Patients’ satisfaction received from nursing staff in the Home Care Programme run by the Ministry of Health in Cyprus

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the home care patients’ satisfaction received from the nursing staff in the public home care program in Cyprus. Patients’ satisfaction has become an important part in evaluating the quality of health care services. Patients are the ones who can identify better than anyone else the aspects of nursing care which need improvement. Home care services are quite new and still developing in Cyprus while the need for these services is increasing rapidly. This study, utilized the QPP survey questionnaire, in depth semi-structured interviews and observations. The questionnaire was delivered to the home care patients who received long term care during the period of February 2011 to May 2011. A purposive sample was used for the interviews of the patients, the nursing staff and the management staff of the home care program and for the observations of the home care visits. The results of this study showed that the home care patients of the public home care program in Cyprus are very satisfied from the services they receive from the home care nursing staff. The quality of care, QPP index was found of the highest score in all items of the questionnaire. This study revealed high standards in the elements relating to the humane approach, the medical competence, the information and advising provided to the patients. At the same time, this study identified a deficiency in the abilities of the nursing staff to provide psychological support in difficult cases and the patients’ inadequate control of their medical care according to their desires rather than by the procedures of their home care nurse. It also identified the need of the home care patients for help in the activities of daily living (ADLs). Additionally, this study surfaced the aspects of the nursing care which the home care patients consider more important and highlighted the characteristics of an ideal home care nurse through the patients’ eyes; placing the humane approach as the most important aspect, followed by the psychological support provided and then by the nursing knowledge. A deviation was identified between the nursing and management views, with the later placing the nursing knowledge as first, followed by leadership skills and then by the humane approach. This study, also identified those problematic areas of the program which negatively influence the nursing services; these were the absence of a team of health professionals in the program, the limited operating hours, the non-implementation of the concept of prescribing nurses, the non- eligibility of the nurses to refer the patients to other health professionals, inadequate technology, insufficient financial support of the program, and the cumbersome procedures of the public sector. Home care patients’ satisfaction from the nursing staff is very high; yet there are some areas which need improvement. Recommendations emanated from the project include the enhancement of the nursing undergraduate and post graduate education in home care nursing, with courses and workshops on the psychology of home care patients, on gerontology, on leadership and communication skills. Recommendations also include individual and organizational development interventions for providing more support to the home care nurses, higher quality of care to the home care patients within a client-centred environment and feedback strategies

Application of Far Cortical Locking Technology in Periprosthetic Femoral Fracture Fixation: A Biomechanical Study

© 2016 Elsevier Inc. Background Lack of fracture movement could be a potential cause of periprosthetic femoral fracture (PFF) fixation failures. This study aimed to test whether the use of distal far cortical locking screws reduces the overall stiffness of PFF fixations and allows an increase in fracture movement compared to standard locking screws while retaining the overall strength of the PFF fixations. Methods Twelve laboratory models of Vancouver type B1 PFFs were developed. In all specimens, the proximal screw fixations were similar, whereas in 6 specimens, distal locking screws were used, and in the other six specimens, far cortical locking screws. The overall stiffness, fracture movement, and pattern of strain distribution on the plate were measured in stable and unstable fractures under anatomic 1-legged stance. Specimens with unstable fracture were loaded to failure. Results No statistical difference was found between the stiffness and fracture movement of the two groups in stable fractures. In the unstable fractures, the overall stiffness and fracture movement of the locking group was significantly higher and lower than the far cortical group, respectively. Maximum principal strain on the plate was consistently lower in the far cortical group, and there was no significant difference between the failure loads of the 2 groups. Conclusion The results indicate that far cortical locking screws can reduce the overall effective stiffness of the locking plates and increase the fracture movement while maintaining the overall strength of the PFF fixation construct. However, in unstable fractures, alternative fixation methods, for example, long stem revision might be a better option

The Specifics of the Internationalization Process of Czech SMEs in the Food Industry

The aim of this paper is to define the specifics of the internationalization process of Czech small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the food industry. The food industry is the largest manufacturing sector in the EU which consists mainly of SMEs. However, in the Czech Republic it has to face increasing imports of foreign food products because of growing globalization, while exports lag behind. Thus, enterprises should be encouraged to internationalize in a greater extent to maintain their competitiveness. The paper explores the main motives, barriers and risks involved in internationalization as perceived by these enterprises. The results are based on primary data obtained by questionnaire surveys performed among Czech food industry SMEs, thus it is based on data about SME's real experiences and perception of interntaionalization process. According to our results, Czech SMEs from food industry are driven to internationalize mainly by their efforts to grow or by unsolicited foreign demand for their product. However, as the biggest barriers are perceived those connected with the lack of knowledge about foreign market and administrative requirements. The identified motives and barriers are compared with results of similar researches from Slovakia and Poland. Moreover, the results of Czech SMEs risk perception in internationalization are depicted in risk matrix which assess not only the effect of risk but also the possibility of its occurrence.O

Revisiting international marketing strategy in a digital era: Opportunities, challenges, and research directions

