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Prolonged hospital stay in the course of management of microbial keratitis patients has been a burden to the resources of a multi‐disciplinary tertiary hospital. The paper aims to evaluate the impact of streamlining the workflow and increased cross‐disciplinary interactions on the average length of hospitalisation. It also seeks to study secondary outcomes including the average time for initiation of therapy, microbial culture positive rate, patients' satisfaction and resource savings.

The authors employed the model of clinical practice improvement (CPI) (New South Wales Health Department) methodology for a systematic approach to improve processes of care and service delivery. A team consisting of ophthalmologist, microbiologist, pharmacist and nursing staff was formed to brainstorm and highlight the problems. A new workflow was formulated and data were prospectively collected to evaluate and to identify areas where improvements could be made.

The average length of hospitalisation stay was reduced from 7.43 to 5.93 days with a mean difference of 1.50±0.63 days (p<0.05). The microbial keratitis culture positive rate increased from 54.6 to 73.0 per cent (p>0.05). The average time taken to initiate antibiotic eye drops after first contact with the doctor was 26.1 minutes (n=28), and 74.4 per cent of the patients surveyed were satisfied with their length of stay.

Intervention was carried out on the top 20 per cent of areas for improvement after voting by the team members.

The reduction in average length of hospitalisation can be improved by strict adherence to a formulated workflow and coordinated cross‐disciplinary interactions.

The management protocol discussed in the paper for microbial keratitis enables more effective and efficient treatment for the inpatients. Increased cross‐discipline and nursing coordination decreases length of hospitalisation of microbial keratitis patients and achieve better care for these patients.

Mental health problems are increasing in society. To deal with these problems effectively, it is imperative that appropriate treatments are delivered. Some evidence suggests that patients often do not complete the full course of many psychotherapy treatments. The aim of this study was to estimate the average length of treatment for patients referred to the adult specialty of a large clinical psychology department. A stratified sampling strategy was chosen to obtain an unbiased and precise estimator of the average treatment length for the population of patients whose files had been closed in one calendar year (n = 3021). The stratified sampling mean estimator for the population mean was 3.9 appointments; standard psychotherapy treatments are often planned to be more than ten appointments. These results suggest that many patients are failing to receive the full treatment planned by mental health professionals. Perhaps more psychotherapy treatments need to be delivered in a smaller number of appointments. Stratified sampling could be used to estimate treatment duration in particular contexts, thereby allowing treatments to be designed to meet local needs.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the design and delivery of psychological treatments offered by the UK National Health Service (NHS) and in particular, ask how much treatment is enough, or who should decide when the patient has had enough treatment.

The data reported in this section were collected during routine clinical practice in the NHS in Scotland.

It was found that treatments could be redesigned so that important therapeutic information is provided in time frames that match patient preferences, leading to more efficient and effective services.

Clinicians, predominantly, determine the design and delivery of treatment programmes, whereas the paper suggests that programmes should be focused on the patient and their needs.

Evidence-based practice (EBP) can have a powerful impact on school-aged children. Yet this impact may not be realized if classroom teachers do not use empirically supported interventions and/or fail to include the best research available when they make important educational decisions about children. Whether classroom teachers use EBP may be influenced, in part, by what they learned or failed to learn in their preservice preparation programs. This chapter describes recent efforts to assess preservice teachers’ understanding and use of empirically supported interventions and provides four examples of how such practices were taught to preservice general educators in a small, regional teacher preparation program. We discuss four contemporary educational reform movements (i.e., federal policies mandating EBP, state-level policies linking growth in pupil learning to teacher evaluation, clinically rich teacher preparation, and the emergence of a practice-based evidence approach) that should increase interest and use of EBP in teacher education and offer recommendations for how teacher educators might infuse EBP into their traditional teaching, research, and service functions in higher education.

