Older patients request more information : a survey of use of written patient education materials in general practice

Objectives: To determine GPs' reported use of written education materials with older patients and older patients' reported receipt of these materials. To determine GPs' and older patients' perceptions of written materials.---------- Method: Using self-report questionnaires, two populations were surveyed; a randomised sample of 50 GPs (29 males and 21 females) practising in Brisbane's southern suburbs and a convenience sample of 188 older community-dwelling people (aged over 64 years).----------- Results: All GPs reported using written materials with patients, although 28% had not given any to the Last 10 patients. This increased to 46% when patients were older. Twenty percent of patients wanted more written information from their GP, while some GPs believed that older patients preferred verbal information and gave out written information only when they perceived patient interest. All GPs reported giving written materials at the time of consultation and over two thirds discussed the content with patients. Just over 50% of patients reported receiving written information from GPs in the Last six months and only hall of these again discussed it directly with their GP. Overall, patients were more positive than GPs about the value of written education materials.---------- Conclusions: Older patients' desire for written information may be better met if they are more assertive in requesting this of GPs and GPs may better serve their patients' needs if they make written information more readily available to them. Better access to materials and more financial incentives to give them out might also increase GPs' use of written materials.

Analysis of selection criteria for design-builders through the analysis of Request for Proposals (RFPs)

Selecting an appropriate design-builder is critical to the success of DB projects. The objective of this study is to identify selection criteria for design-builders and compare their relative importance by means of a robust content analysis of 94 Request For Proposals (RFPs) for public DB projects. These DB projects had an aggregate contract value of over US$3.5 billion and were advertised between 2000 and 2010. This study summarized twenty-six selection criteria and classified into ten categories, i.e.: price, experience, technical approach, management approach, qualification, schedule, past performance, financial capability, responsiveness to the RFP, and legal status in descending order of their relative importance. The results showed that even though price still remains as the most important selection category, its relative importance declines significantly in the last decade. The categories of qualification, experience, past performance, by contrast, have been becoming more important to DB owners for selecting design-builders. Finally, it is found that the importance weighting of price in large projects is significantly higher than that in small projects. This study provides a useful reference for owners in selecting their preferred design-builders.

Determining the optimal proportion of design in design-build request for proposals (RFPs)

The design-build (DB) system is a popular and effective delivery method of construction projects worldwide. After owners decide to procure their projects through the DB system, they may wish to determine the optimal proportion of design to be provided in the DB request for proposals (RFPs), which serve as solicitations for design-builders and describe the scope of work. However, this presents difficulties to DB owners and there is little, if any, systematic research in this area. This paper reports on an empirical study in the USA entailing both an online questionnaire survey and Delphi survey to identify and evaluate the factors influencing owners’ decisions in determining the proportion of design to include in DB RFPs. Eleven factors are identified, i.e. (1) clarity of project scope; (2) applicability of performance specifications; (3) desire for design innovation; (4) site constraints; (5) availability of competent design-builders; (6) project control requirements; (7) user group involvement level; (8) third party requirements; (9) owner experience with DB; (10) project complexity; and (11) schedule constraints. A statistically significant agreement on the eleven factors was also obtained from the (mainly non-owner) Delphi experts. Although some of the experts hold different opinions on how these factors affect the proportion of design, these findings furnish various stakeholders with a better understanding of the delivery process of DB projects and the appropriate provision of project information in DB RFPs. As the result is mainly industry opinion concerning the optimal proportion of design, in addition and for completeness, future studies should be conducted to obtain a big picture of the optimal proportion of design by means of seeking owners’ inputs.

Request for production of documents – UCPR r 222 – manner of compliance

In John Kallinicos Accountants Pty Ltd v Dundrenan Pty Ltd [2009] QDC 141 Irwin DCJ considered the nature of a party’s obligation under r 222 of the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 (Qld) (UCPR) to produce documents referred to in the parties’ pleadings, particulars or affidavits. The decision examined whether the approach in Belela Pty Ltd v Menzies Excavation Pty Ltd [2005] 2 QdR 230 in relation to disclosure of documents under UCPR r 214 also applied to production of documents under r 222.

Motor Accident Insurance Act 1994 - request for information

In Angus v Conelius [2007] QCA 190 the Queensland Court of Appeal concluded that the obligations under the Motor Accident Insurance Act 1994 (Qld), and in particular s 45 of the Act (duty of claimant to cooperate with insurer), continue beyond the commencement of court proceedings

Request that remains of Mrs. Miriam Levy be buried in New York or Newport

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Request of Simeon Levy to K. K. S. I. for matzoth

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An adaptive reliable transport protocol based on automatic reSend reQuest(ASQ) technique for wireless sensor networks

There are many wireless sensor network(WSN) applications which require reliable data transfer between the nodes. Several techniques including link level retransmission, error correction methods and hybrid Automatic Repeat re- Quest(ARQ) were introduced into the wireless sensor networks for ensuring reliability. In this paper, we use Automatic reSend request(ASQ) technique with regular acknowledgement to design reliable end-to-end communication protocol, called Adaptive Reliable Transport(ARTP) protocol, for WSNs. Besides ensuring reliability, objective of ARTP protocol is to ensure message stream FIFO at the receiver side instead of the byte stream FIFO used in TCP/IP protocol suite. To realize this objective, a new protocol stack has been used in the ARTP protocol. The ARTP protocol saves energy without affecting the throughput by sending three different types of acknowledgements, viz. ACK, NACK and FNACK with semantics different from that existing in the literature currently and adapting to the network conditions. Additionally, the protocol controls flow based on the receiver's feedback and congestion by holding ACK messages. To the best of our knowledge, there has been little or no attempt to build a receiver controlled regularly acknowledged reliable communication protocol. We have carried out extensive simulation studies of our protocol using Castalia simulator, and the study shows that our protocol performs better than related protocols in wireless/wire line networks, in terms of throughput and energy efficiency.

A proposal for sea otter protection and research and request for the return of management to the State of California

v.1 - Text and Summaries (272 page document)