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the opportunities and challenges facing firms in this new digital era concerning their international marketing strategy and examine how international marketing practices can be revisited in the light of these developments. Consideration is given to a range of relevant issues involved in the design and deployment of effective international marketing strategies using internet-enabled technologies. Such factors relate to internal company requirements, the external environmental situation, foreign market selection and entry, international marketing mix programs, and strategy implementation and control aspects. Design/methodology/approach: A conceptual paper identifies, structures and presents systematically factors influencing international marketing strategy, implementation and control using digital technologies. Findings: The authors point to the relevance and potentially important role that the deployment of online organizational resources and capabilities play in influencing foreign market selection and entry decisions and international marketing strategy choices, implementation and control. The authors thus explain how the use of digital technologies can facilitate the firm’s foreign market choices and the adoption of effective marketing programs, and offer insights into the adoption of digital tools in more effectively implementing and controlling the firm’s international marketing strategy. Originality/value: The originality and value of this conceptual study is reflected in the identification and discussion of factors comprising the organizing framework of an international marketing strategy using internet-enabled technologies and in the examination of fruitful avenues of future investigation as a result of the need to redesign international marketing strategies in a new digital era

Social media in marketing research : Theoretical bases, methodological aspects, and thematic focus

The widespread use of social media as a marketing tool during the last decade has been responsible for attracting a significant volume of academic research, which, however, can be described as highly fragmented to yield clear directions and insights. We systematically synthesize and critically evaluate extant knowledge of social media marketing extracted from 418 articles published during the period 2009–2021. In doing so, we use an organizing framework focusing on five key areas of social media marketing research, namely, social media as a promotion and selling outlet, social media as a communication and branding channel, social media as a monitoring and intelligence source, social media as a customer relationship management and value cocreation platform, and social media as a general marketing and strategic tool. Within each of these areas, we provide important theoretical, methodological, and thematic insights, as well as future research directions. We also offer useful managerial implications derived from the articles reviewed.© 2022 The Authors. Psychology & Marketing published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Assessing the greenness of environmental advertising claims made by multinational industrial firms

Growing skepticism about green advertisements calls for a thorough investigation of the environmental claims made by firms. This is particularly important in the context of industrial and international markets, where research on the subject is virtually non-existent. By employing legitimacy theory, this article develops several research hypotheses linking various dimensions of environmental claims made in green advertisements (i.e., focal points, evaluation areas, leverage aspects, driving forces) with advertising greenness (i.e., shallow, moderate, deep). It then tests these hypotheses with data obtained from a content analysis of 383 green magazine advertisements by multinational firms producing industrial goods. In accord with legitimacy theory, the results indicate that, the stronger the greenness of an advertisement: (a) the greater the use of focal points relating to a product, processes, image, and facts; (b) the more specific, strong, substantive, and acceptable are the issues raised; (c) the higher the employment of rational, emotional, and moral points to leverage environmental matters; and (d) the sharper the driving forces relating to the planet and its flora, fauna, and human entities. Several important conclusions, managerial implications, and directions for future research are derived from these findings

Identifying Misinformation on YouTube through Transcript Contextual Analysis with Transformer Models

Misinformation on YouTube is a significant concern, necessitating robust detection strategies. In this paper, we introduce a novel methodology for video classification, focusing on the veracity of the content. We convert the conventional video classification task into a text classification task by leveraging the textual content derived from the video transcripts. We employ advanced machine learning techniques like transfer learning to solve the classification challenge. Our approach incorporates two forms of transfer learning: (a) fine-tuning base transformer models such as BERT, RoBERTa, and ELECTRA, and (b) few-shot learning using sentence-transformers MPNet and RoBERTa-large. We apply the trained models to three datasets: (a) YouTube Vaccine-misinformation related videos, (b) YouTube Pseudoscience videos, and (c) Fake-News dataset (a collection of articles). Including the Fake-News dataset extended the evaluation of our approach beyond YouTube videos. Using these datasets, we evaluated the models distinguishing valid information from misinformation. The fine-tuned models yielded Matthews Correlation Coefficient>0.81, accuracy>0.90, and F1 score>0.90 in two of three datasets. Interestingly, the few-shot models outperformed the fine-tuned ones by 20% in both Accuracy and F1 score for the YouTube Pseudoscience dataset, highlighting the potential utility of this approach -- especially in the context of limited training data

Intercultural Service Encounters: An Integrated Framework for the Banking Industry of Cyprus

This doctoral investigation considers the exploration of two theoretical concepts, namely Trust and Emotional Intelligence (EI) within Intercultural Service Encounters (ICSEs), taking into consideration customers΄ and employees΄ perception. The conducted systematic and narrative literature review on ICSEs provided the foundations for the development of an initial conceptual framework on affective trust during ICSEs. The researcher as a symbolic interactionist adopts a case study approach to explore the role of EI on the development of affective trust during ICSEs in the banking industry of Cyprus. Cyprus used to have an extremely sizeable financial and banking industry but the financial crisis has influenced adversely customers΄ trust towards the employees and the banking institutions. In order to gain a deeper understanding on ICSEs in Cyprus, the researcher adopts the critical incident technique (CIT) and conducts semi-structured interviews with frontline service employees (FSEs) and foreign customers within the banking industry. The collected data were analyzed via the template technique with the assistance of qualitative data analysis software NVivo 10. The research findings suggest that affective trust is very important for the financial services that aim to develop trust during ICSEs. The empirically validated conceptual framework reflects an in-depth exploration of the negative emotions that emerge during ICSEs and innovatively enables a holistic understanding on the role of EI in the development of affective trust in the banking industry of Cyprus. As a practical contribution, the researcher delineates a training agenda to local retail banking institutions, which includes strategies and specific emotion management tactics that directly address the development of affective trust during ICSEs