Power-knowledge in Australian legal education: Corporatism's reign

How and why corporatism exists and persists within Australian law schools - as a form of knowledge, corporatism's success is attributable to the convergence of a range of historical, social and political contingencies.

Using a clinical pathway and education to reduce inappropriate prescribing of enoxaparin in patients with acute coronary syndromes: a controlled study

Aims: To evaluate efficacy of a pathway-based quality improvement intervention on appropriate prescribing of the low molecular weight heparin, enoxaparin, in patients with varying risk categories of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Methods: Rates of enoxaparin use retrospectively evaluated before and after pathway implementation at an intervention hospital were compared to concurrent control patients at a control hospital; both were community hospitals in south-east Queensland. The study population was a group of randomly selected patients (n = 439) admitted to study hospitals with a discharge diagnosis of chest pain, angina, or myocardial infarction, and stratified into high, intermediate, low-risk ACS or non-cardiac chest pain: 146 intervention patients (September-November 2003), 147 historical controls (August-December 2001) at the intervention hospital; 146 concurrent controls (September-November 2003) at the control hospital. Interventions were active implementation of a user-modified clinical pathway coupled with an iterative education programme to medical staff versus passive distribution of a similar pathway without user modification or targeted education. Outcome measures were rates of appropriate enoxaparin use in high-risk ACS patients and rates of inappropriate use in intermediate and low-risk patients. Results: Appropriate use of enoxaparin in high-risk ACS patients was above 90% in all patient groups. Inappropriate use of enoxaparin was significantly reduced as a result of pathway use in intermediate risk (9% intervention patients vs 75% historical controls vs 45% concurrent controls) and low-risk patients (9% vs 62% vs 41%; P < 0.001 for all comparisons). Pathway use was associated with a 3.5-fold (95% CI: 1.3-9.1; P = 0.012) increase in appropriate use of enoxaparin across all patient groups. Conclusion: Active implementation of an acute chest pain pathway combined with continuous education reduced inappropriate use of enoxaparin in patients presenting with intermediate or low-risk ACS.

3D information visualisation: An historical perspective

The use of 3D visualisation of digital information is a recent phenomenon. It relies on users understanding 3D perspectival spaces. Questions about the universal access of such spaces has been debated since its inception in the European Renaissance. Perspective has since become a strong cultural influence in Western visual communication. Perspective imaging assists the process of experimenting by the sketching or modelling of ideas. In particular, the recent 3D modelling of an essentially non-dimensional Cyber-space raises questions of how we think about information in general. While alternate methods clearly exist they are rarely explored within the 3D paradigm (such as Chinese isometry). This paper seeks to generate further discussion on the historical background of perspective and its role in underpinning this emergent field. © 2005 IEEE.