The purpose of this study was to operationalize the coronary care patient's concept of hope. Analysis of 25 subjects' responses to an open interview format suggested that the sample's definition of hope revolved around five categories. These categories were: 1) theistic beliefs: 2) knowledge that they would not die, require surgery, or experience pain; 3) a wish not to die; 4) a wish to get better; and, 5) confidence that they would get better. Furthermore, significant differences in: 1) the sample's definition of hope: 2) the feelings associated with admission to the coronary care unit: and, 3) the factors that positively influenced the sample's level of hope were directly related to the subject's age.

One of the impacts of the rising demand for community health services, primarily used by seniors, is that hospitals are often faced with the challenge of having patients finish the acute phase of their treatment and yet are unable to discharge them due to the lack of a bed in a more appropriate community care setting. The frequency of this challenge has led to the designation of “alternative level of care” (ALC) being ascribed to patients who remain in the hospitals due to insufficient capacity downstream. The thesis focuses on a model that seeks to address patient flow through the community care network (CCN) and finding capacity allocation policies for the different facilities that resolves the ALC challenge using scenario analysis. A queuing network model with general routings and nodes’ blocking has been developed and a heuristic approximation method has been employed for solving the model. Blocking probabilities and the number of blocked patients are derived as performance metrics of the CCN. We test the accuracy of the queuing model through a simulation model and the behaviours of the system in different scenarios are investigated in the simulation model and our policy insights and conclusions are provided.

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Patients with severe back deformities can greatly benefit from customized medical seating. Customized medical seating is made by taking measurements of each individual patient and making the seat as per these measurements. The current measuring systems employed by the industry are limited to use in clinics which are generally located only in major population centres. Patients living in remote areas are severely affected by this as the clinics could be far away and inaccessible for these patients. To provide service of customized medical seating requires a new measurement system which is portable so that the system could be transported to the patients in remote areas. The requirements for a new measurement system are analysed to suite the needs of Equipment Technology Services of the Cerebral Palsy League of Queensland. Design for a new measurement system was conceptualised by reviewing systems and technologies in various scientific disciplines. Design for a new system was finalised by optimizing each individual component. The final approach was validated by measuring difficult models and repeating the process to check for process variances. This system has now been adopted for clinical evaluation by ETS Suggestions have been made for further improvements in this new measurement approach.

Thesis (M. P. H.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007.

Thesis (M.S.)--Purdue University--[West Lafayette, Indiana], 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-96).

Thesis (M. P. H.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Also available in print.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Regensburg, 2006. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. [235]-257).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, August 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.