Factors deterring dentistry, medical, pharmacy, and social science undergraduates from pursuing nursing as a healthcare career: a cross-sectional study in an Asian university.

BACKGROUND: Globally more registered nurses need to be recruited to meet the needs of aging populations and increased co-morbidity. Nursing recruitment remains challenging when compared to other healthcare programs. Despite healthcare students having similar motivation in joining the healthcare industry, many did not consider nursing as a career choice. This study aims to identify the deterrents to choosing nursing among healthcare undergraduates by examining the differences in the factors influencing healthcare career choices and nursing as a career choice. METHODS: A cross sectional study was conducted using a 35-parallel items instrument known as Healthcare Career Choice and Nursing Career Choice scale. Six hundred and four (n = 604) first year medical, pharmacy, dentistry and social science students from a university in Singapore completed the survey. RESULTS: Nursing as a career was perceived by healthcare students to be more likely influenced by prior healthcare exposure, the nature of the work, job prospects, and social influences. Lack of autonomous decision making, perceived lower ability to make diagnosis, having to attend to patients' hygiene needs, engendered stigma, and lack of parental support were identified as deterring factors to choosing nursing as a career. CONCLUSION: An understanding of the deterrents to choosing nursing as career allows policy makers and educational leaders to focus on recruitment strategies. These include providing more exposure to nurses' roles in early school years, helping young people to overcome the fear of providing personal hygiene care, promoting nurses' autonomous nursing practice, addressing gender stigma, and overcoming parental objection.

Mineralized collagen coatings formed by electrochemical deposition.

Understanding and controlling the process of electrochemical deposition (ECD) of a mineralized collagen coating on metallic orthopedic implants is important for engineering highly bioactive coatings. In this work, the influence of different ECD parameters was investigated. The results showed that the mineralization degree of the coatings increased with deposition time, voltage potential and H2O2 addition, while chitosan addition led to weakening of mineralization, heavy mineralization resulted in a porous coating morphology. Furthermore, two typical coatings, dense and porous, were analyzed to investigate their microstructure and evaluated for their cytocompatibility; the dense coating showed better osteoblast adhesion and proliferation. Based on our understanding of how the different coating parameters influenced the coating, we proposed an ECD process in which the pH gradient near the cathode and the collagen isoelectric point were suggested to play crucial roles in controlling the mineralization and morphology of the coatings. The proposed ECD process may offer a guide for controlled deposition of a desired bioactive coating.

Improvement of drug elution in thin mineralized collagen coatings with PLGA-PEG-PLGA micelles.

A mineralized collagen (MC) coating on metallic implants has shown great potential as orthopedic material due to high biological responses. However, their drug delivery capacity remains unsatisfactory since a serious burst release may occur and long-term release is hard to be achieved. Aiming to improve the drug-eluting capability, we incorporated drug-loaded PLGA-PEG-PLGA (PPP) micelles into the thin coating. The in vitro release profiles showed that the burst release in the initial 8 h of the modified coating decreased from 81% to 58% compared to MC coating alone; meanwhile, the release duration was prolonged from 3 days to 1 week. Additionally, the release kinetics of vancomycin hydrochloride (VH, the model drug) could be adjusted by changing the size and concentration of PPP micelles. Interestingly, less initial release of VH caused by micelle immobilization did not affect the antibacterial activity in the early stage of implantation according to the antimicrobial test. The cytocompatibility assay demonstrated that the VH-loaded PPP micelles did not have negative effect on the bioactivity of coating which greatly enhanced cell activity compared to bare Ti substrates. Thus, the MC coatings with PPP micelles could be an effective implant route for bone repair.

[Removal mechanism of polychlorinated biphenyls from soil by cosolvent].

Alcohol cosolvent only or with surfactant increases solubilization of PCBs and reduces interfacial tension between washing solution and PCBs, which are very important for the removal of residual PCBs in sandy soils. Through the experiment of the alcohol oscillating solubilization and reducing interfacial tension between alcohol and PCBs oil, it was analyzed that alcohol cosolvent increases solubilization of PCBs and reduces interfacial tension between solution and PCBs oil, and the influence of alcohol on the Triton X-100 solution increases solubilization and reduces the interfacial tension between the solution and PCBs oil. The experimental results show that: the reduction of interfacial tension is inversely proportional to alcohol concentration, the number of carbon atoms in an alcohol molecule, the best concentration of methanol, ethanol, isopropanol is 70%, 55%, 40% respectively, the best removal efficiency of PCBs by desorption reaches 90% and above. The interfacial tension between the solution of Triton X-100 and PCBs oil is inversely proportional to Triton X-100 concentration. When Triton X-100 concentration is lower than 3 000 mg/L, the removal efficiency of PCBs by Triton X-100 alone is higher than that by Triton X-100 with 10% ethanol or 10% isopropanol. When Triton X-100 concentration is between 3 000 mg/L and 7 500 mg/L, removal efficiency by the three groups varies in difference. When Triton X-100 concentration is 10 000 mg/L, the removal efficiency by Triton X-100 alone, with 10% ethanol, with 10% isopropanol is 80.9%, 90.36%, 89.36% respectively. Therefore it is concluded from the experimental results that: Alcohols weaken the ability of the Triton X-100 solution increasing the solubilization of PCBs and reducing the interfacial tension between the solution and PCBs oil when alcohol is used with Triton X-100. However, when Triton X-100 concentration is greater than 3 000 mg/L, that weakening effect has been very little.