AUDIT OF ANTIBIOTIC USAGE IN A MEDIUM-SIZED GENERAL-HOSPITAL OVER AN 11-YEAR PERIOD - THE IMPACT OF ANTIBIOTIC POLICIES

The objective of the present study was to evaluate trends in antibiotic expenditure over an 11-year period (1982-1992) in a 370-bed district general hospital in Northern Ireland and to examine the impact of two separate antibiotic policies on antibiotic usage. A further objective was to examine the attitudes of prescribers to the second policy. Drug utilization review was used to collect information on antibiotic expenditure and usage before and after introduction of separate antibiotic policies in 1985 (not intensively monitored) and 1989 (intensively monitored). A mail questionnaire was used to determine the attitudes of prescribers. The first policy (1985) showed no benefits with regard to the number of antibiotic entities stocked (45 before, 45 after), number of dosage units issued (9.35 increase) or expenditure (33.35 increase). The 1989 policy led to significant reductions in the number of antibiotic entities stocked (28.9%), number of antibiotics issued (11.9%) and expenditure (6.1%). Expenditure began to spiral upwards when active monitoring of the second policy was suspended. The majority of prescribers (87.2%) who responded to the questionnaire (56.5% response rate) felt that the 1989 policy made a positive contribution to antibiotic usage in the hospital.

Managing SMT Resource Usage through Speculative Instruction Window Weighting

Simultaneous multithreading processors dynamically share processor resources between multiple threads. In general, shared SMT resources may be managed explicitly, for instance, by dynamically setting queue occupation bounds for each thread as in the DCRA and Hill-Climbing policies. Alternatively, resources may be managed implicitly; that is, resource usage is controlled by placing the desired instruction mix in the resources. In this case, the main resource management tool is the instruction fetch policy which must predict the behavior of each thread (branch mispredictions, long-latency loads, etc.) as it fetches instructions.

Berryman, Sexton and the Possibilities of Poetic Language

This paper examines a select number of poems by Middle Generation poets John Berryman and Anne Sexton in relation to questions of death, silence and the task that literature sets itself as understood in key works by Blanchot, Heidegger, and Levinas. Rather than recourse to the overtrodden critical path of confessional interpretations of their work, this paper connects Berryman’s The Dream Songs (1969) and two Sexton poems (‘Oh’ and ‘The Silence’) to the philosophical determinations of what it is language can say and what demands literature makes of the writer prepared to risk their own being in answer to its call. Central issues such as suicide and the originating silence of the work of art are intricately interwoven with Berryman’s and Sexton’s work. Leaving aside their biographies, and by approaching suicide as a philosophical problem with which their poetry wrestles, a restructured approach to their work becomes available. The impulse to suicide and the mental processes involved in considering and committing the act are instincts and responses located within an individual’s own psychology. For these writers particularly such issues are sited within a philosophical debate about language, what it can and cannot represent. If poetry articulates language’s argument about its own capability, it is the ideal forum for philosophical confrontations with the possibilities of existence as represented by the grave decision to take one’s own life. © The Author 2013.