1,721,014 research outputs found
Blind spots and adverse conditions of care: screening migrants for tuberculosis in France and Germany
Full text linkTuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that declined significantly throughout the 20th century. Large-scale TB screening of entire populations in France and Germany has thus been replaced by active screening of risk-groups, particularly migrants. The article engages with its problems and practices on three levels: by looking at the way information on migrants as an at-risk group is produced through disease surveillance data; by analysing how such at-risk group data influence local screening practices; and by showing which political and medical problems arise in the field. I overturn the discussion about screening and surveillance of migrants as a risk-group by showing that it is not the stigmatisation of migrants through disease risk that is most at stake, but the invisibility of the most vulnerable among them in disease surveillance data and the way restrictive national immigration policies interfere with and subvert local screening and treatment practices targeting them. The aim of my article is to promote a pragmatic sociology of screening, while paying attention to the practical complexities, political conditions and medical ambivalences of screening and follow-up care, especially when the migrant groups concerned are socially, politically and medically vulnerable
The impact of COVID-19 on children’s dental services in Kazakhstan
Full text linkBACKGROUND:
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted essential medical services globally. Dental services faced unique challenges due to the airborne nature of COVID-19. Dental professionals were at a high risk of contracting the virus due to their close proximity to patients, frequent handling of bodily fluids, and use of aerosol-generating equipment.
In Kazakhstan, the government introduced strict measures that aimed to prevent virus spread, while ensuring dental care could continue. However, delays in treatment occurred that meant a potential increased risk of oral health issues; furthermore, the long-term impact on dental health is uncertain, particularly in children. This study aimed to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on dental services in Kazakhstan, with a particular focus on children.
METHODOLOGY:
A mixed-method approach was used to examine the impact of COVID-19 on dental health services in Kazakhstan. Stakeholder consultations were conducted with dentists from Scotland and Kazakhstan to identify the key issues related to their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conversations with dentists from different countries provided vital insights for the study design and methods.
After obtaining ethical approval, an online survey was conducted with 250 parents to learn about their experiences in maintaining their children’s dental health both pre-pandemic and during the pandemic period. Additionally, statistical data from children’s public dental clinics for 2019 and 2020 were analysed to compare changes in the number of patients and prevalence of dental diseases before and during the pandemic. The findings from these preliminary studies informed the design of a subsequent qualitative interview study with 19 dentists and 19 parents. Thematic analysis was used to analyse findings of the interviews.
RESULTS:
During the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, dental care facilities in Kazakhstan mostly provided emergency care with reduced staff and strict safety measures. Dentists faced challenges including a lack of reliable information about COVID-19 and increased risk of infection. Insufficient public awareness led to dissatisfaction and misunderstandings about service availability and organisation. As the pandemic continued, dentists observed decreased oral hygiene in children, attributed to cancelling of both routine check-ups and promotion of preventive care in educational facilities.
Some of the key findings indicate that parents reported high awareness of the importance of maintaining their children's oral health and regular dental check-ups. Additionally, most parents preferred public dental clinics for their children’s dental care. However, many parents cited their busy working schedules, and the inconvenience of the existing appointment system at Aktobe children’s public dental clinics as barriers to taking their children for regular dental check-ups. Other challenges included managing their children’s food choices, particularly outside the home. During the pandemic, fear of COVID-19 led parents to make judgments about risk and typically prioritise at-home oral care for their family to avoid going outside.
CONCLUSION:
The COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial impact on dental care services in Kazakhstan. The Kazakhstan government’s top-down approach to implement measures to reduce the spread of infection meant that dental care staff were organizing their services and working in a context of continual change and uncertainty. This disruption impacted on the experiences of the public - in this case, children; with dentists describing witnessing an impact on their dental health. The findings of this research can be used to address existing organizational issues, such as improving the appointment system in public dental clinics and enhancing communication between patients and dental care services. Additionally, the findings of this study and the proposed solutions can contribute to future action planning in the event of another pandemic or other large-scale emergencies
Health-related decision-making in its personal, social and health service contexts: a critical review of relevant findings from seven publications and consideration of their contribution to understandings of decision-making and the wider field of applied health services research
Full text linkHealth-related decision-making, in particular patients’ involvement in decision-making about their treatment and care, has been an important and enduring concern for many practitioners and researchers working in applied health services research and allied fields. This is evidenced by the substantial (and still growing) body of work on ‘shared decision-making’ (SDM). With the aim of advancing understandings of decision-making, and the associated literature, this critical review seeks to situate, present, draw together, and critically consider, relevant findings from work (seven papers) I have first-authored. These papers arose from three applied (qualitative) health services research studies which directly or indirectly explored the experiences of different groups of patients confronted with decisions about their treatment and/or care.
I begin my review with a short overview of relevant theoretical and empirical work pre-dating and informing my own research studies and publications, noting some emergent critiques, and highlighting where important gaps in evidence and understanding were said, at the time, to remain. Then, shifting focus to my own work, I introduce the three studies from which the submitted publications arose, detailing their backgrounds, aims, methods and my involvement in each.
Next, I reflect on the findings of my submitted papers, noting how individually and collectively they indicate the importance of the context(s) in which health-related decisions are made. Using techniques of qualitative synthesis to identify a series of descriptive and analytic themes, I develop – and evidence – the proposition that health-related decision-making happens in, and is shaped by, its personal, social and health service contexts. This includes detailing the various ways in which different features of context may influence patients’ decision-making.
I then consider, critically, how my findings fit with the wider literature. I proceed to argue that, in attending to, and highlighting, the role of context, my papers, synthesis and review provide insights that complement and extend the historic emphasis in SDM scholarship on what goes on within clinical encounters. Reflecting on the focus of more recent SDM literature (publications contemporaneous with or subsequent to work leading to the submitted papers) I note where other authors have similarly gone on to assert the importance of taking a more context-cognisant approach to understanding health-related decision-making. I also consider how other literatures (such as the classic literature of medical sociology and more recent work in psychology) support and might usefully inform this and future thinking about health-related decision-making.
Moving the review towards a close, I offer an assessment of the strengths and limitations of my published work and, moreover, of my synthesis and review. I finish by reflecting upon the methodological and other learning I have accrued over the course of undertaking the contributing studies, including preparing the submitted publications, and from the process of producing this critical review
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
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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