The purpose of conducting this qualitative research was to investigate Middle Eastern international students? perceptions of individual mental health counseling services at their colleges/universities in the U.S. An Interpretative Phenomenological Approach (IPA) developed by Smith et al. (2009) was used to analyze the data. Six participants (three…

Telemedicine improves access to information and healthcare services. Not only more cost effective and more efficient method of providing health care than the traditional methods, telemedicine is the most convenient method of delivering healthcare. However, the adoption of telemedicine has been challenging. The purpose of this dissertation is to…

Based on demographic shifts toward more diversity and increasing health care disparities in the United States, nursing educators have been called upon to find innovative pedagogies to teach cultural competence and social justice concepts. International service-learning programs (ISL) are proliferating, as there is evidence that these experiences…

Subject selection is essential and has become the rate-limiting step for harvesting knowledge to advance healthcare through clinical research. Present manual approaches inhibit researchers from conducting deep and broad studies and drawing confident conclusions. High-throughput clinical phenotyping (HTCP), a recently proposed approach, leverages…

The use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is increasingly common. Its use for specific applications has been mandated by a number of major retailers, as well as by the U.S. government; however, core RFID technologies and networks lack consistent approaches to maximize the efficiency and security of RFID applications. The purpose…

This qualitative study focused on counseling psychology doctoral students' perspectives regarding their practicum training experience in primary care psychology. The four participants included three females and one male. Semi-structured individual and focus group interviews were used to explore participants' experiences. The participants described…

With the introduction of technology into our daily lives, the need for physical exertion has decreased, which has led to an increase in sedentary lifestyles. Sedentary lifestyles lead to the state of obesity, and nearly two-thirds of the Unites States' adult population is considered overweight or obese. This has resulted in a reduced quality of…

The study investigated whether an upcoming class of health information technology (HIT) can be used to address currently outstanding issues in the quality and cost of healthcare delivery. Expert interviews and a literature review were used to describe the 2009 universe of in- and outpatient healthcare RFID applications and to identify those…

This study sought to validate whether the literature on high level training evaluation (level four results and level five return on investment) accurately reflected the expectations of organizational leaders regarding training evaluation reports. The researcher was interested in what high level training evaluation was being conducted at…

This work proposes an organizational framework for creating a community to share personal health record (PHR) information in the form of a Health Records Social Network (HRSN). The work builds upon existing social network community concepts as well as the existing Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) model used by the medical community and…

Health information exchange (HIE) is the process of electronically sharing patient-level information among different organizations with the objectives of quality and cost improvements. The adoption of HIE in the United States is not widespread, but numerous efforts at facilitating HIE exist and the incentives for electronic health record system…

In this dissertation we develop a framework that combines data mining, statistics and operations research methods for improving real-time decision support systems in healthcare. Our approach consists of three main concepts: data gathering and preprocessing, modeling, and deployment. We introduce the notion of offline and semi-offline modeling to…

Despite implementation of electronic medical record (EMR) systems in the United States and other countries, there is no organizational development model that addresses medical professionals' attitudes toward technology adoption in a learning organization. The purpose of this study was to assess whether a model would change those attitudes toward…

The purpose of this study was to develop a tool to evaluate the quality of a clinical information system (CIS) conceived by nurses and conduct a pilot test with the developed tool as an initial assessment. CIS quality is required for successful implementation in information technology (IT) environments. The study started with the realization that…

Racial and ethnic health care disparities continue to plague the United States, placing a tremendous personal and societal burden on individuals. A culturally diverse nursing work force can help eliminate these disparities and improve the quality of health care that is delivered. However, the nursing profession does not reflect the nation's…