A unique program has been developed to encourage retention of nurses who prefer to remain in direct patient care roles. Both recognition and monetary reward are available to nurses who join the "Professional Excellence in Nursing" (PEN) program. The underlying philosophy is that stable employment, clearly defined and attainable goals and recognition for a higher level of performance are keys to job satisfaction--and thus to retention. Evaluative data on this young program are not available but informal surveys indicate a positive outcome.

The question of whether an automatic detection task requires the use of limited-capacity resources was investigated in a series of dual-task experiments. The automatic task required subjects to detect a consistently mapped target digit in a display of letters. This task was paired with a variety of concurrent visual discriminations that could either occur in close proximity to the automatic target or in a disparate display area. The main finding was that accuracy in each task was higher in conditions allowing attention to be shared than when it had to be divided between separate areas. These results indicate that detection of automatic targets depends on the allocation of spatial attention to the target's area.

: A series of experiments examined the role of attentional resources in automatic detection by pairing a consistently mapped visual target detection task with a series of concurrent discrimination tasks. The pattern of intertask interference suggested that automatic detection requires two distinct kinds of resources. The occurrence of automatic visual targets produces a shift of the visual spatial attention system to the area of the target. This reallocation of attention enhances the visual representation of the target and any other forms within the attention field. Subjects do not have complete control of this process since automatic targets disrupt performance on the concurrent task even when subjects are instructed to ignore them. In addition to the spatial attention system, automatic detection requires use of comparison processes in working memory. Even partial attention to a secondary task delays the occurrence of the overt detection response suggesting that decisions on two concurrent tasks must occur in working memory in a serial fashion. Converging evidence from an event-related potential (ERP) experiment supports this conclusion. The magnitude of the P300 component of the ERP, which indexes decision making in working memory, was found to be similar for both controlled and automatic detection tasks. Extensive training in detection tasks does not result in a skill that is 'resource-free'. The main function of consistent-mapping training may be to refine the triggering conditions for the application of limited perceptual resources. (Author)

To what extent does successful search for a target letter in a visual display depend on the allocation of attention to the target’s spatial position? To investigate this question, we required subjects to discriminate the orientation of a briefly flashed U-shaped form while searching for a target letter. Performance operating characteristics (POCs) were derived by varying the relative amounts of attention subjects were to devote to each task. Extensive tradeoffs in performance were observed when the orientation form and target letter occurred in nonadjacent display positions. In contrast, the tradeoff was much more restricted when the two targets occurred in adjacent positions. These results suggest that the interference between simultaneous visual discriminations depends critically on their separation in visual space. Both visual search and form discrimination require a common limited-capacity visual resource.