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The primary purpose of this study is to document the psychometric properties of the revised Nursing Work Index (NWI-R) in the context of a large Canadian sample of registered nurses. A self-administered survey containing the NWI-R was completed by 17,965 registered nurses working in 415 hospitals in three Canadian provinces. Using exploratory principal components analysis, with a forced one-factor solution, the practice environment index was obtained. In addition, key assumptions were tested from previous work about the rationale for the aggregation of NWI-R responses. In the Canadian context the one-factor solution provides a parsimonious index of the practice environment of registered nurses working in acute care hospitals. Further work is needed to determine the predictive capability of this index and its relevance to cross-national organizational contexts.

Previous studies have suggested that critical thinking influences research utilization; however, empirical support for the link between critical thinking dispositions and research utilization is nonexistent. In this article, critical thinking dispositions and research utilization habits are detailed, and the relationship of critical thinking dispositions to research utilization in a sample of 141 nurses working on two acute surgical units and five pediatric units in four tertiary care hospitals are examined. Results indicate a significant positive correlation between the total critical thinking disposition score and overall research utilization. Overall critical thinking disposition correlates significantly with all forms of research utilization, with the exception of symbolic research utilization. These findings indicate a need to foster critical thinking in both nursing education and the work environment.

Reflexes undergo modulation according to task and timing during standing, walking, running, and leg cycling in humans. Both cutaneous and Hoffman (H-) reflexes are modulated by movement and task. However, recent evidence suggests that the modulation pattern for cutaneous and H-reflexes may be different. We sought to clarify this issue by reducing the effect of movement phase and altering the level of background muscle activation (low and high) in static and dynamic (leg cycling) conditions. Electromyography was recorded from the ankle extensors soleus and medial gastrocnemius (MG) and the knee extensor vastus lateralis (VL). Reflexes were evoked during the downstroke of stationary leg cycling. Cutaneous reflexes were evoked with trains of 5 x 1.0 ms pulses at 300 Hz delivered to the distal tibial nerve, whereas H-reflexes were evoked in soleus by stimulation with single 1.0-ms pulses. There were two main observations in this study: 1) middle latency cutaneous reflexes were facilitatory during static contraction but were dramatically attenuated or reversed to suppressive responses during cycling (task-dependent modulation); 2) soleus H-reflexes were larger in the high muscle activation condition but were unaffected by task (no task-dependent modulation). Thus opposite results were obtained in the two reflex pathways. It is concluded that cutaneous and H-reflexes are modulated by different mechanisms during active locomotor-like movements.

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