Alma Pobric

Background: Early retirements and decreasing job retention rates have resulted in a growing shortage of nursing staff in the healthcare systems of many countries. Recently, the World Health Organization and the European Commission have joined forces to attract and retain nurses in their systems in a period of increasing demand for healthcare services, due to population aging. While recruiting and training new nurses is a necessary long-term solution, it is equally important for policymakers to focus on retaining the current workforce, as to ensure continuity of care. Aim: This paper aims to review current literature and to discuss the key aspects of this critical issue, focusing on the concept of healthy aging and its significance as a key strategy for retaining nursing staff. Design: This discursive paper explores published literature highlighting the interaction between aging and the challenges that nursing staff faces in daily practice. It also examines global trends in retirement patterns and proposes strategies to retain the aging workforce, with a particular focus on succession planning and knowledge transfer. Results-Conclusion: Both general and more targeted approaches that have been proposed are necessary to enhance nursing staff retention. These approaches include the concept of promoting healthy aging, which can play a key role in this regard. Implications: This paper addresses the nursing staff shortage, highlighting strategies that have been proposed as to prioritize staff retention for healthcare providers and personnel managers.

Water in the city is typically exploited in a linear process, in which most of it is polluted, treated, and discharged; during this process, valuable nutrients are lost in the treatment process instead of being cycled back and used in urban agriculture or green space. The purpose of this paper is to advance a new paradigm to close water cycles in cities via the implementation of nature-based solutions units (NBS_u), with a particular focus on building greening elements, such as green roofs (GRs) and vertical greening systems (VGS). The hypothesis is that such “circular systems” can provide substantial ecosystem services and minimize environmental degradation. Our method is twofold: we first examine these systems from a life-cycle point of view, assessing not only the inputs of conventional and alternative materials, but the ongoing input of water that is required for irrigation. Secondly, the evapotranspiration performance of VGS in Copenhagen, Berlin, Lisbon, Rome, Istanbul, and Tel Aviv, cities with different climatic, architectural, and sociocultural contexts have been simulated using a verticalized ET₀ approach, assessing rainwater runoff and greywater as irrigation resources. The water cycling performance of VGS in the mentioned cities would be sufficient at recycling 44% (Lisbon) to 100% (Berlin, Istanbul) of all accruing rainwater roof–runoff, if water shortages in dry months are bridged by greywater. Then, 27–53% of the greywater accruing in a building could be managed on its greened surface. In conclusion, we address the gaps in the current knowledge and policies identified in the different stages of analyses, such as the lack of comprehensive life cycle assessment studies that quantify the complete “water footprint” of building greening systems.

Cultural and historical heritage, as well as rich history, very often represents a very important segment of tourism development in a certain city. Tourists are very inclined to the old town centers, which generally have many attractions of this type, and usually they are located in the immediate vicinity. Baščaršija is also an example of the old city area, which earlier was intended for commercial purposes only. Nowadays Baščaršija represents the most attractive part of the City of Sarajevo and its cultural features are a real attraction for many tourists. This paper focuses on the evaluation of the cultural - historical heritage within Baščaršija applying the method of tourist valorization of cultural resources by Hilary du Cross. Baščaršija is home to various religions, peoples and rich legacies from different historical periods that shaped its present-day appearance. The cultural heritage of Baščaršija includes numerous museums, religious buildings, fountains, interesting streets, as well as numerous authentic craft shops.