Magister Commercii (Information Management) - MCom(IM) / Long waiting times before receiving a health service, give rise to long queues and congested health facilities, both of which are unnecessary and avoidable. Since patients in part judge the quality of the service by the length of time they spent waiting for it, it is imperative to measure waiting times, and determine and mitigate the immediate and underlying causes of lengthy waits. The facility under investigation was known to have excessively long waiting times. Since the immediate causes of long waiting times were known, it was thus required to research and understand the underlying causes of long waiting times and consequently whether there were any barriers to implementing recommendations to reduce waiting times at this primary health care facility. AIM: The aim of the study was to determine the underlying causes of long waiting times and the barriers to implementing recommendations to reduce waiting times. METHODS: A quantitative cross-sectional analytical study with a small qualitative component was undertaken. The qualitative study took a workshop format by piggy-backing onto feedback sessions held to present the results of the previously conducted waiting time survey to staff. Staff commentary at the workshops on possible underlying causes and barriers to recommendations to reduce them, were then used to develop a questionnaire for the quantitative portion of the study. The population and sample for the qualitative part of the study were all staff working at the facility who attended the feedback sessions. The cross-sectional descriptive quantitative study intended to uncover what underlying causes affected long waiting times, what recommendations could be explored to mitigate long waiting times and improve the patient experience, and if there were any barriers to these recommendations. The quantitative study population and sample were all staff who worked at the facility for more than six months and all patients who had utilised the services at the facility for three or more times. Data was collected using structured questionnaires, which were different for staff and patients. A detailed descriptive analysis was conducted.

Magister Commercii (Information Management) - MCom(IM) / Long waiting times before receiving a health service, give rise to long queues and congested health facilities, both of which are unnecessary and avoidable. Since patients in part judge the quality of the service by the length of time they spent waiting for it, it is imperative to measure waiting times, and determine and mitigate the immediate and underlying causes of lengthy waits. The facility under investigation was known to have excessively long waiting times. Since the immediate causes of long waiting times were known, it was thus required to research and understand the underlying causes of long waiting times and consequently whether there were any barriers to implementing recommendations to reduce waiting times at this primary health care facility. Aim: The aim of the study was to determine the underlying causes of long waiting times and the barriers to implementing recommendations to reduce waiting times. Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional analytical study with a small qualitative component was undertaken. The qualitative study took a workshop format by piggy-backing onto feedback sessions held to present the results of the previously conducted waiting time survey to staff. Staff commentary at the workshops on possible underlying causes and barriers to recommendations to reduce them, were then used to develop a questionnaire for the quantitative portion of the study. The population and sample for the qualitative part of the study were all staff working at the facility who attended the feedback sessions. The cross-sectional descriptive quantitative study intended to uncover what underlying causes affected long waiting times, what recommendations could be explored to mitigate long waiting times and improve the patient experience, and if there were any barriers to these recommendations. The quantitative study population and sample were all staff who worked at the facility for more than six months and all patients who had utilised the services at the facility for three or more times. Data was collected using structured questionnaires, which were different for staff and patients. A detailed descriptive analysis was conducted. Results: The study found a number of potential underlying causes for each immediate cause of long waiting times at the facility. For early morning batching the underlying causes found were: 45% of patients were given early appointments which caused clients to arrive early; 100% of patients with appointments after 10H00 arrived before 10H00; and 43% of the patients stated that they arrived early because they feared being turned away.

Contemporary studies of the phenomenon of attention uncritically suppose that the only way to go about observing attention is as a modification of consciousness. Consciousness is taken to be always intentional, i.e., distinguished by reference to an object-whether physical or not-toward which it is directed. Observers of attention therefore assume that attention is an intentional modification of consciousness. Such practices of observation, in virtue of the kinds of practices that they are, take for granted that the fundamental constituents of reality are subjects and objects. Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger (and Maurice Merleau-Ponty after them) discovered that belief in the world as divided into subjects and objects is merely a convenience designed for the purpose of making a certain kind of sense of experience intelligible-a belief that operates as a controlling assumption which forces the world, if it is to be intelligible, to show up under the oppressively confined ontology that was originally introduced merely as an observational convenience. My work contributes to the prevalent literature an examination of these presuppositions by reconsidering what the landscape of attention studies would look like without the importation of the confinement of a world reduced to subjects in interaction with objects. I do this first by returning to the fundamental and yet strangely forgotten insights into the question that Husserl and Heidegger provided. Then I explore through some of the autobiographical work of Virginia Woolf, Simone Weil, and Pascal a pathway by which we might think differently about what it is to pay attention. I conclude that attention might also be understood as a kind of waiting that does not specify an object, but rather a posture, a way of being that necessarily manifests itself prior to any sort of prejudged or anticipated object. The contribution of my work will serve the community of observers of attention by forcing them to explain what it is to pay attention without reliance on the subject-object distinction.

