Talk about medicines

Background: Thousands of patients and general practitioners (GPs) talk about medicines every day during their consultations. Due to the confidential setting in which these conversations take place, little is known about the ways in which they play out between participants. Alongside the benefits provided by medicines doctors prescribe, there is a worrying degree of avoidable harm and expenditure introduced by errors and misunderstandings about these treatments. This thesis sets out to explore talk about medicines in GP consultations and enhance our understanding of the ways in which medicines are requested, reviewed and included in the fabric of talk-in-interaction. Methods: GPs working at five practices were approached. Eight GPs agreed to take part. Surgery lists were assigned to the research and adult patients from each surgery were contacted. Information about the research was provided to all patients recruited to take part in the study. Video recordings of their consultations were made with the participants' consent. These were collected at eleven surgeries. Talk from the recordings of these consultations were analysed using a conversation analytic approach. The analysis of conversation was made alongside review of non-verbal communication and body position of participants captured in the video recordings. Results: Seventy-nine patients were recruited and 78 consultations were recorded. Patients and GPs used a spectrum of practices during their talk about medicines. Features of patient talk included expression of their lifeworld experiences, concerns and considerations in relation to medicines. Doctors varied in their responses to these biopsychosocial contexts, with a range of practices. Some took a biomedical perspective and excluded these contexts; others embraced the lifeworld as part of the fabric of their consultation. Requests for medicines were made during a variety of consultation activities. Doctors and patients were both seen to orient to contingencies around the supply of prescription medicines as part of this talk. In the review of medicines, the electronic record played a powerful part in the consultation. Doctors used a range of conversational and non-verbal practices in relation to this resource. Some practices inhibited and constrained patient slots in conversation, and some opened out possibilities for patients to participate in talk. Conclusions: The analysis of talk that takes place between GPs and patients as they discuss medicines has revealed a rich and informative insight into the ways in which participants conduct these conversations. The findings from this research can help guide future design of education and practice, focused on the creation of slots for talk about medicines during medical consultation

Crowd-Sourced Evaluation: A Qualitative Study of User-Generated Product Review Videos on ExpoTV.com

Background: While user-generated videos are typically associated with humorous or shocking videos far removed from the rigorous world of evaluation, this paper explores the potential for utilizing user-generated videos as evaluation data.  This topic is addressed through a qualitative pilot study of product review videos available on the ExpoTV.com website.  The findings from this important subset of the evaluation field are analyzed with the goal of identifying themes and insights that could be useful to the broad field of evaluation.  Purpose: The primary purpose of this study is to identify characteristics or insights about the user-generated content that could serve as a guide for future studies and the development of new theory or methodology to enlarge the scope and relevance of data used in evaluations.  Setting: The ExpoTV.com website Intervention: Not applicable. Research Design: Grounded theory. Data Collection and Analysis: User-generated videos downloaded from the ExpoTV.com website.  Analyzed in three stages – In Vivo coding, Axial coding and theme identification.  Findings:  This article finds intriguing strengths to user-generated video as an evaluation data source because user-generated product review videos consistently demonstrate three important elements of evaluation: they provide a description of the product, explain the broader context for both the product and nature of the specific review, and provide an evaluative conclusion that is logically related to specific evaluative descriptions.   Keywords: user-generated video; grounded theory; video data; evaluation methodology&nbsp

Intangible Outcomes: The Importance and Current Neglect Within Evaluation Practice

Human life – and therefore the scope of human goals – includes dimensions that are both visible and countable (e.g., money, weight, attendance or tested proficiency) as well the invisible and intangible (e.g., hope, trust, faith, love, joy, peace). Furthermore, the visible and tangible aspects of life are intrinsically connected to and dependent on the invisible and intangible aspects - much as the visible branches and fruit of a tree are connected to and dependent on an underlying and hidden root structure. While the importance of intangibles can be understood intuitively, it can also be illustrated: 73% of all chartable giving in the U.S. goes to organizations that are explicitly religious, and 118,280 nonprofit organizations are so strongly identified with the intangibles of hope, trust, faith, love, joy, peace that they included one of these words in their name. While the intangible realities of human life are explicitly relevant to a large proportion of organizations we seek to serve, it is essentially ignored by current evaluation practice: only 10 articles within the American Journal of Evaluation, New Directions in Evaluation and Journal of Multidisciplinary Evaluation included even minimal reference to the most common intangibles. New evaluation theory and methodology to address this gap will be needed, and cross-disciplinary exploration with psychology, philosophy and sociology should guide this development. In the meantime, useful questions about intangibles can be drawn from the AEA guiding principles and addressing these can provide a useful starting point for evaluators seeking to consider intangibles within their evaluations. &nbsp

