The development of a photoacoustic Instrument for the monitoring of oil and other hydrocarbons in water.

The present methods for the detection of oil in discharge water are based either on chemical analysis of intermittent samples or bypass pipelines with instrumentation to detect either dissolved or dispersed hydrocarbons by a variety of optical techniques including absorption, scattering and fluorescence. However, test have shown that no single instruments entirely meets either present needs or satisfies the requirements of the future more stringent legislation which may limit total hydrocarbon content to 30 ppm or even less. Hence, in this paper, a detector is devised which can detect both dissolved and dispersed oil products, has a high immunity to scattering and can operate in-line and harsh environments with a detection sensitivity of a few ppm throughout a wide range of operations.

Development and preliminary psychometric properties of the Care Experience Feedback Improvement Tool (CEFIT).

Objective To develop a structurally valid and reliable, yet brief measure of patient experience of hospital quality of care, the Care Experience Feedback Improvement Tool (CEFIT). Also, to examine aspects of utility of CEFIT. Background Measuring quality improvement at the clinical interface has become a necessary component of healthcare measurement and improvement plans, but the effectiveness of measuring such complexity is dependent on the purpose and utility of the instrument used. Methods CEFIT was designed from a theoretical model, derived from the literature and a content validity index (CVI) procedure. A telephone population surveyed 802 eligible participants (healthcare experience within the previous 12 months) to complete CEFIT. Internal consistency reliability was tested using Cronbach's α. Principal component analysis was conducted to examine the factor structure and determine structural validity. Quality criteria were applied to judge aspects of utility. Results CVI found a statistically significant proportion of agreement between patient and practitioner experts for CEFIT construction. 802 eligible participants answered the CEFIT questions. Cronbach's α coefficient for internal consistency indicated high reliability (0.78). Interitem (question) total correlations (0.28–0.73) were used to establish the final instrument. Principal component analysis identified one factor accounting for 57.3% variance. Quality critique rated CEFIT as fair for content validity, excellent for structural validity, good for cost, poor for acceptability and good for educational impact. Conclusions CEFIT offers a brief yet structurally sound measure of patient experience of quality of care. The briefness of the 5-item instrument arguably offers high utility in practice. Further studies are needed to explore the utility of CEFIT to provide a robust basis for feedback to local clinical teams and drive quality improvement in the provision of care experience for patients. Further development of aspects of utility is also required.