How can principals enhance teacher job satisfaction and work commitment?

Teachers leave the teaching profession at different stages throughout their careers. When mid-career teachers leave the profession, there is a potential loss of experienced, quality staff. Increasingly principals have the responsibility for recruiting and keeping quality staff, which translates to responsibility for arresting the attrition rate. This paper reports on an ongoing study that investigates how school leadership may affect teacher job satisfaction in order to understand how principals can enhance teacher work commitment. This paper uses the domains of leadership identified in Education Queensland’s Leadership Matters Framework (2008) to compare school leaders’ and teachers’ perceptions about mid-career teachers’ leaving the profession. Five current principals and five ex-teachers participated in semi-structured, qualitative, individual interviews about which leadership practices impact on teacher work commitment. The ideas identified by each cohort were coded through a content analysis. The five domains of leadership (i.e., personal, relational, intellectual, organisational and educational leadership) provided an analytical framework. Both participant groups indicated relational leadership practices as the strongest influence on teacher work commitment. The relational skills, such as valuing staff, being approachable, being consistent with staff interactions, having good interpersonal skills and developing staff strengths, were noted to have specific impacts on teachers’ work commitment. There were significant differences between the groups, with the ex-teachers rating the personal leadership practices as the second most important practice that can influence teacher work commitment. In contrast, the principals felt that the organisational and education leadership practices were of next importance for teacher work commitment. The findings have implications for principal leadership professional learning. Improving relational skills may help school leaders to increase teacher work. Teacher attrition is a serious concern to many education jurisdictions and by understanding reasons for decline in commitment, jurisdictions can redress the negative impact of leadership practices and keep teachers committed and in the profession. However, further research needs to incorporate more participants through a quantitative study to validate connections with the qualitative findings presented in this current study.

A survey of radiographers' confidence and self-perceived accuracy in frontline image interpretation and their continuing educational preferences

Introduction The provision of a written comment on traumatic abnormalities of the musculoskeletal system detected by radiographers can assist referrers and may improve patient management, but the practice has not been widely adopted outside the United Kingdom. The purpose of this study was to investigate Australian radiographers’ perceptions of their readiness for practice in a radiographer commenting system and their educational preferences in relation to two different delivery formats of image interpretation education, intensive and non-intensive. Methods A cross-sectional web-based questionnaire was implemented between August and September 2012. Participants included radiographers with experience working in emergency settings at four Australian metropolitan hospitals. Conventional descriptive statistics, frequency histograms, and thematic analysis were undertaken. A Wilcoxon signed-rank test examined whether a difference in preference ratings between intensive and non-intensive education delivery was evident. Results The questionnaire was completed by 73 radiographers (68% response rate). Radiographers reported higher confidence and self-perceived accuracy to detect traumatic abnormalities than to describe traumatic abnormalities of the musculoskeletal system. Radiographers frequently reported high desirability ratings for both the intensive and the non-intensive education delivery, no difference in desirability ratings for these two formats was evident (z = 1.66,P = 0.11). Conclusions Some Australian radiographers perceive they are not ready to practise in a frontline radiographer commenting system. Overall, radiographers indicated mixed preferences for image interpretation education delivered via intensive and non-intensive formats. Further research, preferably randomised trials, investigating the effectiveness of intensive and non-intensive education formats of image interpretation education for radiographers is warranted.

Patient satisfaction from two studies of collaborative doctor : pharmacist prescribing in Australia

Background Pharmacist prescribing has been introduced in several countries and is a possible future role for pharmacy in Australia. Objective To assess whether patient satisfaction with the pharmacist as a prescriber, and patient experiences in two settings of collaborative doctor-pharmacist prescribing may be barriers to implementation of pharmacist prescribing. Design Surveys containing closed questions, and Likert scale responses, were completed in both settings to investigate patient satisfaction after each consultation. A further survey investigating attitudes towards pharmacist prescribing, after multiple consultations, was completed in the sexual health clinic. Setting and Participants A surgical pre-admission clinic (PAC) in a tertiary hospital and an outpatient sexual health clinic at a university hospital. Two hundred patients scheduled for elective surgery, and 17 patients diagnosed with HIV infection, respectively, recruited to the pharmacist prescribing arm of two collaborative doctor-pharmacist prescribing studies. Results Consultation satisfaction response rates in PAC and the sexual health clinic were 182/200 (91%) and 29/34 (85%), respectively. In the sexual health clinic, the attitudes towards pharmacist prescribing survey response rate were 14/17 (82%). Consultation satisfaction was high in both studies, most patients (98% and 97%, respectively) agreed they were satisfied with the consultation. In the sexual health clinic, all patients (14/14) agreed that they trusted the pharmacist’s ability to prescribe, care was as good as usual care, and they would recommend seeing a pharmacist prescriber to friends. Discussion and Conclusion Most of the patients had a high satisfaction with pharmacist prescriber consultations, and a positive outlook on the collaborative model of care in the sexual health clinic.

