The current and projected nurse faculty shortage threatens the capacity to educate sufficient numbers of nurses for meeting demand. As part of an initiative to foster strategies for expanding educational capacity, a survey of a nationally representative sample of 3,120 full-time nurse faculty members in 269 schools and programs that offered at least one prelicensure degree program was conducted. Nearly 4 of 10 participants reported high levels of emotional exhaustion, and one third expressed an intent to leave academic nursing within 5 years. Major contributors to burnout were dissatisfaction with workload and perceived inflexibility to balance work and family life. Intent to leave was explained not only by age but by several potentially modifiable aspects of work, including dissatisfaction with workload, salary, and availability of teaching support. Preparing sufficient numbers of nurses to meet future health needs will require addressing those aspects of work-life that undermine faculty teaching capacity.

Data from a longitudinal study of 250 older adults were used to examine activity loss and replacement as a consequence of an important illness episode. Multiple regression analyses revealed that reductions in activity were predicted by physical factors, specifically illness chronicity and severity. In contrast, replacing lost activities was facilitated by social support and optimism and inhibited by a belief in the need to conserve physical resources. An examination of the long-term benefits of replacing activities revealed that older adults who replaced a lost activity had higher positive affect levels 1 year after illness onset than those who did not replace activities. Continuing activity during illness episodes can help maintain positive well-being over time.

Many everyday decisions require trade-offs between immediate and delayed benefits. Although much research has assessed discounting of delayed outcomes by using hypothetical scenarios, little research has examined whether these discounting measures correspond to real-world behavior. Three studies examined the relationship between scenario measures of time preference and preventive health behaviors that require an upfront cost to achieve a long-term benefit. Responses to time preference scenarios showed weak or no relationship to influenza vaccination, adherence to a medication regimen to control high blood pressure, and adherence to cholesterol-lowering medication. The finding that scenario measures of time preference have surprisingly little relationship to actual behaviors exemplifying intertemporal trade-offs places limits on the applications of time preference research to the promotion of preventive health behavior.

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Objective. To examine the relation between illness cognitions and two measures of adherence in patients with hypercholesterolaemia, a disease marked by chronically high cholesterol.Design. Cross-sectional. Based on the self-regulation model (Leventhal, Diefenbach, & Leventhal, 1992), patients' illness cognitions were predicted to be related to cholesterol control and medication adherence. Patients with illness cognitions consonant with an experts' mental model of hypercholesterolaemia were expected to show better control and adherence.Method. Hypercholesterolaemic patients (N = 169) were recruited at a universitybased general medicine clinic. Patients completed a survey that assessed beliefs about hypercholesterolaemia and medication-taking behaviour. Cholesterol levels were obtained from patients' medical charts.Results. Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol control was related to believing that hypercholesterolaemia is a stable, asymptomatic disease with severe coronary consequences, and self-report of medication adherence was related to believing that the disease has severe coronary consequences ( ps < .05). LDL cholesterol differences between groups low and high in various illness beliefs ranged between 0.04 and 0.24 mmol/l (2 and 9 mg/dl) which translated to between 1% and 18% lower LDL cholesterol levels.Conclusion. The present study shows several relations that have not been previously demonstrated between better LDL cholesterol control and illness cognition, cognitions that were similar to an expert or physician' s mental model of hypercholesterolaemia. The magnitude of differences in patient cholesterol levels was small but may be clinically important.Coronary heart disease is caused by a number of factors, including elevated cholesterol levels (Knopp, 1999). Patients diagnosed with chronically elevated blood cholesterol