1,720,977 research outputs found
The cost of drugs direct distribution in ten health care organisations in Piedmont Region
No full textRegional governments have introduced, among other policies, peculiar way of distributing drugs: direct drugs distribution by health authorities (DD) and distribution by community pharmacies on behalf of health authorities (DPC). Distribution strategies by health authorities are partially influenced by economic consideration and costs are one of the component of the economic impact of different possible course of actions. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the costs of the 2012 DD in ten health care organisations in the Piedmont Region, which represent 48% of the beds in the region. The study aims also to simulate the difference between the costs of the DD and those that healthcare organizations would have incurred if the same drugs were distributed in DPC, estimated on the grounds of the various agreements over time between the Piedmont Region and the distribution, or in conventional regime. The study covers an important gap in the (information) literature, since the current studies on the costs of DD are limited and mostly related to individual case-studies. The estimate of the organizational costs of direct distribution could rely on the systematic collection of analytical data in the relevant organisations and other information not routinely collected (e.g. time devoted to DD by hospital pharmacists). The authors have introduced the conservative hypothesis that health care organisations do not sustain any organisational cost neither for DPC nor for ordinary distribution, apart from DPC storing costs by the leading health care organisation. The drug acquisition cost in DPC was assumed the same as that in DD, while the cost of drugs in conventional regimen was estimated on the basis of list price net of discounts and co-payment. The organisational cost per directly distributed pack shows important variations across organisations: its weighted average value is 2.3 € (with important variations across health care organisations - the organisation cost per pack ranging through € 0,7 and € 11.1), which is lower than the fee paid to pharmacies through the DPC. If 2012 fees for DPC are used, DPC would imply a 10% increase of costs (6.4 million €). If 2013 and 2014 fees are used, potential savings thanks to DD (compared to DPC) would drop to 4.1 and 3.7 million € respectively. If drugs were ordinarily distributed they would cost 26 million € more than in the case of DD: pharmacies are not paid if drugs are directly distributed and actual price in the case of DD is 48.5% of the list price on average
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Psychological factors and quality of life in lymphoma patients treated with oral chemotherapy
No full textThe aim of the study was to carry out a longitudinal evaluation of anxious-depressive symptomatology and quality of life in onco-hematological patients in treatment with oral chemotherapies. The project was conducted at the Integrated Oral Chemotherapy Service, in the Subalpine Onco-Hematological Center of the “Città della Salute e della Scienza” University Hospital of Turin. Thirty patients with lymphoma were evaluated with three measurements on psychological distress (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale – HADS and the Distress Thermometer – DT) and quality of life (Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy Scale-General, FACT-G). The psychological assessment was taken at the start of chemotherapy (T0) and after 3 cycles of treatment (T1), during outpatient hematological visits. A secondary aim was to evaluate the subjective patients’ opinion about the quality of the service and the level of concern about the therapy’s management, only at T1. Results of the psychological questionnaires showed the maintenance of distress and anxious-depressive symptomatology levels below the threshold of clinical relevance. Regarding the quality of life, our data showed a statistically significant decrease on the total score. What is more, patients have positively evaluated the presence of the pharmacist in the clinic, as a competent and supportive figure for the management of chemotherapy treatment
Variations on the Author
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Full text linkWe 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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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