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Background: Consistent assignment (CA) is the practice within long‐term care (LTC) by which care staff work with the same residents almost every shift for an indefinite period of time. CA is considered by many to be essential to person‐centred care. Objectives: This paper explores how staff assignment practices impact the caregiving experience from the perspectives of resident care aides (RCAs), residents and family members and, by doing so, describe the nuanced conditions under which CA may or may not be beneficial to all, and why. Methods: Data are drawn from 40 in‐depth interviews conducted as part of a larger institutional ethnography exploring the social organisation of care in three purposively selected LTC homes in Western Canada. Data analysis was based on the principles of constant comparison. Results: RCAs, residents and family members described the primary benefit of CA as being able to 'get to know' each other well and form meaningful relationships. However, the RCAs also indicated that CA can contribute to feelings of isolation, which has negative effects on worker comfort and satisfaction, care team dynamics and communication, and resident care. Conclusions: Management initiatives are needed to ensure that the implementation of CA does not result in the unintended consequences of decreasing RCAs' experience of teamwork, decreasing RCAs' exchange of individualised resident care information, or negatively impacting RCAs' ability and desire to care for each other as well as the residents. Implications for practice: The staffing practice of consistent assignment in long‐term care homes provides increased opportunities for the development of stronger staff‐resident and staff‐family member relationships. Findings from this study enable us to offer several, evidenced‐based recommendations for ensuring the successful implementation of consistent assignment, such that it may be beneficial to all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context Checklists are commonly used in the assessment of procedural competence. However, on most checklists, high scores are often unable to rule out incompetence as the commission of a few serious procedural errors typically results in only a minimal reduction in performance score. We hypothesised that checklists constructed based on procedural errors may be better at identifying incompetence. Objectives This study sought to compare the efficacy of an error-focused checklist and a conventionally constructed checklist in identifying procedural incompetence. Methods We constructed a 15-item error-focused checklist for lumbar puncture ( LP) based on input from 13 experts in four Canadian academic centres, using a modified Delphi approach, over three rounds of survey. Ratings of 18 video-recorded performances of LP on simulators using the error-focused tool were compared with ratings obtained using a published conventional 21-item checklist. Competence/incompetence decisions were based on global assessment. Diagnostic accuracy was estimated using the area under the curve ( AUC) in receiver operating characteristic analyses. Results The accuracy of the conventional checklist in identifying incompetence was low ( AUC 0.11, 95% confidence interval [ CI] 0.00-0.28) in comparison with that of the error-focused checklist ( AUC 0.85, 95% CI 0.67-1.00). The internal consistency of the error-focused checklist was lower than that of the conventional checklist (α = 0.35 and α = 0.79, respectively). The inter-rater reliability of both tools was high (conventional checklist: intraclass correlation coefficient [ ICC] 0.99, 95% CI 0.98-1.00; error-focused checklist: ICC 0.92, 95% CI 0.68-0.98). Conclusions Despite higher internal consistency and inter-rater reliability, the conventional checklist was less accurate at identifying procedural incompetence. For assessments in which it is important to identify procedural incompetence, we recommend the use of an error-focused checklist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional funding programs for fisheries, aquaculture, and aquatic research provide short-term support for an individual or small research team to test a specific hypothesis, often having only limited spatial applicability. To tackle more complex issues existing at larger spatial scales (national or continental), other approaches are necessary. In Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council has developed the Strategic Network Grants (SNGs) program that enables multi-institutional teams of academics (typically 10 to 20 co-principal investigators) to work with industry and government partners on large-scale, multidisciplinary research projects in targeted research areas. The network model is intended to create unique training opportunities and enable researchers to study problems at spatial and temporal scales that could not be addressed with traditional funding. Currently, six of the 30-plus SNGs in Canada are focused on fisheries, aquaculture, and aquatic sciences issues, namely, impacts of hydropower on fish and fish habitat, capture fisheries, integrated multitrophic aquaculture, healthy oceans, and the spatial ecology of aquatic vertebrates in coastal waters. Here we introduce five case studies that will examine the motivation, scientific research objectives, and operation of networks in detail. In addition, we explore the perceived benefits and challenges with the research network-funding model with specific reference to the advancement of large-scale studies in fisheries, aquaculture, and aquatic sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]