Personal case study reflection Essay

1. Introduction The aim of this report is in order to analyze a personal decision making and the issues in the process of decision in a workplace with critical reflection which includes academic theories and some models. Also some reflections will be given to deal with the problems. I worked as an accountant in a technical company which produces various Laser Cutting Machines. The machines are used in car-making, ship-building, and these kinds of markets are very potential in China. Therefore, the financial situation was great in the company. However, for expanding more markets, the company planned to produce Plasma Cutting Machines which are used in industrial machine making such as electrical cabinet production, metal manufacturing and diggers. The company established a work team which was consisted by nine staffs from different departments and spend three months to analyze whether the new plan should be implemented, and the boss made the final decision according to the advices from the team. I was appointed as one of the members in the work team, and I took part in the team to collect the information of Plasma Cutting Machines market. The analysis showed that the new plan is valuable, and if the company produces the new machines, this would bring more increase of sales. At last, the boss decided to produce Plasma Cutting Machines to enlarge wider market. However, because of the Engineering equipment manufacturing market downturn, the sales of new machines decreased year by year. After five years, this new plan brought a large number of losses. 2. The Normative approaches of decision making As we know that there are two kinds of decisions which are programmed decisions and nonprogrammed decisions (Simon, 1984). It is clear that in this case, the decision is belong to nonprogrammed decisions because the decision maker must choose whether the company should produce the new machine, and it was not routine. For the decision maker, it contained high risk and uncertain factors. Before the boss made the decision, he must consider a lot of factors. According to the normative models (Anthony Hopwood, 1974), it is noticed that the boss realized that the company should not only sell the Laser Cutting Machines, and it needs to develop better. Then in order to earn more money, decision maker suggested investing to product new machines which are Plasma Cutting Machines. Meanwhile he established a team to evaluate the plan. The team collected the information which included the structure and functions, cost and market value about the new machine. According to the team’s evaluation, the boss thought this investment has very high market value. Therefore, he decided to add a new product line to produce Plasma Cutting Machines. Next, according to the customer requirements, new machines were produced. 3. Outcome The team spent three months to do the research about the Plasma Cutting Machines, and they thought the new machine would bring the benefits to the company. As a result they advised the boss to implement the new plan, and the boss accepted the suggestion. After that the company invested to the new project with a large number of funds. Even though the decision maker prepared a lot of things before he decided to add a new line to produce Plasma Cutting Machines, the new plan seemed not as successful as he expected. The sales of the new machine decreased year by year, and this led to a large number of losses five years later which even influenced the financial situation of the Laser Cutting Machines. 4. The issues and analysis 4.1. Team work In the process of decision making, team work was crucial to the decision maker, and this way brought some benefits such as promoting the employee’s work efficiency; using more opportunities which are provided by advanced science and technology; making work become more effective through the range of abilities and knowledge distributed from team members (Schein, 1965). However, because of the benefits, the boss relied on the team too much and ignored the disadvantages of the team. This was the one of the most important reasons why he made an unsuccessful decision. The team was a research and development team which is usually used in highly technical company (Ashleigh, 2010). Our work team needed to collect a large number of information about the new machine. First, the members must research the structures and functions about Plasma Cutting Machines. Moreover, the members also need to survey the sales situation of the new machines in the market. Furthermore, the cost of every machine needs to be confirmed, and  according to the sales and cost, the members needed to calculate the profit. Meanwhile, they must survey if other related companies which need to use Plasma Cutting Machines and may become the customers have potential in the future. It is clear that this team helped to develop and test new products, and this work not only needed members’ professional knowledge but also members’ innovation and experience in this field (Ashleigh, 2010). Whereas, the members ignored some important factors when they analyzed the new products. First, the cost of the Plasma Cutting Machines are very expensive, and each machine needs more than hundreds of thousands dollars. As a result, most customers preferred renting the machines to buying them, and this contributed to the decreasing sales. Second, the depreciation of the new machines increased fast, and the components of the new machine are very expensive and can be broken easily. Therefore, the company needed to cost high price to fix the machines. In addition to this, there were some other disadvantages. In the process of the analysis, the conflict usually arises among the members because of various sources such as individual differences, incompatible goals, different values and beliefs (Hinds and Bailey, 2003). In this case, the members of the team all came from different department such as Production Department (PD), General Accounting Department (GAD), Marketing Department (MD), and Purchasing Department (PD). Every department focused on different parts of the new plan. PD concentrated more on quality of the machines; GAD paid attention to the economic return; MD focused on market value and customers; Purchasing Department paid more attention to the cost of every machine, as a result when they have relational problems, they may have different perspectives. This situation contributed to negative conflict (McShane and Travaglione, 2003). Consequently, the conflict caused the result of the team work was not to be objective. 4.2 Uncertainty and Risk in the market In the process of decision-making, there are often some uncertain outcomes we cannot see previously, and it means it has risks. Furthermore, if the risks do not be solved in time, they may become a crisis to the company (Davies and Walters, 1999), and the crisis can lead to undesirable consequences. According to the team’s analysis about the Plasma Cutting Machines, the boss thought the new machines had very high market value because they are used in  the Engineering equipment manufacturing market such as electrical cabinet production, metal manufacturing and diggers, and they were very popular industry in China. However, the market is changeable, and the Engineering equipment manufacturing market was stuck in a dilemma from 2011. Contraction of the current engineering machinery market is mainly due to the downturn of the construction of high-speed rail, and the infrastructure construction was completed gradually. This, in turn, led to the decreasing sales of the Plasma Cutting Machines. Obviously, the decision maker did not realize the uncertain factors before he made the final decision. 5. Reflection As a decision maker in the company, first, he relied on the work team too much. According to the Big Five Personality Model, it is clear that he was not creative enough which means he gets low scores on openness to experience (Digman, 1990). The purpose of the work team is for providing some professional advices to the decision maker, so the boss should improve the professional knowledge about the Plasma Cutting Machines. Second, the boss should give more time to the team, but he just gave three months to the team to collect the information and analyze the new plan. It is obvious that three-month time was not enough to analyze this complicated plan clearly because the team needed to do a lot of work. Also the decision maker should invite more employees into the team because more members can give more specialized knowledge and suggestions. This can help to collect more information and contribute to a more effective decision. Another reflection is when the negative conflict exists, the members should solve it effectively. According to the Nelson’s (1995) taxonomy, they can use the direct approach to deal with the conflict which means when there are some conflicts among the members, the team leader helps to solve the problems directly. They can also use bargaining approach to solve the conflict. For example, In this case, if the members from General Accounting Department hold the different ideas about buying the components of the Plasma Cutting Machines with Purchasing Department, other members should be the mediators and objectively analyze the two different points. This approach can help the team give more suitable advices to the decision maker. Moreover, before the decision making, the boss should do the survey about the situation of the Engineering equipment manufacturing market because this industry is  associated with the new plan. If the Engineering equipment manufacturing market has great financial situation, that means more companies need to buy or rent our new machines. Meanwhile, he also needs to know about the country policy because it plays an important role in economic market. Sometimes if a company has a good financial situation depends on the country policy. The last reflection is the decision maker should do a risk assessment to decrease the risk of the new plan (Teale, Dispenza, Flynn, Currie, 2003) before he made the final decision because the technology of producing was not mature at that time. At same time, he can study the experience from other Plasma Cutting Machines companies, or he can implement the new plan until this technology becomes mature. 6. Conclusion This report illustrated the decision making about whether the new machines should be produced in a technical company. In the process of the decision, some issues arose and led to the failing result. The one of the main problem is the team did not give the suitable suggestions, but the boss still relied on the team’s analysis too much. Another issue is the uncertainty and risk of the economic market, and the boss did not realize the risk of the Plasma Cutting Machines. Contraposing the issues, some reflections were be given, and these reflections may help the company to solve some problems. If the decision maker can think about the new plan more specifically, the outcome may be not so disappointing. Reference Hopwood, A. (1974). Accounting and Human Behaviour, London: Accountancy Age Books. Schein, E. H. (1965). Organizational psychology (p. 25). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Simon, H. (1984). ‘Decision-making and organizational design’, in Pugh, D.S. (ed.), Organization Theory: Selected Readings, Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Ashleigh, M. & Mansi, A. (2010).Working in teams and groups. In The Psychology of People in Organisations(pp.236-65). Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Nelson,M.(1995), ‘Interpersonal team leadership skills,’ Hospital Material Management Quarterly, 16(4), 53-63. Hinds, P. J., and Bailey, D. E. (2003). ‘Out of sight; out of sync: understanding conflict in distributed teams’, Organization Science, 14(6), 615-32. McShane, S., and Travagline, T.(2003). Organisational Behaviour on the Pacific Rim. North Ryde, NSW: McGraw-Hill Australia. J. M. Digman(1990). â€Å"Personality Structure: Emergence of the Five-Factor Model,† in M. R. Rosenzweig and L. W. Porter(eds.). Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 41 (Palo Alto CA: Annual review, 1990). PP 417-440; Teale, M, Dispenza, V., Flynn, J. &Currie. D.(2003). Management decision-making in context. In Mnagement Decision-Making: Towards an Integrative Approach (pp.3-22). Harlow: Pearson Education.

