Improving patient privacy and confidentiality in one regional Emergency Department – a quality project

Background: Patient privacy and confidentiality (PPaC) is an important consideration for nurses and other members of the health care team. Can a patient expect to have confidentiality and in particular privacy in the current climate of emergency health care? Do staff who work in the Emergency Department (ED) see confidentiality as an important factor when providing emergency care? These questions are important to consider. Methods: This is a two phased quality improvement project, developed and implemented over a six month period in a busy regional, tertiary referral ED. Results: Issues identified for this department included department design and layout, overcrowding due to patient flow and access block, staff practices and department policies which were also impacted upon by culture of the team, and use of space. Conclusions: Changes successful in improving this issue include increased staff awareness about PPaC, intercom paging prior to nursing handover to remove visitors during handover, one visitor per patient policy, designated places for handover, allocated bed space for patient reviews/assessment and a strategy to temporarily move the patient if procedures would have been undertaken in shared bed space. These are important issues when considering policy, practice and department design in the ED.

Promoting rural and remote teacher education in Australia through the Over the Hill project

Attracting quality teachers to rural areas is an ongoing international concern. Teacher education institutions have been criticised for contributing to this problem by failing to raise an awareness of teaching in rural areas in their teacher education programs. This study investigates preservice teachers’ perceptions towards teaching in rural areas after participating in a rural experience through the Over the Hill project. A self-selected group of second and third year preservice teachers from a regional campus of an urban Queensland university participated in a six-day rural experience, which included being billeted with local families, attending local community events and observing and teaching in rural primary and secondary schools. Data collected from the preservice teachers before and after the rural teaching experience were analysed to reveal positive perceptions towards teaching and living in rural communities. The findings revealed that even a brief immersion into rural schooling communities can positively influence preservice teachers’ attitudes towards seeking rural teaching placements. These findings have implications for the ways in which teacher education institutions can promote rural teaching opportunities in their teacher education programs.

Motivations, expectations and experiences of Australian rural and regional planners

Despite playing an extremely important role in shaping communities, the role and contribution of planners is not widely understood or acknowledged. At the same time, there is a shortage of planners in Australia, especially in non-urban areas. Thus, though an online survey of 185 rural and regional planners, this research explores their motivations, expectations and experiences. Most enjoyed and felt confident in their role, explaining that they valued the relaxed family orientated rural lifestyle and the varied nature of the planning work. Although they sometimes felt isolated, the non-urban location provided quicker progression to senior roles, the ability to engage directly with the community and to see the consequences of their decisions. Only half felt their education had prepared them well for their role, citing gaps in terms of computerised modelling, team leadership and conflict resolution skills. Their feedback centred on providing a more practical course, focussing more on regional planning, and encouraging urban and rural experience placements. As the first study to quantifiably explore rural and regional Australian planners perceptions of their role and challenges, the findings illustrate current experiences, key planning challenges, perceived educational gaps and future priorities.

Stop whining and make the best of it: a cross-national comparison of response to regional disadvantage in the wine industry

Our cross-national field study of wine entrepreneurship in the “wrong” places provides some redress to the focus of the “regional advantage” literature on places that have already won and on the firms that benefit from “clusters” and other centers of industry advantage. Regional “disadvantage” is at best a shadowy afterthought to this literature. By poking around in these shadows, we help to synthesize and extend the incipient yet burgeoning literature on entrepreneurial “resourcefulness” and we contribute to the developing body of insights and theory pertinent to the numerous but often ignored firms and startups that mostly need to worry about how they will compete at all now if they are ever to have of chance of “winning” in the future. The core of our findings suggests that understandable – though contested – processes of ingenuity underlie entrepreneurial responses to regional disadvantage. Because we study entrepreneurship that from many angles simply does not make sense, we are also able to proffer a novel perspective on entrepreneurial sensemaking.

