Comparison of resident and intern salaries with the current living wage as a quantitative estimate of financial strain among postgraduate veterinary trainees

OBJECTIVE To compare resident and intern salaries with current regional living wages as a quantitative estimate of financial strain. SAMPLE 152 residency programs and 141 internship programs listed with the Veterinary Internship and Residency Matching Program for the 2021–2022 training year. PROCEDURES Data were collected for program annual salary and location. Regional living wage for each location was determined with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Living Wage Calculator, and annual salary was compared with living wage to estimate income surplus before and after taxes. Results for programs in academia and private practice were compared. Spearman correlation was used to determine whether program annual salary was significantly associated with regional living wage. RESULTS Mean ± SD income surplus before taxes was $7,786 ± 9,426 for clinical residency programs, $16,672 ± 5,105 for laboratory animal programs, and $5,829 ± 8,119 for internships. Academic residencies and internships offered salaries significantly lower than those offered in private practice, and income surpluses before and after taxes were significantly lower for academic programs than for private practice programs. There were weak and moderate, respectively, correlations between program annual salary and regional living wage for residency (r = 0.369) and internship (r = 0.570) programs. CLINICAL RELEVANCE Postgraduate training prolongs financial instability, and annual salaries generally do not meet the minimum income standard of a living wage. Financial stress has implications for mental health and diversity, and these findings invite deeper consideration of current remuneration practices for veterinary residents and interns.

Productivity Curve and Social Network Analysis in Science Megaproject Management

Megaprojects aimed at delivering next-generation, multi-billion euro scientific research facilities are complex and high-risk endeavours, requiring expert knowledge spanning a wide spectrum of technical and administrative fields. Such organisations tend to evolve organically, responding to technical and political challenges. They are almost certain to fail to meet expectations on schedule, budget, and deliverables. Whilst there have been illuminating “top-down” phenomenological megaproject studies recently, this article reports a “bottom-up” perspective on the emergence of these issues. Firstly, the staff productivity distribution curves are analysed at a European science megaproject, and a stratified culture is identified with a small, high productivity “clique”, and a vast, low-productivity group of “outsiders” operating at only 50% of their potential. The social network is then analysed, revealing a dense decision-making group that is only tenuously connected to technical expert teams via hierarchy. Staff inefficiency is linked to superfluous roles in middle management, carrying increased bureaucratic burdens and a financial loss ∼10% of the annual salary budget. Corrective suggestions are given, for the current megaproject and future activities to mitigate these causes. This should help to reduce some of the overspend, schedule overrun, and reductions in ambition and scope that have become megaproject norms.

Why Nurses Are Leaving Veterans Affairs Hospitals?

An aging veteran population with a median age of 65, their inferior health status, and the rapidly growing number of women veterans propel veterans affairs (VA) hospitals to provide a wide range of nursing services. However, despite the significant roles of nurses and chronic nurse shortages in VA hospitals, there has been little research on the determinants of nurse turnover in the VA healthcare system. This study analyzed registered nurse turnover rates at a panel of 118 VA hospitals from 2015 through 2017 and found that nurse turnover is significantly influenced by patient mortality, job satisfaction, annual salary level, and preventable hospitalizations. These findings suggest that VA hospitals should maintain proper nurse workloads and implement programs that can improve nurses’ stress level and job satisfaction.

Making a Spectacle of Oneself in the Academy Using the H-Index: From Becoming an Artificial Person to Laughing at Absurdities

This article offers autoethnographic insights into the consequences of making a spectacle of oneself in the audit culture of the academy. Spectacle 1 explores my experiences of using the h-index as part of an annual salary review and how this made me feel like an artificial person. Spectacle 2 shows how, at a conference, I used laughter to expose some absurdities of the h-index and felt better for doing so. Stories that tell different truths about ourselves in combination with the corporeality of laughter, I suggest, can assist us to re-attune ourselves and resist the process of becoming artificial persons.

Unmet needs for CKD care: from the general population to the CKD clinics. How many patients are we missing?

Introduction Prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) varies around the world. Little is known on the discrepancy between general population needs and nephrology offer of care. We aimed to contribute to filling this gap and propose a means to infer the number of patients needing follow-up. Methods All patients undergoing at least one nephrology consultation in 2019 were enrolled. We used the ratio between CKD stage 3 and 4 reported in the literature, and considered that only 25% to 50% of CKD stage-3 patients have progressive CKD, to hypothesize different scenarios to estimate the number of CKD stage-3 patients still needing nephrology follow-up. Results 1992 CKD patients were followed-up in our Center (56.93% males; age 66.71 ± 18.32 years; 16.82% stage-1; 14.66% stage-2; 39.46% stage-3; 19.88% stage-4; 7.68% stage-5). The ratio between stage 3 and 4 in population studies ranged from 7.72 to 51.29, being 1.98 in our center. Hypothesizing that we followed-up 100%, 70% or 50% of CKD stage-4 patients, 528 to 2506 CKD stage-3 patients in our area would need nephrology follow-up (1885 to 8946 per million population). Three to seventeen additional nephrologists per million population would be necessary to fully cover the need for care. Conclusions The number of patients with CKD stage-3 who would benefit from nephrology care is high. Considering that one patient-year of delay of dialysis could cover a nephrologist’s annual salary, interventions aimed to improve care of advanced CKD may be economically sound.

