This report first reviews issues emerging from English usage as a lingua franca, including distinctions among errors and variations in L2 English, attitudes toward L2-accented English, and communication strategies among non-native English speakers. Informed by the English learning as a second language literature, this report provides some suggestions for English teachers in Taiwan to help their students improve interactions with English speakers around the world. These suggestions involve promoting students’ respect for errors and accents in different varieties of English, which is expected to help students improve their own learning habits in order to lower their concerns about their “Taiwanese English.” The suggestions also encourage teachers to integrate issues regarding communication among non-native English speakers into English classes since these issues are often not the focus of traditional English classes in Taiwan. / text

For over half of a century, social and behavioral scientists have been investigating the construct of psychopathy. Even so, psychopathy is still a highly misunderstood personality construct. Even though it has been estimated that psychopaths make up only about 1% of the general population, they are believed to consist of 15-25% of the prison population (Hare, 1996). However, not all psychopaths are in prison. Psychopaths can also be found in such fields as the legal profession, the business world and in politics (Babiak, 1995). In terms of criminal behaviors, psychopaths are arrested at earlier ages, have a higher rate of offending, commit a wider array of offenses, are more likely to have used weapons and threatened violence, and are more likely to have used violence (Hart and Hare, 1997; Hare and McPherson, 1984; Serin, 1991; Wong, 1985). Also, once released from an institution, rates of recidivism for psychopaths are found to be higher than those for other criminals regarding both violent and FTSnon-violent criminal acts (Hemphill, Hare & Wong, 1998). Therefore, the societal importance of the psychopathy construct demanded that more research be conducted to better understand its underlying etiology, potential variants in typology, clinical course and potential treatment. Prior theories have proposed subtypes of psychopathy based on cognitive variables (passive avoidance errors) and on physiological variables (BIS/BAS) and on environmental variables (supportive upbringing or not). This study utilized self-report measures to assess the presence of psychopathy and to test the validity of the cognitive and physiological explanations for subtypes of psychopathy. A cognitive dissonance task tested the validity of the physiological theory and an alteration of a punishment task which increases the degree and strength of punishment tested the cognitive theory. Further, for the first time the construct of optimism was tested to determine it's role in parsing out two types of psychopathy.

Introduction: Medication errors are a major cause of illness and hospitalization of patients throughout the world. This study examines the situation regarding medication errors in the Armed Forces Hospital, Kuwait since no literature exists of any such studies for this country. Several types of potential errors were studied by physicians, nurses and pharmacists. Their attitudes to the commission of errors and possible consequences were surveyed using questionnaires. Additionally, patient medical records were reviewed for possible errors arising from such actions such as the co-administration of interacting drugs. Methods: This study included direct observations of physicians during the prescribing process, pharmacists while they dispensed medications and nurses as they distributed and administered drugs to patients. Data were collected and compiled on Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and analyses were performed using SPSS. Where applicable, results were reported as counts and/ or percentages of error rates. Nurses, pharmacists and physicians survey questionnaires: From the 200 staff sent questionnaires a total of 149 respondents comprising nurses (52.3%), physicians (32.2%) and pharmacists (16.1%) returned the questionnaires a total response rate of 74.5%. All responses were analyzed and compared item-by-item to see if there were any significant differences between the three groups for each questionnaire item. All three groups were most in agreement about their perception of hospital administration as making patient safety a top priority with regard to communicating with staff and taking action when medication errors were reported (all means 3.0 and p > 0.05). Pharmacists were most assured of administration support when an error was reported whereas nurses were least likely to see the administration as being supportive ( p < 0.001), and were more afraid of the negative consequences associated with reporting of medication errors (p = 0.026). Although nurses were generally less likely to perceive themselves as being able to communicate freely regarding reporting of errors compared to pharmacists there was no significant difference between the two groups. Both however were significantly different from physicians (p< 0.001). Physicians had the most favorable response to perceiving new technology as helping to create a safer environment for patients and to the full utilization of such technologies within the institution in order to help prevent medical errors. Scenario response - Responses to two scenarios outlining possible consequences, should a staff member commit a medication error, tended to be very similar among the three groups and followed the same general trend in which the later the error was discovered and the more grievous the patient harm, the more severe would be the consequences to the staff member. Interestingly, physicians saw themselves as less likely to suffer consequences and nurses saw themselves as more likely to suffer consequences should they have committed a medication error. All three groups were more likely to see themselves as facing dismissal from their job if the patient were to die. RESULTS OF ALL THREE OBSERVATIONS: Result of Nursing observations: For 1124 doses studied, 194 resulted in some form of error. The error rate was 17.2% and the accuracy was 82.8%. The commonest errors in a descending order were: wrong time, wrong drug, omission, wrong strength/ dose, wrong route, wrong instruction and wrong technique. No wrong drug form was actually administered in the observational period. These were the total number of errors observed for the entire month period of the study. IV Result of Pharmacist observations: A total of 2472 doses were observed during the one month period. Observations were done for 3 hours per day each day that the study was carried out. The study showed that there were 118 errors detected which were in the following categories respectively: 52 no instructions, 28 wrong drug/unordered, 21 wrong strength/dose, ignored/omission 13, shortage of medication 3 and expired date 1. Result of Prescribers in Chart review for drug-drug interactions: The analysis of the drug-drug interactions showed that out of a total of 1000 prescriptions, 124 had drug-drug interactions. None were found to fall into the highest severity rating i.e. 4 (contraindicated). Only twenty-one interactions were rated 3 (major), 87 interactions were rated moderate and 15 interactions were rated minor according the modified Micromedex scale. Patient education: All health care such as physician, pharmacist, and nurses have a responsibility to educate patient about their medication use and their health conditions to protecting them from any error can occur by wrong using drugs. Conclusion This study has contributed to the field of medication errors by providing data for a Middle Eastern country for the very first time. The views and opinions of the nurses, pharmacists and physicians should be considered to enhance the systems to minimize any errors in the future.

