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Manual software design methods suffer from many handicaps. As a result, the design documentation of software systems usually either does not exist, or is full of errors and out of date. Many software development, reliability, and maintainability problems reported in the literature can be traced to this state of affairs. The solution of these problems does not appear to lie in improved manual software design methods, but in the potentially much more "effective" computer-aided software design tools. This project set out to investigate how to aid the manual software design methods with a computer. A novel entity-relationship model for the software design specification was formulated and built into an interactive pilot software design tool. In spite of its simplicity, the model is capable of representing software structures from high-level architectural design to low-level detailed design. The tool stores the model entered by the user in a database. The model can then be inspected either on-line, or from printed documentation. The evaluation of the pilot tool, based on the feedback from the users, was favourable to the underlying model. However, many human-computer interface problems were identified. The effectiveness of software design tools was defined in terms of the designer productivity and the quality of the design documentation. An approach which consisted of repeated propositioning, implementation, and evaluation of modifications was then used to improve the effectiveness of the tool. A questionnaire was used to assess the opinion of the tool users more objectively, and an experiment was carried out to compare the effectiveness of the tool with a manual method. The results of this research have shown that the latest version of the tool is significantly more effective than the manual method.

Technology and the complexity of the patient care can take the nurse's attention away from caring for the patient to caring for the technology. The purpose of this systematic review was to gather evidence from the literature on tools for measuring caring and the outcomes in order to make that body of knowledge easily accessible to the direct care nurse for implementation. Jean Watson's theory of human caring 'the theoretical framework that guided and informed this DNP project' focuses on human caring processes and experiences. It assumes that effective caring promotes health and outcomes of the nurse and patient. By using such a theory, a systematic review of caring behaviors can illustrate how using caring behaviors with intention can improve patient outcomes as well as nurse satisfaction outcomes. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were identified and articles were appraised using the Johns Hopkins Evidence-based Practice Model and process that nurses at all levels have used to appraise research and non-research for practice changes. Articles were narrowed to10 that met criteria and caring behaviors were recognized. The chosen articles used 5 different tools to measure caring behaviors. Although the individual caring behaviors were identified, the diversity of the tools used to measure and assess caring behaviors did not provide an easy way to assess for commonalities. This review identified areas for future research including, how one tool can be used to measure caring at different levels of care, in an acute care setting, an whether there exists an opportunity to develop common terminology for describing caring behaviors? Future research on using caring behaviors with intention could change nursing practice by changing how nurses perceive their skills and tasks.

<p>This study analyses the communication possibilities for pharmaceutical companies in Belgium. What communication tools can they use,which tools are the most effective, useful for the companies.</p>

This study analyses the communication possibilities for pharmaceutical companies in Belgium. What communication tools can they use,which tools are the most effective, useful for the companies.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX227302.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-126).

Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Chuck Zhang, Florida State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Industrial Engineering. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Mar. 1, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.