Yes / A recent initiative in hospital settings is the patient safety huddle (PSH): a brief multidisciplinary meeting held to highlight patient safety issues and actions to mitigate identified risks. The authors studied eight ward teams that had sustained PSHs for over 2 years in order to identify key contributory factors. Methods: Unannounced observations of the PSH on eight acute wards in one UK hospital were undertaken. Interviews and focus groups were also conducted. These were recorded and transcribed for framework analysis. Findings: A range of factors contributes to the sustainability of the PSH including a high degree of belief and consensus in purpose, adaptability, determination, multidisciplinary team involvement, a non-judgemental space, committed leadership and consistent reward and celebration. Conclusion: The huddles studied have developed and been shaped over time through a process of trial and error, and persistence. Overall this study offers insights into the factors that contribute to this sustainability.

Yes / The Patient Safety Huddle (PSH) is a brief multidisciplinary daily meeting held to discuss threats to patient safety and actions to mitigate risk. Despite growing interest and application of huddles as a mechanism for improving safety, evidence of their impact remains limited. There is also variation in how huddles are conceived and implemented with insufficient focus on their fidelity (the extent to which delivered as planned) and potential ways in which they might influence outcomes. The Huddle Up for Safer Healthcare (HUSH) project attempted to scale up the implementation of patient safety huddles (PSHs) in five hospitals - 92 wards - across three UK NHS Trusts. This paper aims to assess their fidelity, time to embed, and impact on teamwork and safety culture. A multi-method Developmental Evaluation was conducted. The Stages of Implementation Checklist (SIC) was used to determine time taken to embed PSHs. Observations were used to check embedded status and fidelity of PSH. A Teamwork and Safety Climate survey (TSC) was administered at two time-points: pre- and post-embedding. Changes in TSC scores were calculated for Trusts, job role and clinical speciality. Observations confirmed PSHs were embedded in 64 wards. Mean fidelity score was 4.9/9. PSHs frequently demonstrated a 'fear free' space while Statistical Process Control charts and historical harms were routinely omitted. Analysis showed a positive change for the majority (26/27) of TSC questions and the overall safety grade of the ward. PSHs are feasible and effective for improving teamwork and safety culture, especially for nurses. PSH fidelity criteria may need adjusting to include factors deemed most useful by frontline staff. Future work should examine inter-disciplinary and role-based differences in TSC outcomes. / The Health Foundation’s Scaling Up Improvement Programme: Round One (2015)

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. Johannesburg, 2014. / This dissertation tracks the political response by middle class residents to attempts by the city of Johannesburg to develop a public golf course and wetland called Huddle Park. It seeks to better understand the role of politics in Johannesburg’s suburban areas. The study explores three aspects of this issue. It first looks at the reasons why the issue of Huddle Park became important for residents. It then examines mobilisation tactics used by residents’ groups to pursue their political agenda on the issue. Lastly it follows how these middle class formations interact with city governance structures informed by deliberative democratic theories. It argues that understandings of these of these groups are too narrow and that by using a spatial paradigm greater nuance can be added to understandings of their actions. It shows that long term political action is possible by these groups and explores the limits of its effectiveness.