Raft2 Sentinel Event

Sentinel Event: Child Abduction Description of Event A three-year-old patient presented to the hospital for outpatient surgery of bilateral myringotomies with mother. After the patient was registered, consent for surgery signed by mother, and prepped for surgery, the mother gave the pre-op nurse her phone number and left to run an errand with instructions to be called if her daughter was finished with surgery sooner than expected. The mother was expecting the patient would be ready to go home in about 2 hours.The pre-op nurse stated that she wrote down the mother’s phone number in her own notepad to call her. The patient completed surgery and was taken to recovery. At this time the recovery nurse paged out to the waiting room for the mother as parents are encouraged to come back to the recovery area as the children come out of anesthesia. With no answer from the page and the patient awake and stable, the patient was then given to the post op nurse for discharge. The post op nu rse stated that the recovery nurse had tried to page the mother, but made no mention of trying herself.The patient was becoming upset because she had not yet seen her mother. The security personnel called informing the nurse that the patient’s father had arrived and the patient happily met the â€Å"father,† so the discharge nurse waited another thirty minutes before releasing the patient to the father as there was no sign of the mother. When the mother of the patient arrived thirty minutes after the patient had been discharged looking for the patient, security was called, an internal code pink was initiated and law enforcement notified.Security stated that the mother informed them she had full custody of the patient and that the parents were divorced. The patient was found within thirty minutes in the care of the patient’s father at home. No charges were filed against the father. Roles of Personnel Registrar: A hospital registrar â€Å"performs scheduling, reg istration, verification and reception for all outpatient surgical patients (Northeast Health, 2012). † A hospital registrar is very important to hospitals, as they are the people who obtain insurance and billing information so that the hospital can get paid for the services it provides.The registrar at Nightingale Hospital stated that she entered the patient’s demographics and insurance information, obtained consent to treat the patient, and copied the patients insurance card. She did identify that, as it is not standard process, she did not ask for any other form of identification from the patient’s mother or ask about custody. At most hospitals that deal with pediatric patients, a standard part of the registration process is to have the parent’s present identification and a social security card of the patient. This is one way to help identify the parents as the parents of the patient.While custody information does not have to be given, as part of the con sent for treatment there is a clause stating that the parents who bring the child in are the only people to whom the child will be released upon discharge. Usually an identifier is placed on the parents by registration, such as a matching wristband that has the patient information and says parent, which helps staff know who to release the patient too. As there is no such process in place at Nightingale Hospital to verify parent identification, the registrar completed her job and moved on to the next patient.Pre-Op Nurse: The pre-op nurse is responsible for getting the patient ready for surgery. From â€Å"assess patient’s status, to reviewing the chart, identifying the patient, verifying the surgical site and marks site per institutional policy, establishing IV line, giving medications, and providing emotional support (Nurselabs, 2012). † The pre-op nurse stated in her interview that she was very busy the day of the patient’s surgery and did her usual assessment s and patient preparation, however she did have to run around to track down a gown.The nurse also stated that she wrote the mother’s phone number down on a notepad that she carries with her at all times. The mother requested to be called when the surgery was complete. The nurse made no mention of passing the phone number off to any of the other nurses or making a note on the chart for the other nurses to see regarding the mothers wish to be called and the number she could be reached at. The nurse also stated that she did not ask for custody information and felt that the doctor’s office should be responsible to get and give that information to the hospital.Overall the nurse did her basic work to prepare the patient for surgery. OR Nurse: The next nurse to receive the patient and have contact with her was the OR nurse. This nurse â€Å"maintains aseptic technique, controls the environment of the OR suite, transfers patient to operating room bed or table and positions th e patient: function alignment, exposure of surgical site, applies grounding device to patient, ensures that the sponge, needle, and instrument counts are correct and completes intraoperative documentation (Nurselabs, 2012). The OR nurse expressed concern in her interview that there was a possibility of this type of incident happening in other areas or departments in the facility as the OR is not the only area that separates children and parents to do procedures or tests. Overall the nurse did not identify much of her role and interactions with the patient or other staff in her interview. It is therefore assumed she did her role as described above but nothing further. Recovery Nurse: After the OR the patient was then sent to the recovery nurse.His role is to â€Å"determine the patient’s immediate response to surgical intervention, monitor patient’s physiologic status, assess and reassess patient’s pain level and administers appropriate pain relief measures, mai ntains patient’s safety (airway, circulation, prevention of injury), and assess readiness to be discharged or admitted (Nurselabs, 2012). † The recovery nurse stated that he received report from the OR nurse and took care of the patient as described above. As the patient woke up he â€Å"paged† to the waiting area to have the mom brought back.She did not answer and as the patient was stable and awake he took her to the post op nurse. There was no mention of the recovery nurse calling the mother as she had expressed to the pre-op nurse. The recovery nurse did not appear to know of these wishes, have her phone number, or be aware that the mother was not going to be in waiting room. The lack of communication from one staff member to another becomes apparent at this point in the patient’s care. The recovery nurse did not have any ideas on how to improve the system, but did express concern over lengthy and formal hand off report among nurses.The recovery nurse did not think outside of the normal standard when it came to trying to contact the patient’s mother, however he did his job according to hospital standards. Post-Op Nurse: The last phase of the patient’s care was to be transferred to the Post-Op nurse for â€Å"continued monitoring of patient’s physical and psychological response to surgical intervention, provides teaching to patient and family for discharge (Nurselabs, 2012). † The nurse stated that she was informed that the recovery nurse could not reach the mother via page.There is no mention of her trying to obtain a phone number to reach the mother. The nurse expressed that the patient was very distraught over not having her mother there. When security notified her that a person who stated he was the father was there, the nurse agreed to let him in and the patient was very happy to see him. The nurse stated in her interview that she waited for the mother, but when she did not show agreed to discharge the patient to the father’s care. The nurse did not check any identification from the father that acknowledged he was in fact the patient’s father.While the nurse did not have a specific hospital policy to follow regarding discharge of a patient, there was no extra effort on the part of the nurse to contact the mother per her report. Had there been notification on the patient chart regarding custody or a phone number the nurse could have easily verified information and not let the patient leave or gotten the mother’s approval for discharge. The nurse adequately took care of the patient during her time in the nurse’s care, however her choice to discharge the patient home without the mother was a lapse in judgment causing an error that could have potentially harmed the patient.Security: A security officer at a hospital has many responsibilities and depending on the needs of the hospital those duties may vary. Overall the officer is supposed to â€Å"write daily reports regarding the activities and disturbances (if any) that occur during his serving period, checks lights, alarm system, windows, doors, and gates, gives access to family members to see their patients, responds to any fire alarms, violent patients, and assists with helicopter landings (Sandhyarani, Ningthoujam, 2011). The security officer at Nightingale Hospital was responsible for bringing the â€Å"father† of the patient to the post-op care area to meet the patient, as well as responding to the â€Å"code pink† and notifying law enforcement of the abduction. The officer expressed concern over the delay in time of reporting the abduction when in fact, the nurse was unaware that the mother did not know the child had been discharged. The officer had an idea for using the same alarm coded bands used in the OB department with any pediatric patient and placing sensors around the hospital.It is great that he is thinking of new ways to help improve the system fro m a security standpoint. The officer responded to the situation quickly and efficiently using the information and resources he had available at the time. In the end the child was found and he therefore performed his duty quickly and efficiently. Surgeon: The surgeon’s responsibilities include ensuring that the patient is a good candidate for surgery, preparing the parents and patients for surgery, performing the surgery, overseeing the patients care post surgery. The urgeon who worked on the patient at Nightingale Hospital stated that he is the #1 ENT physician at the hospital. That implies he is very good at what he does. He stated that his office had records that state the mother is the primary custody holder of the patient and that the hospital did not get those records. While the hospital could have obtained the records, simply adding the question to the registration process would rectify the situation. The surgeon is very angry that this incident occurred and he does hav e a right as this is his patient and if these things continue to happen he will not have patients.The surgeon role is the overseer of the patient’s care before, during and after surgery. The surgeon completed the surgery and care of the patient as part of his job. Chief Nursing Officer: This person is responsible for just about anything that happens in the hospital from a nursing standpoint. This means that anything that is going right or wrong they deal with. The officer usually sits on many different committees to help with improving and maintaining staff education, competence, patient safety, and hospital management.The officer was not involved in the sentinel event, however it will be her responsibility to form committee, to complete the documentation, and to develop a way to ensure the event does not happen again. Barriers There are many different barriers that can impede effective interactions among people. These include physical, emotional, communication, language and cultural barriers (Ivanov, Tatyana, n. d). Physical barriers include demand of the nurse’s jobs including being short staffed, time constraints, technology, and unable to do face to face hand off reports. Emotional barriers include stereotyping, fear, anger, frustration, and mistrust.Communication barriers can encompass all the types of barriers. This barrier inhibits people’s ability to speak so that others understand, not all the information is given, and an inability to fully listen to what is said. Language and Cultural barriers include not being able to understand someone due to an accent, different meanings of words when translated from one language to another, and not understanding or respecting cultural views or practices. In this situation all of the staff experienced some form of barrier during the course of the patients visit. The biggest barriers appear to be communication and emotional barriers.A lack of proper hand-off report from one staff member to the next and nurses who appeared to feel overwhelmed and unsure of themselves or what to do next contributed to the patient being discharged to the wrong parent. Ways to decrease the presence of barriers and improve the staff interactions include a standardized hand off report, decreasing use of jargon or slang, giving timely feedback, decreasing physical barriers and talking in person, and learning about other cultures (Neusom, Ruby, n. d. ). Knowledge is power and the more the staff knows the better equipped they will be to identify and handle barriers as they arise.Getting a team of nurses together from multiple departments to help develop a standardized hand off report for staff will ensure that important information is passed on and not missed. In this report, staff must relay vital information for that patient as well as give report in person so that technology and language are not barriers. This will allow the staff to work together to improve their areas and it allows them to ta ke ownership of the project, meaning they will be more likely to utilize the hand off process in the future.Another way to improve interactions is to include barriers as a topic of education in the annual risk management education that staff completes each year. By helping staff to see and identify potential barriers they can hopefully prevent them from impeding patient care in the future. Quality improvement Method The quality improvement is a concept that not only hospitals but companies all over the world have been using for a very long time. Quality improvement is the process of looking forward and backward at company, process, policy, and/or safety. It is simply the process of making things better or improving them.It can be done to correct something that went wrong or used to prevent something bad from happening in the future. The method the Nightingale hospital needs to utilize is the FADE method. Focus, analyze, develop, and execute/evaluate (Wiseman, Beau and Kaprielian, Vi ctoria S, 2005). While there are many