Draft Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (NI) Order (PDF 30 KB)

Explanatory Memorandum

Draft Health and Personal Social Services (Quality, Improvement and Regulation) Order (PDF 56 KB)

Explanatory Memorandum

The Health and Personal Social Services (Quality, Improvement and Regulation) NI Order 2003 (PDF 178 KB)

Draft Statutory Instruments

Consultation of a Proposal for an Order in Council (PDF 226KB)

The Health and Personal Social Services (Quality, Improvement and Regulation) (NI) Order 2003

Children Order (PDF 508 KB)

The Children Order series of regulations and guidance consists of the following: Volume 1: Court Orders and other Legal Issues Volume 2: Family Support, Child Minding and Day Care Volume 3: Family Placements and Private Fostering Volume 4: Residential Care Volume 5: Children with a Disability Volume 6: Co-operating to Protect Children Volume 7: Schools Accommodating Child åÊ

Format of medical order sheet improves security of antibiotics prescription: The experience of an intensive care unit.

OBJECTIVE: To assess whether formatting the medical order sheet has an effect on the accuracy and security of antibiotics prescription. DESIGN: Prospective assessment of antibiotics prescription over time, before and after the intervention, in comparison with a control ward. SETTING: The medical and surgical intensive care unit (ICU) of a university hospital. PATIENTS: All patients hospitalized in the medical or surgical ICU between February 1 and April 30, 1997, and July 1 and August 31, 2000, for whom antibiotics were prescribed. INTERVENTION: Formatting of the medical order sheet in the surgical ICU in 1998. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Compliance with the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists' criteria for prescription safety was measured. The proportion of safe orders increased in both units, but the increase was 4.6 times greater in the surgical ICU (66% vs. 74% in the medical ICU and 48% vs. 74% in the surgical ICU). For unsafe orders, the proportion of ambiguous orders decreased by half in the medical ICU (9% vs. 17%) and nearly disappeared in the surgical ICU (1% vs. 30%). The only missing criterion remaining in the surgical ICU was the drug dose unit, which could not be preformatted. The aim of antibiotics prescription (either prophylactic or therapeutic) was indicated only in 51% of the order sheets. CONCLUSIONS: Formatting of the order sheet markedly increased security of antibiotics prescription. These findings must be confirmed in other settings and with different drug classes. Formatting the medical order sheet decreases the potential for prescribing errors before full computerized prescription is available.

Fourth order pseudo maximum likelihood methods

We extend PML theory to account for information on the conditional moments up to order four, but without assuming a parametric model, to avoid a risk of misspecification of the conditional distribution. The key statistical tool is the quartic exponential family, which allows us to generalize the PML2 and QGPML1 methods proposed in Gourieroux et al. (1984) to PML4 and QGPML2 methods, respectively. An asymptotic theory is developed. The key numerical tool that we use is the Gauss-Freud integration scheme that solves a computational problem that has previously been raised in several fields. Simulation exercises demonstrate the feasibility and robustness of the methods [Authors]

Playing Second Fiddle: Expert Advice and Decision-Making in Switzerland

This thesis concerns the role of scientific expertise in the decision-making process at the Swiss federal level of government. It aims to understand how institutional and issue-specific factors influence three things: the distribution of access to scientific expertise, its valuation by participants in policy for- mulation, and the consequence(s) its mobilization has on policy politics and design. The theoretical framework developed builds on the assumption that scientific expertise is a strategic resource. In order to effectively mobilize this resource, actors require financial and organizational resources, as well as the conviction that it can advance their instrumental interests within a particular action situation. Institutions of the political system allocate these financial and organizational resources, influence the supply of scientific expertise, and help shape the venue of its deployment. Issue structures, in turn, condition both interaction configurations and the way in which these are anticipated by actors. This affects the perceived utility of expertise mobilization, mediating its consequences. The findings of this study show that the ability to access and control scientific expertise is strongly concentrated in the hands of the federal administration. Civil society actors have weak capacities to mobilize it, and the autonomy of institutionalized advisory bodies is limited. Moreover, the production of scientific expertise is undergoing a process of professionalization which strengthens the position of the federal administration as the (main) mandating agent. Despite increased political polarization and less inclu- sive decision-making, scientific expertise remains anchored in the policy subsystem, rather than being used to legitimate policy through appeals to the wider population. Finally, the structure of a policy problem matters both for expertise mobilization and for the latter's impact on the policy process, be- cause it conditions conflict structures and their anticipation. Structured problems result in a greater overlap between the principal of expertise mobilization and its intended audience, thereby increasing the chance that expertise shapes policy design. Conversely, less structured problems, especially those that involve conflicts about values and goals, reduce the impact of expertise.