AI for Evaluators: Opportunities and Risks

We are all familiar with how computers and smartphones have transformed work and productivity. We now stand at a new threshold with another technology that is predicted to further transform the way we work: Artificial Intelligence (AI).  In this article, we hope to take a sober and practical look at AI from the perspective of professional evaluators. We examine how we might use it, how it might transform the nature of our tasks, what threats it might pose to our field, and what evaluators might do to protect themselves and our society from potential adverse effects of this emerging technology.&nbsp

Late Pleistocene extinction of the flat-headed peccary on the Ozark Plateau: Paleozoological insights from Peccary Cave, Arkansas

Paleozoological research on flat-headed peccary (Platygonus compressus) and dire wolf (Canis dirus) remains from Peccary Cave, Arkansas, provides information on the ecology and extinction of these taxa. The peccary assemblage is large, totaling nearly 4,000 specimens, and includes all skeletal elements, while the dire wolf assemblage includes only a handful of specimens. A minimum of 61 sub/adult peccaries, 15 fetal/neonatal peccaries, and 3 dire wolves are represented in the collection. Peccaries died naturally in the cave. The dire wolf remains were transported into the cave by colluvial or fluvial processes. Five direct AMS ages on peccary and three direct AMS ages on dire wolf bone range between approximately 25,500 cal B.P. and 21,300 cal B.P., and indicate both assemblages are time-averaged accumulations. Dire wolves did not den in the cave or transport peccary carcasses there, however bulk stable isotopes indicate that dire wolves likely preyed on peccaries regularly. Serial isotopic sampling of two peccary canine teeth paired with stable isotope values from bone indicates the animal foraged primarily on C3 plants year-round, mostly legumes. Early Late Glacial Maximum conditions on the Ozark Plateau were warming and drying, which contributed to deficits in peccary reproduction and, ultimately, to the regional extinction of the taxon, and by extension, dire wolf

δ13C and δ18O Isotopic Analysis of a Platygonus compressus Tusk

Stable-isotope analysis of Platygonus compressus remains from Peccary Cave, AR documents previously unknown dietary and seasonal information on flat-headed peccary. P. compressus diet knowledge currently derives from dental wear analyses with no isotopic data. New δ13C data obtained from 14C dated specimens reveals a C3 focused diet, despite dental adaptations allowing for omnivorous and mixed plant-life feeding. Combined with other indicators, δ13C enables improved recreation of peccary habitat adaptations in the late Pleistocene. Serial sampling of a P. compressus tusk for δ13C and δ18O further evidences a C3 diet and documents seasonal shifts in δ18O. Abrupt δ18O shifts between samples enables improved understanding of water sources. Merging δ13C from bone and δ13C and δ18O from tusk adds to understanding P. compressus extinction and the debate over cause; climate change or human predation

Space-Filling Designs for Multi-Layer Nested Factors

This articles considers computer experiments where levels for continuous factors are selected in sequential order with the level selected for one factor directly a ecting the range of possible levels for the nested factor, and so on for a nite number of factors. In addition, we assume the nested relationships between the factors have no closed form solution. In this paper, we propose an approach for constructing a multi-layer nested factor design, or multi-NFD for short. This space- lling design approach takes advan- tage of the maximin criterion and can be analyzed using a standard Gaussian process model. While the multi-NFD approach can be adapted for future computer experi- ments involving factor relationships of this type, we present results from a particular aerospace computer simulation study

Changes in SEBT Scores in College Basketball Players Participating in a Preventative Ankle Program

In volume 4, Issue 1 of the JSMAHS you will find Professional Research Abstracts, as well as Bachelor Student Research Abstracts and Case Reports. Thank you for viewing this 4th Annual OATA Special Editio

Comparison of Dynamic Balance in Male and Female Collegiate Lacrosse and Soccer Athletes

Please enjoy Volume 6, Issue 1 of the JSMAHS. In this issue, you will find Professional, Graduate, and Undergraduate research abstracts, and case reports. Thank you for viewing this 6th Annual OATA Special Edition