Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy in elderly patients.

Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) was performed on 28 elderly patients (mean age 82 years) who were dysphagic and intolerant of naso-gastric feeding. Twenty-six patients were recovering from a stroke; the interval between the onset of stroke and PEG averaged 63 days. The procedure was successful and well tolerated by all patients. Nineteen (68%) still had a functioning PEG a median of 14 weeks after placement. One patient whose swallowing recovered had the tube removed 6 months after its insertion. Seven patients (25%) subsequently died from their underlying disease, a mean of 92 days following PEG. There was one procedure-related death from peritonitis. PEG is a useful alternative to surgical gastrostomy in selected elderly patients with dysphagia who are intolerant of naso-gastric feeding

Assessing and Rewarding Excellent Academic Teachers for the benefit of an Organisation.

In this article we describe and analyse a system for rewarding excellence in university teaching developed at the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University in Sweden. Individual teachers are rewarded for the effort they invest in the support of student learning. However, it is the organization that establishes a reward system and it does so for developmental purposes. These two purposes, individual and organizational, need to be balanced but the organizational perspective is wide enough to host the individual perspective, especially if the individual teacher contributes to the overall development at institutional level. The Faculty of Engineering rewards teachers with a clear focus on student learning and a developed capability to reflect scholarly on their teaching practice. The balance between theoretical knowledge about teaching and student learning and the actual teaching practice is crucial and examined in detail. It is the reflected practitioner that is rewarded – for the benefit of the organization