A Skellam regression model for quantifying positional value in soccer

Soccer is undeniably the most popular sport world-wide and everyone from general managers and coaching staff to fans and media are interested in evaluating players’ performance. Metrics applied successfully in other sports, such as the (adjusted) +/− that allows for division of credit among a basketball team’s players, exhibit several challenges when applied to soccer due to severe co-linearities. Recently, a number of player evaluation metrics have been developed utilizing optical tracking data, but they are based on proprietary data. In this work, our objective is to develop an open framework that can estimate the expected contribution of a soccer player to his team’s winning chances using publicly available data. In particular, using data from (i) approximately 20,000 games from 11 European leagues over eight seasons, and, (ii) player ratings from the FIFA video game, we estimate through a Skellam regression model the importance of every line (attackers, midfielders, defenders and goalkeeping) in winning a soccer game. We consequently translate the model to expected league points added above a replacement player (eLPAR). This model can further be used as a guide for allocating a team’s salary budget to players based on their expected contributions on the pitch. We showcase similar applications using annual salary data from the English Premier League and identify evidence that in our dataset the market appears to under-value defensive line players relative to goalkeepers.

Бытовая лексика в деловых текстах XVIII в. (на материале писем хана Аюки и их русских переводов)

Introduction. Being an important stratum of the vocabulary of any language that conveys ethnolinguistic specifics of texts, household vocabulary attracts attention of linguists. Khan Ayuka’s letters to Astrakhan Chief Commandant M. I. Chirikov are traditionally referred to as samples of the 18th-century Kalmyk official epistolary genre. The lexical composition of the examined texts is characterized by diversity since the latter contain essentially different types of vocabulary (military terms, titles, anthroponyms, toponyms, etc.). Goals. The article seeks to analyze the functioning of household vocabulary in Khan Ayuka’s letters in comparison to synchronic Russian translations. The 18th-century sources comprise historical/lexicological materials and provide an opportunity to clarify if there is a correspondence between the use of household vocabulary — and genre/stylistic and substantial features traced in source and translated texts. Methods and Materials. The paper investigates Khan Ayuka’s letters dated to 1714 and simultaneous Russian translations stored at the National Archive of Kalmykia. The research primarily employs contextual analysis and the descriptive, comparative methods. The involved texts were transliterated, adapted (from Old to Modern Kalmyk), and translated (literally) into Russian by D. B. Gedeeva. Results. The analysis reveals peculiarities that characterize a particular fragment within early 18th-century Kalmyk and Russian vocabularies. So, the source texts contain not only common Mongolic lexemes but also Russian loanwords. There is a correspondence between the use of household vocabulary and the implied intentions: household vocabulary is used to articulate the request / demand to deliver a certain part of the annual salary which was not limited to money. Thus, acting as enumerative elements, household vocabulary units emerge in a periphery of the vast sociopolitical lexicon. Unlike texts with imperative subgenres, informative letters confirming receipt of the submitted objects are more precise: such messages routinely use words that denote measures of weight or volume paired with cardinal numerals. Besides, there are examples confirming a dependence between a token used — and the described situation and essence of the request. Our comparison of household vocabulary units chosen by translators as equivalents explicitly delineates the ethnolinguistic specifics inherent to Kalmyk official letters and their synchronous Russian translations.

Construction and Analysis of Actuarial Model of the Influence of Personal Tax Deferred Commercial Pension Insurance on Personal Pension Wealth in China

Taking mortality distribution, surrender value, and tax relief factors into consideration, the authors construct an actuarial model for the influence of personal income tax deferred commercial pension insurance on changes in personal pension wealth and adopts a numerical simulation to deliver the corresponding changes in personal pension wealth to different initial insured age and different initial insured annual salary. In order to better measure the security level of the commercial pension insurance, the model for the net replacement rate of pension of the commercial pension insurance was further constructed. The results show that the effect of participating in the personal income tax deferred commercial pension insurance on the present value of personal pension wealth depends on the combined action of the initial insured age and the initial annual salary. Under the same insured age, because men retire later and work longer than women, men can obtain a higher accumulation of personal pension wealth than women. For insured persons with different income levels, high-income groups can obtain higher personal pension wealth growth, and although low-income groups cannot obtain higher personal pension wealth growth, they can obtain a significant increase in the pension replacement rate by participating in the insurance, thereby better guaranteeing their living standards after retirement. Regardless of the income level, tax relief can be obtained once participating in the insurance, but the value may vary. The optimal tax-saving age for men is 23 years old, and for women 25 years old.