A Qualitative Exploration of Perceived Key Knowledge and Skills in End-of-Life Care in Dementia Patients among Medical, Nursing, and Pharmacy Students

Background: The steady increase in the number of people living and dying with dementia, coupled with the recent focus on quality of care, has highlighted the importance of dementia training for health care professionals. This exploratory study aimed to discover which skills health care students felt were important in providing quality end-of-life care to dementia patients.

Methods: Ninety-four medicine, nursing, and pharmacy students participated in a larger study using open-ended and closed questions to explore attitudes related to caring for dementia patients at the end of life. This study looks at the student responses to an open-ended question regarding the skills and knowledge they believe are needed to provide end-of-life care to dementia patients. Individual responses were reviewed by the researchers, coded into key issues, and tabulated for frequency of occurrences and group differences.

Results: Several common issues emerged: knowledge, patience, empathy, understanding, family involvement, compassion, medication knowledge, respect/patient autonomy, communication, quality of life, and patient education. Significant differences were observed among the participant groups on the following issues: Patience and understanding (pharmacy students mentioned these issues less frequently than medical and nursing students), compassion (medical students mentioned this issue more frequently than pharmacy students), and medication knowledge (pharmacy students mentioned this issue more frequently than medical and nursing students).

Conclusions: Different health care disciplines (in-training) value different skill sets for the provision of dementia care at the end-of-life. As health care education for dementia patients at the end of life is expanded, it will be important to understand which skills both patients and health care students value.

Retrieving Regions of Interest for User Exploration

We consider an application scenario where points of interest (PoIs) each have a web presence and where a web user wants to iden- tify a region that contains relevant PoIs that are relevant to a set of keywords, e.g., in preparation for deciding where to go to conve- niently explore the PoIs. Motivated by this, we propose the length- constrained maximum-sum region (LCMSR) query that returns a spatial-network region that is located within a general region of in- terest, that does not exceed a given size constraint, and that best matches query keywords. Such a query maximizes the total weight of the PoIs in it w.r.t. the query keywords. We show that it is NP- hard to answer this query. We develop an approximation algorithm with a (5 + ǫ) approximation ratio utilizing a technique that scales node weights into integers. We also propose a more efficient heuris- tic algorithm and a greedy algorithm. Empirical studies on real data offer detailed insight into the accuracy of the proposed algorithms and show that the proposed algorithms are capable of computingresults efficiently and effectively.

Young people exiting homelessness: An exploration of process, meaning and definition

In the past decade in particular, research attention has shifted from an almost exclusive focus on routes or pathways into homelessness towards the investigation of exits from homelessness. As well as demonstrating the multiple paths possible for young people who become homeless, recent research, and longitudinal studies in particular, has contributed to a more nuanced understanding of the complexity of the homeless pathways of young people. Nonetheless, knowledge and understanding of the nature of homeless exits, and of the mechanisms that facilitate the transition out of homelessness, is far from complete. This paper explores the processes surrounding the exit routes taken by young people out of homelessness and the meanings attached by them to these housing transitions based on selected findings from an ongoing qualitative longitudinal study of homeless youth in Dublin, Ireland. More broadly, the paper considers the utility of distinguishing between the types of routes that young people take out of homelessness, with particular attention to the notions of ‘independent’ and ‘dependent’ exits. The paper aims to further the discussion and debate on the conceptualisation of homeless exits and also discusses a number of policy implications arising from the study's findings.

An exploration of integrated data on the social dynamics of suicide among women

The gender based nature of suicide related behaviour is largely accepted.However, studies which report exclusively on female fatal suicides are rare.Here we demonstrate how female fatal suicide has effectively been ‘othered’ and appears ‘incidental’ in studies which compare female behaviour with that of their male counterparts. We highlight how recent studies of suicide have tended to be dominated by male only approaches,which increasingly link issues of masculinity with male death by suicide.Drawing on data collected from the GP and Coroner’s office, we then apply the Sociological Autopsy approach to a cohort of 78 deaths recorded as suicides in the UK between 2007 and 2009. By focusing on females in isolation from males, we demonstrate that as in male suicide only studies,it is similarly possible to draw out issues associated with the feminine identity which can be linked to death by suicide. We identify that bereavement, sexual violence and motherhood could all be linked to the lives and help-seeking of the females who died. In closing, we suggest are orientation towards sociological analytic approaches of female suicide may help to produce further reductions in the rate of female death by suicide.

National institutions and employers’ age management practices in Britain and Germany:‘Path dependence’and option exploration

We pursue a comparative analysis of employers’ age management practices in Britain and Germany, asking how valid ‘convergence’ and ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ theories are. After rejecting the convergence verdict, we proceed to ask how far ‘path dependence’ helps explain inter-country differences. Through 19 interviews with British and German experts, we find that firms have reacted in different ways to promptings from the EU and the two states. Change has been modest and a rhetoric-reality gap exists in firms as they seek to hedge. We point to continuities in German institutional methods of developing new initiatives, and the emerging role of British NGOs in helping firms and the state develop new options. We argue that ‘path dependence’ offers insight into the national comparison, but also advance the idea of national modes of firm optionexploration as an important way of conceptualizing the processes involved.