goDesign travelling design workshop program for regional secondary students

goDesign Travelling Workshop Program for Regional Secondary Students was an initiative of Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and the Design Institute of Australia (DIA) Queensland Branch, which aligned with the DIA unleashed: Queensland design on tour 2010 Exhibition. It was designed be delivered by university design academics in state secondary schools in Chinchilla, Mt Isa, Quilpie, Emerald, Gladstone and Bundaberg between February and September 2010, to approximately 95 secondary students and 24 teachers from the subject areas of visual art, graphics and industrial technology and design. A talk by a visiting design practitioner whose work was displayed in the exhibition, also features in the final day of the program in each town, and student work from the workshop was displayed in the exhibition alongside the professional design work. The three-day workshop is a design immersion program for regional Queensland Secondary Schools, which responds to specific actions outlined in the Queensland Government Design Strategy 2020 to ‘Build Design Knowledge and Learning’ and ‘Foster a Design Culture’. Underpinned by a place-based approach and the integration of Dr Charles Burnette’s IDESIGN teaching model, the program gives students and teachers the opportunity to explore, analyse and reimagine their local town through a series of scaffolded problem solving activities around the theme of ‘place’. The program allows students to gain hands-on experience designing graphics, products, interior spaces and architecture to assist their local community, with the support of design professionals. Students work individually and in groups on real design problems learning sketching, making, communication, presentation and collaboration skills to improve their design process, while considering social, cultural and environmental opportunities. The program was designed to facilitate an understanding of the value of design thinking and its importance to regional communities, to give students more information about various design disciplines as career options, and provide a professional development opportunity for teachers. Advisory assistance for the program was gained through Kelvin Grove State College, Queensland Studies Authority and QMI/Manufacturing Skills Queensland Manager, Manufacturing & Engineering Gateway Schools Project.

Developing a framework for Six Sigma in financial service institutions : empirical evidence from expert interviews

Six Sigma is considered to be an important management philosophy to obtain satisfied customers. But financial service organisations have been slow to adopt Six Sigma issues so far. Despite the extensive effort that has been invested and benefits that can be obtained, the systematic implementation of Six Sigma in financial service organisations is limited. As a company wide implementation framework is missing so far, this paper tries to fill this gap. Based on theory, a conceptual framework is developed and evaluated by experts from financial institutions. The results show that it is very important to link Six Sigma with the strategic as well as the operations level. Furthermore, although Six Sigma is a very important method for improving quality of processes others such as Lean Management are also used This requires a superior project portfolio management to coordinate resources and projects of Six Sigma with the other methods used. Beside the theoretical contribution, the framework can be used by financial service companies to evaluate their Six Sigma activities. Thus, the framework grounded through literature and empirical data will be a useful guide for sustainable and successful implementation of a Six Sigma initiative in financial service organisations.

Exploring regional differences in Chinese consumer acceptance of new mobile technology : a qualitative study

This study examines consumer adoption of 3G mobile technology in China. The qualitative study involved 45 in-depth interviews undertaken in three major Chinese cities to explore the beliefs and attitudes which determine Chinese consumers’ acceptance of the mobile technological innovation. The findings are compared and contrasted against those reported in Western studies. The variations underpinning adoption of 3G between consumers in the three regional cities were identified. Specifically, it was found that the regions differed in terms of the relative importance of the identified adoption determinants, such as perceived social outcomes for using the innovation and the effects of social influence on the adoption. These findings provide subtle insight into the nature of Chinese consumers’ responses to new mobile technologies and a better understanding of variations among regional Chinese consumers.

Competitive advantages as a foundation for social advantage: The role of social enterprise in regional development

The belief that regions play a role in determining national economic development and that advantages are found at the local and regional level has been the focus of economic geography and development studies over the last 10 years. However, this issue has historically been dominated by economic perspectives, industrial firms, and public bodies. In recent years the social economy is starting to receive greater attention in creating regional advantage as well as ameliorating regional disadvantage. The social economy includes the impact of the third sector such as social enterprises. This paper proposes that understanding the role and function of social enterprise will enable a more nuanced understanding of the socio-economic aspects of regional development. Drawing upon Oliver’s (1997) framework for sustainable competitive advantage it is argued that this established management framework provides a valuable foundation for examining the organisational resources that social enterprise need to operate effectively, as well as the socio-economic resources they produce for regional communities.