different models available in the business world today, they all have the common theme of analysis, implementation and reviewing. Different businesses tend to have different needs and therefore no model is better than another. The FADE model is useful to the hospital’s root cause analysis as it gives guidance and direction.The reason this model was chosen was because of the ease of use, the detailed direction and instruction, and the completeness of the model. This model allows the staff or committees to look at all angles of the situation and work to improve it. It is a complex model not a basic simple one, which gives better instruction. The first step of FADE is to focus. This means the hospital needs to identify a problem within the hospital and write a problem statement to help narrow down what is being looked at. The current issue is how to prevent child abductions within the hospital.While the OR is where the current event happened , it can easily become an issue for other areas of the hospital who care for children. The next step is to analyze the data and determine influential factors. This means the hospital will need to compile lists of what information is important to this case and what information is not. Collect any data about patterns and things that influence the outcomes or contribute to the problem or solution. This is the time for the hospital to evaluate what went wrong that lead to the child being discharged to a person that potentially could have not been the child’s relative.The more data that is gathered and analyzed the better understanding and better outcome the hospital can hope for in fixing the problem. The third step is to develop a plan of action. After gathering and reviewing all the information provided regarding the issue at hand. The hospital must develop a plan that helps to solve the problem. This is the time when getting people from multiple departments and areas of the ho spital will be important as each area will have a different view point that may help develop a plan that works for the majority of the people.During this stage not only does a plan need to be made but also planning to implement the plan. New policies and procedures cannot be implemented over night and expect all staff to agree and utilize it. All staff must complete proper training regarding the new plan before it can be put into use. For the hospital a plan needs to be developed that includes the input of security, OR staff, ER staff, OB staff, radiology, and administration. As multiple areas of the hospital will be affected by the new plan for pediatric patients, all those working with them should be included in the planning process.Once a plan is developed to prevent child abduction from happening again, education of all staff will be required. The last step in the quality improvement method is execute and evaluation. After staff has been trained it is time to put the plan into a ction. This is the time when committees will need to be organized to continue to evaluate and monitor the progress of the plan, keep records of the impact the plan has, and most important execute the plan. As time passes the committees will need to continue to evaluate the plan for success.If it is successful then continued monitoring is all that is needed. If the plan is not successful then the quality improvement methods starts again. It is during this phase that the hospital will need to ensure that every aspect of the plan is in place in a timely manner so that it can be properly evaluated. In this stage maintenance of the equipment and technologies will need to be completed as well as any minor adjustments to the plan that need to be made to better serve the entire staff and ensure the safety of the pediatric patients.Overall quality improvement is vital to patient safety and necessary for the continued advancement and improvement of patient care. By utilizing this method the h ospital will be able to complete a thorough root cause analysis that focuses, analyzes, develops, executes and evaluates the success and failure of the hospital. The Joint Commission requires that all sentinel events be reported and that the hospital develop a reason and solution to the problem. This method allows the hospital to follow Joint Commission Standards ensuring they keep their Joint Commission Accreditation.Corrective Action Plan: The development of risk management officers and committees started when lawsuits and insurance premiums began to rise. The goal of these people was to establish guidelines in which to help reduce and prevent errors, increase safety, and decrease financial loss. While the committees work daily to accomplish these things by utilizing a process of identifying, analyzing, treating and controlling, and evaluating (Chubb Healthcare, n. d. ), it is important to note that all staff must take an active role in risk management to ensure the hospital maint ains its high standards of care.It is the responsibility of all staff to identify areas of concern and report to the risk management committee so that changes can be made. Annual education of all staff is required on this subject to ensure that everyone is doing all they can to decrease risk. A thorough risk management program includes policies and procedures on the running of a risk management committee as well as maintenance and changes to the company’s policies and procedures to ensure compliance and proper utilization. It also has formal incident reporting, tracking and trends, and staff education.These are the basics of a very complex program that helps to decrease risk in the hospital setting. The areas that need to be changed and addressed in regards to the Nightingale Hospital is the area of policies and procedures that are related to patient safety. In ensuring patient safety the hospital can decrease the occurrence of lawsuits, decrease insurance costs, and increase staff awareness. While the risk management committee will be doing much of the initial review of the incident and changes to the policies, other committees and staff must be included in the change process.These resources include quality assurance, administration, safety and security, legal, and nurses, physicians, and other ancillary staff. The risk management committee should be reviewing the hospitals policies and procedures on a routine basis, at least annually, to look for areas of improvement, compliance with Joint Commission standards, and changes in healthcare advancements that therefore make the policies outdated. This area of the risk management program is clearly not being followed if there is no policy or procedure in place to prevent child abductions from happening in areas outside of the OB department.The risk management committee needs to address this lapse in protocol by taking five simple steps. First a review of the incident that happened, second gathering resource s to help gain insight into the different areas of the hospital, third developing a new hospital policy, fourth implementing the policy and educating staff, and lastly reviewing the policy on a annual basis to ensure compliance and monitor the need for improvement (Chubb Healthcare, n. d. ). In doing these steps the risk management committee can decrease the potential for child abductions in the hospital.First the committee must review the formal incident report, looking at the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the situation. Review any prior claims, patient complaints, staff complaints, and quality assurance reports (Chubb Healthcare, n. d. ). These allow the risk team to identify the problem and start to pinpoint the areas that need changing. The risk committee will need to work closely with the quality assurance committee, who likely have already gathered much of this information.They also will be a resource with regards to the requirements of the Joint Commission standards and be able to help identify any missteps that are resulting in non-compliance. This step needs to be completed in a timely manner, the longer it takes to get the information the longer it will take to get a new policy in place. The risk committee should set a deadline of no more than one month to complete this step. It is more likely that the committee could complete this step in two weeks but as many members may be working on other projects at the time, the committee will be allowed one month to complete this step.Next the risk management committee must meet with the different resources available to discuss the changes that need to be made to patient ensure safety. During this time the committee will hear from the legal department, safety and security department, staff from all areas of the hospital, and administrative staff. The point of this step is to gather as many ideas for change and improvement as possible from as many different aspects. As child abduction prevention is no t just security’s responsibility it will be important to understand what all staff can do (CNA, 2006).The legal department will be able to give feedback on what the hospital can and cannot do to ensure that the hospital does not develop a potential lawsuit from the new policy or lack of any previous policies. The safety and security department will be a huge resource for the risk committee as their job is to ensure that everyone stays safe. The new policy will greatly impact the security department as they will be required to potentially perform â€Å"code pink† drills, research and obtain new monitoring and sensor equipment or even increase staff levels to accommodate the increased security measures.Ensuring that the safety and security department is working closely with the risk committee will be key to ensuring a policy that is beneficial to everyone. The administrative staff involvement will be important as they will be looking at the information from a corporate s tandpoint. Their input on the policy will be centered on what is best for the hospital and how it ties into the values and standards of the corporation as a whole. They also will know budgets available for changes that need to be made to staff or security systems.The administrative resource is important because they look at the whole picture. The last resource that the risk committee will be utilizing is the staff, both clinical and non-clinical staff. This includes input from physicians, nurses, maintenance, environmental, technical support, and volunteers. These are the front line defenders when an abduction happens. These are the staff members that are present when it happens. Their input is key to being able to ensure that a new policy will help prevent any future abduction.As these staff live the day-to-day responsibilities of caring for patients, their suggestions and points of view are important. Also by having staff involved in the planning process they will be more likely t o adopt the new policy and follow it, because it will make sense to them and fit into their needs for the hospital. By utilizing all these different resources a proper policy can then be developed. This step should only take two weeks to complete. Taking longer may cause delay in development of the policy that is needed.The thirds step is to develop the new hospital policy utilizing all the information gathered from the sentinel event, quality assurance committee, and the hospital resources. The new policy must meet Joint Commission requirements for standards of care and safety of patients, as well as the hospitals needs (Chubb Healthcare, n. d. ). During this time, research for any new technology or materials to implement the new policy must be completed and quotes for pricing submitted to administration for approval. When the risk committee writes the new policy it must be written in a way that everyone can understand.This step should take no more than one month to complete. The c ommittee should spend a week reviewing all the notes and information gathered from the first two steps, then one week gathering the pricing information needed to implement the plan and then two weeks to have a completed policy. Everyone on the committee and in administration must be aware of these deadlines so that the policy can be implemented in a timely manner and all approvals completed in the appropriate deadlines. Next, the risk committee must ensure the staff is educated on the new policy and implement the policy.Live classes and computer-based learning will be important to educate all staff in the hospital on the new policy, technologies, and equipment (CNA, 2006). It is during this time that any new technology, forms, or other materials must be installed, printed, and dispersed so that when training is completed it will be ready for staff to use. This includes but is not limited to new forms for registration, new matching armbands for the children and parents, sensors aroun d the hospital that connect with the sensors in the armbands of the children, increased security staffing, etc.This step may take up to two months to complete depending on the ability of the committees to get the materials needed for training as well as materials installed and dispersed. Lastly the risk committee must continue to monitor the policy and compliance for any issues that may arise and make changes accordingly. It is recommended that with any new policy the risk committee monitor progress, compliance, and whether it is working or not by compiling risk reports on â€Å"code pinks† or other child safety reports as indicated in the policy monthly for the first year.As the hospital becomes more comfortable with the policy and it is changed to fit the needs of the hospital, and the policy has not been changed for six months; the policy can go into the yearly review area. The quality assurance committee can then continue to monitor the policy for compliance, impact, and maintenance. This last step can take up to a year, if not longer to complete depending on the needs of the hospital. Conclusion In the end a child being abducted whether by a parent who does not have custody or by a stranger is an emotionally trying experience for any parent as well as the child.All measures must be taken to ensure that the sentinel event does not occur again. By working with the quality assurance committee to utilize FADE (focus, analyze, develop, execute/evaluate), the risk management committee to create a new hospital policy, and the entire hospital staff, this will hopefully never happen again. While there are always legal and financial issues involved when something happens to a patient to compromise their safety, care, or well being, it is important that the hospital learns from these mistakes and takes action to correct them for the future.

