Attitudes of Nursing Faculty Members and Graduates towards the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE)

The aim of this study was to evaluate the attitudes of faculty and graduates of college of nursing towards Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) as a valid and reliable method of clinical competency assessment in nursing ten years after its inception. Core nursing courses are based on instructional teaching methods and “hands-on” approach to impact cognitive, psychomotor skills and clinical judgments. Different clinical competency assessment methods are used globally;however, most of them are subjective. A descriptive survey using 16-item five-point likert scale questionnaire was conducted. The study sample consisted of 140 participants: 20 faculty members, 27 graduates of the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) Degree and 93 graduates of the Associate Degree of Nursing (ADN) programs with OSCE experience during their training. Data collection was carried out between October and November 2015. Eighty percent of faculty members, 74% of BSN and 62.3% of ADN graduates agreed that OSCE represented an objective evaluation method for psychomotor skills. Majority of the graduates perceived their OSCE experience positively although stressful. However, they have suggested the introduction of trial/mock OSCE prior to each exam to minimize the stress associated with it. In conclusion, there appears to be no single “gold-standard” assessment tool for clinical competency. OSCE assesses student nurses’ psychomotor skills in a non-clinical environment, therefore without risks to real patients. In combination with other assessment methods in the clinical settings, OSCE will provide a more comprehensive student psychomotor skill evaluation. OSCE experiences gave new nursing graduates confidence to work as registered nurses in health care settings.

Attitudes of undergraduate nursing students toward Objective Structure Practical Examination: An Exploratory study

Background: Objective Structured Practical Examination (OSPE) is a method of assessment of clinical competence.The examination is conducted at multiple stations.Besides practical and problem-solving skills,theoretical knowledge is also tested.OSPE can be traced back more than 40 years.OSPE has been included more than two decades,as a part of assessment in the College of Nursing,All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS),New Delhi.Objectives: This study was carried out to determine nursing students' attitudes towards OSPE as an assessment tool.Participants: The responses of all the 252 Undergraduate nursing students studying at the College of Nursing,AIIMS were obtained for this study (77 from B.Sc.(H) Nursing first year,61 from the second year,69 from the third year and 45 from the fourth year).Methods: The students attitudes towards OSPE were assessed by using a validated questionnaire containing 28 item statements on Likert's 5-point scale (LS) and 11 bipolar adjectives on Osgood's 7-point Semantic'Differential Scale (OSDS).Result: Most of the students approved of OSPE and felt that it was fair,useful,good,effective,exciting,interesting,practical,skill oriented but also taxing.The study also revealed that amongst the second years' students there was a strong correlation between Overall Rank in the Class and Assessment of OSPE.Conclusion: The study supports the introduction of OSPE as one of the methods of assessment of B.Sc.(Hons.) Nursing students.

GENERALIZED PROBABILISTIC PERTURBATION METHODFOR STATIC ANALYSIS

The static response and reliability of uncertain structures with vector-valued and matrix-valued functions were studied, and the finite element analysis method for the uncertain structures was derived based on the Kronecker algebra and perturbation theory. The random variables and system derivatives can then be conveniently arranged into the 2-D matrices, and the generalized mathematical formulas for the probabilistic perturbation were obtained.

Local structured representation for generic object detection

Structure information plays an important role in both object recognition and detection. This paper studies what visual structure is and addresses the problem of struc- ture modeling and representation from two aspects： visual feature and topology model. Firstly, at feature level, we pro- pose Local Structured Descriptor to capture the object＇s local structure effectively, and develop the descriptors from shape and texture information, respectively. Secondly, at topology level, we present a local strnctured model with a boosted fea- ture selection and fusion scheme. All experiments are conducted on the challenging PASCAL Visual Object Classes （VOC） datasets from VOC2007 to VOC2010. Experimental results show that our method achieves very competitive performance.

Objectives and Structure Officially Defined

The readjusted objectives and structure of the departments responsible for auto industries management of the State Administration of Ma-chinery Industry (SAMI) which is located in Beijing has officially been defined as follows. ●Objectives of Div. of Auto Industry Planning under Dept. of Planning and Develop-ment of SAMI ——Working out development strategies, en-

NUMERICAL STUDY OF 3D EXPLOSION BUBBLES ADJACENT TO STRUCTURES

The bejavior of a bubble near a rigid structure was considered by using the local surface fitting method and the jet prediction method. The convergence difficulty caused by the abnormality of the elements was overcome. The flow was numerically simulated by using the boundary-integral method on the assumption that the water was inviscid and incompressible, and the bubble gas obeyed the isentropic rule. The evolution of the bubble was investigated by means of the mixed Euler-Lagrange method, and the Runge-Kutta method. The important behavior of the bubble, such as migration and jetting, was analyzed in several examples. The solution of one period of the explosion bubble was obtained.