Integrating field survey data with satellite image data to improve shallow water seagrass maps : the role of AUV and snorkeller surveys

Repeatable and accurate seagrass mapping is required for understanding seagrass ecology and supporting management decisions. For shallow (< 5 m) seagrass habitats, these maps can be created by integrating high spatial resolution imagery with field survey data. Field survey data for seagrass is often collected via snorkelling or diving. However, these methods are limited by environmental and safety considerations. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are used increasingly to collect field data for habitat mapping, albeit mostly in deeper waters (>20 m). Here we demonstrate and evaluate the use and potential advantages of AUV field data collection for calibration and validation of seagrass habitat mapping of shallow waters (< 5 m), from multispectral satellite imagery. The study was conducted in the seagrass habitats of the Eastern Banks (142 km2), Moreton Bay, Australia. In the field, georeferenced photos of the seagrass were collected along transects via snorkelling or an AUV. Photos from both collection methods were analysed manually for seagrass species composition and then used as calibration and validation data to map seagrass using an established semi-automated object based mapping routine. A comparison of the relative advantages and disadvantages of AUV and snorkeller collected field data sets and their influence on the mapping routine was conducted. AUV data collection was more consistent, repeatable and safer in comparison to snorkeller transects. Inclusion of deeper water AUV data resulted in mapping of a larger extent of seagrass (~7 km2, 5 % of study area) in the deeper waters of the site. Although overall map accuracies did not differ considerably, inclusion of the AUV data from deeper water transects corrected errors in seagrass mapped at depths to 5 m, but where the bottom is visible on satellite imagery. Our results demonstrate that further development of AUV technology is justified for the monitoring of seagrass habitats in ongoing management programs.

Job satisfaction of preventive medicine workers in northern Vietnam : a multi-method approach

In the health care industry, Job Satisfaction (JS) is linked with work performance, psychological well-being and employee turnover. Although research into JS among health professionals has a long history worldwide, there has been very little analysis in Vietnam. No study has addressed JS of preventive medicine workers in Vietnam, and there is no reliable and valid instrument in Vietnamese language and context for evaluation of JS in this group. This project was conducted to fill these gaps. The findings contribute evidence regarding factors that influence JS in this sector of the health industry that should be applied to personnel management policies and practices in Vietnam.

Religion and life satisfaction: Evidence from Germany

We examined the association between religious involvement and life satisfaction using data drawn from the 2003, 2007, and 2011 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel. Our study provides evidence of an association between attendance at religious services and life satisfaction for respondents residing in West Germany. While social networks partially mediate this relationship for West Germany, there appears to be a remaining direct impact of attendance on life satisfaction. On the contrary, we find no evidence of an association between attendance at religious services and life satisfaction for respondents residing in East Germany.

Investigation of fiducial marker and soft-tissue image guidance techniques in prostate radiation therapy

This thesis examines and compares imaging methods used during the radiotherapy treatment of prostate cancer. The studies found that radiation therapists were able to localise and target the prostate consistently with planar imaging techniques and that the use of small gold markers in the prostate reduced the variation in prostate localisation when using volumetric imaging. It was concluded that larger safety margins are required when using volumetric imaging without gold markers.

What determines weight loss behaviour and body weight satisfaction in Australia? Evidence from the HILDA survey

This thesis undertakes an empirical investigation to identify factors that influence the decision to undertake weight loss behaviour using the nationally representative HILDA dataset. Although many factors influenced the decision, the findings suggested that body weight satisfaction was the greatest determinant of weight loss dieting. This thesis therefore conducted a further empirical study to analyse the determinants of body weight satisfaction. A rank-hypothesis was found to better predict variation in body weight satisfaction levels than the absolute value of the individual's Body Mass Index (BMI) or the relative-norm hypothesis, which are commonly reported in the literature.

Identifying satisfaction factors in tertiary education: The case of an information systems program

This paper introduces a modified Kano approach to analysing and classifying quality attributes that drive student satisfaction in tertiary education. The approach provides several benefits over the traditional Kano approach. Firstly, it uses existing student evaluations of subjects in the educational institution instead of purpose-built surveys as the data source. Secondly, since the data source includes qualitative comments and feedback, it has the exploratory capability to identify emerging and unique attributes. Finally, since the quality attributes identified could be tied directly to students’ detailed feedback, the approach enables practitioners to easily translate the results into concrete action plans. In this paper, the approach is applied to analysing 26 subjects in the information systems school of an Australia university. The approach has enabled the school to uncover new quality attributes and paves the way for other institutions to use their student evaluations to continually understand and addressed students’ changing needs.