The Secret of Ella and Micha Chapter 21

Micha The hospital lights are bright and the air is a little cold, but Ella's warm hand in mine is comforting. The doctor doped me up with a sedative to ease the pain and then I lay down on the bed, waiting for them to come clean the fragments of the branch out of my wound. I was scared shitless when I crashed into that tree, worried I was going to die and leave Ella behind with no one. But now, I'm feeling pretty good. Ethan peers over me and scrunches his nose at the wound. â€Å"It's gnarly looking.† I shove him out of the way and pull Ella down beside me. â€Å"Hey there, pretty girl, come sit with me.† She giggles, then glances at someone and laughs harder. â€Å"I think you might be better off trying to shut your eyes,† she tells me. I shake my head from side to side. â€Å"No way, all I want to do is stare at you all day.† She snorts a laugh and then smoothes my hair back from my head. â€Å"Quit talking, before you say something embarrassing.† I search my brain, not finding anything embarrassing stashed away inside. â€Å"I'll be fine.† I reach over with my good hand and find her leg. Grabbing hold of it, I pull her over toward me so she falls onto the bed. â€Å"Micha,† she says, her green eyes so wide I can see my reflection in them. â€Å"There are people everywhere.† I glance from left to right, not seeing anything but blurry shapes. â€Å"I think we're good.† I move into kiss her and she gives me a quick peck on the lips, before leaning away. â€Å"How about you rest your head in my lap,† she says. â€Å"And I'll rub your back until you go to sleep.† â€Å"But what if I wake up and you're not here?† I ask, sounding like a little baby, but not giving a shit. She presses her lips together and sighs. â€Å"I'm not going anywhere.† â€Å"You promise?† â€Å"I promise.† She sits up and I rest my head on her lap. She rubs her fingers up my back and through my hair. I hold onto her as I drift into unconsciousness. Ella Micha is lying on my bed without a shirt on, fiddling with the bandage covering the hole where the branch stabbed into him. The doctors couldn't stitch it up because it was too wide of an injury, so he has to keep it covered and is not allowed to take showers, something he had jokingly griped about at the hospital as he winked at me. It's been a few days since the accident and the Chevelle is parked out in his garage in ruins. When I saw it in the light, I practically passed out because it doesn't look like an accident anyone would walk away from; the driver's door is caved in and the front fender fell completely off. â€Å"This is going to leave an awesome battle scar.† He pushes the bandages back down over the wound. â€Å"I'm glad you think so.† I read the email that showed up in my inbox the day after the accident. Turns out, I got the internship at the museum and now I have no idea what to do. I want to do it – it's a great opportunity, but I also don't want to leave him. â€Å"What are you reading?† he asks, sliding his legs off the bed, starting to get to his feet. â€Å"Nothing. I was just looking through my emails.† I shut the computer screen off, climb onto the bed with him, and lean back against the headboard, stretching my legs out. He points at the drawing of the broken mirror on my wall. â€Å"I like that one. Especially the guitar part.† It turned out to be my best piece, full of memories, and a future I wasn't able to see until I finally let go. A freedom given to me by Micha because he refused to let me go. â€Å"Me too,† I agree. â€Å"I think I'll probably turn it in as one of my art projects one day.† â€Å"It's got a lot of meaning in it,† he comments. I smile and slide down, putting my head next to his. â€Å"I know.† He rolls to his side carefully, so he doesn't hurt his shoulder and we're lying face to face. â€Å"Where's your head, Ella May? Ever since the accident, you've been really quiet.† I'm so close to him I can see the dark specks of blue in his aqua eyes. I've been quiet because that night made me realize something important. For a split second, I thought I'd lost him and it opened up my heart and freed what I'd buried deep inside me that night on the bridge. I look into his eyes, no longer afraid of what's in them, but afraid I'll lose what they carry. â€Å"I just don't ever want to lose you.† His eyebrows dip together as he props up onto his elbow. â€Å"Is that what it's been about? The accident? Because I'm fine.† He points to the bandages. â€Å"It's just a tiny scrape.† â€Å"I know you're okay,† I say, sounding choked. â€Å"But for a second I didn't think you were.† â€Å"Hey.† He cups my cheek and kisses me tenderly. â€Å"I'm okay. You're okay. Everything's okay.† I take a deep breath and let it out before I can suck it back in. â€Å"Micha, I love you.†

Effect of Patient Care Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Effect of Patient Care - Essay Example Based on this research all people involved in conducting patient care should be efficient in their assigned tasks to ensure proper patient care is conducted. Different patients require different type of care due to the different types of ailments. This necessitates exemplary care in all patients so as to assist them cope with their ailments and other complications arising from the diseases. This task of providing patient care is solely the responsibility of health professionals who oversee that all procedures are followed. These health professionals have to follow the ethics code to ensure they do not compromise on the quality of care they award the patients. Examples of patient care include; cast care, bowel care, bladder care, amputation care, ambulatory care, circulatory care, among others. In all these, utmost and efficient care must be accorded to a patient at the right time and as expected. This is in order to reduce or altogether avoid further complications, which may arise in the process. It would be negligence on the part of a health professional if patient care is not provided at the stipulated time. Complications may arise as a result of negligence or incompetence in the line of duty. Having a case of nurses responsible for providing patient care arriving late each day to attend to patients is disheartening. Patients should be attended to within the stipulated time without delays as their health is paramount. Such nurses may cause additional pain to patients. This paper is going to assess the effects on patient care of nurses arriving late to the duty. Discussion Effect of nurses arriving late for duty on patient care The act of nurses arriving late for their duty to accord proper patient care to the patients may lead to non achievement of goals in the medical sector. The primary goal and objective of patient care is to assist patients recover or those with terminal illnesses, supportive care that minimizes the challenges they face. When nurses decid e to report late to assess the conditions of patients, there are chances of making the whole process of patient care a failure. In such instances, patient recovery goals may not be achieved as expected or as planned (Mitchell 2001). This is because; the nurses may find out that the condition of a certain patient deteriorated before they arrived for check up. As changes can be abrupt in ailments, a little delay may lead to complications which could otherwise not have happened had the responsible personnel arrived on time. An example is a diabetic patient who may be having challenges injecting insulin in the body. As glucose tests are to be carried out regularly, and necessary measures taken depending with the results, any delay in administering the right treatment can easily cause complications (Wagner 2000). Such patients may suffer from diabetic related complications if nurses continued to arrive late for work. Nurses administering patient care must be within points of call so as t o take care of any eventuality arising from the ailments. This trend of nurses arriving late for duty may also strain the relationship between the nurses and the patients. Under patient care, the relationship between a health professional and a patient is extremely vital. This is what is emphasized as it assists in ensuring quality care is maintained. When a patient and a health professional are in good terms, the health profession would be at ease knowing that any changes felt by the patient would be easily communicated. This would assist health professionals to administer relevant medication to the patient (Health-EU 2012). In such a scenario, a patient would always feel free to speak of any development to a health practitioner

Psychologist's Reasons to Know Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Psychologist's Reasons to Know - Essay Example To surmount the past, you must know the past." Since one is determined to become a psychologist, I agree with Rothko’s statement and identify the need to know two specialized endeavors, such as Philosophy and Anthropology, by presenting the contentions within the discourse to someone who aspires to be in the same profession. A Psychologist’s Reasons to Know â€Å"You have to learn, young man. Philosophy. Theology. Literature. Poetry. Drama. History. Archeology. Anthropology. Mythology. Music. These are your tools as much as brush and pigment. You cannot be an artist until you are civilized. You cannot be civilized until you learn. To be civilized is to know where you belong in the continuum of your art and your world. To surmount the past, you must know the past." – Mark Rothko. One is determined to become a psychologist. After having remunerated on the professed statements of Rothko, I agree that it is important to be civilized, and to be civilized one must lea rn about a variety of disciplines and from the great works and ideas that shaped our history. To become an effective psychologist, one deems it of crucial relevance to know two specialized endeavors such as Philosophy and Anthropology. ... In every conceivable setting from scientific research centers to mental health care services, "the understanding of behavior" is the enterprise of psychologists† (Amercan Psychological Association, 2012, p. 1). Likewise, anthropology is clearly defined as â€Å"the study of humanity. It has its origins in the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences† (Define Anthropology, 2011, p. 1). Philosophy, on the other hand, was revealed to be fairly difficult to define, given the expansive scope of the endeavor. Pardi (2011) wittingly noted that when his graduate professor asked what philosophy is, one of the most favorite answers was â€Å"â€Å"psychology misspelled.† Accordingly, it was noted that â€Å"the more philosophy I study, the more affinity I see between it and psychology. Both are generally focused on the mind and what it does, both worry about how the mind relates to the world around it, both are interested in behavior. But philosophy focuses less o n how to live in the world as a thinking thing and spends more energy on what it means to be a mind. Philosophy also studies the mind’s contents--ideas or concepts. Psychology helps humans to understand why things go wrong and how to make them right again (and what that means) while philosophy is concerned with understanding the structure of things like beliefs, a moral behavior, and sense experience† (Pardi, 2011, par. 6). Having established the theoretical frameworks of the mentioned disciplines, one is more determined that in pursuing a degree in psychology, there is eminent need to immerse oneself in both anthropology and philosophy to enhance expertise and awareness on the various disciplines that influence and impact human experience.

Power Point Research Proposal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Power Point Research Proposal - Essay Example However, heart attack risk factors can be effectively reduced by embracing a healthy living style, which includes modified diets, lifestyle, and physical activities for older women. The PICOT-based research question will be the basis for the practice where two heart attack reduction intervention will be compared, which include the use of Aspirin and lifestyle modification. Mortality rate caused by heart attack in older women is a global epidemic. Although there being medications such as Aspirin to reduce heart attack, the side effects are adverse making it a rather risky intervention. However, lifestyle modification forms a better intervention compared to the use of Aspirin as it has minimal risks and side effects and promote the overall health of a woman as well as reducing risks to other diseases. The evidence-based practice aims at establishing the effectiveness of modifying lifestyle to reduce the chances of a heart attack that will be compared to the use of Aspirin intervention. The practice further aims at improving awareness of heart attack risk factors that will be a major intervention in reducing mortality rate from heart diseases in older women. The evidence-based practice will be important, as it will find out whether lifestyle modification for women aged 45-75 years is better compared to the Aspirin regimen. The practice will further promote awareness of risks factors that contribute to heart attacks among older women. Studies have shown that physical activity has been one of the most successful interventions in reducing coronary heart disease. Daily exercise including simple walks has potential health benefits including reducing heart attack risks. The literature conducted aimed at the perceptions associated with Aspirin regimen in reducing the risk of heart attack. Additionally, reviewed studies aimed at comparing the efficacy of modifying lifestyle to the use of Aspirin regimen. Notably, most studies points out that modification

Discretion And The Criminal Justice Professionals Research Paper

Discretion And The Criminal Justice Professionals - Research Paper Example Therefore, researchers argue that the efforts on the part of security forces â€Å"unforeseen effects† on the privacy of citizens. Under such situations, if the police officers do not respect the value of privacy of citizens, their action will constitute the crossing of ethical boundaries. From the evidence evaluated during the course of this research, it has transpired that law enforcement officers are bestowed the power discretion which offers them immense authority over the citizens of the US. Many police officers misuse this power for personal gains such as accepting bribes, favoring individuals by not reporting their crimes, inflicting harm on ethnic minorities, poking into the private lives of citizens etc. On the other hand, there is a need for the police officers to have such powers because of their role in protecting the safety of citizens and fighting the menace of terrorism. Terrorist activities across the world and especially in countries like the US and India are on the increase and, therefore, police officers need to be endowed with the authority to check vehicles, search home and private premises, arrest suspect or even shoot terrorists to prevent the escalation of violent terrorist activities. However, police officers should be professional in their actions while dealing with as well as codes of conduct and ensure that they do not cross ethical limits by violating citizens’ freedom. Thus, while tackling the issue of terrorism and other crimes, police officers need to adhere to ethical principles.

