The Nursing Coordinators (NCs) at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) fields phone calls from patients who have been discharged and are undergoing home care procedures at a daily basis. The project described in this thesis aims to provide tools for the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) that the NCs can use during the phone calls. The Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) and Ecological Interface Design (EID) approach are used to identify the information requirements to design the system. Major challenges of the telephone consultation process that are additionally identified by literature review and interviewing the NCs included visibility of patients, individual differences, and lack of standardized procedures. A combination of decision trees and visualization techniques is proposed to aid the process. Implementation of decision trees would help unload mental workload especially accesses to "knowledge in the head" as well as facilitate expert knowledge transfer to less experienced nurses. Visualization tools display integration of multiple-cues from patients in an abstract nature and can be accessed by users at any point of decision process. <br /><br /> Preliminary experiment with static images showed that visualization tools helped the decision makers more when the judgement tasks were more complex. The effects of different types of decision support on the cardiac nurses in simulated telephone consultation processes were examined. The system improved the performance of the decision makers and induced different types of strategic behaviours: a standardized checklist, OLDCAR, induced more through assessment, the decision algorithms induced efficient and more detailed recommendation, and the semantic network symptom map induced information gathering more relevant to diagnosis. <br /><br /> The research also explored methodologies to examine multi-layered decision process, where many decision makers with varying expertise are involved in modeling the strategic behaviours. This type of process can be applicable when the primary decision makers do not monitor the work domain, but can be alerted when something goes wrong.

For more than twenty years, the issue of setting up gamming industry in Penghu has continually deepened, and is turning into an official agenda. Thus, the government must take serious and careful action after through the scrutinized evaluation, rather merely a public concern. This research is based on the consultation framework of integrated public affairs administration to analyze Penghu¡¦s historical process of striving for the tourism gamming industry and to discuss the reasons of postponement from social, economic, political and governmental views. The dilemma of local development in Penghu results from the lack of public discussion and the failure of public policymakings. This study therefore aims, by using IM of NGT methods, to effectively communicate with the public participators, and to initiate the focus of the interactive conference to perceive ¡§how to decrease the doubt of the counterforce about setting up casinos¡¨. In the interactive conference, participators reached the consensuses that the foundation lies in (1) holding trips to learn from existing casino; the planning phase should (2) actively strive for chief officials¡¦ support and (3) enhance positively to public security and (4) ensure financial distributed proportions; further implementation should (5) avoid interventions by politicians, (6) ensure the proportions of locals employment, and (7) to emphasize the necessity of developing casinos in Penghu and (8) to invite people from every status to expand related activities; and, the last requests are to (9) hold public hearing and statement to decrease people¡¦s suspicion and (10) set up the White Paper of Casinos for Penghu for future guidance. Two tests of questionnaires before and after the NGT were set for each observer in the conference to examine the participant satisfaction, NGT interactive conference effectiveness, results of interactive learning, and affirmation of defining and differentiating problems in order to solve a complex and mal-organized issue.

No description available.

Taiwan has been practicing The National Health Insurance (NHI) more than ten years. Under the regulations of the NHI policy, almost all hospitals have encountered challenges and difficulties in their business operation. Therefore, figuring out how to move on from these obstacles and to create more profitable opportunities have become the primary tasks for the hospitals. Now, facing a global economic downturn, while the conventional and electronic industries are in recession, the healthcare industry in Kaohsiung City will need to take more actions in order to survive such a crisis and create new opportunities. Taiwan¡¦s neighboring countries, such as Thailand, Singapore, South Korea and India have been actively opening up their healthcare industry markets and earning considerable amount of money from foreign patients, creating many job opportunities. What Kaohsiung City could learn from these countries¡¦ successful experiences in order to benefit and help develop its own healthcare industry is the focus of this dissertation. Since 2005, a three-year project ¡V healthcare tourism, has been carrying out. It was practiced in Kenting only for half a year, and there are many reasons resulted in the short life of this project. Years later, the present Ma Ying-Jiu government vows to redevelop the healthcare industry. However, the key to the success of such a project is whether the government has the resolution to clear up unnecessary, restraining regulations and laws, and to set up responsible organizations in order to help the development of the healthcare industry. After the Three Linkages ¡V direct postal, trade, and transportation ¡V between Taiwan and the Mainland China were reconnected at 2008 December 15, the relation between the two straits is less intense. The Kaohsiung City Major, Miss Chen Ju, as the major of the host city of the World Game 2009, went to Beijing and Shanghai to promote this event. This trip has political and economical significances, which continue impacting on the relationship between Taiwan and Mainland China and were reflected on several important Democratic Progressive Party members¡¦ recent, frequent visits of China. How these phenomena would influence on the development of the healthcare industry in Kaohsiung City is still under observation. This dissertation uses Dr. Wan Ming-Sheng¡¦s Consultation Framework of Integrated Public Affairs Administration as the main theory, through in-depth interviews with governors and professional experts in the fields of healthcare and travelling, this research is able to conclude the following practicable strategies, regarding their value, practicability and support, for the development of the healthcare industry of Kaohsiung City: 1. Now it is a good timing for Kaohsiung City to develop its healthcare industry. The city should use all the advantages it possesses and take initiative moves. 2. Beauty and Healthcare Tourism Promotion Association of Kaohsiung City is already established. The association is advised to be promoted and led by non-governmental directors. 3. The healthcare tourism should list Hong Kong and Macao people as primary sale targets; the secondary should be the Mainland Chinese and Chinese people from other countries. 4. Necessary measures should be carried out in order to prevent malign sale competitions which would bring down the quality of the healthcare service in Kaohsiung City. 5. Kaohsiung City should take the advantage of hosting the World Game 2009 to promote its strength in healthcare service, such as and particularly health checks. 6. The government should face and respond with an active attitude towards the requests from the healthcare industry and release the industry from unhelpful, restraining laws. Healthcare can be and is a business. 7. The central government should take other Asian countries¡¦ successful experiences as models, and sets up cross-section supervisory sectors responsible mainly for directing issues regarding healthcare tourism.