Interprofessional Healthcare Collaboration on the Front Lines: A Qualitative Exploration of the Facilitators and Barriers to Effective Collaboration in Qatar.

Background:
Healthcare in Qatar is undergoing a period of major reform, driven by a strong economy and vision for a world-class healthcare system. One area identified as a potential contributor to developing a world-class healthcare system is interprofessional education (IPE), with the goal of facilitating healthcare workers to work together collaboratively. Several key steps have been taken towards developing IPE in Qatar, such as the formation of the Qatar Interprofessional Health Council (QIHC), the development of an IPE program for undergraduate healthcare students, the development of a set of shared core competencies, the receipt of substantial buy-in from leaders across the healthcare system, and recent approval of funding to develop a post-licensure healthcare IPE program. In order to improve IPE in Qatar, it is important to better understand the facilitators and barriers to interprofessional collaboration in Qatar. This study seeks to do so by qualitatively exploring facilitators and barriers to interprofessional collaboration for healthcare professional in Qatar from the perspective of health care professionals. By better understanding how health care workers give meaning to interprofessional education and collaboration, this research can assist in improving interprofessional activities in healthcare in Qatar.

Objectives
The purpose of this paper-presentation is to report on finding from a qualitative study that explored different facilitators and barriers of interprofessional practice in Qatar.

Method:
Ten healthcare professionals who work in Qatar were interviewed using semi-structured, open-ended interviews. Interview questions were organized by phenomenological (e.g. exploring the lived-experiences of healthcare workers) and ethnographic interviewing techniques (e.g. focusing on what people do). The questions explored the barriers, facilitators, and what is working well in terms of interprofessional practice for health care professional in Qatar.

Findings and Implications:
Different factors associated with interprofessional collaborations will be discussed. In doing so, this research adds to the literature on IPE by shedding light on interprofessional collaboration and education in the Middle East. Furthermore, this study identifies barriers for health care workers to work collaboratively in health care settings in Qatar. Addressing such barriers, and building off of what is working well, will facilitate Qatar in reaching one of the Vision 2030 goals of improving Qatar’s health and wellness.

Interprofessional Healthcare Collaboration on the Front Lines: A Qualitative Exploration of the Facilitators and Barriers to Effective Collaboration in Qatar.

Background:

Healthcare in Qatar is undergoing a period of major reform, driven by a strong economy and vision for a world-class healthcare system. One area identified as a potential contributor to developing a world-class healthcare system is interprofessional education (IPE), with the goal of facilitating healthcare workers to work together collaboratively. Several key steps have been taken towards developing IPE in Qatar, such as the formation of the Qatar Interprofessional Health Council (QIHC), the development of an IPE program for undergraduate healthcare students, the development of a set of shared core competencies, the receipt of substantial buy-in from leaders across the healthcare system, and recent approval of funding to develop a post-licensure healthcare IPE program. In order to improve IPE in Qatar, it is important to better understand the facilitators and barriers to interprofessional collaboration in Qatar. This study seeks to do so by qualitatively exploring facilitators and barriers to interprofessional collaboration for healthcare professional in Qatar from the perspective of health care professionals. By better understanding how health care workers give meaning to interprofessional education and collaboration, this research can assist in improving interprofessional activities in healthcare in Qatar.

Objectives

The purpose of this paper-presentation is to report on finding from a qualitative study that explored different facilitators and barriers of interprofessional practice in Qatar.

Method:

Ten healthcare professionals who work in Qatar were interviewed using semi-structured, open-ended interviews. Interview questions were organized by phenomenological (e.g. exploring the lived-experiences of healthcare workers) and ethnographic interviewing techniques (e.g. focusing on what people do). The questions explored the barriers, facilitators, and what is working well in terms of interprofessional practice for health care professional in Qatar.

Findings and Implications:

Different factors associated with interprofessional collaborations will be discussed. In doing so, this research adds to the literature on IPE by shedding light on interprofessional collaboration and education in the Middle East. Furthermore, this study identifies barriers for health care workers to work collaboratively in health care settings in Qatar. Addressing such barriers, and building off of what is working well, will facilitate Qatar in reaching one of the Vision 2030 goals of improving Qatar’s health and wellness.

On the statistical memory architecture exploration and optimization

The worsening of process variations and the consequent increased spreads in circuit performance and consumed power hinder the satisfaction of the targeted budgets and lead to yield loss. Corner based design and adoption of design guardbands might limit the yield loss. However, in many cases such methods may not be able to capture the real effects which might be way better than the predicted ones leading to increasingly pessimistic designs. The situation is even more severe in memories which consist of substantially different individual building blocks, further complicating the accurate analysis of the impact of variations at the architecture level leaving many potential issues uncovered and opportunities unexploited. In this paper, we develop a framework for capturing non-trivial statistical interactions among all the components of a memory/cache. The developed tool is able to find the optimum memory/cache configuration under various constraints allowing the designers to make the right choices early in the design cycle and consequently improve performance, energy, and especially yield. Our, results indicate that the consideration of the architectural interactions between the memory components allow to relax the pessimistic access times that are predicted by existing techniques.