Building legitimacy by criticising the pharmaceutical industry: a qualitative study among prescribers and local opinion leaders.

PRINCIPLES: The literature has described opinion leaders not only as marketing tools of the pharmaceutical industry, but also as educators promoting good clinical practice. This qualitative study addresses the distinction between the opinion-leader-as-marketing-tool and the opinion-leader-as-educator, as it is revealed in the discourses of physicians and experts, focusing on the prescription of antidepressants. We explore the relational dynamic between physicians, opinion leaders and the pharmaceutical industry in an area of French-speaking Switzerland. METHODS: Qualitative content analysis of 24 semistructured interviews with physicians and local experts in psychopharmacology, complemented by direct observation of educational events led by the experts, which were all sponsored by various pharmaceutical companies. RESULTS: Both physicians and experts were critical of the pharmaceutical industry and its use of opinion leaders. Local experts, in contrast, were perceived by the physicians as critical of the industry and, therefore, as a legitimate source of information. Local experts did not consider themselves opinion leaders and argued that they remained intellectually independent from the industry. Field observations confirmed that local experts criticised the industry at continuing medical education events. CONCLUSIONS: Local experts were vocal critics of the industry, which nevertheless sponsor their continuing education. This critical attitude enhanced their credibility in the eyes of the prescribing physicians. We discuss how the experts, despite their critical attitude, might still be beneficial to the industry's interests.

The Changing Face of Psychiatric Nursing –Care or Control?

This report has been written as part of the project “Toward improved quality – developing nurse’s continuing vocational training in hospitals and inpatient units”. Its overall goal is to ensure high quality, ethically appropriate and therapeutically effective interventions to enable nurses to manage distressed and disturbed patients in European psychiatric hospitals and inpatient units. In this large-scale, multinational projects there are all together six European countries involved: Finland, Ireland, England, Portugal, Italy and Lithuania. The project work plan were during autumn 2006 and spring 2007. The content of this publication was produced in the first stage of the project aiming to collect the preliminary source material for the project. The literature review was carried out in the project stage, providing the groundwork for the next steps for the project. This project aims to develop an interactive multinational portal with training material. Therefore, it is important to share an understanding of basic information, psychiatric nurse’s continuing vocational education, laws and ethical codes and patient restriction used in mental health care. In this publication, the purpose of the material produced here is to understand nurses’ educational need related to vocational continuing education and to be used in further project stages as an empirical data collection. The data were collected as a preliminary source material for latter phases where nurse’s perceptions of the current practice, nurse’s attitudes to mental illness, prevalence of use of seclusion room and existing and desired vocational training provision will be collected in six different European countries. The following organisations are involved in this project: University of Turku, Dublin City University, St. Vincent Hospital, National Council for the Professional Development of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Padova, Klaipeda College - Health Faculty, Klaipeda Psychiatric Hospital, Escola Superior de Enfermagem de Lisboa, Centro Hospitalar Psiquiátrico de Lisboa, Omnia Vocational Institution the Espoo Region, Kellokoski psychiatric hospital, Hyvinkää hospital area, Pirkanmaa Hospital District, Kingston University & St. George’s Medical School and South West London & St. George’s Mental Health NHS Trust. A wide variety of different countries, organisations and individuals in this project give us a strong confidence that theoretical, practical, ethical and political issues around the topic of interest will be taken account during this project lifetime. We are aware the content of this book will be partially outdated almost as soon as it has been published. We still hope that this publication will encourage nurses and different professions working in mental health care field to have a basic understanding of similarities and differences between different European countries related in mental health care. We also hope that this publication will inspirate and motivate nurses in maintaining and developing the quality of psychiatric care in Europe.

