Rudyard Kipling :: Essays Papers

Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling, born in Bombay, India, on December 30, 1865, made a significant contribution to English Literature in various genres including poetry, short story and novel. His birth took place in an affluent family with his father holding the post of Professor of Architectural Sculpture at the Bombay School of Art and his mother coming from a family of accomplished women. He spent his early childhood in India where an "aya" took care of him and where under her influence he came in direct contact with the Indian culture and traditions. His parents decided to send him to England for education and so at the young age of five he started living in England with Madam Rosa, the landlady of the lodge he lived in, where for the next six years he lived a life of misery due to the mistreatment - beatings and general victimization - he faced there. Due to this sudden change in environment and the evil treatment he received, he suffered from insomnia for the rest of his life. This played an im portant part in his literary imagination. His parents removed him from the Calvinistic foster home and placed him in a private school at the age of twelve. The English schoolboy code of honor and duty affected his views in later life, especially when it involved loyalty to a group or a team. Returning to India in 1882 he worked as a newspaper reporter and a part-time writer and this helped him to gain a rich experience of colonial life which he later presented in his stories and poems. In 1886 he published his first volume of poetry, "Departmental Ditties" and between 1887 and 1889 he published six volumes of short stories set in and concerned with the India he had come to know and love so well. When he returned to England he found himself already recognized and acclaimed as a brilliant writer. Over the immediately following years he published some of his best works including his most acclaimed poem "Recessional" and most famed novel "Kim". In 1907 Kipling won the Nobel prize in literature in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterized his writings.

Nurseâ€Patient Ratio in California

a) Nurse-Patient ratio is the relationship of the number of patients that should be served by one nurse at particular moment of time. It was a working formula that was proposal in 1992 by the California Nurses Association (CAN), which was to cater for quality service to patients by their nurses in the hospitals. After varied controversial arguments about the proposal regarding the overall implication to the economic costs of the ratio, different proposal from the concerned parties were arrived at where; the state government proposed ratio was 1:6 for all the medical or surgical units in the hospital.   However this ratio was to lower to 1:5 in a period of one and one-half year. The California Nurse Union (CNU) had a proposal of 1:3 for the medical units and 1:4 for the surgical units. The California Hospital Association (CHA) had proposed a ratio of 1:10 for both medical and surgical units. The nurse-patient ratio was enacted in October 1999.   However, the results of the actual proposed ratios were released on 2002.   The CNU and CHA ratio requirement were thought to be stable all through and each of them parties sought for its own ratio implementation.   However, the state proposal consisted a series of development where, they were to be implement at 1:6 and later reduced to 1:5 after 1 – 1  ½ year. (Slack, Slack,2001, p.107) b) History The nurse-patient ratio was firstly proposed by nurses in California in 1992 (Russell, 2004) However it was enacted as a law in 1999 but its enactment was to be followed by a period of its implement, which was to be until January 2002.   This implementation gave the California Hospital Association upto a deadline of January 2003 to hire the right number of nurses for their hospital as required by the government proposal of 1:5   ratio which the government had stated would lower from the ratio of 1:6 in a period of 1 – 1  ½ years. However, due to the complains, from the CHA, the proposal was only enacted into a law in January 2004, requiring the hospitals to implement on the 1:5 ratio by June 2004.  