1,721,007 research outputs found
The development and implementation of NHS treatment centres as an organisational innovation
No full textThe idea for Treatment Centres was first heralded in the
NHS Plan (DH, 2000). From a planned small scale
introduction of four ‘Diagnostic and Treatment Centres’
(soon renamed as Treatment Centres) in 2001, the plan
was to increase the number, range of services and type
of provider (with the introduction of the private sector)
so that 50 TCs would be operational by 2004/05
(DH,2002). Using the existing Ambulatory Care and
Diagnostic Centre at Central Middlesex Hospital
(London) and models of surgicentres (developed
overseas) as prototypes, the TC model was innovative
as it proposed a ‘one-stop shop’ for planned (nonemergency)
care. Patients could obtain diagnostic and
treatment services under one roof. TCs aimed to reduce
inappropriate delays and waiting lists through the
separation of elective surgery from emergency and
unplanned treatment. By focussing on high volume
and routine surgical procedures in orthopaedics,
gynaecology, ophthalmology and cardiology, TCs
sought to increase efficiency by delivering high
volumes of activity and high quality health care using
modern methods. This proposed service development
was timely for NHS change managers who were
seeking ways to make progress towards national
waiting time targets and to introduce more patientcentred
models of care.Whilst many had not previously
considered the TC model, they were eager to explore its
advantages at a local level
Development, implementation and evaluation of a tool for forecasting short term demand for beds in an intensive care unit
No full textVariability in demand for staffed beds from existing patients and new referrals in intensive care units presents a substantial problem to managers. Short term fluctuations in the number of patients requiring a bed can result in demand for beds exceeding capacity, or alternatively, seemingly inefficient use of an expensive resource. While operational research methods can help in capacity planning, there are many barriers to implementing such methods in practice. In this paper we describe an entire operational research project cycle. This included: deriving exact expressions for the probability distribution for the time-varying bed demand on an intensive care unit taking account of occupancy at the point of forecast and future planned and emergency admissions; applying these expressions to a specific hospital’s intensive care unit using historical data; building software that the hospital staff can use daily to produce forecasts of short term bed demand; implementing the software within the hospital; and an evaluation of this implementation from both a technical and non-technical perspective.The main contribution of this paper is in describing the process of implementing an abstract mathematical model in a busy intensive care unit and the independent qualitative evaluation of the work about how potential barriers to implementation were addressed as part of a “modellers in residence” programme that led to us building a software tool that is still being used by the hospital more than 4 years after initial implementation. In particular, we draw together lessons from our work that we think will benefit other operational researchers wanting to work effectively with health care organisations on similar problems
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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