Trypanocidal activity of Meliaceae and Rutaceae plant extracts

The in vitro trypanocidal activity of 22 extracts and 43 fractions of plants belonging to the families Meliaceae and Rutaceae was evaluated. The extracts from leaves of Conchocarphus heterophyllus and branches of Trichilia ramalhoi were the most active. The trypanocidal activity seems to be increased by fractionation of the extracts. Fractions from C. heterophyllus and Galipea carinata were the most active and a 100% lysis of the parasites was observed for five fractions. From one of them were isolated two flavonoids: flavone and 7-methoxyflavone, which showed weak trypanocidal activity. The results obtained from the extracts and fractions revealed that the order Rutales is a promising source for the search of new drugs for Chagas disease. Phytochemical studies with the other active fractions are underway in order to isolate compounds, which could be associated with observed activities.

Being Recognizable in Order to Overcome the Crisis: The Ambivalence of Islamis Actor's Struggle for Visibility in France and Switzerland

Since the 1990s, and especially since the early 2000s, passionate controversies (Göle 2014) have emerged around the new visibility of Islam in the public sphere across Europe. These controversies, which crystallized in the headscarf debate, seem even more disturbing given that women who wear it are often young, urban and educated: that is to say, "modern" (Göle 1997, 2011). Indeed, these young women wearing the hijab seem to disrupt the narrative of Western modernity, including the decline in religious practice (Hervieu-Léger 2006) or the narration of the process of secularization in Europe. It is in the context of these controversies that Islam is built imaginatively as a "public problem" that has to be "solved" (Behloul 2012). Thus, this social construction of the Muslim other has nurtured an assessment of the failure of multiculturalism in some European countries and a process of convergence around a single model of civic integration in Europe (Behloul 2012, Joppke 2004, 2010).

Impact of a computerized physician order entry system on compliance with prescription accuracy requirements.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the change in non-compliant items in prescription orders following the implementation of a computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system named PreDiMed. SETTING: The department of internal medicine (39 and 38 beds) in two regional hospitals in Canton Vaud, Switzerland. METHOD: The prescription lines in 100 pre- and 100 post-implementation patients' files were classified according to three modes of administration (medicines for oral or other non-parenteral uses; medicines administered parenterally or via nasogastric tube; pro re nata (PRN), as needed) and analyzed for a number of relevant variables constitutive of medical prescriptions. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The monitored variables depended on the pharmaceutical category and included mainly name of medicine, pharmaceutical form, posology and route of administration, diluting solution, flow rate and identification of prescriber. RESULTS: In 2,099 prescription lines, the total number of non-compliant items was 2,265 before CPOE implementation, or 1.079 non-compliant items per line. Two-thirds of these were due to missing information, and the remaining third to incomplete information. In 2,074 prescription lines post-CPOE implementation, the number of non-compliant items had decreased to 221, or 0.107 non-compliant item per line, a dramatic 10-fold decrease (chi(2) = 4615; P < 10(-6)). Limitations of the computerized system were the risk for erroneous items in some non-prefilled fields and ambiguity due to a field with doses shown on commercial products. CONCLUSION: The deployment of PreDiMed in two departments of internal medicine has led to a major improvement in formal aspects of physicians' prescriptions. Some limitations of the first version of PreDiMed were unveiled and are being corrected.

Implantanció d'un sistema ERP SAP R/3 en una administració educativa

Aquest treball aprofundeix en el Departament d'Educació com a gran empresa, n'analitza els objectius, les funcions i l'estructura organitzativa i estudia els avantatges que podria aportar la implantació d'un ERP. També estudia amb detall els passos que s'haurien de seguir per a implantar SAP R/3 i n'assenyala els punts febles per tal de prevenir-los i assegurar l'èxit de la implantació.