Selena Pillay, Sarah O'Dwyer and Marguerite McCarthy
Up‐to‐date patient records are essential for safe and professional practice. They are an intrinsic component for providing adequate care and ensuring appropriate and systematic…
Abstract
Purpose
Up‐to‐date patient records are essential for safe and professional practice. They are an intrinsic component for providing adequate care and ensuring appropriate and systematic treatment plans. Furthermore, accurate and contemporaneous notes are essential for achieving professional standards from a medico‐legal perspective. The study's main aim was to investigate current record‐keeping practices by looking at whether out‐patient communication pathways to general practitioners, from letter dictation to insertion in the chart, were being satisfied.
Design/methodology/approach
From current out‐patient attendees over six months, 100 charts were chosen randomly, and reviewed. A pro‐forma was used to collect data and this information was also checked against electronic records.
Findings
Of the charts reviewed, 15 per cent had no letter. If one considers that one‐month is an acceptable time for letters to be inserted into the chart, then only 11 per cent satisfied this condition. Electronic data were also missing.
Research limitations/implications
It is impossible to discern whether letters to GPs were dictated by the out‐patient doctor for each patient reviewed. Another limitation was that some multidisciplinary hospital teams have different out‐patient note‐keeping procedures, which makes some findings difficult to interpret.
Practical implications
The review drew attention to current record‐keeping discrepancies, highlighting the need for medical record‐keeping procedures and polices to be put in place. Also brought to light was the importance of providing a workforce sufficient to meet the out‐patient team's administrative needs. An extended audit of other medical record‐keeping aspects should be carried out to determine whether problems occur in other areas.
Originality/value
The study highlights the importance of establishing agreed policies and procedures for out‐patient record keeping and the need to have a checking mechanism to identify system weaknesses.
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The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains…
Abstract
The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.
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Li-fang Zhang, Gerard A. Postiglione and Ben Jiao
This study was to ascertain the validity of Sternberg's theory of mental self-government for Tibetan ethnic minority university students and to compare the thinking styles of…
Abstract
This study was to ascertain the validity of Sternberg's theory of mental self-government for Tibetan ethnic minority university students and to compare the thinking styles of Tibetan students with those of the Han Chinese majority students. Participants were 408 Tibetan students and 920 Han Chinese students. Furthermore, focus group interviews were conducted with two Tibetan scholars and 11 Tibetan students. Results indicated that compared with the Han students, Tibetan students scored significantly higher on the more norm-conforming thinking styles but significantly lower on the creativity-generating styles. Moreover, Tibetan students indicated a stronger preference for working with others as opposed to working independently. Discussions of these findings focus on the impact of Tibet's culture and economy upon students' thinking styles.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide a retrospection on the importance, origins and development of the research programs in the author’s career.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a retrospection on the importance, origins and development of the research programs in the author’s career.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses an autobiographical approach.
Findings
Most of the articles, research monographs and books that constitute this research and publishing efforts can be categorized into seven distinct, but related, research programs: channels of distribution; marketing theory; marketing’s philosophy debates; macromarketing and ethics; relationship marketing; resource-advantage theory; and marketing management and strategy. The value system that has guided these research programs has been shaped by specific events that took place in the author’s formative years. This essay chronicles these events and the origins and development of the seven research programs.
Originality/value
Chronicling the importance, origins and development of the seven research programs will hopefully motivate and assist other scholars in developing their own research programs.
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The critical dimension and the one that can unify knowledge through systemic interrelationships, is unification of the purely a priori with the purely a posteriori parts of total…
Abstract
The critical dimension and the one that can unify knowledge through systemic interrelationships, is unification of the purely a priori with the purely a posteriori parts of total reality into a congruous whole. This is a circular cause and effect interrelationship between premises. The emerging kind of world view may also be substantively called the epistemic‐ontic circular causation and continuity model of unified reality. The essence of this order is to ground philosophy of science in both the natural and social sciences, in a perpetually interactive and integrative mould of deriving, evolving and enhancing or revising change. Knowledge is then defined as the output of every such interaction. Interaction arises first from purely epistemological roots to form ontological reality. This is the passage from the a priori to the a posteriori realms in the traditions of Kant and Heidegger. Conversely, the passage from the a posteriori to a priori reality is the approach to knowledge in the natural sciences proferred by Cartesian meditations, David Hume, A.N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, as examples. Yet the continuity and renewal of knowledge by interaction and integration of these two premises are not rooted in the philosophy of western science. Husserl tried for it through his critique of western civilization and philosophical methods in the Crisis of Western Civilization. The unified field theory of Relativity‐Quantum physics is being tried for. A theory of everything has been imagined. Yet after all is done, scientific research program remains in a limbo. Unification of knowledge appears to be methodologically impossible in occidental philosophy of science.
