An integrated method for airline company supplier selection based on the entropy and vikor methods: a real case study

All certified airlines require to implement a safety and quality management system. Therefore, the quality of all services and products with critical operational domains have been challenging issues in the aviation industry. In this regard, supplier selection plays an important role to acquire competitive benefits. Flight operations is critical scope in an airline and their outputs have a direct impact on flight safety consequences. Therefore, the quality of supplier’s product and services play the main role in their flight operations process. In this research, a new decision-making framework is developed to evaluate the performance of the suppliers based on the Entropy and VIKOR approaches. At the outset, the main criteria and sub-criteria are identified based on the literature and expert\u27s viewpoint and then their weights are calculated using the Entropy method. Afterward, the potential suppliers are ranked using the VIKOR method. The airline supplier’s assessment through expert judgment and integrated criteria are the new approaches that are developed in this paper. The obtained results show that economic, quality and safety, and reputation respectively are the main criteria to select suppliers

Exploring the experiences of ICU nurses caring for end stage patients: a qualitative study

Background and Aim: The fact that in spite of providing care some of the patients pass away can affect the mental health of some of the nurses and eventually affect the caring of patients. Therefore, considering the importance of end stage care, this research aimed to explore the experiences of caring end stage patients by nurses working in ICU. Materials and Methods: This study is qualitative content analysis. After purposive sampling, data was collected using interview and semi-structured interview and data saturation was reached after interviewing with 10 nurses working in ICU wards of Sanandaj city and the data were analyzed using content analysis contract. Findings: Three main themes were obtained from the data analysis: trauma, omitting the responsibility of the patient from the nurse and adhering to the inner voice about the experience of caring of end stage patients. Conclusion: The results of this study indicated the need for moral support from nurses, providing the possibility of providing full care, paying attention and managing patients condition and their families and making nurses participate in the decision-making process of end-stage patients. Therefore, managers while supporting nurses should consider these aspects and establish specialized nursing care units for end stage patients to provide full care for these patients

Designing a bi-objective decision support model for the disaster management

This paper addresses the allocation and scheduling of the relief teams as one of the main issues in the response phase of the disaster management. In this study, a bi-objective mixed-integer programming (BOMIP) model is proposed to assign and schedule the relief teams in the disasters. The first objective function aims to minimize the sum of weighted completion times of the incidents. The second objective function also minimizes the sum of weighted tardiness of the relief operations. In order to be more similar to the real world, time windows for the incidents and damaged routes are considered in this research. Furthermore, the actual relief time of an incident by the relief team is calculated according to the position of the corresponding relief team and the fatigue effect. Due to NP-hardness of the considered problem, the proposed model cannot present the Pareto solution in a reasonable time. Thus, NSGA-II and PSO algorithms are applied to solve the problem. Furthermore, the obtained results of the proposed algorithms are compared with respect to different performance metrics in large-size test problems. Finally, the sensitivity analysis and the managerial suggestions are provided to investigate the impact of some parameters on the Pareto frontier

Exploring the experience of prostate surgery among male patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia: a qualitative content analysis

Background and aim: Besides their effects on patients’ bodies, diseases and their treatments can also take a toll psychologically on different aspects of patients’ lives. On the other hand, patients’ experiences of diseases and treatments are affected by the type and the manifestations of diseases as well as their own socio-cultural background. Understanding patients’ experiences of diseases can help healthcare professionals improve the quality of care. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of prostate surgery among patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia. Methods: This was a qualitative content analysis study. A purposive sample of patients who had recently undergone a transurethral resection of the prostate was recruited from the urologic care unit of Tohid Hospital, Sanandaj, Iran. Study data were collected through conducting fifteen in-depth interviews with patients. The qualitative content analysis approach was adopted for data analysis. Findings: Study participants’ experiences of transurethral resection of the prostate fell into four main themes including succumbing to the disease, having no option other than undergoing the surgery, having freedom and comfort, and feeling worried about future. Results: Male patients who undergo transurethral resection of the prostate need educations and information in order to understand and accept the disease, its treatments, and its effects on different aspects of their lives. Study findings highlighted the necessity for developing and implementing post-operative care plans for this patient population

<i>In silico</i> design of a novel chimeric <i>shigella</i> IpaB fused to C terminal of <i>clostridium perfringens</i> enterotoxin as a vaccine candidate

<p>This study aimed to design a novel chimeric protein <i>in silico</i> to serve as a serotype-independent vaccine candidate against <i>Shigella</i>. The chimera contains amino acid residues 240–460 of <i>Shigella</i> invasion plasmid antigen B (IpaB) and the C-terminus of <i>Clostridium perfringens</i> enterotoxin (C-CPE). Amino acid sequences of 537 peptide linkers were obtained from two protein linker databases. 3D structures of IpaB-CPE_290–319, IpaB-CPE_184–319, IpaB-CPE_194–319 and 537 newly designed IpaB-linker-CPE_290–319 constructs with varying linker regions were predicted. These predicted 3D structures were merged with the 3D structures of native IpaB_240–460, CPE_194–319, CPE_184–319 and CPE_290–319 to select the structure most similar to native IpaB and C-CPE. Several <i>in silico</i> tools were used to determine the suitability of the selected IpaB-C-CPE structure as a vaccine candidate. None of the 537 linkers was capable of preserving the native structure of CPE_290–319 within the IpaB-linker-CPE_290–319 structure. <i>In silico</i> analysis determined that the IpaB-CPE_194–319 3D structure was the most similar to the 3D structure of the respective native CPE domain and that it was a stable chimeric protein exposing multiple B-cell epitopes. IpaB-CPE_194–319 was designed for its capability to bind to human intestinal epithelial and M cells and to accumulate on these cells. The predicted B-cell epitopes are likely to be capable of inducing a mucosal antibody response in the human intestine against <i>Shigella</i> IpaB. This study also showed that the higher binding affinities of CPE_184–319 and CPE_194–319 to claudin molecules than those of CPE_290–319 is the result of preserving the 3D structures of CPE_184–319 and CPE_194–319 when they are linked to the C-termini of other proteins.</p