Sauti Za Wananchi “voice of the people”: patient satisfaction on the medical wards at a Kenyan Referral Hospital

Introduction: Patient satisfaction is one indicator of healthcare quality. Few studies have examined the inpatient experiences in resource-scarce environments in sub-Saharan Africa. Methods: To examine patient satisfaction on the public medical wards at a Kenyan referral hospital, we performed a cross-sectional survey focused on patients’ satisfaction with medical information and their relationship with staffing and hospital routine. Ratings of communication with providers, efforts to protect privacy, information about costs, food, and hospital environment were also elicited. Results: Overall, the average patient satisfaction rating was 64.7, nearly midway between “average” and “good” Higher rated satisfaction was associated with higher self-rated general health scores and self-rated health gains during the hospitalization (p = 0.023 and p = 0.001). Women who shared a hospital bed found privacy to be “below average” to “poor” Most men (72.7%) felt information about costs was insufficient. Patients rated food and environmental quality favorably while also frequently suggesting these areas could be improved. Conclusion: Overall, patients expressed satisfaction with the care provided. These ratings may reflect modest patients’ expectations as well as acceptable circumstances and performance. Women expressed concern about privacy while men expressed a desire for more information on costs. Inconsistencies were noted between patient ratings and free response answers

Generalized trust and diversity in the classroom: A longitudinal study of Romanian adolescents

Generalized trust, the faith we place in strangers, is a fundamental attribute of democratic societies. We investigate the development of generalized trust using data collected from Romanian high school students within a multi-level, panel research design. We find that diversity in the classroom, defined through ethnic and socio-economic differences, has negative effects on generalized trust. Associational membership interacts indirectly with diversity, counteracting the negative impact of ethnic diversity but reinforcing socio-economic distinctions. The findings support cultural theories of generalized trust and point to the potentially positive role educational policy might play in encouraging trust among youths

Does inequality erode cooperation in the classroom? Evidence from PISA 2015

We consider the relationship between SES equality and cooperation among high school students. We find that inequality decreases the acquisition of cooperation skills, a key ingredient to sustained democracy. Generalized trust and political equality counteract this effect independently. Further, trust and political equality moderate the influence of inequality, reaffirming the importance of education to democratic citizenship

From white elephant to Nobel Prize: Dennis Gabor’s wavefront reconstruction

Dennis Gabor devised a new concept for optical imaging in 1947 that went by a variety of names over the following decade: holoscopy, wavefront reconstruction, interference microscopy, diffraction microscopy and Gaboroscopy. A well-connected and creative research engineer, Gabor worked actively to publicize and exploit his concept, but the scheme failed to capture the interest of many researchers. Gabor’s theory was repeatedly deemed unintuitive and baffling; the technique was appraised by his contemporaries to be of dubious practicality and, at best, constrained to a narrow branch of science. By the late 1950s, Gabor’s subject had been assessed by its handful of practitioners to be a white elephant. Nevertheless, the concept was later rehabilitated by the research of Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks at the University of Michigan, and Yury Denisyuk at the Vavilov Institute in Leningrad. What had been judged a failure was recast as a success: evaluations of Gabor’s work were transformed during the 1960s, when it was represented as the foundation on which to construct the new and distinctly different subject of holography, a re-evaluation that gained the Nobel Prize for Physics for Gabor alone in 1971. This paper focuses on the difficulties experienced in constructing a meaningful subject, a practical application and a viable technical community from Gabor’s ideas during the decade 1947-1957

Academic literacies as a theoretical underpinning for Learning Development support

Research into academic literacy or literacies, however the term is defined, and how the field relates to disciplinary practice, has been debated in recent decades (Lillis and Scott, 2007; Lillis, 2019). Consideration of academic literacies is also a key component of the Learning Development community as the profession has evolved and developed its own identity. Is the term defined as ‘literacy’ or ‘literacies’? Is it a core component of Learning Development practice, or is it more tied to disciplinary and curriculum-based delivery? By understanding the literature around the definition and the development and application of academic literacies, can we consider how this relates to current perceptions and understanding of the field in a Learning Development context and what impact it may have on student learning? This workshop provided participants with the opportunity to hear about current research being undertaken by the ALDinHE research virtual Community of Practice (vCoP) to investigate our current understanding of academic literacies, how they are (or it is, if considered a singular literacy) perceived across the Learning Development community, and how we might measure its impact on our practice and student learning. For simplicity within this paper, academic literacies will be referred to as a plural form. Due to the historical creation of Learning Development teams in response to sector changes in higher education, this workshop provided participants with the opportunity to hear about the current research on academic literacies. Participants were also able to discuss their own experiential views to develop a shared understanding of how we may apply this understanding to practice, and what the impact on our work may be. The workshop aimed to help define our understanding of academic literacies—both in terms of the literature and in practice—and take away ideas and examples of practice that we can apply in our own work