Thesis (Psy. D.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-89).

Thesis (Psy. D.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-68).

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1998. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-89).

The aim of this thesis is to examine whether law reforms in the detailed planning process can be an aspect that gets in conflict with the citizens rights to participate in the Swedish planning through dialogue, and how five chosen municipalities are working with citizen participation. To be able to answer the aim of the thesis a literature study and five semi-structured interviews was performed in purpose to get wide-ranging information from municipal officials working with detailed planning handling.   Law changes that aims to make the detailed planning process more efficient has been implemented partly to satisfy the needs of dwellings since the detailed planning process among master builders seems to be slow and inefficient, which to the them means higher costs. The requirement on having a detailed planning program was taken away when the new planning law was adopted year 2011. The planning program was including a moment of citizen dialogue. The case studied municipalities have not been affected in this law change arguing that it’s still possible to bring a program if needed. 1st of January 2015 new procedures were implemented in the planning process in purpose to make the process more efficient, where most of the respondents argue that the process don’t have to be more efficient because of the reform, but that the room for citizen dialogue will probably be smaller. The best way of dialogue among municipalities is to include citizens early in the communication process. Nevertheless there are divided meanings whether how there is enough room for dialogue.

The purposes of this research were to determine the rate at which school psychologists engage in parent training/education with the parents of children with chronic behavior problems and to determine the relationships between school psychologists’ demographic variables, professional practice, training, and perception of barriers and their engagement in such activities. These variables have been found to be related to types of service delivery practices and were hypothesized to also be related to the rate and type of engagement in parent training/education activities by school psychologists. Five hundred school psychologists were randomly sampled from the membership of the National Association of School Psychologists and mailed a survey. One-hundred-fifteen (23%) of the targeted school psychologists returned a usable survey. Five school psychologists indicated that they engaged in parent training/education at least weekly and volunteered to engage in a phone interview with the researcher. The phone interview was conducted in order to gather more specific information regarding facilitators of the school psychologists’ engagement in parent training/education with the parents of children with chronic behavior problems. Data were analyzed using descriptive, correlational, linear, and qualitative methods. Results indicated that school psychologists’ rate of engagement in parent training interventions with the parents of children with chronic behavior problems occurred on average less than once per semester. The data also suggested that intensity of training and perception of barriers were most strongly related to school psychologists’ engagement in parent training/education activities. Other variables including school psychologists’ perception of available time, problem solving skills, and ability to communicate with school-based administrators also were indicated as impactful on school psychologists’ engagement in parent training/education activities. These findings have important implications for school psychology training programs. Specifically, school psychology training programs may wish to examine the intensity of training provided to trainees in not only parent training/education but also in time management, problem solving, and consultation.

In this thesis I develop a critical theory of public participation and deliberation in post-communist Romania. Primarily, this theory is developed from a critical assessment of two intermediate-level Romanian institutions: the deliberative system that has formed to debate the authorisation of a proposed gold mining project in Roșia Montana, Romania and the legitimacy claims of the series of hybrid forums that were convened as part of that project's Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The hybrid forum legitimacy claims were assessed based on a standard of hybrid forum legitimacy developed in this thesis from deliberative democracy theory and practice. Grounded in new institutionalism theory, this thesis describes the historical and contemporary socio-economic conditions that have shaped Romanian public participation and deliberation.