The Harvard Community Health Plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The Harvard Community Health Plan - Essay Example In order to deliver high-quality healthcare services to the patients, Harvard Vanguard is focused on establishing a partnering relationship with its patients and community members (Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, 2012c). As part of delivering complete healthcare services to the patients, Harvard Vanguard’s physicians, physician assistants, nurses, and the rest of the medical teams are required to work closely with other specialties such as internal medicine, OB/GYN, pediatrics among others (Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, 2012d). This is also the main reason why healthcare professionals at Harvard Vanguard are continuously collaborating with other Atrius health affiliates (i.e. Dedham Medical Associates, Granite Medical Group, Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Reliant Medical Group, South Shore Medical Center, and Southboro Medical Group) (Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, 2012e). As part of the Harvard Vanguard ‘s human resource people plan, this report will explore the effectiveness of its organization's commitment to equality and diversity, individual and organizational learning, compensation, pay-for-performance and incentives, employee benefits, and employee rights. After the conclusion, some recommendations will be provided to ensure that the HR manager of Harvard Vanguard will be able to continuously support and implement necessary changes that aim to improve its current HR practices. Equality and Diversity ‘Equality’ means that work-related discrimination should be removed in order to guarantee that each worker within a business organization is given equal work-related opportunities whereas ‘diversity’ is all about the need to value the differences between two or more different people (Skills for Business, 2012). Basically, the human resource of Harvard Vanguard is committed to promoting workforce diversity and Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) (Employee Guide Book, 2012, p. 7). Without any forms of work discrimination (i.e. race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, and handicap or disability veteran status), each and everyone who is currently employed at Harvard Vanguard will be given the equal opportunity for employment (Employee Guide Book, 2012, p. 7). Individual and Organizational Learning Healthcare management is subject to change because of the presence of external socioeconomic factors that could directly affect the way healthcare services are being managed. According to Aspin and Chapman (2001, pp. 39 – 40), some of the reasons why HR managers should provide opportunities for individual lifelong learning includes the need to continuously improve one’s own knowledge and skills for â€Å"economic progress and development†, for â€Å"personal development and fulfilment†, and for â€Å"social inclusiveness and democratic understanding and activity†. Basically, in dividual lifelong learning is a new perspective wherein the modern society is being strongly influenced. In response to the continuous improvements on science and information and communication technology, a lot of educational institutions around the world started promoting the importance of individual lifelong learning (Demirel, 2009).  

Week 5discusiions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Week 5discusiions - Essay Example An active that will lead to weight loss is a treatment procedure. Therefore, an expense incurred during the weight loss process becomes a permitted deduction. However, the deductions must be more than 10% of the Annual Gross Income of the taxpayer (U.S Department of the Treasury, 2015). Furthermore, the taxpayer should not appear as a dependent on another person’s tax returns. A client who owns stocks can fund qualified organizations through appreciated securities in the stock market. The decision to sell the appreciated shares means that the client will forego the capital gains associated with them. The client will forego the capital gains and tax liabilities, but will include them as potential deductions. Furthermore, the deduction will be on the prevailing market value. However, when the qualified group is receiving the stock and wants value for money, they will have to cash the shares. Since the organization is non-profit, it would not be liable to tax liability associated with capital gains. For instance, consider a client with appreciated securities of 10,000 with a market value of $45. The client decides to offer the stock (10,000) to a qualified organization. They can deduct $45,000 as part of the potential deductions. They will have contributed the appreciated shares, and realized gains through the

Marginal Concept Essay Example for Free

Marginal Concept Essay Some land might be very good for producing certain crops rich in nutrients and easy to access and work. This land is likely to be used first for any cultivation because the relationship between the cost of producing the crop and the return gained from selling it will be highest. However, land that is not so good will be taken into cultivation if certain conditions allow. These conditions could be a rise in the price of the crop concerned or a means of either reducing the cost of producing the crop (perhaps through a greater understanding of how to maximize crop yield). Alternatively, it could be through some technological development that raises productivity (output per acre) or yield (for example, through breeding, selection and genetic modification). The capital cost of exploiting this resource is very high and at the margin is only worth investment if the return from one extra barrel of oil is greater than the cost of extracting it. The cost of exploiting the oil sands is relatively high. The separation of the oil from the sand is capital intensive, and then there have to be refineries that will process the oil into its constituent parts. Added to this is the cost of reclaiming the land and replanting it. Oil prices are determined by an international market. The demand for oil has been rising in recent years. There is, at the moment, plenty of oil available but the ability of the world to extract oil and to process it is where the problem lies. At present, we simply do not have the processing capacity to refine oil to keep up with the rising demand, which is why the price has risen so dramatically. (There are other reasons, of course concern over Middle East politics, the turmoil throughout the Middle East†¦etc).As the price rises, marginal oil reserves those that exist but are relatively expensive to exploit become viable. It is certainly the case that non-renewable resources remain exactly that non-renewable but as technology develops and as resources become more scarce in relation to demand, the market will lead companies to look to exploit resources that may have been considered impossible to extract or which were simply too costly to produce. It is all down to decisions at the margin. Questions 1. Most of Europe’s coal mines have closed down. There are still large reserves of coal available. Under what circumstances would you envisage businesses opening up coal mines and exploiting these resources? 2. Discuss the relevance of marginal concepts to the destruction of the rain forest. 3. How might an understanding of marginal concepts help to establish strategies to conserve as opposed to destroying natural resources?

