1,720,956 research outputs found
An evaluation of the effectiveness of the decentralized health system in Trinidad and Tobago
No full textSchool systems in Trinidad and Tobago: A cause of deviant behaviours/violent crimes and the XYZ model of school violence
No full textThe aetiology of violence is manifold (genetic, personal, environmental, and situational) and of major concern to Trinidad and Tobago. The school system itself (the main conduit for overall child development) might be a major contributor to poor performance, deviance, and violent behaviour. Primary and secondary school education is a strategic instrument for promoting or hindering children’s growth and development. This study aims to show the possible relationship between the school system and school performance and the potential for deviant and violent behaviour. Data were collected on the school system, school performance, and national crime levels. A literature search was also conducted on school systems, performance, and violence. Results indicate that primary school training focused on academic performance and did not cater to universal accessibility or ‘legitimate structural accessibility’ for all children, and focused on obtaining places in prestigious institutions for higher education. Since 2018, approximately 40% of the students have failed the secondary entrance assessment exam, with approximately 11% scoring less than 30%. With universal secondary school enrolment, students may be deprived further of accessibility. This may become compounded by the mixing of students of varying tendencies, behaviours, and otherwise. This continued reliance on academics satisfied the students at prestigious schools. The secondary school system brings added challenges such as the mixing of students (academics, non-academics, students with violent or deviant tendencies, etc.) of varied backgrounds and continued lack of ‘legitimate structural accessibility’. A large section of the non-academically inclined (half passing fewer than five subjects) may find themselves doing inappropriate things, eventually leading to deviance or even violent behaviour. This is further complicated by contributions from the public health system. In the public school system, students, especially those who are not academically inclined, endure further stress, anger, frustration, and eventually ending in deviant/violent behaviour. A school system with an academic focus effectively decreases ‘legitimate structural accessibility’ and opportunities. This subsequently leads to ‘non-performing students’ affecting their psyche and confidence and disturbing other students, eventually leading to deviance and criminal activity. Such a dysfunctional school system must be corrected to allow student education to be holistic. Additionally, a need exists to develop a system to screen and identify students who are at risk or display deviance, and implement corrective measures
Coronary Artery Disease: Epidemiology and Management in a Tertiary Hospital in South Trinidad
No full textHealth services in Trinidad: throughput, throughput challenges, and the impact of a throughput intervention on overcrowding in a public health institution
No full textAbstract Background Throughput might be partially responsible for sub-optimum organisational and medical outcomes. The present study examined throughput and the challenges to ensuring optimum throughput in hospitals, and determined the effectiveness of a throughput intervention in reducing overcrowding in a public healthcare institution in Trinidad and Tobago. Methods First, a literature review of throughput and its processes in relation to improving hospital care was conducted. Second, the challenges to throughput in healthcare were reviewed. Data were also collected from print media, hospital records, and the central statistical office in Trinidad and Tobago to discuss throughput and describe the throughput status in hospitals. Finally, the effect of a throughput intervention on overcrowding was determined. The intervention was implemented over six months, from October 2010 to March 2011, and comprised three stages of a five-stage throughput process: transferring patients to a specific medical ward, bedside electrocardiograms (ECG), and promptly obtaining patient investigative reports and patient files. Results Problems with the throughput process led to prolonged delays or failures in obtaining lab reports, radiology services, ECGs, and pharmaceutical supplies, as well as inadequate social work services and other specialised services. During the throughput intervention, there was a reduction in overcrowding/overflow to 5–10 patients per day with a daily admission rate of 58. However, at post-intervention, there was increased overcrowding/overflow to 20–30 per day but fewer admissions (52 per day) i.e. similar to pre-intervention period. Additionally, there was an increase in bed complement in the department of medicine from 209 (2011) to 227 (2012). Overcrowding continued into 2016 and beyond: medical admissions in 2016 were 46.4 per day and the medical bed capacity was 327 (indicating a 44% increase in capacity from 2012). Conclusion Hospital throughput processes are currently suboptimum. Improving specific throughput processes or targeting the greatest primary constraints might help decrease overcrowding
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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