This report investigated the various types of memory intrusion errors of adults with language learning disability (LLD) in comparison to age- and gender-matched typically developing (TD) adults using lists that are specifically designed to induce memory intrusions adapted from Roediger and McDermott (1995) and modified by Watson et al. (2001; 2003). The 28 participants between the ages of 18:9 - 24:3 listened to pre-recorded lists of twelve words that converged on a critical lure either semantically, phonologically, or dually with a hybrid list. This report tested the hypotheses that 1) hybrid lists would be more likely to induce memory intrusions of the critical lure than either semantic or phonological lists for each group; 2) adults with LLD would demonstrate more intrusion errors than their TD counterparts; 3) the error profiles of the LLD and TD groups should be largely similar; however, the adults with LLD might show deficits in extracting the semantic gist of word lists in light of such patterns in children with specific language impairment (Sheng & McGregor, 2010a). Results showed that the hybrid lists induced the greatest number of critical lure intrusions producing a super-additive effect. Contrary to our hypothesis, the LLD group did not produce more memory intrusions than the TD group. The fact that the two groups performed similarly on all standardized measures suggests that the participants with LLD may have outgrown their disability. Results also revealed that interference and intrusions increased when there was an increase in phonological similarity among words for both groups. Lastly, our preliminary evidence suggests that adults with LLD are not as efficient as their TD counterparts at extracting the gist of semantically-related words. The inclusion of a greater number of participants may provide stronger support for the hypothesis that lexical-semantic organization is less efficient in young adults with LLD. / text

This paper sets out to examine the most common errors in the national test and whether the students make the same errors in English course B as in English course A at Upper Secondary School in Sweden. The method used for this study is quantitative where nine grammatical features are used to count the errors made. Twenty national tests were used to carry out this study; ten national tests are from English course A and the other ten from English course B. Results from all features from English course A are compared with some features from English course B. The results show that the most common errors made in the national test are subject verb agreement and tense. Those two features had also a worsening in the English course B. The genitive errors have also doubled in English course B. The best improvement happened with the capital letters. Other features either stayed the same or improved slightly. One of the solutions for grammatical errors could be that teachers and students pay more attention to it and that the teachers include more grammar in their lessons so that the students have an opportunity to improve.

