Post choice satisfaction among international postgraduate students from Asia studying in Victorian universities

As a study destination Australian universities operate in a competitive international market for full fee paying international students. In order to be successful it is vital that universities, like any other business, address issues of customer satisfaction. Using the expectations/perceptions paradigm this study examines the gap between pre-choice expectations and post-choice perceptions and the resulting satisfaction levels of international postgraduate students from four Asian countries studying in Victorian universities. The study concludes that although the students, in general, appear to be relatively satisfied with the university as a study destination, students' perceptions remained far below expectations across all factors and variables investigated. The study also found that there were significant variances in the expectations and perceptions among students from different countries, suggesting that the impact of culture on the decision-making behaviour of students requires further investigation.

Falls prevention in rural general practice: what stands the test of time and where to from here?

Objective: General practitioner recall of the 1992–96 'Stay on Your Feet' (SOYF) program and its influence on practice were surveyed five years post-intervention to gauge sustainability of the SOYF General Practice (GP) component.

Methods: A survey assessed which SOYF components were still in existence, current practice related to falls prevention, and interest in professional development. All general practitioners (GPs) situated within the boundaries of a rural Area Health Service were mailed a survey in late 2001.

Results: Response rate was 66.5% (139/209). Of 117 GPs in practice at the time of SOYF, 80.2% reported having heard of SOYF and 74.4% of those felt it had influenced practice. Half (50.9%) still had a copy of the SOYF GP resource and of those, 58.6% used it at least 'occasionally'. Three-quarters of GPs surveyed (75.2%) checked medications 'most/almost all' of the time with patients over 60 years; 46.7% assessed falls risk factors; 41.3% gave advice; and 22.6% referred to allied health practitioners. GPs indicated a strong interest in falls prevention-related professional development. There was no significant association between use of the SOYF resource package and any of the current falls prevention practices (all χ² >0.05).

Conclusions and implications: There was high recall of SOYF and a general belief that it influenced practice. There was little indication that use of the resource had any lasting influence on GPs' practices. In future, careful thought needs to go into designing a program that has potential to affect long-term change in GPs' falls prevention practice.

Improving the quality of diabetes care in general practice

Objective: The evidence treatment gap for patients with type 2 diabetes.
Design: A summary of convenience sample of seven general practices.
Setting: Metropolitan and rural Victoria, Australia.
Participants: 561 patients of general practices (75% from rural general practices).
Main outcome measures: Demographic data, duration of diabetes, diabetes complications, HbA1c and lipid levels, blood pressure and score on PHQ-9.
Results: Patients with depression show more severe, progressive and intensively treated diabetes. The prevalence of depression in diabetes is about twice that of the general population.
Conclusion: Australian guidelines for diabetes should recommend screening for depression.

Contribution of Australian cardiologists, general practitioners and dietitians to adult cardiac patients’ dietary behavioural change

Aim:  To investigate the use of behavioural change techniques by cardiologists, general practitioners and dietitians in adult cardiac patients within 12 months of their cardiac event.
Method:  Quantitative cross-sectional surveys. Frequency analyses were conducted on the respondents' answers to questionnaire items. Chi-squared test of independence compared responses of the three professional groups on the questionnaire items. Analyses of variance were conducted to explore the impact of the independent variables: age, sex and time worked on the behavioural change techniques used by the respondents.
Results:  The respondents included 248 general practitioners (30% response), 189 cardiologists (47% response) and 180 dietitians (60% response). General practitioners and cardiologists acted mainly as advocates for dietary change in the dietary management process. Dietitians provided nutrition knowledge and a range of techniques to assist dietary behavioural change. Cardiologists and dietitians shared little nutrition information with general practitioners (cardiologists with general practitioners = 8%, dietitians with general practitioners = 49%).
Conclusion:  The present study shows that cardiac patients may have insufficient access to knowledge of nutrition and techniques to assist them with dietary behavioural change.

Enhancing the dietary management of general practice patients through collaborative care: perspectives of general practitioners and dietitians

Aim:  To describe how general practitioners and dietitians view their role in the dietary management of cardiac patients and to provide insights on how to facilitate collaborative care.
Methods:  Two studies were conducted in Victoria (Australia) 2005–2006. Study One: semi-structured interviews with general practitioners. Study Two: cross-sectional quantitative surveys of general practitioners and dietitians. Study One: texts were analysed using the grounded theory approach. Study Two: frequency analysis was conducted and chi-squared test for independence was used to explore the impact of age, sex and consultation time on the role and reporting scales.
Results:  Study One: Themes arising from the interviews with 30 general practitioners showed their involvement in dietary management fell into three broad roles: ‘Influencing’, ‘Coordinator’ of referrals and dietary ‘Educator’. They described dietetic education as a process that included dietary assessment, education, application of behavioural change techniques and reporting back to general practitioners. Study Two: Respondents were 248 general practitioners (30% response) and 180 dietitians (60% response). General practitioners' counselling consisted mostly of advocating for dietary change, coordinating dietetic referrals and reinforcing dietitians' recommendations. General practitioners considered dietary education as the role of dietitians. Dietitians reported a much broader role in the management of patients with some overlap with general practitioners' roles.
Conclusions:   The findings indicate the need: (i) for more structured reporting to ensure general practitioners receive appropriate information to enable them to reinforce dietetic counselling and recommendations; and (ii) to streamline the communication process in order to expedite dietitians' reports to general practitioners.