Ã‚   But following an emergency proposal by the director of department of Health Services – Sandra Sherry, the 1:5 ratio laws would only be instituted in January 2008.   (Russell 2004) c) Ideally, this proposal would highly support a positive nursing work environment.   Although the Californian Hospital Association argues that this would be too costly, but this would on be argumentable for the short run.   However, the cost would be reduced in the short run period of their business cycle.  Ã‚   Since higher ratios would ultimately help to improve the existing state of patient care.   Either, Lower ratios would consequently call for more nurse to join the career, whose turn over was very low. Through lowering the ratios, then the profession would be more interesting to the young learners who will be able to join it.   Also, it was made to call back those nurses who had left the profession due to unappealing ratio. To defend, their argument, they argued that, lower nurse-patient ratio was to lower the possible costs by hospitals to hire other nurses.   This is because of the possible economies that would be arrived at through the savings in greater patient care and faster service delivery.   Either, hospitals would reduce the hire of the nurses who were temporary registered, and whose cost was higher than that of permanently employed nurses.   (Coombs, 2004, p. 83) d) However, different controversies were between different parties aligned to this proposal.  Ã‚   Firstly, the California Nurse Association felt that, this was a good move, as it enhanced better patient care and ultimately economies to the owners of the medical centers in the long run.   They believed that, by using lower ratios, the result would be an attraction of more number of young and others who had left to the nursing profession.   Either, this worked to reduce cost by the hire of temporary registered persons. However, the California Hospital Association argued that this was impractical in terms of cost of implementation.   They argued that these would only work to favour the nurses at the expense of their business.   The state government thought that, the proposals of the nurses were viable but could only work under stages of implementation. It believed this proposal worked for the good of the people.   Also, the union for Service Employees International was also in the view that, this proposal worked to improve the amount of care given to patient hence it was important for its implementation. (Ponton, Carrion, 2001, p.48) e) The proposal would be highly recommendable for the general service delivery to the patients.   Either, it was important since it worked to improve the conditions of both the patients, nurses and hospital owners. f. (I) Yes, they work to ensure that, there were a lesser number of patients for service by one nurse.   This helped to reduce the amount of service by the nurses hence they could give a better attention to the patients.   However this did not keep the attention of any possible risk cases where the number of patients may increase indefinitely. ii) The government enacted that the ratio that would remain as 1:6 in January 2004, and reduce to 1:5 by June the same year.   However, in a petition that was passed to the court, by the direction of California Hospital Association this would only to be active in January 2008.   However, the ratio of 1:6 has not been followed in some health centers where nurse are made to serve a bigger number than this ratio.   Else where, there has been a positive adherence to this law in most of the hospitals. (David, Baustica, p. 66) References David, E. & Baustista, H. (2004) La Nueva California LATINOS IN THE GOLDEN STATE. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ponton, M. & Carrion, J. (2001).   Neuropsychology and the Hispanic Patient: A clinical Handbook; Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Coombs, M. (2004) Power & Conflict between Doctors and Nurses.   Breaking Through the Inner Circle in Clinical Care. London : Routledge. Slack, N. & Slack, C. (2001) Cyber Medicine: How Computing Empowers Doctors and Patients For Better Cared Revised and Updated Edition. San. Francisco: Jossey – Bass. Russell, S. (2004).   State Moves to Freeze Nurse Patient Ratio.   Nov, 05, 2005