The research-to-practice gap occurs when practices supported as effective by research are infrequently used in applied settings, such as classrooms. This gap may be due to teachers preferring to use practices they find to be trustworthy, usable, and accessible. Instead of relying on research, teachers frequently use resources from other teachers, which may be because teachers prefer practices that are supported by evidence developed in applied settings (i.e., practice-based evidence [PBE]). Using PBE to support the application of evidence-based practices (EBPs) may increase the latter's use in classrooms. In this chapter, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both EBPs and PBE and how the two can complement each other to help lessen the research-to-practice gap. We also discuss mixed-methods approaches that can be used to combine EBPs with PBE.

This paper aims to examine the skill requirements for the practice of corporate real estate management (CREM) in Nigeria.

Questionnaires were distributed to 270 practising estate firms in Lagos State, Nigeria, 145 final year students of Estate Management in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria as well as corporate real executive officers of the 24 recapitalised commercial banks, 21 insurance and five GSM communication companies in Nigeria. A total of 260 questionnaires (58 per cent) were returned and found useful for the study. The study adopted the descriptive method of percentages, mean and proportion method for analysis.

The study found that in rank order, the skill requirements for CREM were financial performance skill, investment in corporate strategy, productivity skill, space efficiency management skill and customers and employees' management skill. The mean figures for the five factors are 5.0, 4.8, 4.8, 4.73 and 4.67 respectively. The results of the analysis also showed further that the portfolio efficiency skill had a mean value of 3.58 and was rated by the respondents as the least skill required for corporate real estate management.

Limiting the scope of the study to CRE executives and practitioners in selected service industry and students of a university might pose a great challenge to the representativeness of the findings.

The study has major implications on real estate education and practice in Nigeria. There is an urgent need to overhaul the university/polytechnic curriculum to incorporate business and accounting knowledge to prepare real estate graduates for efficient practice and the continuous re‐training of practitioners to prevent future declining real estate profession.

The negative implication of joblessness arising from unemployable graduates of real estate by corporate organisations breeds more social vices.

The paper documents the requisite information needed for developing contemporary policy on real estate education in the country. It also serves as a guide for real estate practitioners and regulatory bodies for developing contemporary real estate practice to meet emerging trends in CREM practice and for relevance in the practice of CREM as an evolving sub‐discipline of estate management.

The purpose of this study is to explore the factors affecting locals’ domestic gastronomic behaviour. A conceptual framework is developed that examines domestic restaurant coolness, social return and tourism ethnocentrism as antecedents to attitude towards domestic gastronomic tourism, while positive word-of-mouth and domestic gastronomy behaviour are modelled as consequences.

The study adopts a quantitative methodology to conduct a cross-national examination in Italy and Fiji. A total of 621 responses (Italy = 302 and Fiji = 319) were collected through an online survey and analysed using covariance-based structural equation modelling.

The results of this study show that the positive relationship between domestic restaurant coolness and tourism ethnocentrism on attitude is stronger for Italy. The positive relationship between social return and attitude is only significant for Fiji. Moreover, the positive relationship between attitude towards domestic gastronomic tourism and positive word-of-mouth is stronger for Fiji. Finally, the positive relationship between attitude towards domestic gastronomic tourism and domestic gastronomic tourism behaviour, while significant in both countries, depicted no significant differences in results.

The findings of this study highlight the need for building a cool image based on vibrant, iconic, rebellious and authentic attributes. Marketers need to focus on local restaurants’ effective use of social media platforms to increase the symbolic value of local restaurants. To remain competitive, there is a need for domestic restaurants to manage and understand tourism ethnocentrism to leverage success.

This study contributes to the scarce domestic tourism literature. It contributes to understanding destination coolness in the context of domestic restaurants and increases the generalisability of the destination coolness scale. The study also adds to understanding the symbolic value in domestic gastronomy by examining social returns from peers. It also contributes to the limited research on tourism ethnocentrism by being the first to investigate tourism ethnocentrism in domestic travel and gastronomy experience. Overall, the cross-national nature of the study demonstrates the difference between decision-making behaviour between two distinct countries.