Patientsäkerhet är ett viktigt ämne inom hälso- och sjukvården. Läkemedelshantering är en del av omvårdnadsarbetet som kan äventyra patientsäkerheten. En fjärdedel av de vårdskador som inträffar beror på fel i läkemedelshanteringen. Studiens syfte var att beskriva händelser och/eller omständigheter i omvårdnadsarbetet som kan riskera patientsäkerheten vid läkemedelshantering. Metoden är litteraturstudie och omfattar 17 artiklar i resultatet som visar att det är flera händelser/omständigheter som bidrar till och ibland samverkar till att medicineringsfel inträffar. Händelser/omständigheter som kunde utgöra en risk för medicineringsfel var: hög arbetsbelastning, övertid, långa arbetspass, kunskapsbrist, låg erfarenhet, kommunikationsbrister, avbrott/distraktion, otydliga ordinationer, bristande kontrollåtgärder av sjuksköterskan samt relation och ansvarsfördelning mellan personalen. Fortsatt forskning bör fokusera på metoder, hjälpmedel och system som kan förhindra att medicineringsfel inträffar och på det sättet spara både pengar och mänskligt lidande. Det är även väsentligt att utvärdera effekterna av den nya patientsäkerhetslagen. / Patient safety is important for health care. Handling of pharmaceutical products is a task within nursing that may jeopardize patient safety. One fourth of the all documented health damages that occur are due to medication errors. The purpose of this study was to describe events and/or circumstances in nursing that can jeopardize patient safety when it comes to handling of pharmaceutical products. The study design is literature study which covers 17 articles in it’s result that shows it’s several events/circumstances that contributes and sometimes work together to make medication errors occur. Events or circumstances that could pose a threat to medication errors was: high workload, overtime, long shifts, lack of knowledge, lack of experience, communication gaps, interruption/distraction, unclear prescription, lack of control measures from the nurse and the relation and responsibilities among staff. Further studies should focus upon methods, tools and systems that can prevent medication errors from occuring and thus save both money and human suffering. It’s also essential to evaluate the effects of the new law concerning patient safety.

Syfte: Syftet med studien var att beskriva vilka faktorer som kan orsaka risk för fel i samband med sjuksköterskans läkemedelshantering samt vad sjuksköterskan kan göra för att förebygga att fel uppstår inom den somatiska slutenvården. Syftet var också att granska artiklarnas kvalité utifrån urval och bortfall. Metod: En beskrivande litteraturstudie som baseras på 13 vetenskapliga artiklar med både kvalitativ och kvantitativ ansats. Litteratursökningen genomfördes i databaserna PubMed, Cinahl och Academic Search Elite. Resultat: Faktorer som orsakade att sjuksköterskan begick fel i läkemedelshanteringen var hög arbetsbelastning, bristande kunskaper inom farmakologi, mindre erfarenhet av sjuksköterskeyrket och avbrott i arbetet. Förebyggande åtgärder för att minimera risken att ett fel uppstod i samband med läkemedelshanteringen var att sjuksköterskan ökade sina kunskaper i farmakologi, bidrog till förbättrad arbetsmiljö och kommunikation med annan vårdpersonal samt var nogrannare vid kontroller. Slutsats: Flera förekommande faktorer som orsakade fel i samband med sjuksköterskans läkemedelshantering som hög arbetsbelastning och bristande kunskaper inom farmakologi borde inte vara svåra att förebygga. Det stora förebyggande arbetet bör ske inom verksamheten för att förbättra arbetsmiljön för sjuksköterskorna och på så vis minska att fel uppstår i samband med läkemedelshanteringen. / Aim: The purpose of this study was to describe the factors that could cause errors associated with the nurse's medication and what the nurse can do to prevent errors from occurring in somatic inpatient care. The aim was also to examine the quality of the articles in relation to sample size and disappearance. Method: A descriptive literature study based on 13 scientific articles with both qualitative and quantitative approach. The literature research was made in the databases PubMed, Cinahl and Academic Search Elite. Results: Factors that caused the nurse to made ​​errors in the handling of drugs was high workload, lack of knowledge in pharmacology, less experience in the nursing profession and working interruptions. Preventive measures to minimize the risk that an error occurred during the drug treatment were that the nurse increased her knowledge of pharmacology, contributed to a better working environment and the communication with other healthcare professionals and was accurate at the controls. Conclusion: Several common factors that caused the errors associated with the nurse's medication as high workload and insufficient of knowledge in pharmacology should not be difficult to prevent. The major preventive measures should be done within the hospital management to improve the working environment for nurses and prevent the error associated with medication management.

