1,721,370 research outputs found
The effect of doctor ethnicity and country of qualification on prescribing patterns
No full textThe aim of this thesis is to assess the effect of doctor ethnicity and country of qualification on prescribing cost and frequency, and generic prescribing; taking account of doctor personal and practice characteristics where possible. A new refined weighting factor (ASTRO-PU) has been used and two study designs employed to achieve this aim. As well as global prescribing, four therapeutic groups were chosen as these were thought to be commonly issued by Asian doctors. In addition, prescribing patterns of GPs are described by these personal and practice characteristics.The first study (Ecological) used aggregate prescribing data from the 90 Family Health Services Authorities (FHSAs) and found that being an Asian doctor and qualifying from the Indian sub-continent (ISC) were associated with increased frequency and prescribing but not cost. The second record linkage study used data collected from 155 single handed GPs; from FHSAs; from the 1991 Census and from the Prescription Pricing Authority. To adjust for potential confounding, analysis of covariance was used and parsimonious models developed by backward elimination for each dependent variable. This showed that, for global prescribing, Asian doctors qualified from the ISC do not issue items more frequently, issue expensive items, or fewer generic drugs than Asian and white doctors qualified from the UK. Further, no significant difference was found between the three groups of doctors for:1) volume of paracetamol and non-steroidal drugs;2) cost of antibiotics; expectorants; paracetamol and non-steroidal drugs; and 3) generic prescribing of antibiotics.However, there was a difference between the three groups of GPs for both the volume of antibiotics and expectorants and the cost/volume of paracetamol. It was noted that the parsimonious models explained little of the variation in the prescribing dependent variables.This thesis lays to rest, for global prescribing and specific therapeutic groups, the myths of Asian doctors being high volume and cost prescribers. The second study has also contributed to the understanding of prescribing variation at the individual doctor level.</p
General practice community pharmacist consultation service: an exploratory patient survey
No full textBackground: the General Practice Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (GP CPCS) was established to allow patients with certain minor illnesses to be referred to a community pharmacy for assessment and treatment.Aim: to explore patients’ experiences of the GP CPCS.Design & setting: an online survey in two regions of England.Method: 25 general practices invited patients to take part in an exploratory survey. Descriptive statistics were used for the analysis.Results: the response rate was 5.1% (72/1423). Prior to contacting their general practice, 14.1% (9/64) had tried to speak to a pharmacist. Most respondents accepted the CPCS referral (77.3%, 51/66), received a pharmacy consultation on the same day (80.0%, 40/50) and were largely satisfied with the amount of time the pharmacist spent with them (82.5%, 33/40) the consultation format (68.3%, 28/41) and the privacy provided during the consultation (80.9%, 38/47).However, most respondents (56.5%, 39/69) felt poorly informed by the general practice on why they were being advised to speak to a pharmacist and did not feel that it was appropriate that they had been advised to speak to a community pharmacist (54.2%, 39/72). Only 33.3% (16/48) felt that their consultation fully met their health needs and 27.1% (13/48) of patients described being re-referred from pharmacy back to their general practice.Conclusion : in this exploratory study patients were largely accepting of the GP CPCS. Improvements in terms of explaining GP CPCS to patients, selecting patients appropriate for referral to the service and the appointment process may be of benefit
Okanagan sentiment analysis of airlines reviews
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked financial devastation for airlines. As travel restrictions eases, it is important for airlines to gather and assess the opinions of passengers in order to meet new expectations. With the availability of online electronic platforms, it has become feasible to collect customer reviews on a large scale. Collecting, processing and deciphering textual data remain a challenge to most. This thesis details the collection of textual review data from SkyTrax and Trip Advisor. Subsequently, it demonstrates the use of quantitative sentiment scoring of the textual reviews, exploratory data analysis and statistical modelling to ascertain factors that affect passenger perceptions of airlines services. Specifically, we developed a linear mixed model with passengers and airline as random to rank various airlines with respect to sentiment scores, while confirming fixed factors which affect these scores. The application of this model allows for interpretability to the expectations and recommendations made by various passengers of airlines, measures the performance of airlines with respect to customer experience.Science, Irving K. Barber Faculty of (Okanagan)Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, Department of (Okanagan)Graduat
An Ethnographic Study of the Social Context of Migrant Health in the United States
Full text linkRefereedMigrant workers in the United States have extremely poor health. This paper aims to identify ways in which the social context of migrant farm workers affects their health and health care. This qualitative study employs participant observation and interviews on farms and in clinics throughout 15 months of migration with a group of indigenous Triqui Mexicans in the western US and Mexico. Study participants include more than 130 farm workers and 30 clinicians. Data are analyzed utilizing grounded theory, accompanied by theories of structural violence, symbolic violence, and the clinical gaze. The study reveals that farm working and housing conditions are organized according to ethnicity and citizenship. This hierarchy determines health disparities, with undocumented indigenous Mexicans having the worst health. Yet, each group is understood to deserve its place in the hierarchy, migrant farm workers often being blamed for their own sicknesses. Structural racism and anti-immigrant practices determine the poor working conditions, living conditions, and health of migrant workers. Subtle racism serves to reduce awareness of this social context for all involved, including clinicians. The paper concludes with strategies toward improving migrant health in four areas: health disparities research, clinical interactions with migrant laborers, medical education, and policy making.UCSF Medical Scientist Training ProgramUniversity of California Institute for Mexico and the United StatesUCSF Center for Reproductive Health Research and PolicyUCSF Graduate DivisionMustard Seed Foundatio
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
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