The purpose of the current study was to look at waiting behavior and how it is acquired among children with disabilities. Within this study a multi-experimental design was used to compare the effectiveness of two interventions, a signaled intervention using a visual timer and an unsignaled intervention. Both interventions were implemented across one changing criterion design that allowed for a progressive time delay to increase behavior. This experiment was also conducted across 4 participants to assess the intervention effects across multiple participants. The results showed that the signaled intervention was more effective in increasing the waiting behavior across all four participants. Three participants did see an increase in waiting behavior across the unsignaled intervention phases, although data indicates those results were not as clinically significant or consistent as the signaled intervention.

A collection of poetry that follows the death of a close friend and explores how grief devours the soul, and the ways in which we find strength to endure.

In a controlled lab experiment, we investigate hypothetical biases in the value of time by comparing stated preference (SP) and revealed preference (RP) values attached to unexpected waiting times. The SP and RP choice sets are identical in terms of design with the only difference being that the RP choices have real consequences in terms of unexpected waiting times and monetary incentives. We find a substantial hypothetical bias with the average SP value of time being only 71% of the corresponding RP value. The bias is mainly driven by participants who have scheduling constraints during the time of the unexpected wait. Scheduling constraints are taken into account to a much lesser extent in the SP setting than in the RP setting, presumably because only in the latter, the consequences of ignoring them are costly. We find evidence that this effect is stronger for persons with relatively low cognitive ability.

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<p>The aim of the study was to measure patient waiting and service times, describe the causes of high waiting time as well as to determine staff and patient derived norms on waiting times at the Manzini Regional Hospital HIV Clinic. Literature reviewed show that complaints regarding long waiting time have been effectively dealt with through patient flow analysis studies, which measure patient waiting and service times as well as other characteristics. A descriptive cross sectional quantitative survey methodology was undertaken using a time-delimited sample of all patients attending the HIV clinic over one week and all the staff who were in contact with the patients. Waiting time tracking instruments and short questionnaires were used to collect data from both patients and staff. Data were analysed quantitatively.</p>

Background: An emergency department (ED) should offer timely care for acutely ill or injured persons that require the attention of specialized nurses and physicians. This study was aimed at exploring what is actually going on at an ED. Methods: Qualitative data was collected 2009 to 2011 at one Swedish ED (ED1) with 53.000 yearly visits serving a population of 251.000. Constant comparative analysis according to classic grounded theory was applied to both focus group interviews with ED1 staff, participant observation data, and literature data. Quantitative data from ED1 and two other Swedish EDs were later analyzed and compared with the qualitative data. Results: The main driver of the ED staff in this study was to reduce non-acceptable waiting. Signs of non-acceptable waiting are physical densification, contact seeking, and the emergence of critical situations. The staff reacts with frustration, shame, and eventually resignation when they cannot reduce non-acceptable waiting. Waiting management resolves the problems and is done either by reducing actual waiting time by increasing throughput of patient flow through structure pushing and shuffling around patients, or by changing the experience of waiting by calming patients and feinting maneuvers to cover up. Conclusion: To manage non-acceptable waiting is a driving force behind much of the staff behavior at an ED. Waiting management is done either by increasing throughput of patient flow or by changing the waiting experience.

Aim: The aim of this study was to describe how patients with acute illness experience their given care in the emergency department. Method: A literature review of ten studies where differences and similarities were analyzed. These studies had been published between the years of 2000 and 2011. Results: The analysis showed a lack of sufficient care concerning patients’ subjective experiences. The researchers found three themes that specifically stood out when studies that had already been made were researched. These themes played an important role in care in the emergency department and insufficient attention to these from the staff could lead to a negative impact on patients’ experiences. The themes were: patients’ participation, patients’ need of communication and information and waiting period. The result showed that a lack in these presented themes could cause feelings of distress, frustration and irritation among patients. Because of this they often used different kinds of strategies to get more involved in their own caring process. Conclusion: The conclusion of this study was that there is a lack of resources within the emergency department where lack of personnel is the most forthcoming reason to patients’ negative experiences. There was however ways for the nurses to improve patients’ experiences within the emergency department by using Travelbee’s philosophy. This was to better interact and understand the patients’ lived experiences as a whole. Every patient is unique and by using proper communication, nurses can understand the patients’ whole life situation and by that, improve the quality of care.