VLSI Design and Embedded Systems

VLSI Design and Embedded Systems CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Motivation Phase locked loop (PLL) [1-3] is the heart of the many modern electronics as well as communication system. Recently plenty of the researches have conducted on the design of phase locked loop (PLL) circuit and still research is going on this topic. Most of the researches have conducted to realize a higher lock range PLL with lesser lock time [4] and have tolerable phase noise. The most versatile application of the phase locked loops (PLL) is for clock generation and clock recovery in microprocessor, networking, communication systems, and frequency synthesizers. Phase locked-loops (PLLs) are commonly used to generate well-timed on-chip clocks in high-performance digital systems. Modern wireless communication systems employ Phase Locked Loop (PLL) mainly for synchronization, clock synthesis, skew and jitter reduction [5]. Phase locked loops find wide application in several modern applications mostly in advance communication and instrumentation systems. PLL being a mixed signal circuit i nvolves design challenge at high frequency. Since its inspection in early 1930s, where it was used in the synchronization of the horizontal and vertical scans of television, it has come to an advanced form of integrated circuit (IC). Today found uses in many other applications. The first PLL ICs were available around 1965; it was built using purely analog component. Recent advances in integrated circuit design techniques have led to the development of high performance PLL which has become more economical and reliable. Now a whole PLL circuit can be integrated as a part of a larger circuit on a single chip. There are mainly five blocks in a PLL. These are phase frequency detector (PFD), charge pump (CP), low pass loop filter (LPF), voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) and frequency divider. Presently almost all communication and electronics devices operate at a higher frequency, so for that purpose we need a faster locking PLL. So there are a lot of challenges in designing the mentioned different blocks of the PLL to operate at a higher frequency. And these challenges motivated me towards this research topic. In this work mainly the faster locking of the PLL is concentrated by properly choosing the circuit architectures and parameters. The optimization of the VCO circuit is also carried out in this work to get a better frequency precision. 1.2 Organization of Thesis Before going into the details of the PLL, the motivation behind this work is mentioned in the Chapter 1 of the thesis. Chapter 2 briefly describes the whole PLL system. An introduction to the PLL circuit is mentioned in the section 2.1. Section 2.2 contains the detail architecture of the whole PLL system. Different types of PLLs are mentioned in the section 2.3. Section 2.4 explains the basic terms used in the PLL system while the consecutive sections give the details about the noise and application of the PLL. Chapter 3 builds the concepts of optimization. Definition of optimization technique and different circuit optimization techniques are presented in section 3.1 and 3.2 respectively. Section 3.3 gives the brief outline of the concept of geometric programming and convex optimization. The optimization of the CSVCO circuit is explained in section 3.4. The design and synthesis of the PLL is described in Chapter 4. The different design environments used in this work is mentioned in the section 4.1. The adopted design procedure is explained in section 4.2. Section 4.3 gives the design specifications and parameters of the work. The simulation results of the different circuits used in the PLL are depicted in the different sections of the Chapter 5. The performance of the CSVCO designed using convex optimization is compared with that of the traditional method in section 5.3. Section 5.5 gives the different simulation results of the PLL and its performance comparison between schematic and post layout level. At last Chapter 6 provides the conclusion that inferred from the work. CHAPTER 2 PHASE LOCKED LOOP 2.1 Introduction A PLL is a closed-loop feedback system that sets fixed phase relationship between its output clock phase and the phase of a reference clock. A PLL is capable of tracking the phase changes that falls in this bandwidth of the PLL. A PLL also multiplies a low-frequency reference clock CKref to produce a high-frequency clock CKout this is known as clock synthesis. A PLL has a negative feedback control system circuit. The main objective of a PLL is to generate a signal in which the phase is the same as the phase of a reference signal. This is achieved after many iterations of comparison of the reference and feedback signals. In this lock mode the phase of the reference and feedback signal is zero. After this, the PLL continues to compare the two signals but since they are in lock mode, the PLL output is constant. The basic block diagram of the PLL is shown in the Figure 2.1. In general a PLL consists of five main blocks: Phase Detector or Phase Frequency Detector (PD or PFD) Charge Pump (CP) Low Pass Filter (LPF) Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) Divide by N Counter The â€Å"Phase frequency Detector† (PFD) is one of the main parts in PLL circuits. It compares the phase and frequency difference between the reference clock and the feedback clock. Depending upon the phase and frequency deviation, it generates two output signals â€Å"UP† and â€Å"DOWN†. The â€Å"Charge Pump† (CP) circuit is used in the PLL to combine both the outputs of the PFD and give a single output. The output of the CP circuit is fed to a â€Å"Low Pass Filter† (LPF) to generate a DC control voltage. The phase and frequency of the â€Å"Voltage Controlled Oscillator† (VCO) output depends on the generated DC control voltage. If the PFD generates an â€Å"UP† signal, the error voltage at the output of LPF increases which in turn increase the VCO output signal frequency. On the contrary, if a â€Å"DOWN† signal is generated, the VCO output signal frequency decreases. The output of the VCO is then fed back to the PFD in or der to recalculate the phase difference, and then we can create closed loop frequency control system. 2.2 PLL Architecture The architecture of a charge-pump PLL is shown in Figure 2.2. A PLL comprises of several components. They are (1) phase or phase frequency detector, (2) charge pump, (3) loop filter, (4) voltage-controlled oscillator, and (5) frequency divider. The functioning of each block is briefly explained below. 2.2.1 Phase Frequency Detector The â€Å"Phase frequency Detector† (PFD) is one of the main part in PLL circuits. It compares the phase and frequency difference between the reference clock and the feedback clock. Depending upon the phase and frequency deviation, it generates two output signals â€Å"UP† and â€Å"DOWN†. Figure 2.3 shows a traditional PFD circuit. If there is a phase difference between the two signals, it will generate â€Å"UP† or â€Å"DOWN† synchronized signals. When the reference clock rising edge leads the feedback input clock rising edge â€Å"UP† signal goes high while keeping â€Å"DOWN† signal low. On the other hand if the feedback input clock rising edge leads the reference clock rising edge â€Å"DOWN† signal goes high and â€Å"UP† signal goes low. Fast phase and frequency acquisition PFDs [6-7] are generally preferred over traditional PFD. 2.2.2 Charge Pump and Loop Filter Charge pump circuit is an important block of the whole PLL system. It converts the phase or frequency difference information into a voltage, used to tune the VCO. Charge pump circuit is used to combine both the outputs of the PFD and give a single output which is fed to the input of the filter. Charge pump circuit gives a constant current of value IPDI which should be insensitive to the supply voltage variation [8]. The amplitude of the current always remains same but the polarity changes which depend on the value of the â€Å"UP† and â€Å"DOWN† signal. The schematic diagram of the charge pump circuit with loop filter is shown in the Figure 2.4. When the UP signal goes high M2 transistor turns ON while M1 is OFF and the output current is IPDI with a positive polarity. When the down signal becomes high M1 transistor turns ON while M2 is OFF and the output current is IPDI with a negative polarity. The charge pump output current [3] is given by IPDI=IPUMP—IPUMP4Ï€Ãâ€"ΔÎ ¦ =2IPUMP4Ï€Ãâ€"ΔÎ ¦ =IPUMP2Ï€Ãâ€"ΔÎ ¦ =KPDIÃâ€"ΔÎ ¦ (1) Where KPDI=IPUMP2Ï€ (amps/radian) (2) The passive low pass loop filter is used to convert back the charge pump current into the voltage. The filter should be as compact as possible [9].The output voltage of the loop filter controls the oscillation frequency of the VCO. The loop filter voltage will increase if Fref rising edge leads Fin rising edge and will decrease if Fin rising edge leads Fref rising edge. If the PLL is in locked state it maintains a constant value. The VCO input voltage is given by Vinvco = KF Ãâ€" IPDI (3) Where KF is the gain of the loop filter. 2.2.3 Voltage Controlled Oscillator An oscillator is an autonomous system which generates a periodic output without any input. The most popular type of the VCO circuit is the current starved voltage controlled oscillator (CSVCO). Here the number of inverter stages is fixed with 5. The simplified view of a single stage current starved oscillator is shown in the Figure 2.5. Transistors M2 and M3 operate as an inverter while M1 and M4 operate as current sources. The current sources, Ml and M4, limit the current available to the inverter, M2 and M3; in other words, the inverter is starved for current. The desired center frequency of the designed circuit is 1GHz with a supply of 1.8V. The CSVCO is designed both in usual manner as mentioned in [3], [10, 11]. The general circuit diagram of the current starved voltage controlled oscillator is shown in the Figure 2.6. To determine the design equations for the CSVCO, consider the simplified view of VCO in Figure 2.5. The total capacitance on the drains of M2 and M3 is given by Ctot=52Cox(LpWp+LnWn) (4) The time it takes to charge Ctot from zero to VSP with the constant current ID4 is given by t1=VSPID4Ãâ€"Ctot (5) While the time it takes to discharge Ctot from VDD to VSP is given by t1=VDD-VSPID1Ãâ€"Ctot (6) If we set ID4= ID1=ID then the sum of t1 and t2 is given by t1+t2=VDDIDÃâ€"Ctot (7) The oscillation frequency of CSVCO for N number of stage is fosc=1Nt1+t2=IDNCtotVDD (8) This is equal to fcenter when Vinvco=VDD2 (9) The gain of the VCO is given by KVCO=fmax-fminVmax-Vmin HzV (10) 2.2.4 Frequency Divider The output of the VCO is fed back to the input of PFD through the frequency divider circuit. The frequency divider in the PLL circuit forms a closed loop. It scales down the frequency of the VCO output signal. A simple D flip flop (DFF) acts as a frequency divider circuit. The schematic of a simple DFF based divide by 2 frequency divider circuit is shown in the Figure 2.7. 2.3 Types of PLL There are mainly 4 types of PLL are available. They are . Liner PLL Digital PLL All Digital PLL Soft PLL 2.4 Terms in PLL 2.4.1 Lock in Range Once the PLL is in lock state what is the range of frequencies for which it can keep itself locked is called as lock in range. This is also called as tracking range or holding range. 2.4.2 Capture Range When the PLL is initially not in lock, what frequency range can make PLL lock is called as capture range. This is also known as acquisition range. This is directly proportional to the LPF bandwidth. Reduction in the loop filter bandwidth thus improves the rejection of the out of band signals, but at the same time the capture range decreases, pull in time becomes larger and phase margin becomes poor. 2.4.3 Pull in Time The total time taken by the PLL to capture the signal (or to establish the lock) is called as Pull in Time of PLL. It is also called as Acquisition Time of PLL. 2.4.4 Bandwidth of PLL Bandwidth is the frequency at which the PLL begins to lose the lock with reference. 2.5 Noises in PLL The output of the practical system deviates from the desired response. This is because of the imperfections and noises in the system. The supply noise also affects the output noise of the PLL system [12]. There are mainly 4 types of noises. They are explained below. 2.5.1 Phase Noise The phase fluctuation due to the random frequency variation of a signal is called as phase noise. This is mostly affected by oscillators frequency stability. The main sources of the phase noise in PLL are oscillator noise [12-15], PFD and frequency divider circuit. The main components of the phase noise are thermal and flicker noise. 2.5.2 Jitter A jitter is the short term-term variations of a signal with respect to its ideal position in time [16-19]. This problem negatively impacts the data transmission quality. Jitter and phase noise are closely related and can be computed one from another [18]. Deviation from the ideal position can occur on either leading edge or trailing edge of signal. Jitter may be induced and coupled onto a clock signal from several different sources and is not uniform over all frequencies. Excessive jitter can increase bit error rate (BER) of communication signal [19]. In digital system Jitter leads to violation in time margins, causing circuits to behave improperly. 2.5.3 Spur Non-desired frequency content not related to the frequency of oscillation and its harmonics is called as â€Å"Spur†. There are mainly two types of spur. They are reference spur and fractional spur. Reference spur comes into picture in an integer PLL while fractional spur plays a major role in fractional PLL. When the PLL is in lock state the phase and frequency inputs to the PFD are essentially equal. There should not be any error output from the PFD. Since this can create problem, so the PFD is designed such that, in the locked state the current pulses from the CP will have a very narrow width as shown in the Figure 2.9. Because of this the input control voltage of the VCO is modulated by the reference signal and thus produces â€Å"Reference Spur† [20]. 2.5.4 Charge Pump Leakage Current When the CP output from the synthesizer is programmed to the high impedance state, in practice there should not be any current flow. But in practical some leakage current flows in the circuit and this is known as â€Å"charge pump leakage current† [20]. 2.6 Applications of PLL The demand of the PLL circuit increases day by day because of its wide application in the area of electronics, communication and instrumentation. The recent applications of the PLL circuits are in memories, microprocessors, hard disk drive electronics, RF and wireless transceivers, clock recovery circuits on microcontroller boards and optical fiber receivers. Some of the PLL applications are mentioned below. 