No abstract

Technology readiness is a well-established construct that refers to individuals' ability to embrace and adopt new technology. Given the increasing use of advanced technologies in the delivery of health care, this study uses the Technology Readiness Index (Parasuraman, 2000) to explore the technology readiness of nursing and medical students from the fall 2006 cohort at Memorial University of Newfoundland. The three major findings from this study are that (i) rural nursing students are more insecure with technology than their urban counterparts, (ii) male medical students score higher on innovation than their female counterparts and have a higher overall technology readiness attitude than female medical students, and (iii) medical students who are older than 25 have a negative technology readiness score whereas those under 25 had a positive score. These findings suggest health care professional schools would be well served to implement curricular changes designed to support the needs of rural students, women, and those entering school at a non-traditional age. In addition, patterns such as those observed in this study highlight areas of emphasis for current practitioners as health care organizations develop continuing education offerings for staff.

No abstract

Drawing on Tinto's (1987Tinto's ( , 1993 theory of student integration, this research examines students who withdrew from their original institution prior to graduation. Of this group, some of the students who withdraw do so to transfer to another institution, and it is reasonable to assume that these students are different in many ways from students who withdraw and do not continue their education. Thus, the purpose of this effort is to provide a better understanding of the characteristics of students who leave their original institution so that intervention strategies can be more carefully targeted to the individual needs of these two groups. Results of the logistic regression analysis concur with some aspects of the existing literature on institutional departure; however, this study of systemic departure differs on several key points. The implications for the findings are then discussed in terms of their impact on the design institutional retention programs. 425Ó 2005, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.