1,721,136 research outputs found
Infection control standards and credentialing
No full textInfection control professionals (ICPs) play an integral part of developing, implementing, and evaluating infection control programs. In Australia, there is no minimum or standardized education to practice as an ICP. The Australasian College of Infection Prevention and Control, the professional body for ICPs in Australasia, sought to address the issue by developing a credentialing process.1, 2 and 3 This decision was made in recognition that self-regulation is one of the hallmarks of professionalism.4 The process of becoming credentialed as an ICP in Australia involves the submission of evidence against a range of criteria with a subsequent peer-review process..
Time spent by infection control professionals undertaking healthcare associated infection surveillance: A multi-centred cross sectional study
No full text<b>Background</b>\ud
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- There is limited contemporary information on how <i>infection control professionals (ICPs)</i> in hospitals utilise their time, with even less providing any specific data on time taken to undertake HAI surveillance. HAI surveillance is a critical component of any infection control program.\ud
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<b>Methods</b>\ud
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- An anonymous online web-based survey was used to conduct a cross-sectional study of infection control units in public and private Australian hospitals. Participants were asked demographic information and time spent undertaking infection control activities, including surveillance.\ud
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<b>Results</b>\ud
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- Forty infection control units, responsible for providing services to 138 hospitals completed the survey. The percentage of time spent undertaking HAI surveillance activities by members of the infection control units was 1675 h or 36.0% (95% CI 34.3%–37.8%; range 17%–61%) of all contracted infection control professionals time (4653 h). Of the time spent undertaking HAI surveillance, 56% was spent collecting data, 27% collecting data on compliance with infection control activities and 17% feeding HAI data back to clinicians and management. There was no difference in the proportion of time spent undertaking HAI surveillance between public and privately funded hospitals or infection control units led by a credentialed ICP. Infection control units with a form of electronic surveillance dedicated more time to surveillance, compared to units that did not use such a system. Demands for surveillance increased with larger number of hospitals beds.\ud
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<b>Conclusion</b>\ud
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- The costs of undertaking HAI surveillance and collecting data can be considerable. The efficiency of undertaking surveillance should be considered, weighing investment against the likely improvement in infection rates and patient quality of life
Hospital infection control units: Staffing, costs, and priorities
No full textBackground: This article describes infection prevention and control professionals’ (ICPs’) staffing levels,\ud
patient outcomes, and costs associated with the provision of infection prevention and control services in\ud
Australian hospitals. A secondary objective was to determine the priorities for infection control units.\ud
Methods: A cross-sectional study design was used. Infection control units in Australian public and private\ud
hospitals completed a Web-based anonymous survey. Data collected included details about the\ud
respondent; hospital demographics; details and services of the infection control unit; and a description\ud
of infection prevention and control-related outputs, patient outcomes, and infection control priorities.\ud
Results: Forty-nine surveys were undertaken, accounting for 152 Australian hospitals. The mean number\ud
of ICPs was 0.66 per 100 overnight beds (95% confidence interval, 0.55-0.77). Privately funded hospitals\ud
have significantly fewer ICPs per 100 overnight beds compared with publicly funded hospitals (P < .01).\ud
Staffing costs for nursing staff in infection control units in this study totaled 16,364,392 (mean,\ud
380,566). Infection control units managing smaller hospitals (<270 beds) identified the need for\ud
increased access to infectious diseases or microbiology support.\ud
Conclusion: This study provides valuable information to support future decisions by funders, hospital\ud
administrators, and ICPs on service delivery models for infection prevention and control. Further, it is the\ud
first to provide estimates of the resourcing and cost of staffing infection control in hospitals at a national\ud
level.\ud
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Credentialing of Australian and New Zealand infection control professionals: An exploratory study
No full textBackground\ud
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Despite evidence from overseas that certification and credentialing of infection control professionals (ICPs) is important to patient outcomes, there are no standardized requirements for the education and preparation of ICPs in Australia. A credentialing process (now managed by the Australasian College of Infection Prevention and Control) has been in existence since 2000; however, no evaluation has occurred.\ud
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Methods\ud
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A cross-sectional study design was used to identify the perceived barriers to credentialing and the characteristics of credentialed ICPs.\ud
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Results\ud
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There were 300 responses received; 45 (15%) of participants were credentialed. Noncredentialed ICPs identified barriers to credentialing as no employer requirement and no associated remuneration. Generally credentialed ICPs were more likely to hold higher degrees and have more infection control experience than their noncredentialed colleagues.\ud
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Conclusions\ud
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The credentialing process itself may assist in supporting ICP development by providing an opportunity for reflection and feedback from peer review. Further, the process may assist ICPs in being flexible and adaptable to the challenging and ever-changing environment that is infection control
Exploring the context for effective clinical governance in infection control
No full textBackground\ud
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Effective clinical governance is necessary to support improvements in infection control. Historically, the focus has been on ensuring that infection control practice and policy is based on evidence, and that there is use of surveillance and auditing for self-regulation and performance feedback. There has been less exploration of how contextual and organizational factors mediate an infection preventionists (IP's) ability to engage with evidence-based practice and enact good clinical governance.\ud
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Methods\ud
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A cross sectional Web-based survey of IPs in Australia and New Zealand was undertaken. Questions focused on engagement in evidence-based practice and perceptions about the context, culture, and leadership within the infection control team and organization. Responses were mapped against dimensions of Scally and Donaldson's clinical governance framework.\ud
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Results\ud
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Three hundred surveys were returned. IPs appear well equipped at an individual level to undertake evidence-based practice. The most serious set of perceived challenges to good clinical governance related to a lack of leadership or active resistance to infection control within the organization. Additional challenges included lack of information technology solutions and poor access to specialist expertise and financial resources.\ud
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Conclusions\ud
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Focusing on strengthening contextual factors at the organizational level that otherwise undermine capacity to implement evidence-based practice is key to sustaining current infection control successes and promoting further practice improvements
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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