The thesis deals with Work Instructions from the Perspective of Text Comprehesion. It gives the description of Work Instructions in general, then focuses on two specific kinds of Instructions - Recipes and Consumer Medicine Information. Information about Vocabulary, Syntactics, Semantics, Coreference and Inferences are involved. There is a research of Text Comprehension in the empirical part of this thesis, it is divided into two parts, one for each kind of Instruction. This thesis draws on findings of Czech and foreign linguists.

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As the practice of integrative medicine becomes more common, it is important for library science professionals to understand the research needs of integrative medicine professionals in order to best provide resources and services to this population. This paper surveys integrative medicine professionals affiliated with the four North Carolina academic programs and centers for integrative medicine. The results of this study indicate that this population may need more targeted library services due to the difficulty in finding information in this field.

Healthcare is an important part of life in most societies that attract a significant amount of public investment. Primary healthcare is a fundamental branch of the healthcare system where patients and doctors initially meet. Family Medicine Information Systems are developed in an effort to ease the daily work of family doctors with the help of information technology. Such systems are generally used for handling critical tasks such as managing health records of patients, monitoring pregnancy and keeping track of children&rsquo / s vaccination. Like any medical information technology, the usability of such systems is a vital concern for enabling efficient and effective primary healthcare operations. Family Medicine is a recently established practice in Turkey and there are a number of systems in service to aid the daily work of family doctors. However, none of these systems have been subjected to a systematic usability analysis. In this study, a usability analysis of a popular Family Medicine Information System used in Turkey is conducted. By combining several usability evaluation techniques, the study identified several important usability issues and provided recommendations for further improving the system. The main usability issue observed in the system was the overall complexity of the information presented at the main interface that often confused and misled the users. In order to address this problem, it is suggested that features related to the most frequent family medicine operations should be placed on the main screen, whereas remaining features should be organized under auxiliary pages with clear navigation aids.

This research is concerned with some aspects of the retrieval of information from database systems by casual, naive computer users. A "casual user" is defined as an individual who only wishes to execute queries perhaps once or twice a month, and a "naive user" is someone who has little or no expertise in operating a computer and, more specifically for the purposes of this study, is not practiced at querying a database. The research initially focuses on a specific group of casual, naive users, namely a group of clinicians, and analyzes their characteristics as they pertain to the retrieval of information from a computer database. The characteristics thus elicited are then used to create the requirements for a database interface that would, potentially, be acceptable to this group. An interface having the desired requirements is then proposed. This interface consists, from a user's perspective, of three basic components. A graphical model gives a picture of the database structure. Windows give the ability to view different areas of the database, physically group together items that come under one logical heading and provide the user with immediate access to the data item names used by the system. Finally, a natural language query language provides a means of entering a query in a syntax (that of ordinary English) which is familiar to the user. The graphical model is a logical abstraction of the database. Unlike other database interfaces, it is not constrained by the model (relational, hierarchical, network) underlying the database management system, with the one caveat that the graphical model should not imply any connections which cannot be supported by the management system. Versions of the interface are implemented on both eight-bit and sixteen-bit microcomputers, and testing is conducted in order to validate the acceptability of the interface and to discover the level of graphical model which the users find most acceptable. The results of this testing are reported and further areas for research suggested.

Thesis (M.P.H.)--University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health, 2008. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 46-05, page: 2673. Adviser: Linda Lloyd. Includes bibliographical references.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrated Health, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has highlighted a need for research to better understand the usage of complementary and alternative medicine practices. The purpose of this study was to investigate the flow of complementary and alternative medicine information among yoga practitioners. The study consisted of 51 yoga practitioners from 7 yoga studio locations. This mixed-methods study used interviews, surveys, and field notes to collect data. Content and social network analyses provided supporting evidence for Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory and Granovetter's strength of weak ties theory. Key findings included a preference for face-to-face communications, students having both strong and weak relationship ties to directors and instructors, and yoga being the top recommended practice. The study suggested that yoga practitioners related to complementary and alternative medicine information through the lens of their friends and relatives, sought information from trusted sources, and used this information to determine which practices were right for them to pursue.