The Australasian triage scale: examining emergency department nurses' performance using computer and paper scenarios

Study objective: The purpose of this study is to examine emergency nurses' performance using triage scenarios characterized by type of patient population (adult versus pediatric) and mode of delivery (paper versus computer). Methods:   A combination of paper-based (script alone) and computer-based (script plus still photographs) triage scenarios were used. Of the 28 scenarios used, half were written and half were computer based. Within each subgroup, there were 7 adult and 7 pediatric scenarios. Participants were asked to allocate an Australasian Triage Scale category for each triage scenario. Results: One hundred sixty-seven participants completed a total of 2,349 adult scenarios, and 161 participants completed 2,265 pediatric scenarios. Sixty-one percent of the triage decisions made by the nurses were “expected” triage decisions, 18% were “undertriage,” decisions, and 21% were “overtriage” decisions. Nurse triage allocation decisions for the scenarios containing still photographs delivered by computer demonstrated a higher average agreement percentage of 66.2% (κ=0.56; τb=0.77; P<.0001) compared with the average agreement percentage of 55.4% (κ=0.42; τb=0.75; P<.0001) using paper-based (text-only) scenarios. Conclusion: The mode of delivery appeared to have an effect on the nurses' triage performance. It is unclear whether the use of simple still photographs used in the computer mode of delivery resulted in a higher incidence of expected triage decisions and, thus, improved performance. The use of cues such as photographs and video footage to enhance the fidelity of triage scenarios may be useful not only for the education of triage nurses but also the conduct of research into triage decisionmaking. However, further exploration and research in this area are warranted.

The book: production and participation

Purpose – The focus of this paper is on the benefits that may eventuate through new mechanisms of production and distribution. As we enter the twenty-first century, the nature of the book and the structure of the industry which produces it are undergoing radical transformation, as developments in information technology offer new mechanisms for production and distribution. Most of the discussion of these changes is conducted from the perspective of what has been lost through these changes. Design/methodology/approach – This paper reviews the history of the book from the perspective of the disruptive effects of the changes in production technology and impact on the roles involved in production, distribution and reading of books. Darnton’s Communication Circuit is updated to predict future limiting factors and opportunities for participation. Findings – The evolution of the book has seen successive categories of workers involved in book production supplanted by the adoption of new technology. The updated Darnton’s model suggests that the roles involved in the production and distribution of the book will, however, be supplanted in favour of authors and readers of the book in the future. Social implications – The predicted changes will alter the roles of authors and book users. Originality/value – This paper suggests a novel approach to the discussion of the future of book publication and suggests future developments.

E-book devices and m-commerce : what might be the impact on organizational learning?

E-book devices are changing current organizational practices by providing a source of e-learning, in which organizations and their employees can more easily access information about current business developments that impact on their existing practices. E-book devices (also referred to as e-book readers or e-readers) use electronic ink technology to display written words from books, newspapers, magazines and other documentation. They are portable devices that are the size of a paperback book and are a new technology that has only been mass-marketed to the general population in the past year. Most importantly for an organization is that e-books could transform and will certainly influence their current technology practices and how people communicate and perform their job tasks.

Asia and the autobiographical picture book

The Asia literacy curriculum objectives in Australian primary school classrooms are currently hampered by the scarcity of quality narrative picture books about Asian countries. Few books engage children without also representing Asia problematically. Anh Do’s The Little Refugee asserts an authentic cultural insider perspective on both Vietnam and Australia. In fact, it presents a paternalistic view of Asia and a self-congratulatory vision of Australia. This presentation engages with the picture book and life-writing genres to highlight the pitfalls and possibilities of using the autobiographical picture book to promote Asia literacy.

The early detection of postpartum depression: midwives and nurses trial a checklist

Objective: To evaluate the use of a standard pen-and-paper test versus the use of a checklist for the early identification of women at risk of postpartum depression and to investigate the experiences of nurses in using the checklist.

Design: A prospective cohort design using repeated measures.

Setting: The booking-in prenatal clinic at a regional hospital in Victoria, Australia, and the community-based postpartum maternal and child health service.

Participants: 107 pregnant women over 20 years of age.

Main Measures: Postpartum Depression Prediction Inventory (PDPI), Postpartum Depression Screening Scale (PDSS), Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), demographic questionnaire, and data on the outcome from the midwives and nurses.

Results: The PDPI identified 45% of the women at risk of depression during pregnancy and 30% postpartum. The PDSS and EPDS both identified the same 8 women (10%), who scored highly for depression at the 8-week postpartum health visit. Nurses provided 80% of the women with anticipatory guidance on postpartum depression in the prenatal period and 46% of women at the 8-week postpartum health visit. Nurse counseling or anticipatory guidance was provided for 60% of the women in the prenatal period.

Conclusion: The PDPI was found to be a valuable checklist by many nurses involved in this research, particularly as a way of initiating open discussion with women about postpartum depression. It correlated strongly with both the PDSS and the EPDS, suggesting that it is useful as an inventory to identify women at risk of postpartum depression.

Leadership, organisational climate and workplace innovation: a study of factors that enhance workplace innovation in small to medium enterprise

Innovation is a valued organisational asset that may asssist the creation and maintenance of competitive advantage. A number of authors have proposed links between leadership, organisational climate and innovation, and these constructs appear to converge. This convergence led researchers to produce models of the interaction between the three constructs within organisations. It has generally been reported that leadership effects innovation and organisational climate or vise versa. However, to date there is no substantial, direct nor robust empirical evidence to informt his view. This book and detailed study addresses the relationship between leadership, organisational climate and innovation simultaneously. 