1. Frequency Synthesis A frequency synthesizer is an electronic system for generating a range of frequencies from a single fixed time base or oscillator. 2. Clock Generation Many electronic systems include processors of various sorts that operate at hundreds of megahertz. Typically, the clocks supplied to these processors come from clock generator PLLs, which multiply a lower-frequency reference clock (usually 50 or 100 MHz) up to the operating frequency of the processor. The multiplication factor can be quite large in cases where the operating frequency is multiple GHz and the reference crystal is just tens or hundreds of megahertz. 3. Carrier Recovery (Clock Recovery) Some data streams, especially high-speed serial data streams (such as the raw stream of data from the magnetic head of a disk drive), are sent without an accompanying clock. The receiver generates a clock from an approximate frequency reference, and then phase-aligns to the transitions in the data stream with a PLL. This process is referred to as clock recovery. 4. SkewReduction This is one of the very popular and earliest uses of PLL. Suppose synchronous pair of data and clock lines enter a large digital chip. Since clock typically drives a large number of transistors and logic interconnects, it is first applied to large buffer. Thus, the clock distributed on chip may suffer from substantial skew with respect to data. This is an undesirable effect which reduces the timing budget for on-chip operations. 5. Jitter and Noise Reduction One desirable property of all PLLs is that the reference and feedback clock edges be brought into very close alignment. The average difference in time between the phases of the two signals when the PLL has achieved lock is called the static phase offset. The variance between these phases is called tracking jitter. Ideally, the static phase offset should be zero, and the tracking jitter should be as low as possible. CHAPTER 3 CONVEX OPTIMIZATION OF VCO IN PLL 3.1 What is an optimization technique? Optimization technique is nothing but the finding of the action that optimizes i.e. minimizes or maximizes the result of the objective function. Optimization technique is applied to the circuits aiming at finding out the optimized circuit design parameter to achieve either the best performance or the desired performance. Optimization techniques are a set of most powerful tools that are used in efficiently handling the design resources and there by achieve the best result. Mainly optimization techniques are applied to the circuit for the selection of the component values, devices sizes, and value of the voltage or current source. 3.2 Types of circuit optimization method There are mainly four types of circuit optimization methods exist. They are Classical optimization Knowledge based optimization Global optimization method Convex optimization and geometric programming 3.2.1 Classical Optimization Methods: In case of analog circuit CAD, classical optimization methods [21], such as steepest descent, sequential quadratic programming, and Lagrange multiplier methods are mainly used. These methods are used with more complicated circuit models, including even full SPICE simulations in each iteration. This method can handle a wide variety of problem. For this there is a need of a set of performance measures and computation of one or more derivatives. The main disadvantage of the classical optimization methods is that the global optimal solution is not possible. This method fails to find a feasible design even one exist. This method gives only the local minima instead of global solution. Since many different initial designs are considered to get the global optimization, the method becomes slower. Because of the human intervention (to give â€Å"good† initial designs), the method becomes less automated. The classical methods become slow if complex models are used. 3.2.2 Knowledge-Based Methods: Knowledge-based and expert-systems methods such as genetic algorithm or evolution systems, systems based on Fuzzy logic, and heuristics-based systems have also been widely used in analog circuit CAD [21]. In case of knowledge based methods, there are few limitations on the types of problems, specifications, and performance measures that are to be considered. These methods do not require the computation of the derivatives. This is not possible to find a global optimal design solution using these methods. The final design is decided on the basis of the initial design chosen and the algorithm parameters. The disadvantage of the knowledge based methods is that they simply fail to find a feasible solution even when one may exist. There is a need of human intervention during the design and the training process. 3.2.3 Global Optimization Methods: Global optimization methods such as branch and bound and simulated annealing are also used in analog circuit design [21]. These methods are guaranteed to find the global optimal design solution. The global optimal design is determined by the branch and bound methods unambiguously. In each iteration, a suboptimal feasible design and also a lower bound on the achievable performance is maintained by this method. This enables the algorithm to terminate non-heuristically, i.e., with complete confidence that the global design has been found within a given tolerance. The branch and bound method is extremely slow, with computation growing exponentially with problem size. The trapping in a locally optimal design can be avoided by using simulated annealing (SA). This method can compute the global optimal solution but not guaranteed. Since there is no real-time lower bound is available, so termination is heuristic. This method can also handle a wide variety of performance indices and objects. T he main advantage of SA is that it handles the continuous variables and discrete variables problems efficiently and reduces the chances of getting a non-globally optimal design. The only problem with this method is that it is very slow and can not guarantee a global optimal solution. 3.2.4 Convex Optimization and Geometric Programming Methods: Geometric programming methods are special optimization problems in which the objective and constraint functions are all convex [22-24]. Convex optimization technique can solve the problems having a large number of variables and constraints very efficiently [22]. The main advantage of this method for which people generally adopt is that the method gives the global solution. Infeasibility is unambiguously detected. Since a lower bound on the achievable performance is given, so the method uses a completely non- heuristic stopping criterion. 3.3 Geometric programming and convex optimization Geometric programming is a special type of optimization technique in which all the objective must be convex. Before applying this technique it has to confirm that whether the given problem is convex optimization problem or not. Convex optimization problem means the problem of minimizing a convex function subject to convex inequality constraints and linear equality constraints. In IC integration convex optimization and geometric programming has become a more efficient computational tool for optimization purpose. This method has an ability to handle thousands of variables and constraints and solve efficiently. The main advantage of convex optimization technique is that it gives the global optimized value and the robust design. The fact that geometric programs can be solved very efficiently has a number of practical consequences. For example, the method can be used to simultaneously optimize the design of a large number of circuits in a single large mixed-mode integrated circuit. The de signs of the individual circuits are coupled by constraints on total power and area, and by various parameters that affect the circuit coupling such as input capacitance, output resistance, etc. Convex optimization is used to find out the optimized value of these parameter and sizing of the devices in the circuit [25]. Another application is to use the efficiency to obtain robust designs i.e., designs that are guaranteed to meet a set of specifications over a variety of processes or technology parameter values. This is done by simply replicating the specifications with a (possibly large) number of representative process parameters, which is practical only because geometric programs with thousands of constraints are readily solved. A real valued function fx defined on an interval (space) is called convex if ftx1+1-tx2≠¤tfx1+1-tfx2 (11) For every t,0 In the Figure 3.1 function fx is represented as a convex function on an interval. The convex optimization problem is in the form of minimize f0x Subjected to fix≠¤1 , i=1, 2, 3†¦, m gix=1 , i=1, 2, 3†¦, p xi>1 , i=1, 2, 3†¦, n Where fix is a posynomial function gix is a monomial function Let x1,x2†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦xn be n real positive variables. We can denote the vector (xi,xi†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.xi) of these variables asx. A function f is called a posynomial function of x if it has the form fix1,x2†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦xn=k=1tCkx1ÃŽ ±1kx2ÃŽ ±2k†¦..xnÃŽ ±nk (12) Where Cj≠¥0 and ÃŽ ±ij à Ã‚ µ R. The coefficients Cj must be nonnegative but the exponents ÃŽ ±ij can be any real numbers including negative or fractional. When there is exactly one nonzero term in the sum i.e. t=1 and C1>0, we call f is a monomial function. 3.3.1 Advantages:  § Handle thousands of variables and constraints and solve efficiently.  § Global optimization can be obtained. 3.3.2 Disadvantages: * Strictly limited to types of problems, performance specification and objectives that can be handled. 3.4 Optimization of the VCO circuit In my earlier design of the VCO circuit, the sizes of all the five inverter stages are same. Now the convex optimization technique is applied to find out the optimal scaling ratio of the different inverter stages to get the optimal design with a better performance. There are 5 inverter stages and the design has to give a delay of 100ps. The load capacitance of the VCO circuit is 65 fF. All these design constraints are formulated and applied to the convex optimization technique. Mainly optimization techniques are applied for selection of component values and transistor sizing. In this work I have used the geometric programming technique to find out the optimized scaling ratio of the different stages in CSVCO to meet the desired center frequency with lesser deviation. Let xi is the scaling ration of the ith stage, CL is the load capacitance, and D is the total delay of the inverter stages then optimization problem is in the form of Minimize sum (xi) Subjected to CL≠¤CLmax D≠¤Dmax Where CLmax and Dmax are required design parameters and has a constant value. CHAPTER 4 DESIGN AND SYNTHESIS OF PLL 4.1 Design Environment The schematic level design entry of the circuits is carried out in the CADENCE Virtuoso Analog Design Environment. The layout of the PLL is designed in Virtuoso XL using GPDK090 library. In order to analyze the performances, these circuits are simulated in the Spectre simulator of CADENCE tool. Different performance indices such as phase noise, power consumption and lock time are measured in this environment. Transient, parametric sweep and phase noise analyses are carried out in this work to find out the performances of the circuit. The optimization of the current starved VCO circuit, the scale factor for transistor sizing is found out using the MATLAB environment. 4.2 Design Procedure 4.2.1 VCO Design Since VCO is the heart of the whole PLL system, it should be designed in a proper manner. The design steps for the current starved VCO are as follows. Step 1 Find the value of the propagation delay for each stage of the inverter in the VCO circuit using the following equation. Ï„p=1Nf (13) Where Ï„p= Ï„phl= Ï„plh= half of the propagation delay time of the inverter N= no of inverter stages f= required center frequency of oscillation Step 2 Find the WL ratio for the transistors in the different inverter stages using the equation in below. WL n=CloadÏ„phl µnCoxVdd-VT,n2VT,nVdd-VT,n+ln4Vdd-VT,nVdd-1 (14) WL p=CloadÏ„plh µpCoxVdd-VT,p2VT,pVdd-VT,p+ln4Vdd-VT,pVdd-1 (15) Step 3 After finding the WL ratio, find the values for W and L. Step 4 Find the value of the total capacitance form the expression Ctot=52Cox(LpWp+LnWn) (16) Where Cox is the oxide capacitance Lp,Wp,Ln,Wn is the width and length of the PMOS and NMOS transistors in the inverter stages. Step 5 Calculate the value of drain current for the center frequency which is given by IDcenter=NCtotVddf (17) Step 6 Find the WL ratio for the current starving transistors in the circuit from the drain current expression which is represented as WL n=2Ãâ€"IDcenter µnCoxVgs-VT,n2 (18) Similarly WL p=2.5Ãâ€"WL n (19) 4.2.2 Design of Phase Locked Loop The value of the charge pump current and the component parameters of the loop filter play a major role in the design of the phase locked loop circuit. The value of the lock time mainly depends upon these parameters. So while designing the circuit proper care should be taken in calculating these parameters. For the given values of reference(Fref) and output frequency(Fout) as well as the lock in range, the following steps to be carried out in designing the filter circuit. Step 1 Find the value of the divider circuit to be used which is given by n=FoutFref (20) Step 2 Find the value of the natural frequency (ωn) from the lock in range as given below lock in range=2Ãâ€"ÃŽ ¾Ãƒâ€"ωn (21) Step 3 Find the value of the charge pump gain (KPDI) from the charge pump current used in the circuit which is given by KPDI=Ipump2Ï€ (Amps/radian) (22) Step 4 Find the value of the gain of the VCO (Kvco) circuit from the characteristics curve using the following expression. Kvco=fmax-fminVmax-Vmin (Hz/V) (23) Step 5 Find the values of the loop filter component parameters using the following expressions. C1=KPDIÃâ€"KvcoNωn2 (24) C2=C110 (25) R=2ÃŽ ¾Ãâ€°nC1 (26) 4.3 Design Specifications and Parameters 4.3.1 VCO Design Specification The current starved VCO design specifications are mentioned in the following table. Table 1 VCO design specifications 4.3.2 VCO Design Parameters Table 2 List of design parameters of the CSVCO circuit 4.3.3 PLL Design Parameters The whole PLL system design specifications and parameters are shown in the Table 3. Parameter Value Reference frequency((Fref) 500 MHz output frequency(Fout) 1 GHz Lock in range 100 MHz