Regine Marguerite Abos, Simone Taffe, Jane Connory, Gamithri Gayana Karunasena and David Pearson
This paper aims to demonstrate how the design of data visualisations can act as a tool to support social marketing messages in prompting behaviour change to reduce food waste…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to demonstrate how the design of data visualisations can act as a tool to support social marketing messages in prompting behaviour change to reduce food waste using the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) as a theoretical framework. It also responds to a lack of consumer-led insight to develop campaigns in reducing food waste.
Design/methodology/approach
The research uses data collected by the End Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre (EFW CRC) in Australia to determine which text-based campaign messages are most likely to prompt people toward reducing food waste. Behaviour change messages were first identified through workshops with 11 food waste experts, then explored through online focus group discussions with 18 participants from three food-wasting market segments. The messages were further tested via a quantitative survey among 1,000 decision makers in Australian households in their own homes, with the top three performing messages examined using summative content analysis.
Findings
The significant findings were that participants want to see 1) evidence of how adopting new behaviours would lead to financial savings and benefit the environment, and 2) concrete steps to reduce food waste. When examined through the ELM, the findings suggest that tools that encourage both cognitive and peripheral processing as a means of persuasion, like data visualisations, may be useful for changing food-wasting behaviours.
Research limitations/implications
Applying principles from the field of communication design to the ELM has uncovered the potential for a cross-disciplinary approach to enhance theoretical frameworks for understanding consumer engagement with messages. This process in turn, may lead to the development of more effective behaviour change marketing strategies.
Practical implications
Six principles for using data visualisations in a social marketing campaign are proposed: personal relevance, ease of use, emotional storytelling, context, prioritising the message itself and long-term usage.
Originality/value
This study proposes that data visualisations could enhance the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns by leveraging consumer-derived insights and the persuasive capacity inherent in their theoretical underpinnings.
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Vibha Kapuria-Foreman and Charles R. McCann
Prior to the passage of the 20th amendment to the US Constitution in 1920, several states had extended the suffrage to women. Helen Laura Sumner (later Woodbury), a student of…
Abstract
Prior to the passage of the 20th amendment to the US Constitution in 1920, several states had extended the suffrage to women. Helen Laura Sumner (later Woodbury), a student of John R. Commons at Wisconsin, undertook a statistical study of the political, economic, and social impacts of the granting of voting rights to women in the state of Colorado, and subsequently defended the results against numerous attacks. In this paper, we present a brief account of the struggle for women’s equality in the extension of the suffrage and examine Sumner’s critical analysis of the evidence as to its effects, as well as the counterarguments to which she responded.
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Changes in the format of library materials, increased amounts of information, and the speed at which information is being produced have created an unrelenting need for training…
Abstract
Changes in the format of library materials, increased amounts of information, and the speed at which information is being produced have created an unrelenting need for training for library staff members. Additionally, library employees are retiring in greater numbers and their accompanying expertise is being lost. The purpose of this study was to document evaluation practices currently used in library training and continuing education programs for library employees, including metrics used in calculating return-on-investment (ROI). This research project asked 272 library training professionals to identify how they evaluate training, what kind of training evaluation practices are in place, how they select programs to evaluate for ROI, and what criteria are important in determining an effective method for calculating ROI.
Wenfan Su, Zhifeng Gao, Songhan Li and Jiping Sheng
The study aims to investigate consumer preferences across 25 attributes of plant-based milk (PBM) products and examine the key predictors and underlying mechanisms of consumer…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to investigate consumer preferences across 25 attributes of plant-based milk (PBM) products and examine the key predictors and underlying mechanisms of consumer purchase decisions of PBM alternatives.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employed a multidimensional approach to investigate consumer preferences and the determinants of PBM purchasing decisions. Drawing on data from 819 online surveys conducted in the Jing-Jin-Ji region of China in 2021, we measured consumer preferences across 25 specific attributes and other individual characteristics. Purchasing decisions were framed as a two-stage process – the decision to purchase (frequency) and the decision on how much to pay (WTP). The Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) model was utilized to examine these dimensions separately, and the selected predictors were incorporated into OLS linear and Heckman’s two-stage regression analyses to establish the underlying mechanisms.
Findings
The findings indicate that consumers exhibit a strong preference for freshness and the absence of spoilage, followed by taste experiences such as taste and aroma. Preferences for milk preservation significantly increase the purchase frequency of PBM, while preference for calorie content has a negative and significant impact. Preferences for milk preservation, aroma and processing methods can also significantly increase WTP. Preferences vary across PBM categories. Social influence, knowledge and advertising exposure positively impact purchase frequency and WTP. Consumers with low food neophobia tend to be more responsive to product-related factors, such as freshness, calorie content and processing methods, in their purchase decisions.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the extant literature by comprehensively examining the determinants of consumer purchase decisions for PBM alternatives. The findings provide practical implications for marketers and policymakers, highlighting the strategic product attributes, consumer segments and marketing levers that can effectively target and cater to consumer preferences for PBM alternatives.