International commercial arbitration : an Asia-Pacific perspective

This book focuses on the general principles of ICA while drawing on case law and relevant legislation from Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea (Republic of), Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore. Equips the reader to deal with many arbitration issues which are not dealt with (or are scarcely dealt with) in the various arbitration statutes. The book succinctly summarises the key features of a complex and evolving area of law and practice while not shying away from the more difficult or contentious issues.

From blogging Central Asia to citizen media : a practitioners’ perspective on the evolution of the neweurasia blog project

This essay examines the development of one regional blogosphere, the Central Asian ‘Stanosphere’, through a focus on the neweurasia blog project. The neweurasia project began in 2005 as an Englishlanguage volunteer-run blog project about the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, rapidly becoming one of the most visited blogs about the region. Following this auspicious start, over the next five years neweurasia developed into a multi-language locally driven project with more than 80,000 unique page views on average per month. Despite its indisputable successes, the project was often a steep learning curve for all involved. In this essay, we examine neweurasia’s evolution from ‘blogging Central Asia’ towards a citizen media project, and reflect on some of the issues and challenges encountered. On the basis of our discussion, we reflect upon how neweurasia, and citizen media in general, can maximise its impact on the nascent Stanosphere, in the process helping to give Central Asia a voice in the global blogosphere.

Reducing risk in coronary artery disease. Are Australian patients in general practice achieving targets? The coronary artery disease in general practice study (CADENCE)

Background The benefits of secondary preventive measures for stable coronary artery disease are well established and risk factor treatment targets are defined.

Aim The aim of this study was to examine Australian general practitioners' (GP) perception and management of risk factors in chronic stable angina patients in primary care.

Methods Using a cluster-stratified design, 2031 consecutive stable angina patients were recruited between October 2006 and March 2007 by 207 GP who documented their risk factors and reported if they were optimally controlled.

Results Among the patients, 93% had objective evidence of coronary artery disease and 63% were male, and mean age was 71 ± 11 years. Based upon national guidelines, recommended targets were achieved in: 60% for blood pressure, 24% for body mass index, 23% for waist circumference, 17% for lipid profiles (low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides) and 54% of diabetics for haemoglobin A1c. However, GP perceived risk factors to be ‘optimally controlled’ in: 86% for blood pressure (kappa statistic (κ) = 0.37), 44% for weight (κ = 0.3), 70% for lipids (κ = 0.20) and 60% for haemoglobin A1c (κ = 0.74).

Conclusions In this representative cohort of chronic stable angina patients attending GP, cardiovascular risk factor control was frequently suboptimal despite being perceived as satisfactory by the clinicians. New strategies that raise awareness and address this treatment gap need to be implemented.

Australia and Japan after the second world war: constructing new futures in Asia

The subject of my lecture is Australian-Japanese relations since the end of the Second World War, but I’m keen to explore these relations in the context of ideas, efforts and practical results in relation to collaborative and other efforts towards regionalism in the Asia Pacific. My general argument is that, on the one hand, Australian-Japanese relations have developed with a strength that would have been hard to imagine in 1945, and with an important focus on regional growth and security. The incremental steps taken may have been small and at a steady pace but, given the legacy of deep scars resulting from the Second World War and given the limitations on the defence aspects of Japan’s postwar involvement in regional affairs (ie the self defence requirement of the Constitution and the practice of spending not more than one per cent of Gross National Product on defence), these have been very successfully negotiated steps. On the other hand, there are some opportunities for greater joint leadership in the region which may or may not be realized. The incremental steps took place in difficult and changing circumstances; and what I would like to do now is remind us of how many unknowns attached to what might happen in Australian- Japan relationships after the Second World War, partly because there were so many unknowns about how the post-war international order would settle, and partly because Australian-Japanese relations started from such a desperately low point. I will try to walk through some of the key features of different periods, as I see the periodisation logically falling out after the war, and draw some thoughts together in relation to more recent initiatives on regional and bilateral co-operation. My training is as a historian, and that shapes the way this lecture works, and for most of my career I have been an Australian historian of international relations, looking particularly at Australia’s changing role in world affairs, and that is also likely to show in what follows－possibly at the expense of greater detail from Japanese perspectives. But I hope you will understand that, and also the limitations involved in trying to paint with a broad brush on a huge historical canvas.

El Arco del Pacífico Latinoamericano y su proyección a Asia-Pacífico

Incluye Bibliografía

Oportunidades de comercio e inversión entre América Latina y Asia Pacífico: el vínculo con APEC

Incluye Bibliografía

Tecnología de la información y las comunicaciones (TIC) para el fomento de las PYMES exportadoras en América Latina y Asia Oriental

Incluye Bibliografía

Comparative analysis of regionalism in Latin America and Asia-Pacific

Includes bibliography

Trade and investment promotion between Asia-Pacific and Latin America: present position and future prospects

Includes bibliography