Making difference SUPER : a critical approach to the politics of celebrity-authored children's books

Recent years have seen a flood of celebrity-authored children’s books enter the children’s literature marketplace. This paper tracks the evolution of this phenomenon as it pertains to contemporary celebrity culture, and responds to the question: what are the embedded messages about identity at play in such texts? The key contention here is that these works endorse celebrity as the most desirable identity category for the children of the new millennium, going so far as to position difference as a commodity to be traded in the quest for fame. Using critical theory around celebrity culture, and through a close reading of a short celebrity-authored picture book, this paper demonstrates that far from being innocuous pieces of popular culture, such books beckon children into a world that increasingly values visibility and stardom above all else.

Mechanisms for multimodality : taking fiction to another dimension

We present methods for automatically constructing representations of fiction books in a range of modalities: audibly, graphically and as 3D virtual environments. The correspondence between the sequential ordering of events against the order of events presented in the text is used to correctly resolve the dynamic interactions for each representation. Synthesised audio created from the fiction text is used to calibrate the base time-line against which the other forms of media are correctly aligned. The audio stream is based on speech synthesis using the text of the book, and is enhanced using distinct voices for the different characters in a book. Sound effects are included automatically. The graphical representation represents the text (as subtitles), identifies active characters and provides visual feedback of the content of the story. Dynamic virtual environments conform to the constraints implied by the story, and are used as a source of further visual content. These representations are all aligned to a common time-line, and combined using sequencing facilities to provide a multimodal version of the original text.

Identifying annotations for adventure game generation from fiction text

Recent advancements in Text-to-Scene research have lead to the development of systems which automatically extract key concepts from the text of a fiction book and generate computer animated movies depicting the story. Extracting such annotations from raw fiction text is a laborious process and so in this work we evaluate appropriate candidates to serve as the basis for the required annotations for generating interactive virtual worlds.

We validate our choice by generating adventure games: inter-active virtual worlds which create a stylized representation of the environment described in the text, populate it with characters related to the story and define game goals related to the plot of the fiction story. Our prototype produces a fully playable game, making use of an existing open-source game engine.

The process is evaluated using user tests in which participants are asked to measure the accuracy with which the game represents the events, characters and goals described in the story. The response indicates that the chosen annotation set is sufficient to define a game that is a plausibly acceptable representation of the text.

By-product recovery in industrial wastewater pollution control

By-products from most industries become waste when they are not recovered. This article gives examples of by-product recovery from industries such as pulp and paper, dairy, pig farm and food processing.

Although the recovery of by-products will require new processes, the investments on those processes will be paid-back easily from the benefits brought by those by-products. Also, in order to have a sustainable development, by-product recover will play a significant role in all industries in the near future.

Incorrigible and undisciplined lines in visual social research : ways of ‘writing’ and ‘drawing’ at the interstices

In this paper the author traces the possibilities afforded by engaging with the aesthetic, historic and socio-political nature of shodo (Japanese calligraphy) as an intersectional space. Shodo literally translated as 'the way of writing' is an artistic practice bringing together ink, brush and paper. It is simultaneously a juncture between studied discipline and an ongoing mediation of subjectivities. The calligrapher/writer/drawer communicates to the reader through the bold or subtle brush strokes, the pressure and movement at the completion of each stroke. The calligrapher/writer/drawer draws across the boundaries of text and image to meet the reader blurring the lines between subject and object. This discussion re-examines the hierarchical binaries of writing/drawing, text/image, self/Other as they play out from vanishing lines of distinction between truth and conjecture. Crossing these binaries opens up opportunity for decentring and questioning representational practice by enabling other possible meanings and practices to emerge (Lather, 2007). I work from a stance of theoretical promiscuity in order to disrupt constitutive discourses and restore the liminal in social research. Drawing across the fragments of research projects I illustrate the generative and speculative space of visualising pedascapes in educational research.

Thermosets : structure, properties and applications

Structure-property relationships of thermosets are important in the manufacture and application of materials. Understanding the desired properties of a material in a certain application is related to the material's structure and vice versa. The way in which the material is processed is also a determinant of the structure and resulting properties. Many books have been written about the chemistry of thermosets but with only brief consideration of structure-property relationships. This book focuses on how the structure and properties of a range of thermosets affect the final material and applications. It is composed of two parts: I Structure and properties of thermosets and II Applications of thermosets. Part I starts with a comprehensive overview of thermosets covering structure, properties and processing for advanced applications, followed by four chapters addressing mechanical properties, thermal properties, rheology, and nanostructures and toughening. The applications presented in Part II range from the use of thermosets in the building and construction industry to aerospace applications, electrical applications, thermoset adhesives and insulation materials in appliances and other applications. We hope that this book will not only be a useful textbook for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, but also a concise reference for researchers in academia and engineers in related industries. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the staff of Woodhead Publishing Limited, especially Kathryn Picking who invited me to edit this book and helped develop the initial content, also Adam Hooper, Helen Bradley, Emily Cole, Francis Dodds and Rachel Cox for their assistance in many ways during the preparation of the manuscript. Finally, I wish to express my appreciation and respects to all the contributors for their commitment, patience and pleasant cooperation.