Frequency of falls in nursing homes for neurodegenerative diseases

Poster presented at the First international Congress of CiiEM “From Basic Sciences to Clinical Research”, 27-28 November 2015, Egas Moniz, Caparica, Portugal.

A snapshot of the quality of therapy in nursing homes

Poster presented at the 1st International Congress of CiiEM: From Basic Sciences to Clinical Research, 27-28 November 2015, Egas Moniz, Caparica, Portugal.

Avaliação da qualidade sentida e satisfação dos clientes de uma estrutura residencial para idosos

O aumento da esperança média de vida leva a que muitos idosos vivem para além dos 85 anos e consequentemente precisam cada vez mais de respostas sociais adequadas às suas necessidades, numa época em que as famílias se desresponsabilizam gradualmente dos cuidados aos seniores. As respostas sociais mais conhecidas no nosso país são os lares de idosos, ou seja, as estruturas residenciais para idosos e estas têm vindo a assumir um papel cada vez mais relevante na nossa sociedade. Este estudo procurou avaliar a qualidade sentida e a satisfação dos clientes residentes de uma estrutura residencial para idosos. Para que esta pesquisa fosse o mais fidedigna possível foram realizadas 12 entrevistas semi-estruturadas aos residentes do Centro Social da Nossa Senhora das Necessidades em Alcaria no Concelho do Fundão durante os meses de dezembro de 2015 e fevereiro de 2016. A análise dos resultados deste estudo permitiu perceber a perceção que os idosos residentes nos lares têm sobre os serviços e cuidados prestados e que vai influenciar a sua satisfação e qualidade de vida. Com este estudo procuramos ajudar as Direções e Corpos Gerentes das Instituições a melhor avaliarem e valorizarem o tipo de serviços e cuidados que disponibilizam e a atenção às necessidades sentidas pelos residentes, nomeadamente no que respeita à melhoria da qualidade de vida dos idosos

Gamification in Skills Management

Employees are the human capital which, to a great extent, contributes to the success and development of high-performance and sustainable organizations. In a work environment, there is a need to provide a tool for tracking and following-up on each employees' professional progress, while staying aligned with the organization’s strategic and operational goals and objectives. The research work within this Thesis aims to contribute to improve employees' selfawareness and auto-regulation; two predominant research areas are also studied and analyzed: Visual Analytics and Gamification. The Visual Analytics enables the specification of personalized dashboard interfaces with alerts and indicators to keep employees aware of their skills and to continuously monitor how to improve their expertise, promoting simultaneously behavioral change and adoption of good-practices. The study of Gamification techniques with Talent Management features enabled the design of new processes to engage, motivate, and retain highly productive employees, and to foster a competitive working environment, where employees are encouraged to be involved in new and rewarding activities, where knowledge and experience are recognized as a relevant asset. The Design Science Research was selected as the research methodology; the creation of new knowledge is therefore based on an iterative cycle addressing concepts such as design, analysis, reflection, and abstraction. By collaborating in an international project (Active@Work), funded by the Active and Assisted Living Programme, the results followed a design thinking approach regarding the specification of the structure and behavior of the Skills Development Module, namely the identification of requirements and the design of an innovative info-structure of metadata to support the user experience. A set of mockups were designed based on the user role and main concerns. Such approach enabled the conceptualization of a solution to proactively assist the management and assessment of skills in a personalized and dynamic way. The outcomes of this Thesis aims to demonstrate the existing articulation between emerging research areas such as Visual Analytics and Gamification, expecting to represent conceptual gains in these two research fields.