, and learning styles, in a way that: * represents diverse theoretical perspectives; * includes solid empirical evidence testing the validity of these perspectives; and * shows the application of these perspectives to school situations, as well as situations involving other kinds of organizations. International representation is emphasized, with chapters from almost every major leader in the field of styles. Each chapter author has contributed serious theory and/or published empirical data--work that is primarily commercial or that implements the theories of others. The book's central premise is that cognitive, learning, and thinking styles are not abilities but rather preferences in the use of abilities. Traditionally, many psychologists and educators have believed that people's successes and failures are attributable mainly to individual differences in abilities. However, for the past few decades research on the roles of thinking, learning, and cognitive styles in performance within both academic and nonacademic settings has indicated that they account for individual differences in performance that go well beyond abilities. New theories better differentiate styles from abilities and make more contact with other psychological literatures; recent research, in many cases, is more careful and conclusive than are some of the older studies. Cognitive, learning, and thinking styles are of interest to educators because they predict academic performance in ways that go beyond abilities, and because taking styles into account can help teachers to improve both instruction and assessment and to show sensitivity to cultural and individual diversity among learners. They are also of interest in business, where instruments to assess styles are valuable in selecting and placing personnel. The state-of-the-art research and theory in this volume will be of particular interest to scholars and graduate students in cognitive and educational psychology, managers, and others concerned with intellectual styles as applied in educational, industrial, and corporate settings.