Diversity Issues in the Workplace Essay

The world is changing and becoming more globalized, especially with the fast growing rate of technology, people who live far away feel closer than they are. Since the world is changing, so are things in it, organizations is one of how things are moving faster. Organizations are no longer run in one region, country or for one market, they are now multi-cultural and diverse in nature. It therefore require special skills to manage and be able to teach employees to properly respect and value people’s opinions, sexual orientation, culture and beliefs to avoid diversity problems. Diversity is basically defined as acknowledging, understanding, accepting, valuing, and celebrating differences among people with respect for age, class, ethnicity, gender, physical and mental ability, race, sexual orientation, spiritual practice, and public assistance status (Esty, et al. , 1995). In work place, I will personally define it as difference between people working in an organization; it could be their ideas, beliefs, language or even their culture. These factors affect one’s way of thinking, and can even determine their work performance. Taking for instance lateness at work, it is obviously a bad working habit but in some parts of Africa or Asia, it is a normal to be fifteen or twenty minutes late, this habit is one of the worse working habits in America. That is cultural difference. Workplace diversity could also refer to human quality or ability that is different form our own example. Workers sometimes treat or favor co-workers who they are more related or have some affliction to in a nicer way than other people. Workplace diversity also happens when companies hire employees from various backgrounds and experiences. â€Å"Many companies see workplace diversity as an investment toward building a better business. Although workplace diversity provides many benefits, it also poses many challenges to employees and managers. To reap the benefits of workplace diversity, employees and managers must understand the challenges and know how to effectively deal with them† (Rose Johnson, Demand Media). Being an immigrant I have personally encountered some diversity issues in a few places I have worked. Coming from a country (Ghana) where the power distance is very wide, there is no way you can call your boss by the first name, you have to address them with their title at least. But in America where power distance is no issue, where you can play ping pong with your company president at break and call them by their first name, I found it hard to fit in. I always call my boss with either sir or Mr. that made him feel I wanted to be distant away from him, and my other managers never liked me until they got to ask me questions about my culture and got to know me more. Another big diversity issue in every U.  S organization is the language barrier. This issue is due to the fact that most U. S companies hire workers who have English as their second language or got exposed to English in America. Workers like this will always have problems getting work done properly due to clarity, because they might have difficulties understanding all instructions they have been assigned to, it will cause misunderstanding and eventually low productivity. If an Indian manager who has a â€Å"thick accent† gives instruction to an American associate, the probability that the American might not get the job done right is high. Globalizing and diverse organizations have become a norm these days and organizations are better off hiring workers that are bilingual and can translate for workers that have problems with language. If this is not done companies may lose highly talented people from different backgrounds. In the movie â€Å"crash† the Arab store owner could not understand exactly what the Mexican lock repairer meant by replacing the door and that caused him to lose everything in his store, I am pretty sure if his daughter who is more fluent in both the Arab language and the English language the situation would have been totally different. Political and religious beliefs could also be another form of diversity issue in the workplace. It is always going to be hard for Christians to work and socialize with Buddhist or Muslims, because they think they involve in bad practices, and might even reject their ideas. Some employers of companies also try to impose their beliefs on employees. Example a Christian might not allow a Muslim to take breaks to pray in their season of fasting (Ramadan), it would also be a challenge for a Christian to work for a Muslim. This is religious diversity issue, if not properly managed might reduce organizational productivity or eventually it to close down, political diversity is the same as it in religion, Republican view of ruling a nation is different from that conflict Democratic, and it’s sometimes brought into managing an organization and that might cause misunderstanding. Since these two parties have different views one will always reject the idea of another in decision making. This form competition is not healthy for any organization and must be managed with care. To avoid this issues in organizations law of equal rights must be enforced to protect everyone religious, political or even sexual opinions and mandate that employees cannot force their political choices and religious faiths on other employees. A Christian employee can work with a Muslim because the two should put the goal of the organization first and leave their difference outside of the workplace. Also the Federal and State equal opportunity legislation make discrimination in workplaces illegal. These laws specify the rights and responsibilities of both associates and employers in the workplace and hold both groups accountable. Workplace diversity issues cannot be discussed without the mention of sexual orientation and harassment. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines sexual orientation as an emotional or affection attraction to another person. This includes heterosexuality (attraction to the opposite sex), homosexuality (attraction to the same sex) and bisexuality (attraction to either sex). Workers and managers should be ready to accept and work with people with different sexual orientation and not to take advantage of them. Formally it was acceptable to fire or refuse a gay or lesbian with the globalize nature of workplaces, human and civil rights on the rise, organizations should be able to draft laws that can protect people like that. After all they require two workers to deal with their differences outside of the organizations; their personal life outside of the organization should not be a problem to the organization, unless that employee is using his orientation to harass other employees. It is always good to have a diverse organization, and there is no doubt is comes with problems, but how do managers of these organizations manage diversity? As pointed out earlier, it will be effective for employers to hire professionals that deal with diversity issues to help them with the challenges involved for example having translators to help workers with language problems will help organizations tap out the talented workers. Also organizations should not over react and base their recruitment solely on diversity issues. Example, hiring with the idea of hiring workers from all walks of life will definitely be more of a challenge than an advantage. â€Å"According to Lawrence Herzog of HCareers, managers face challenges when new employees from diverse backgrounds interact with long-standing employees. † Another powerful way to deal with diversity in the workplace is by creating avenues like meeting social gathering and business meetings, where every member must listen and have the chance to speak, are good ways to create dialogues. Managers should implement policies such as mentoring programs to provide associates access to information and opportunities, workers can socialize, talk to each other and get to know more about each other’s culture, beliefs, and ideas. There might be something they could learn from each other that might positively benefit the organization. This is a strategy my formal managers in my previous job used and I think it really helped solve the diversity issue between us. I spent time with them and they got to know about me more and began to understand the way responded to certain things at work. Having a diverse workforce is due to our changing world, and if it’s managed effectively, organizations can benefit positively and have a large pool of different ideas to make the organization very competitive in all markets. Good diversity management does not only benefit the organizations it creates a safe and comfortable working environment for workers; this benefits the organization as well because employees work with enthusiasm.