Stop whining and make the best of it : a cross-national comparison of responses to regional disadvantage in the wine industry

Our cross-national field study of wine entrepreneurship in the “wrong” places provides some redress to the focus of the “regional advantage” literature on places that have already won and on the firms that benefit from “clusters” and other centers of industry advantage. Regional “disadvantage” is at best a shadowy afterthought to this literature. By poking around in these shadows, we help to synthesize and extend the incipient yet burgeoning literature on entrepreneurial “resourcefulness” and we contribute to the developing body of insights and theory pertinent to the numerous but often ignored firms and startups that mostly need to worry about how they will compete at all now if they are ever to have of chance of “winning” in the future. The core of our findings suggests that understandable – though contested – processes of ingenuity underlie entrepreneurial responses to regional disadvantage. Because we study entrepreneurship that from many angles simply does not make sense, we are also able to proffer a novel perspective on entrepreneurial sensemaking.

Determinants of China’s regional innovation capacity

This paper investigates the determinants of China’s regional innovation capacity (RIC) and variations in these determinants between different types of regions. Based on the framework of national innovation capacity (NIC) and research on innovation system, this paper develops a framework of RIC in the Chinese context. Using panel data from 1991 to 2009, clustering analysis is first employed to classify regions according to their innovation development path. Panel data regressions with fixed effect model are conducted to explore the determinants of RIC and how these vary across the different regional clusters. We find that the 30 regions can be clustered into three groups, and there are considerable differences in the drivers of RIC between these different regional groups.

Queensland Business Women Stories

These projects build on the research of Klaebe and Burgess into digital story-telling, specifically variable workshop scenarios, co-creative media, participatory public history, and the development of co-creative production processes for cultural institutions. The projects represented a partnership between QUT and the State Library of Queensland. The Five Senses project focused on the distributed digital storytelling workshop model and the development of audiences for digital storytelling. The team worked with regional artists whose work had been selected for inclusion in the Five Senses exhibition at the State Library of Queensland to produce stories about their work; these works were then integrated into the physical exhibition space. The Queensland Businesswomen project produced four digital stories profiling the lives of leading Queensland businesswomen. The digital story telling workshop model was disbanded and research teams worked individually with participants to create the digital stories. Academic research and oral history interviews were conducted initially to foreground these productions. This pilot led to a larger project, Business Leaders Hall of Fame, which now has a dedicated viewing room in the SLQ sponsored by an annual silver service dinner event. With the Responses to the Apology project, which stimulated similar projects in Mt Isa and Cairns, the research team worked with Indigenous facilitators, and the participants created their digital stories with assistance from these facilitators and the QUT research team using a mix of workshop and individual meetings. The research component of the work relates to the further development of co-creative production processes for cultural institutions, involving a wide range of institutional and individual partners, while authentically representing the intensely personal perspectives of each of the primary participants. The Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame was a research project that included interviews with eminent Queenslanders that produced oral history interviews and digital stories about the achievements of both Queensland personalities and businesses. This model was able to test and evaluate the use of oral history and digital storytelling for learning and community heritage purposes. Interviewees include; Sir John and Valmai Pidgeon, Joseph Saragossi, Robert Bryan, Clem Jones, Jim Kennedy, Sr Angela Mary, Castelmaine Perkins, Burns and Philp, Qantas, Don Argus & Steve Irwin All digital stories, oral history interviews and transcripts were accessioned into the library collection – an international first for digital stories. Two publications in refereed journals have resulted, and the digital stories are stored in the SLQ permanent collection for the benefit of national and international scholars and the general public.

Conference report : International Conference on Destination Branding and Marketing for Regional Tourism Development. December 8-10 2005. Macau.