The gravitational wave observatory and many other large ground-based instruments need to be decoupled from the Earth’s ever-present motion to improve their performance. In such scenarios, inertial sensors which measure the ground motion are necessary, especially those with a high resolution and a large dynamic range. This thesis aims to develop high performance inertial sensors which outperform the commercially available ones in terms of resolution and dynamic range in low frequency down to 0.01 Hz.Inertial sensors essentially consist of two parts: a single-degree-of-freedom mechanism and a transducer which converts mechanical quantities into electrical quantities. In this work, a novel interferometric readout based on homodyne quadrature interferometer is proposed and examined. Experimental results show that its resolution is 1e-11, 1e-12 and 2e-13 m/rtHz at 0.01, 0.1 and 1 Hz respectively. For the mechanical parts, the leaf spring pendulum and Lehman pendulum are used respectively as the restoring springs for the vertical and horizontal inertial sensors. With these, the resonance frequencies are made to 0.26 and 0.11 Hz, respectively. Combined with the interferometric readout, a Vertical Interferometric Inertial Sensor (VINS) and a Horizontal Interferometric Inertial Sensor (HINS) are developed. They are placed together in a vacuum chamber as an inertial unit to measure vertical and horizontal motion.A critical investigation of the developed HINS and VINS is performed. The passive VINS and HINS are compared, firstly, with a commercial seismometer (Guralp 6T) the results showed that they provide equivalent seismograms in frequencies from tides to 10 Hz. Secondly, both simulations and measurements have been conducted in this study, a noise budget of the interferometric readout itself was constructed, which corresponds to the case when the proof-mass of the inertial sensors is blocked. At present, the resolution of the interferometric readout is found to be limited by the photodetector noise from 0.01 to 1 Hz. Moreover, huddle tests were conducted for the inertial units to examine their overall performance. However, extra experiments and simulations are performed and it is found that the resolution identified from the experimental means is worse than that from the simulation. Nevertheless, the mismatch can be reduced by reducing the magnitude of input ground vibration, by reducing undesired inputs and improving the stability of the interferometric readout output signal. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

No description available.

Ecologically, spiders are both predators and prey. Therefore, they must balance being aggressive enough to forage successfully, but not so aggressive that they become overly exposed to predation. Some species of spiders actively forage during clearly defined periods of the day, leading to the hypothesis that they should be less aggressive (or more defensive) during periods when they are not foraging, predicting that antipredator behaviour should be more pronounced during inactive foraging times. We tested the antipredator 'huddle response' in a nocturnal foraging orb-weaver, Larinioides cornutus, and found that, as predicted, the spiders huddled longer in the day than at night. We then conducted tests to determine whether the cycling of the response was regulated by an internal clock (circadian), and we found that huddle duration continued to cycle under constant dark (with periodicity significantly less than 24. h) as well as under constant light (periodicity nonsignificantly longer than 24. h). This work adds a novel behaviour to the list of behaviours under circadian control and also to the surprisingly short list of studies demonstrating circadian rhythm in spiders.