Suicide continues to claim hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide each year, in spite of the significant progress of research efforts aimed at understanding the complexity of this tragic behaviour. Data accumulated over the last decades suggest a certain biological predisposition to suicidal behaviour. Among the possible biological risk factors, cholesterol has frequently been cited. Several lines of evidence support the relationship between altered lipid metabolism, particularly low levels of serum cholesterol, and suicidal behaviour, yet the possible mechanisms governing the relationship remain to be elucidated. Three separate strategies were employed in order to explore the link between lipid metabolism and suicidal behaviour, each one from a novel perspective on this issue. The first approach aimed to substantiate the existing evidence of an association between low serum cholesterol and suicidality by examining psychiatric data, suicidality and related behavioural characteristics in a sample of Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome heterozygotes---a clinically normal population with altered cholesterol metabolism due to an inherited partial deficiency in the 7-dehydrocholesterol reductase enzyme---compared with controls. The second approach consisted in measuring the lipid profile in brain tissue from suicide completers, in order to address whether there are alterations in cholesterol and/or fatty acids in the brain. The final approach involved the use of exploratory gene expression studies to identify novel candidate genes and proteins that may be involved in mediating the link between lipid metabolism and suicidality. The results of these studies will be presented and discussed.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTIC OF THE DISSERTATION Topicality of the problem Prosthesis in orthopaedic technique are constructions that act as leg function reproduction and for external normal view of the leg. It is a technique giving a possibility to adapt to the society and live a full-fledged life, when one or another limb is lost. By the data, declared by the world health society, people with a disability include 10 % of all world population, among them people over 80 years old. More and more orthopaedic techniques are produced in Lithuania at present. The production, manufactured in our country keeps in step with world design and quality in foreign countries and they are 5–6 times cheaper. The main aim of the designers and constructors of orthopaedic techniques is to design and produce functional and high quality lower limbs prosthesis and apparatus. In the meantime, the same as abroad, in Lithuania the production processes of the prosthesis are automated but not so much to ensure a good quality of the prosthesis. Sometimes it is very hard to make prosthesis of adequate size to a patient that prosthesis implicitly fits just to the patient. Also, it is very hard to adjust it, ensuring the same length as the residual limb which should precisely correspond to the lost limb of the changeable loads chains of the prosthesis periodically are deformed during walking. In other words, the length of the prosthesis changes during gait. Thus, it is very important to set the limits of... [to full text]

Darbo tikslas. Įvertinti klinikinės diagnostikos laboratorijos klaidas ir jų valdymo galimybes. Tyrimo metodika. Atlikta X ligoninės klinikinės diagnostikos laboratorijos klaidų registro 2007 – 2009 metų duomenų analizė ir susisteminti duomenys. Jais remiantis, identifikuotos klaidos, jų priežastys ir pasiskirstymas. Atlikta ligoninės skyrių, tiesiogiai susijusių su laboratoriniais tyrimais, darbuotojų (gydytojų ir slaugytojų) anketinė apklausa. Išdalinta 260, grąžinta 241 anketų (atsakas 92,7 proc.). Požymių ryšio reikšmingumui skaičiuotas χ2 kriterijus, dviejų proporcijų lyginimui - z kriterijus. Rezultatai. Iš visų klaidų (N=669) didžiausia dalis (80 proc.) identifikuota ikianaliziniame tarpsnyje. Dažniausios ikianalizinio tarpsnio klaidos - tyrimo užsakymo (22 proc.), ėminių ėmimo (23 proc.), užsakymo formos pildymo (21 proc.), įvykusios hemolizės (11 proc.). Kituose tarpsniuose klaidų pasiskirstymo dažnis ženkliai mažesnis: analiziniame. ir poanaliziniame po 10 proc. Analiziniame tarpsnyje didžiausią dalį užima klaidos, identifikuotos matavimo metu dėl ikianalizinių veiksnių poveikio (31 proc.), poanaliziniame - žmogiškojo faktoriaus ir elektroninių programų nesusidirbimo klaidos (41 proc.). Nustatyta, kad darbuotojų informuotumas apie laboratorijos klaidas ir jų valdymą yra nepakankamas. 55,9 proc. darbuotojų mano, kad apie galimas klaidas, lemiančias laboratorinių tyrimų patikimumą, bei jų išvengimo galimybes, žino tik iš dalies. Informacijos apie laboratorinio tyrimo... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Aim of the study: Evaluate clinical diagnostics laboratory errors and their management possibilities. Study methodology: Laboratory X error registry study performed (2007 – 2009 year). Survey among hospital staff related to laboratory test ordering conducted. Total responses: 241 (92.7% from 260 invitations). Criterions calculated: indication relation significance - χ2, couple proportions comparison - z. Results: Error distribution (total 669) by phase: 80% pre-analytical, 10% analytical, 10% post-analytical. Top errors in pre-analytical phase: specimen collection (23%), test ordering (22%), order form input (21%), hemolyzed sample (11%). Analytical phase most errors are influenced by pre-analytical variables (31%). Post-analytical phase most errors are caused by human factor and software malfunction (41%). Found, that hospital staff awareness about laboratory errors and their handling is insufficient. 55.9% staff responded they have only partial knowledge about errors influencing testing reliability and how to avoid errors. 51.3% staff has knowledge about test process organization. 33.3% staff knows about error classification by phase. 71.4% doctors and 42.6% nurses consider such information important and would like to learn more. 52% doctors and 33.8% nurses familiar with full set of available tests. More knowledge about available laboratory tests have staff of age >54y (58.1%), also, having employment history >24y (48.6%). Most of staff (expectation of 81.9% respondents... [to full text]