It has been over 50 years since the topic of branding first appeared in the marketing literature. Research relating to destination branding has however emerged only since the late 1990s, with the first journal article published in 1998 (see Pritchard & Morgan, 1998) and the first book published in 2002 (see Morgan, Pritchard, & Pride, 2002). While a growing number of academic tourism conferences have focused on ‘destination marketing’ as a theme during the past decade (for a list of proceedings see Pike, 2004), Gnoth (1998) claimed the special track he convened at the 1997 American Marketing Science conference, represented the first meeting of practitioners and academics on the topic of destination branding. The initiative of Macau's Instituto De Formacao Turistica (IFT), in conjunction with Perdue University, to convene the first conference on destination branding, was thus new territory and a test of academic interest in the topic. Ultimately the decision was justified with around 100 delegates from 22 countries, including destination branding pioneers Pritchard & Morgan, travelling to the inaugural meeting...

Sri Lanka in global medical research: a scientific analysis of the Sri Lankan research output during 2000-2009

Background Scientific research is an essential component in guiding improvements in health systems. There are no studies examining the Sri Lankan medical research output at international level. The present study evaluated the Sri Lankan research performance in medicine as reflected by the research publications output between years 2000-2009. Methods This study was based on Sri Lankan medical research publication data, retrieved from the SciVerse Scopus® from January 2000 to December 2009. The process of article selection was as follows: Affiliation - 'Sri Lanka' or 'Ceylon', Publication year - 'January 2000 to December 2009' and Subject area - 'Life and Health Sciences'. The articles identified were classified according to disease, medical speciality, institutions, major international collaborators, authors and journals. Results Sri Lanka's cumulative medical publications output between years 2000-2009 was 1,740 articles published in 160 different journals. The average annual publication growth rate was 9.1%. Majority of the articles were published in 'International' (n = 950, 54.6%) journals. Most articles were descriptive studies (n = 611, 35.1%), letters (n-345, 19.8%) and case reports (n = 311, 17.9%). The articles were authored by 148 different Sri Lankan authors from 146 different institutions. The three most prolific local institutions were Universities of; Colombo (n = 547), Kelaniya (n = 246) and Peradeniya (n = 222). Eighty four countries were found to have published collaborative papers with Sri Lankan authors during the last decade. UK was the largest collaborating partner (n = 263, 15.1%). Malaria (n = 75), Diabetes Mellitus (n = 55), Dengue (n = 53), Accidental injuries (n = 42) and Lymphatic filariasis (n = 40) were the major diseases studied. The 1,740 publications were cited 9,708 times, with an average citation of 5.6 per paper. The most cited paper had 203 citations, while there were 597 publications with no citations. The Sri Lankan authors' contribution to the global medical research output during the last decade was only 0.086%. Conclusion The Sri Lankan medical research output during the last decade is only a small fraction of the global research output. There it is a necessity to setup an enabling environment for research, with a proper vision, support, funds and training. In addition, collaborations across the region need to be strengthened to face common regional health challenges. Keywords: Sri Lanka, Medical research, Publication, Analysis

Development priority zoning (DPZ)-led scenario simulation for regional land use change : the case of Suichang County, China

China has experienced an extraordinary level of economic development since the 1990s, following excessive competition between different regions. This has resulted in many resource and environmental problems. Land resources, for example, are either abused or wasted in many regions. The strategy of development priority zoning (DPZ), proposed by the Chinese National 11th Five-Year Plan, provides an opportunity to solve these problems by coordinating regional development and protection. In line with the rational utilization of land, it is proposed that the DPZ strategy should be integrated with regional land use policy. As there has been little research to date on this issue, this paper introduces a system dynamic (SD) model for assessing land use change in China led by the DPZ strategy. Land use is characterized by the prioritization of land development, land utilization, land harness and land protection (D-U-H-P). By using the Delphi method, a corresponding suitable prioritization of D-U-H-P for the four types of DPZ, including optimized development zones (ODZ), key development zones (KDZ), restricted development zones (RDZ), and forbidden development zones (FDZ) are identified. Suichang County is used as a case study in which to conduct the simulation of land use change under the RDZ strategy. The findings enable a conceptualization to be made of DPZ-led land use change and the identification of further implications for land use planning generally. The SD model also provides a potential tool for local government to combine DPZ strategy at the national level with land use planning at the local level.