Det finns många tidigare studier om hur kommunikation sker mellan strategisk och taktisk nivå samt problematiken med kommunikationen. Många studier visar att informationsspridning påverkar om en organisations mål kan uppnås och att acceptans och förståelse för informationen är viktigt för att det ska vara möjligt, däremot kan det skilja sig i olika typer av arbetsgrupper. Denna studie riktar istället in sig på medarbetare på den operativa nivån och hur produktionsmål kommuniceras till dem genom daglig visuell styrning. Studien syftar till att (1) skapa insikt om hur kommunikation av produktionsmål kan ske mellan ledare och medarbetare på operativ nivå i en organisation inom gruvindustrin, (2) identifiera och förklara förekommande likheter och skillnader avseende kommunikation av produktionsmål mellan olika organisatoriska enheter inom en sådan organisation, (3) analysera förhållandet mellan kommunikation av produktionsmål och acceptans samt förståelse för de kommunicerade målen hos organisationens operativa medarbetare, samt att (4) skapa förståelse för hur avvikelser från produktionsmål påverkar organisationens dagliga visuella styrning.  Studien är en förklarande fallstudie med två analysenheter med induktiva och deduktiva inslag och genomfördes med semistrukturerade intervjuer, observationer och analys av dokument. Studiens teoretiska utgångspunkt är Shannon och Weavers kommunikationsteori. I studiens resultat identifieras fyra teman; processen, kommunikation, dagliga mål samt förändringar i daglig styrning, som visar att det finns likheter och skillnader i grupperna som studerades. Resultatet visar att det finns skillnader i hur kommunikation av produktionsmål sker mellan ledare och medarbetare på operativ nivå och att likheter med Shannon och Weavers kommunikationsmodell återfinns i delar av processen. Resultatet visar att kommunikation av produktionsmål genom daglig visuell styrning oftast leder till acceptans och förståelse, men att det finns skillnader inom olika grupper på operativ nivå. Resultatet ligger till grund för en utvecklad analysmodell som beskriver ytterligare faktorer som kan påverka förståelsen och acceptansen för målen. Analysmodellen leder fram till studiens slutsats som visar att kommunikation av produktionsmål genom daglig visuell styrning påverkar acceptansen och förståelsen för målen. Studien leder fram till att grupper har olika behov av information vid kommunikation av produktionsmål. Studien leder även fram till att informationsbrist är en av faktorerna som påverkar acceptansen och förståelsen. Studien visar att anpassning av produktionsmålen sker vid avvikelser och att det påverkar organisationens dagliga visuella styrning. / There are several previous studies that show that the flow of communication between strategic and tactical levels within an organization, as well as the problems with communication. Many studies show that the dissemination of information and the importance of acceptance and understanding of information impacts if the goals of organization's can be achieved. However, it can differ among various units within an organization. This study focuses on how the communication of production targets take place through daily visual control of the operational level. The study aims to (1) create insight into how communication of production targets can occur between managers and employees at the operational level within an organization in the mining industry, (2) identify and explain existing similarities and differences regarding the communication of production targets between different organizational units within such an organization, (3) analyse the relationship between communication of production targets and acceptance as well as understanding for the communicated targets among the employees at the operational level in the organization, and (4) create understanding of how deviations from production targets affect the organization’s daily visual control.  The study is an explanatory case study with two embedded cases with inductive and deductive elements and was conducted through semi-structured interviews, observations and document analysis. The theoretical point of the study is Shannon and Weaver’s communication theory. The result presents four themes; the process, communication, daily targets and daily control changes, which shows that there are similarities and differences between the studied units. The result shows that there are differences in how communication of production targets occurs between managers and employees at the operational level, and that similarities with Shannon and Weaver’s communication theory can be found in the process. The result shows that communication of production targets through daily visual control usually leads to acceptance and understanding, but that there are differences within different units at the operational level. An improved analysis model is based on the result and describes additional factors that can influence the understanding and acceptance of the goals.  The analysis model leads to the study’s conclusion which is that communication of production targets through daily visual control affects the acceptance and understanding of the targets. The study shows that units have different needs of information about the communicated production targets. The study also shows that a lack of information is one of the other factors that affects the acceptance and understanding of the goals. The study shows that adaptation of the production targets happens in the event of deviations and that it affects the organization’s daily visual control.

No description available.

Flera av Sveriges sjukhus har implementerat arbetssätt baserat på lean, ett arbetssätt som från början utformades efter industrin för att effektivisera arbetet. Lean -organisationen kan också benämnas som resurssnåla organisationer då arbetssättet är baserat på att det endast används de resurser som är av värde för kunden och tar bort faktorer som inte är direkt nödvändiga för utförandet av arbetsuppgifterna. Hur arbetsplatserna använder sig av lean varierar och ibland plockas endast delar ut för användning. Pulsmötet och pulstavlan är ett visualiseringsverktyg inom lean som författarna intresserade sig för. Författarna vill i studien undersöka hur den administrativa personalen inom hälso- och sjukvård upplever pulsmötet.  Studien genomfördes med en kvalitativ ansats där fem semistrukturerade intervjuer med administrativ personal på olika arbetsplatser genomfördes. Intervjuerna analyserades genom en kvalitativ innehållsanalys, där fyra kategorier plockades ut. Resultatet visar att den administrativa personalen upplever att pulsmötet underlättar arbetet i förhållande till information och kommunikation. Största delen av pulsmötet för den administrativa personalen är just kommunikationen. Resultatet visar också en liten delaktighet för den administrativa personalen, men trots detta att samarbetet upplevdes bättre efter införande av pulsmöte. Respondenterna upplever att arbetsbelastningen på arbetsplatserna är hög, vilket författarna inte uppfattar stå i relation till pulsmötet, resultatet tyder dock på att användning av pulsmöte och pulstavla kan ha en positiv effekt på arbetsmiljön. Resultatet visar att upplevelsen av pulsmötet hos den administrativa personalen överlag är positiv men att det finns en tydlig skillnad beroende på hur strukturerat mötet är och om det är tydligt kopplat till arbetssättet för övrigt.