Dr. Kathleen M Andresen

The rising cost of textbooks affects students globally, no matter if they attend a public or private institution. Open Educational Resources (OERs), offer a free, online alternative to traditional publisher-created textbooks and materials. This panel will discuss how the University of West Florida (UWF) encouraged and fostered faculty participation in OER adoption, adaption, and creation models in courses around campus. You will hear directly from UWF faculty and a librarian who have created numerous OERs by different methods, and how these resources have not only assisted students here at UWF, but around the world, gain access to free, interactive educational resources.

This literature review compiles twelve existing studies that analyze student perceptions of OER quality, as well as student experiences using OER, and extrapolates implications for the development process. The intention is to discover common themes to direct future research into identifying the features that improve student engagement, contribute to academic success, and ensure the future of OER by increasing students’ willingness to interact with OER again

"Serious mental illnesses have became very prevalent in jails and prisons. About 20% of jail inmates and 15% of prison inmates are estimated to have a serious mental illness. It has been discovered that the mentally ill tend to remain in jail or prison longer than inmates with no serious mental illness. It has also been found that it costs more money to detain and house the mentally ill as they need psychiatric medications. The mentally ill in jails and prisons are more likely to commit suicide and develop behavioral problems due to being in isolation (Treatment Advocacy Center, 2016)."

Postpartum depression (PPD) is a common disorder that happens after a woman has given girth. The ramifications of PPD can have short or long-term effects on the mother, child, and the family as a whole (Brown et al., 2021). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) use in postpartum women has been controversial for many years due to the potential effects to the infant through lactation. There has been an increase of 2.3% of SSRI use in the postpartum phase in the last 20 years (Molenaar et al., 2019).

Mental health can affect many different aspects in the nursing profession. In this project, we are focusing on how staffing ratios, adequate and inadequate, affect occupational stress and burnout of nurses over time. These factors not only affect the mental health, but also the patient outcomes, patient safety, and number of errors made. It is identified that there is a significant relationship between insomnia, burnout and mental health among nurses (Cheng et al., 2020).

The importance of this topic is to hope for better patient outcomes in the geriatric population. Human touch may be an effective way to provide comfort and care, with a deeper purpose/goal to older patients who may be struggling with mental health conditions. Older  individuals that are struggling through illness or mental distress are in desperate need of human touch and how it is crucial it is in the role of caregiving (Pedrazza, 2018).