Renewing the Nursing Culture: Sustaining the Professional Community of Practice Through the Role of the Preceptor.

Culture is the driving frame within which all human action takes form. This article explores the elements and characteristics of culture and applies them to the nursing professional community of practice. As it drills down to the work in the cultural context, it argues for the central role of the preceptor in evidencing the influence of culture.

Mood matters: a national survey on attitudes to depression.

Background: Depression is the leading contributor to the burden of disease worldwide. Stigma and negative attitudes to depression can act as barriers to treatment and to social inclusion. Understanding attitudes to depression and treatment has implications for individual outcomes and societal mental health.

The Power of the Frame: Systems Transformation Framework for Health Care Leaders.

Health care leaders are responsible for oversight of multiple and competing change interventions. These interventions regularly fail to achieve the desired outcomes and/or sustainable results. This often occurs because of the mental models and approaches that are used to plan, design, implement, and evaluate the system.

Development of a professional nursing framework: the journey toward nursing excellence.

To achieve Magnet recognition designation, an organization must demonstrate a framework for nursing practice. However, successfully incorporating and sustaining frameworks and theories into practice are not easy undertakings. The authors describe how leaders and staff in a healthcare system created and implemented a conceptual framework for nursing practice to guide nursing practice for the system.

Innovation cycle for small- and large-scale change.

In today's complex healthcare systems, transformation requires 2 major efforts: (1) a fundamental changes in the underlying beliefs and assumptions that perpetuate the current system and (2) a fundamental redesign of the multiplicity of diverse and complex subsystems that result in unpredictable aggregate behavior and outcomes. Through an Intelligent Complex Adaptive System framework combined with an innovation process a transformation process and cycle was created for a large healthcare system that resulted in both small- and large-scale changes. This process not only challenges the underlying beliefs and assumptions but also creates new possibilities and prototypes for care delivery through a change-management process that is inclusive and honors the contributions of the entire team.

Managing the complexity of a systemwide electronic medical record design and implementation: lessons for nurse leaders.

Nurse executives are critical to the successful planning, implementation, and adoption of technology to support the workflow and documentation needs of nurses and other end users. Informed by key principles of complexity theory, the enormous task of broad-based implementation of a standardized electronic medical record can be accomplished through the thoughtful development of flexible structures and change management principles that promote intelligent decision making and adoption by key stakeholders.

Acquired Aurotrichia ("Gilding Syndrome") of Miniature Schnauzers.

Abstract- Eighteen miniature schnauzers which developed a hair coat color change from normal to a golden color are reported. Average age of onset was 2.5 years, with no discernable sex predilection.