Conceptual Interpretation of LOM and its Mapping to Common Sense Ontologies

Peer-reviewed

A Three-Level Approach for Analyzing User Behavior in Ongoing Relationships

Peer-reviewed

A catalogue of Primitive Scenario-Types : The First Step to the Automation of Learning Scenarios

Peer-reviewed

Evaluation of Implementation of BSc IT Curriculum at Tumaini University

In Tanzania computer knowledge is vital to supplement the pace fast growing economic and development activities, which demands high and reliable level of expertise in com- puting field. In 2006, a research carried out at Tumaini University with purpose to design and implement a contextualized curriculum that can supplement for such needs hence facilitate development in Tanzanian context. A contextualized curriculum took advantage of six principles namely curriculum contex- tualization, projects, practical, interdisciplinary orientation, international recognition and continuous research for the program’s formative and development. Implementation of the curriculum followed the CATI (Contextualize, Apply, Transfer, and Import) model with emphasis on students to identify societal expectations at the early stage in learning process, in which case the graduates will potentially cater for societal expertise needs on ICT. This study adopts an emergent exploratory cross-section research design, while employ- ing a qualitative approach. This study was conducted at Tumaini University in Iringa where by purposeful sampling was used to obtain participants such as students, teach- ers, administrators and employers who participated in several focus group discussions, in-depth interviews and participant observation. The study reveals that six principles are satisfactorily met,despite of bottlenecks such as incompatibility in pedagogical thinking and technology availability for e-learning, learning attitudes, insufficient experts with actual skills and experience,in academic field among the others. The study recommends that iterative longitudinal study should be car- ried out to design for proper intervention in response to these problems which will help in improving and stabilize the curriculum.

Formación continuada: Adaptación a la vida extrauterina

La adaptación a la vida extrauterina es un proceso fisiológico de gran complejidad. En ella participan prácticamente todos los órganos y sistemas; sin embargo, se consideran...

Työhyvinvointi, koulutus ja toiminnan kehittäminen terveyskeskuksissa lääkäritilanteen näkökulmasta

Finnish health centres have suffered from a shortage of physicians in recent years. This is why more physicians are being educated, the tutelage of the young physicians has been improved and many tasks which were previously reserved for physicians have been transferred to nurses and other personnel of the health centres. Only a little research has been done about the effects of the shortage of physicians and education to the work atmosphere in the health centres The objectives of the study was to describe the situation of the physicians in the counties Satakunta and South-Western Finland at the time when the University of Turku started to decentralise its education to Satakunta and describe the health centres attitudes towards training and research co-operation with the University of Turku; to gain information about the training programmes for physicians in specific training in general medical practice (STPG); study how the shortage of physicians affects the job atmosphere, the job satisfaction and the operation of the health centres; study health centre employees opinions about their professional skills, their needs and interets in continuing education; study medical and nurse students professional indentity and their readiness to multiprofessional teamwork. The material of the study was gathered during 2003-2006 with three mail questionnaires and a questionnaire given to medical and nurse students who practised in the training health centre in Pori. The first questionnaire was sent to the chief physicians of the health centres in counties Satakunta and South-Western Finland to clarify the number of unfilled positions of physicians and the reasons for physician shortage as well as the readiness for practical training of medical students and research at the health centres. The second questionnaire was posted to doctors in specific training in general medical practice and their trainers at the health centres and it gained information about training programmes of young physicians at health centres. The third questionnaire was sent to personnel at health centres in Satakunta and South-Western Finland and included questions about job satisfaction and education. The survey for medical and nurse students gained information about their professional indentity and their readiness to multiprofessional teamwork. In spring 2003 the shortage of physicians was more severe in Satakunta than in South-Western Finland. Attitudes towards training of medical students and research co-operation with the universities were generally positive. The guidance of STGP doctors in health centres improved during 2003-2005. A shortage of physicians had only a slightly negative impact on employee job satisfaction. The shortage of physicians had also positive impact on the operation of the health centres because it led to reorganization of the operations. The personnel at Finnish health centres were willing to take more challenging tasks and also to acquire appropriate further education or training. The medical and nurse students had strong professional identity and they understood the significance of teamwork for the health care service system.

AulaCEP : experiencia de un entorno virtual de aprendizaje en un centro educativo presencial

En este trabajo se presenta un conjunto dereflexiones y conclusiones alrededor del proceso de formación del profesorado y personal no docente en el uso de un LMS (Learning Management System)en un centro educativo, y el proceso de implantación de dicho sistema. En el entorno presencial de aprendizaje del Centre d'Estudis Politècnics, en adelante CEP, es necesario facilitar la comunicación y el acceso a los recursos entre los miembros de la comunidad, no sólo por parte de los estudiantes para localizar recursos docentes y facilitar la comunicación con sus profesores, sino también para facilitar la reusabilidad e intercambio de los materiales, la comunicación entre docentes y el resto del personal del centro educativo, secretaria,administración, departamento de calidad y bolsa detrabajo, así como la interacción entre profesores y estudiantes y de éstos entre sí.

