North Shore Community College

This collective essay was born out of a desire to honor and remember Professor Mark Easterby-Smith, a founder of the Management Learning community. To do this, we invited community members to share their experiences of working with Mark. The resulting narratives remember Mark as a co-author, co-researcher, project manager, conference organizer, research leader, PhD supervisor, and much more. The memories cover many different aspects of Mark’s academic spectrum: from evaluation to research methods to cross-cultural management, to dynamic capabilities, naming but a few. This space for remembrance however developed into a space of reflection and conceptualization. Inspired by the range and extent of Mark’s interests, skills, experiences, and personal qualities, this essay became conceptual as well as personal as we turned the spotlight on academic careers and consider alternative paths for Management Learning scholarship today. Using the collective representations of Mark’s career as a starting point, we develop, the concept of holistic scholarship, which embraces certain attitudes and orientations in navigating the dialectical spaces and transcending tensions in academic life. We reflect on how such holistic scholarship can be practised in our contemporary and challenging times and what inspiration and lessons we can draw from Mark’s legacy.

Introduction: Oral oncolytics are becoming a mainstay in oncology, representing first-line therapies for numerous different malignancies. In addition, the cost of oncology drugs has increased dramatically in recent years. Given the increasing number of oral oncolytics available, as well as the increase in medication costs in recent years, it is important to assess the trend in prescriptions and expenditures of these agents. Methods: A descriptive retrospective analysis of the Medicare Part D Provider Utilization and Payment Data Public Use File (PUF) was conducted for the years 2013 through 2017. Outcomes of interest included total aggregate prescriptions per year, total aggregate expenditures per year, mean expenditure per prescription per year, and mean expenditure per standardized 30-day prescription per year. Chi-square tests were conducted to assess statistical significance of differences in proportions of prescriptions as well as expenditures between 2013 and 2017. Results: The number of prescriptions for oral oncolytics dispensed to Medicare Part D beneficiaries increased from 7,017,902 in 2013 to 8,164,883 in 2017. Medicare Part D expenditures for oral oncolytics increased greater than 2.5-fold from $5,631,224,307 in 2013 to $14,422,681,331 in 2017 after adjusting for inflation. The mean expenditure per prescription for oral oncolytics increased from $802 in 2013 to $1,766 in 2017. Conclusions: This study found oral oncolytic utilization has been increasing in recent years with a slight, but statistically significant increase in the proportion of oncolytics for all Medicare prescriptions from 2013 through 2017.

The purpose of this review was to define compassion fatigue in the context of palliative care nursing. Compassion fatigue was first introduced as a description for nursing burnout; however, it was not fully described. An initial concept analysis within nursing placed it in terms of a psychological model for secondary traumatic stress disorder, with continual revisions of this application. Palliative care nurses are routinely exposed to pain, trauma, and the suffering they witness by nature of ongoing symptom management and end-of-life care delivery; however, the focus of care is on healthy end-of-life management rather than preservation of life. The literature was reviewed to provide clarification of compassion fatigue for palliative care nurses to assist in future identification and direction in the profession. CINAHL, EBSCO, Journals@Ovid, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PubMed, and ScienceDirect databases were queried for peer-reviewed literature, and dictionaries were examined for subject-specific definitions. The method that was used was a concept analysis in the tradition of Walker and Avant. A concept definition was proposed for the discipline of palliative care nursing. Identification of compassion fatigue for this profession helps facilitate the recognition of symptoms for a group that deals with patient suffering on a regular basis.

Klebsiella pneumoniae is one of clinically important opportunistic pathogens responsible for community-acquired and nosocomial infections in immunocompromised individuals. The increasing prevalence of carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae (CRKP) poses a serious threat to public health worldwide. With antibiotic resistance, hypervirulent K. pneumoniae (HvKP) responsible for serious disseminated infections in both healthy and immunocompromised individuals has also emerged. Recently, the emergence of carbapenem-resistant hypervirulent K. pneumoniae (CR-HvKP) strains has become a great challenge to public health. In this paper, we discuss the emergence mechanisms of CRHvKP through analyzing features of CR-HvKP strains isolated in China, where both CRKP and HvKP strains are prevalent. These analyses suggest that more extensive surveillance is required to accurately assess the potential threat of the plasmid-mediated convergence of carbapenem-resistance and hypervirulence.

ABSTRACTThe progression from prescription opioid (RXO) abuse to RXO addiction is not well understood in adolescents, nor is the progression from RXO addiction to heroin abuse. The purpose of this pilot study was to characterize the development of RXO drug abuse, RXO drug addiction, and heroin abuse in a small cohort of adolescents recovering from opioid addiction at Massachusetts Recovery High Schools (RHS). A self-report questionnaire was administered to 31 adolescent, former RXO abusers across two Massachusetts RHS. RXO abuse was primarily initiated due to curiosity; RXOs were initially obtained through illicit and licit methods. Fifty-eight percent (N = 18) of the RXO abusers became addicted to RXOs. Many addicted adolescents initiated RXO abuse under the influence of marijuana, yet believed that they became addicted due to the stress from difficult life situations. A subgroup indicated they abused and became addicted to RXOs that had been obtained from legitimate prescriptions due to their pain. Sixteen percent (N = 5) of the sample abused heroin. Most heroin abusers (4/5) were addicted to RXOs prior to onset of heroin use. Heroin abusers indicated that they considered using heroin after they began tampering with RXOs. A portion of the sample felt that abuse deterrent formulations (ADFs) would have reduced their RXO use. This pilot study discovered areas where further research could be targeted, such as drug combinations, adolescent coping mechanisms, adolescent pain management, and the use of ADFs to disrupt the transition from RXO addiction to heroin use.