Poverty Amid Renewed Affluence: The Poor of New England at Mid-Decade

This article examines the problem of poverty in New England during the current period of economic prosperity. Major trends in the size and composition of the poor population within the region are analyzed. Striking changes in the relative incidence of poverty have occurred among families in New England. As the economy has moved toward full employment, poverty rates among husband-wife families in the region have fallen sharply. In contrast, female-headed families in New England have not benefited substantially from recent rapid increases in employment opportunities. The result has been a persistent trend toward the feminization of poverty in New England. The bulk of poor female family heads are of working age and could potentially be brought into the region\u27s work force. However, education and training services that can successfully attack fundamental barriers to labor force participation must be delivered to these women. Programs designed to overcome low levels of educational attainment and deficient basic skills must be combined with child care and other social services in order to further reduce overall poverty rates across the New England region

An Intelligent Clinical Decision Support System for Assessing the Needs of a Long-Term Care Plan

With the global aging population, providing effective long-term care has been promoted and emphasized for reducing the hospitalizations of the elderly and the care burden to hospitals and governments. Under the scheme of Long-term Care Project 2.0 (LTCP 2.0), initiated in Taiwan, two types of long-term care services, i.e., institutional care and home care, are provided for the elderly with chronic diseases and disabilities, according to their personality, living environment and health situation. Due to the increasing emphasis on the quality of life in recent years, the elderly expect long-term care service providers (LCSP) to provide the best quality of care (QoC). Such healthcare must be safe, effective, timely, efficiently, diversified and up-to-date. Instead of supporting basic activities in daily living, LCSPs have changed their goals to formulate elderly-centered care plans in an accurate, time-efficient and cost-effective manner. In order to ensure the quality of the care services, an intelligent clinical decision support system (ICDSS) is proposed for care managers to improve their efficiency and effectiveness in assessing the long-term care needs of the elderly. In the ICDSS, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are adopted to distinguish and formulate personalized long-term care plans by retrieving relevant knowledge from past similar records

Working together: reflections on a non-hierarchical approach to collaborative writing

The process of writing is a cornerstone for academia, reflecting values such as rigour, critique and engagement (Mountz et al., 2015). Academic writing is typically valorized as an individual endeavour, but with the advancement of technology such as synchronous online writing platforms, opportunities to construct scholarly knowledge collaboratively have multiplied (Nykopp et al., 2019). Collaborative writing (CW) involves ‘sharing the responsibility for and the ownership of the entire text produced’ (Storch, 2019, 40), factors that have certainly been enhanced by developing technologies. CW differs from cooperative writing, which involves a division of labour with each individual being assigned to, or completing, a discrete sub-task (Storch, 2019). This chapter discusses the reflections of ten authors from a UK-based research virtual Community of Practice (vCoP) on the challenges and positives encountered during the CW of a research journal article using a shared Google Document

Collaborative writing communities for Learning Development research and practice

This workshop discussed how collaborative reflection and writing provides us, as a group of Learning Developers, with insights into our role and sense of identity. The wider potential for using collaborative writing to develop topics of mutual interest was also explored. Our reflections on the collaborative writing process arose from our first-hand experience of collaborative writing (Bickle et al., 2021). Therefore, we aimed to introduce participants to the tools we used for our writing and encourage them to experience the tools themselves to stimulate a discussion on the potential and challenges of collaborative writing for LD research and practice. We hoped to increase participants’ understanding of collaborative writing through practice and reflection and provide ideas on how others can initiate a collaborative writing community. The introduction briefly outlined the insights we gained from our study, focussing particularly on the way collaborative writing served as a tool to examine and broaden our identities as Learning Developers. It also introduced the methodologies for creating (collaborative writing) and analysing (collaborative autoethnography) data. Next, participants were invited to try out collaborative writing activities and reflect on their potential use as part of their own practice. We used a Google document (Figure 1) to collect their spontaneous responses to short writing prompts related to the challenges and potential of collaborative writing. Finally, at the end of the session, participants left with tips and techniques on how to develop a collaborative writing group of their own