State Funding for California State University

State Funding for California State University Sherry Pickering The state legislators in California play a key role in the funding for the California State University (university). They may also impose new reporting requirements, change the laws and set new rules that directly affect the university at any time. As a university administrator the system-wide conferences that I attend typically feature a speaker from the California State Universitys advocacy team whom will outline the political landscape and discuss content and status of current legislation. A key point that has routinely been made in these presentations in the last several years is that term limits are detrimental to the university. Specifically we are told that term limits mean that the state legislators are constantly campaigning so they cannot be bothered with key issues that are important to the university or, if theyve just entered office, they are too new to be of much help. This leads to the question, are term limited state legislators more or less likely to be responsive to the requests of bureaucratic interests? Term limits were enacted for the California state legislature with the passage of proposition 140 in 1990. â€Å"The law limited state Assembly members to three two-year terms and state senators to two four-year terms.† (California_Term_Limits,_Proposition_140_(1990), 2015) It also imposed â€Å"a lifelong ban against seeking the same office once a member† was termed out and prevented â€Å"new legislators from earning pension benefits.† (California_Term_Limits,_Proposition_140_(1990), 2015) California was among the first in a series of states to adopt term limits. This trend begun in the 1980s and continued throughout the 1990s to the early 2000s that ended with to up to 21 states adopting some term limits. Six states have since repealed these changes in the wake of a 1995 ruling that congressional term limits were unconstitutional, in that states could not place limits on a federal office. The push for term limits in the 1990s seemed to be a grassroots effort. Throughout the 1980s in California incumbents seemed to be impossible to unseat. This was in part due to advantages of name recognition enjoyed by all incumbents. However that effect was reinforced by several redistricting efforts that made it increasingly difficult for the predominantly Democratic members to be challenged by Republicans. These results for the legislative bodies were in stark contrast to the results in the three gubernatorial contests that occurred during this period where a Republican was chosen. The proposition was backed by Republicans whom were interested in the passage of these laws in two way. Ideologically Republicans are in favor of a more limited government. Term limits are generally seen as a way to weaken a legislative body which is alternately used as an argument for or against term limits laws. More importantly in the early 1990s Republicans were in favor of term limits as a way to create more competitive races for seats. Given the make-up of the legislative membership it seemed that the Republicans stood to gain the most with the passage of term limits. Main stakeholders involved with this issue are state legislators. In California there are two legislative bodies, the state assembly and the state senate. Unlike other states such as Texas where legislative appointments are part-time, California legislators have a full time or professional appointment. In the assembly there are 80 members while in the state senate there are 40 members. While several political parties exist, these legislative bodies only have representatives from the Democrat and Republican parties. Presently Democrats hold a majority of the seats in both the assembly and senate. The staffs of these legislative bodies represent another group that would be deeply interested in this issue. This staff is made up of partisan staff, usually represented by those that work for individual legislators, and non-partisan staff such as those that work for the administrative arm of these bodies. For example, non-partisan staffers in the Legislative Analyst’s Office provide analysis for each bill presented in each house. While the non-partisan staff may seem to have more secure positions regardless of the passage of term limits they would be impacted by an increase or decrease in the amount of bills generated by the legislators. Lobbyists and special interests have a stake in the outcomes wrought by term limits. These lobbyists may represent bureaucratic interests like those of other state agencies such as university, prisons and health and human services or external parties such as business and issues groups. These groups would be keenly interested in how term limits have strengthened or weakened their influence on these legislative bodies. Citizens of the state play a key role in shaping law in California. In 1849 referendums or initiatives, which are changes to the state constitution or laws, were referred to the electorate for a popular vote. This law was expanded in 1911 to allow externally sponsored initiatives to be brought to vote. The initiatives process means that the voters are asked to decide if either tiny or sweeping changes to laws should be adopted. While this should result in a more direct style of government as a voter it gives the impression that the legislative bodies aren’t working to come to consensus on decisions that they should be more informed than the average voter to make. Legislators, legislative staff and lobbyists largely opposed the proposed term limits law because of the seemingly detrimental effect that it would have from each of their perspectives. Prior to term limits some legislators served in the same seat for decades. In the face of term limits these legislators had to reimagine how they could perform in office under these new rules. Legislative staff tied to a particular legislator or party faced an uncertain future where they may need to find a new job every few years. Finally, lobbyists could no longer rely on their long relationships with a particular legislator nor could they influence affiliated committees with these relationships. Beyond the rhetoric published as the term limits law was up a vote, there is ample evidence that legislators dislike these laws. For example, in the majority of the states without these laws each state’s legislative house law would have to be passed on a vote to be adopted. Yet these laws have never gained enough support. In the U.S. Congress term limits could only be imposed on senators and representatives by passing a vote in those legislative bodies, but term limits proposals have been brought to vote several times and failed to gain enough support to pass. Therefore the electorate seemed to have the most to gain from adoption of term limits. The expected positive outcomes most frequently citied during the campaign to pass the law were that term limits would lead to a more diverse, citizen legislature that represents the electorate’s interests, and balanced power the between the executive and legislative bodies. While all of these aims may not have materialized, overall likely voters in California seem to be pleased with the results in the last several years. One area where it could be argued that term limits has succeeded is related to the diversity or make up of the legislators. Supporters of the law claimed that it would create new opportunities for women and minorities to become representatives. Generally the number of women in the legislature rose statewide and adjusting for other factors â€Å"term limits opened up nine Assembly seats for women† between 1990 to 2001 (Cain Kousser, 2004). Nationwide the effect of term limits on participation rates for women seems to be virtually flat. (Institutional Change in American Politics: The Case of Term Limits, 2007) California had a long history of electing minority representatives. In the period after term limits laws went into effect minorities were elected to the state legislature in greater numbers. This was in part to seats that became available due to term limits. However, term limits removed long serving minority members such as Willie Brown. So the overall effect of term limits on the make-up of the state legislature in California did show an uptick in the election of minority legislators, specifically Latinos. (Cain Kousser, 2004) One area where term limits seems to have had no effect is on the careerism of legislators. Proponents of the term limits laws were certain that the career politicians would be phased out due to term limits and seats would become available to ‘citizen’ candidates. Instead since term limits have been put into place legislators seem to map out a series of jobs that begin in local government, rise to state legislature and go onto elected state office or back to local government. (Cain Kousser, 2004) Research found that in 1980 â€Å"the share of Senators who had been Assembly members had risen to 65 percent. By 2001, that figure rose to 90 percent.† (Cain Kousser, 2004) Legislative staff concerns about term limits came to pass in a couple of ways. With the downturn and subsequent shortfalls in the state budget non-partisan legislative staffs, namely the staff of the Legislative Analyst’s Office, were cut dramatically. The staff of the Assembly also suffered cuts related to budget shortfalls. So the staff has experienced a greater amount of work, not because of a change in the amount of legislation, but rather from a reduced number of staff to perform the work. Partisan staff also experienced a shift in their jobs in the wake of the adoption of term limits laws in California. As expected with the loss of some job security, the tenure of this staff has decreased. Along with fewer years of service the expectations of the staff in these positions has changed. For example, prior to term limits staff were expected to analyze legislation. After term limits staff must also provide recommendations with their analysis. (Robinson, 2011) An alarming outcome of term limits for the university is that it seems to have strengthened executive branch in certain ways. One key way this has materialized that directly impacts the university is that the legislature is less likely to be effective in altering the governor’s budget. Researchers observed this effect by comparing budgets for certain categories in the budget in years before term limits and after the laws went into effect where economically the state was experiencing similar circumstances. (Cain Kousser, 2004) In a less studied way this effect has been noticeable in the last few years has been on time budgets which is helpful to the university in creating more stability for the transition from one fiscal year to the next. However, this means that there have been fewer objections to the governor’s budget proposal by the legislators. For the university system the governor’s budget has fallen short of the budget requests that were submitted. Additionally, while there have been some increases for the university between the governor’s budget and the May revise that takes tax collections into account, these have only made some progress in replacing the state support that the university lost in the financial downturn. This virtual lockdown in the budget process and insistence by the Governor that tuition fees remain level over the last few years has made it difficult for the university to grow system-wide enrollment. The Governor has also expressed his view that the university should cut cost of course delivery by adopting an online model more rapidly. While this is a fine opinion to have, it does seem that his budget allocations for the university reflect an unwillingness to recognize that making such a drastic change in a large system does not happen overnight. The overall lack of legislative voices disagreeing with the Governor on these points has been very noticeable. One expected outcome of instituting term limits was that the influence of lobbyists would be diminished. This was supposed to occur because the lobbyist would have less time to develop long relationships with any one legislator so lobbyists would have less success in influencing the political process. While if this were true it could mean that the university’s lobbyist’s claims are true, there is some evidence that this outcome has not been realized. When surveyed lobbyists responded with term limits in place the influence of the Governor increased quite dramatically. Additionally, the influence for their firms specifically stayed about the same or increased slightly with the implementation of term limits. (Moncrief Thompson, 2001) In the years after the term limits were enacted under proposition 140 there were four attempts to remove or change the law. The first three attempts, a lawsuit and two ballot propositions, failed. Proposition 28 was passed in a June 2012 election. With this amendment legislators may now serve in either house in any combination of terms up to 12 years. This doubles the time that a member of the Assembly could serve under proposition 140 rules. While the effects of this recent change remain to be seen, it is possible that it will return some balance to the political process and reign in the executive branch. While I can see that the university’s lobbyists are likely working harder than they did in the past, I see no evidence that they have less influence under term limits. Given that the budget is a key issue for the university what may also be the case is that they are putting their efforts into influencing the members of the legislature that worked well under pre-term limits conditions when their efforts would be better spent demonstrating that the university system has value to the executive branch. In light of this analysis, I believe the university’s lobbying group should: Assess their current program to determine how much of their time is allocated to committee support, specific contacts with legislators and the executive branch. Then evaluate the effectiveness of the meetings with specific legislators. If this leads to more effective committee support then they should likely leave their time allocation as it is currently. However, if their meetings yield little results they should assess how that time could be better utilized to up their contact with the executive branch. It is well known that this governor is no fan of higher education; however any improvements that could be made as a result of the renewed efforts on the part of the lobbyists would be helpful. It seems likely that they are well aware of the research underpinning this analysis, but I have been surprised in the past how frequently people do not read about their own professions. So going through this assessment could do them well. Bibliography Basham, P. (2003). Defining Democracy Down: Explaining the Capaign to Repeal Term Limits. Washington D.C.: Cato Institute. Cain, B., Kousser, T. (2004). Adapting to term limits: recent experiences and new directions. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California. California_Term_Limits,_Proposition_140_(1990). (2015, 03 07). Retrieved from ballotpedia.org: http://ballotpedia.org/California_Term_Limits,_Proposition_140_(1990) Donovan, T., Snipp, J. (1994). Support for Legislative Term Limitations in California: Group Representation, Partisanship, and Campaign Information. The Journal of Politics, 492-501. Institutional Change in American Politics: The Case of Term Limits. (2007). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Moncrief, G., Thompson, J. (2001). On the outside Looking in: Lobbyists Perspectives on the Effects of State Legislative Term Limits. State Politics Policy Quarterly, 394-411. Robinson, K. (2011). Shifting Power in Sacramento: The Effects of Term Limits on Legislative Staff. California Journal of Politics and Policy 3(1). Walters, D. (2012, 03 30). Changing Term Limits isnt the Answer. Monterey Herald, pp. http://www.montereyherald.com/general-news/20120330/dan-walters-changing-term-limits-isnt-the-answer.