What are the contributors to job satisfaction, stress and burnout for haemodialysis nurses?

Aim To review recent studies which identify the factors that contribute to stress, burnout and job satisfaction for nurses who are working in haemodialysis units. Background Regardless of where nurses work, stress, job burnout and dissatisfaction are known to cause high rates of nurse resignations and for many of those to leave the profession entirely. Understanding factors that contribute to job satisfaction, stress and burnout could increase haemodialysis nurse retention and improve health outcomes for people receiving haemodialysis. Evaluation Studies of job stress, burnout and satisfaction for nurses working in haemodialysis units published in English from January 2000 to December 2009 were identified. Specific inclusion criteria were developed resulting in eleven articles selected for this review. Key issues Specifically for haemodialysis nurses’ job stress and burnout was found to originate from two factors related to either patient care or organisations. Patient care factors included unrealistic patient expectations, progressive decline of a patient’s health, and violence and verbal abuse from patients. Organisational factors included shortage of time to complete tasks, lack of resources and unsupportive work environments. Increased job satisfaction for haemodialysis nurses was due to having job security, freedom to use one’s judgement and the quality of nurse/physician interactions. Conclusion Job stress and burnout are problematic for haemodialysis nurses. Instituting strategies which prevent and/or ameliorate stress or burnout could result in improved job satisfaction and also the retention of highly skilled haemodialysis nurses.

Content-independent embedding scheme for multi-modal medical image watermarking

Background As the increasing adoption of information technology continues to offer better distant medical services, the distribution of, and remote access to digital medical images over public networks continues to grow significantly. Such use of medical images raises serious concerns for their continuous security protection, which digital watermarking has shown great potential to address. Methods We present a content-independent embedding scheme for medical image watermarking. We observe that the perceptual content of medical images varies widely with their modalities. Recent medical image watermarking schemes are image-content dependent and thus they may suffer from inconsistent embedding capacity and visual artefacts. To attain the image content-independent embedding property, we generalise RONI (region of non-interest, to the medical professionals) selection process and use it for embedding by utilising RONI’s least significant bit-planes. The proposed scheme thus avoids the need for RONI segmentation that incurs capacity and computational overheads. Results Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed embedding scheme performs consistently over a dataset of 370 medical images including their 7 different modalities. Experimental results also verify how the state-of-the-art reversible schemes can have an inconsistent performance for different modalities of medical images. Our scheme has MSSIM (Mean Structural SIMilarity) larger than 0.999 with a deterministically adaptable embedding capacity. Conclusions Our proposed image-content independent embedding scheme is modality-wise consistent, and maintains a good image quality of RONI while keeping all other pixels in the image untouched. Thus, with an appropriate watermarking framework (i.e., with the considerations of watermark generation, embedding and detection functions), our proposed scheme can be viable for the multi-modality medical image applications and distant medical services such as teleradiology and eHealth.

Solo holiday travellers: Motivators and drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction

A growing number of people are travelling alone for holidays, yet limited research addresses this topic. This paper explores the main motivators and drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction for solo holiday travellers using a critical incident technique (CIT) to collect and analyse data. The findings show that drivers of satisfaction for solo holiday travellers are more related to personal feelings of freedom, relaxation and discovery (personal factors), and interaction with other people (human interaction factors), than with holiday destination factors. Safety (a destination factor) and unfriendly service providers (a human interaction factor) are the main sources of dissatisfaction for solo holiday travellers.

A virtual environment for medical radiation collaborative learning

Asoftware-based environment was developed to provide practical training in medical radiation principles and safety. The Virtual Radiation Laboratory application allowed students to conduct virtual experiments using simulated diagnostic and radiotherapy X-ray generators. The experiments were designed to teach students about the inverse square law, half value layer and radiation protection measures and utilised genuine clinical and experimental data. Evaluation of the application was conducted in order to ascertain the impact of the software on students’ understanding, satisfaction and collaborative learning skills and also to determine potential further improvements to the software and guidelines for its continued use. Feedback was gathered via an anonymous online survey consisting of a mixture of Likert-style questions and short answer open questions. Student feedback was highly positive with 80 % of students reporting increased understanding of radiation protection principles. Furthermore 72 % enjoyed using the software and 87 %of students felt that the project facilitated collaboration within small groups. The main themes arising in the qualitative feedback comments related to efficiency and effectiveness of teaching, safety of environment, collaboration and realism. Staff and students both report gains in efficiency and effectiveness associated with the virtual experiments. In addition students particularly value the visualisation of ‘‘invisible’’ physical principles and increased opportunity for experimentation and collaborative problembased learning. Similar ventures will benefit from adopting an approach that allows for individual experimentation while visualizing challenging concepts.