Learning in later life: participation in formal, non-formal and informal activities in a nationally representative Spanish sample

This article examines the participation of Spanish older people in formal, non-formal and informal learning activities and presents a profile of participants in each kind of learning activity. We used data from a nationally representative sample of Spanish people between 60 and 75 years old (n = 4,703). The data were extracted from the 2007 Encuesta sobre la Participación de la Población Adulta en Actividades de Aprendizaje (EADA, Survey on Adult Population Involvement in Learning Activities). Overall, only 22.8 % of the sample participated in a learning activity. However, there was wide variation in the participation rates for the different types of activity. Informal activities were far more common than formal ones. Multivariate logistic regression indicated that education level and involvement in social and cultural activities were associated with likelihood of participating, regardless of the type of learning activity. When these variables were taken into account, age did not predict decreasing participation, at least in non-formal and informal activities. Implications for further research, future trends and policies to promote older adult education are discussed.

Formación continuada: Vacunaciones en la infancia

Son contraindicaciones generales de las vacunas: a) Las enfermedades febriles agudas v sus períodos de convalecencia. b) Los enfermos diagnosticados de tuberculosis v tratados con tuberculostáticos los dos meses anteriores...

La formación continua de los profesionales de la acción socioeducativa : un estudio de necesidades

El artículo analiza las necesidades de formación continua de los profesionales de la acción socioeducativa y reflexiona sobre el papel de la universidad en este tipo de formación. Se presenta una investigación realizada en la Universidad de Girona con el objetivo de identificar las necesidades de formación continua de los educadores sociales. El estudio, que utiliza como instrumento básico un cuestionario, trata de hallar discrepancias en cuanto a la situación actual percibida por estos profesionales, en lo que a formación se refiere, y la situación deseable. En este artículo se ofrecen los principales resultados obtenidos con relación a la valoración que los profesionales realizan sobre las tareas y funciones que desarrollan en sus puestos de trabajo y sobre sus necesidades de formación percibidas. Los resultados indican la necesidad de actualización profesional y una demanda de instrumentos y recursos para mejorar la acción socioeducativa en temas relacionados con las competencias interpersonales y el apoyo a la reflexión y autoevaluación de la práctica profesional, la detección de necesidades y la construcción de respuestas personalizadas adecuadas a través de la elaboración de programas individuales y comunitarios, la gestión del tiempo y la supervisión de estudiantes de prácticas. El contexto universitario aparece como un espacio de formación continua adecuado para organizar programas de larga duración y con un alto nivel de especialización

Educació: frontera permeable? Una mirada des de dins i des de fora

De nou un full en blanc, la perspectiva de paper és ben llarga, l'ordinador no ens hi posa fronteres i esper que les idees em flueixin i puga descriure allò que ha estat, i està sent la nostra vida en i per a l'educació. Quina paraula amb més significats! Si en diem educació ens podem referir àmpliament a l'experiència mútua que s'esdevé quan optem per "donar classes" que es diu col·loquialment, donar classes! En una època en que ningú dóna res...

Educació: frontera permeable? Una mirada des de dins i des de fora

De nou un full en blanc, la perspectiva de paper és ben llarga, l'ordinador no ens hi posa fronteres i esper que les idees em flueixin i puga descriure allò que ha estat, i està sent la nostra vida en i per a l'educació. Quina paraula amb més significats! Si en diem educació ens podem referir àmpliament a l'experiència mútua que s'esdevé quan optem per "donar classes" que es diu col·loquialment, donar classes! En una època en que ningú dóna res...

Educació: frontera permeable? Una mirada des de dins i des de fora

De nou un full en blanc, la perspectiva de paper és ben llarga, l'ordinador no ens hi posa fronteres i esper que les idees em flueixin i puga descriure allò que ha estat, i està sent la nostra vida en i per a l'educació. Quina paraula amb més significats! Si en diem educació ens podem referir àmpliament a l'experiència mútua que s'esdevé quan optem per "donar classes" que es diu col·loquialment, donar classes! En una època en que ningú dóna res...