Bringing about Changes at a Large Engineering College: Lessons for Designers and Implementers of Large Scale Change Efforts

This paper outlines a change management program undertaken at Maritime Engineering Institute in India. The intervention came in the form of a focused three month effort where the first author, a professor of OB at a leading management school in India was invited to stay on the campus of the institute to familiarize herself with the organization and the processes, and suggest necessary changes. The paper presents the change management process in detail. The events and happenings during this intervention are discussed in terms of the dilemmas it posed for the consultant and in retrospect for exploring why the change process could not be institutionalized. Lessons from the intervention are offered to help deal with the less obvious and critical issues that can emerge as stumbling blocks in the successful implementation of any change process.

The relationship between mentor, self-efficacy, job satisfaction and career success

Career Success is an important element in an employee‘s career attainment. This is because one‘s achievement in their working life is determined on how successful they are. Career success does not only give an employee a sense of accomplishment but also gives the organisation an ownership on workforce retention. This study was carried out to examine the relationship between mentors, self-efficacy, job satisfaction and career success among healthcare providers in a private hospital in Kedah, Malaysia. There are three main objectives for this study, 1) to examine the relationship of mentor and career success, 2) to identify the relationship between self-efficacy and career success and 3) to examine the influence of job satisfaction in determining career success. A cross sectional study was chosen for this study. A total of 155 respondents took part in this study. Data were collected through a selfadministered questionnaire. Gathered data were analysed using Statistical Packages for Social Sciences, version 19.0 (SPSS). This study applied descriptive analysis and inferential statistics to examine the relationship among the variables. Self-efficacy was found to be the most significant variable that determines career success among healthcare providers, followed by mentor. However, job satisfaction was found to be insignificant determinant for career success. The implication of this study is that attention should be given to create more opportunity for the healthcare providers to carve a successful career in their work environment. Future research on other factors that might influence career success like variation in working environment, employee perceptions and management system need to be carried out

Risk Assessment Strategy for Late Preterm Infants

Late preterm infants (LPIs), born between 34 and 36 6/7 weeks gestation, face many challenges. These infants comprise 71% of preterm births and 8.7% of all births in the United States (Hamilton, Martin, & Ventura, 2010). They have a higher incidence of medical complications than their full-term counterparts leading to longer hospital stays or readmissions (Consortium on Safe Labor, 2010; Khashu, Narayanan, Bhargava, & Osiovich, 2009; Pulver et al., 2010). The nurse’s role in educating parents of LPIs is pertinent as these babies are at heightened risk for a number of significant complications. The purpose of this project is to determine if adopting an evidence-based parent teaching model of care will improve clinical outcomes, build parents’ skills and self-confidence in caring for their LPIs at home, and reduce hospital readmissions. “Late Preterm Infants: What Parents Need to Know,” a free patient education brochure, which is available in English and Spanish from Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurse’s LPI Initiative. The parents were given a pre and post questionnaire on the material presented in the teaching. Follow-up phone calls were made to collect data regarding emergency room visits or hospitalizations to the mother at 1 month from the discharge date.Even though there were no readmissions between the two groups, the study shows a significant gap in the parental knowledge in taking care of these infants. Hence, this researcher felt the implementation of a LPI teaching tool ensures care is evidence-based and provides a framework for measuring patient outcomes

Culture and COVID-19: Impact of Cross-Cultural Dimensions on Behavioral Responses

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has impacted every sphere of human life across all nations of the world. Countries adapted and responded to the crisis in different ways with varied outcomes and different degrees of success in mitigation efforts. Studies have examined institutional and policy-based responses to the pandemic. However, to gain a holistic understanding of the pandemic response strategy and its effectiveness, it is also important to understand the cultural foundations of a society driving its response behavior. Towards that end, this entry focuses on a few key cultural dimensions of difference across countries and proposes that national culture is related to the protective behavior adopted by societies during COVID-19. The cultural dimensions examined in relation to COVID-19 include the dimensions of individualism vs. collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and femininity, and future orientation. Inferences are drawn from academic research, published data, and discernible indicators of social behavior. The entry provides pointers for each dimension of culture and proposes that cultural awareness be made an important element of policy making while responding to crises such as COVID-19

Closed atraumatic flexor hallucis longus tendon rupture following hallux valgus correction repaired using a turn down flap

A case report of closed atraumatic rupture of flexor hallucis longus (FHL) tendon few months after hallux valgus correction in a high functioning individual is presented. There have been only two cases of FHL tendon rupture reported following hallux valgus correction in literature till now. Our patient underwent Hallux valgus corrective osteotomy, 4 months after which he presented with rupture of the FHL tendon, he subsequently underwent successful surgical turn down flap repair with good clinical outcome. Closed atraumatic rupture of FHL tendon as an isolated injury is a rare event evidenced by systematic review reporting only 10 cases in literature till now. Low clinical suspicion of FHL rupture in closed foot injuries could be one factor resulting in fewer cases being reported in literature. Acute rupture of FHL tendon following open foot injuries and partial closed rupture due to tendinitis in dancers have been reported frequently in literature. In conclusion, we emphasize careful handling of FHL tendon while performing corrective osteotomy of the hallux in any patient. Although, turn down flap is a well-documented technique to bridge gaps and repair chronic tendo-achilles rupture, we were able to replicate the same technique in our patient and produce good functional result using this effective tendon repair technique to bridge segmental gap as evidence by return of almost normal power of great toe plantar flexion

MAIL SORTER USING LABVIEW

The Indian postal system is the largest networks in the world. Being the 7th largest country in the world, major population of the country is rural based, where the basic amenities of life is a sweet dream. In such a scenario, having an efficient mail delivery system is essential. Hence, to eliminate the drawbacks in other processes, we propose to fully automate the sorting process. Unlike the code generation technique, it neither requires any human intervention to generate a code based on the pin code nor will be a problem in case of absence of the pin code. The principle used for sorting is the Optical Character Recognition using LabVIEW software. Camera, placed over the slide unit captures the image of the address. The pin code or the state (in the absence of the pin code) is selected and compared with a set of trained characters in the data base. On finding a positive match, based on the first two digits of the pin code or the first four letters of the state, the mail is segregated by the LabVIEW program involving OCR technique. The processed data is sent to the real time application by the DAQ card, which activates the actuating arm(servo motor) to allow the letters to move to the respective stack(zone) and thus sorting the mails automatically, reducing the human effort and errors

Production and characterization of antimicrobials from isolate Pantoea agglomerans of Medicago sativa plant rhizosphere soil

Due to rise in drug resistance among pathogens, there is always an urge to look for new drug alternatives. So in this study we aimed to identify the unexplored rhizosphere microflora of alfalfa plant for new antimicrobials. With initial screening for isolates from rhizosphere region for antibacterial activity against selected bacterial pathogens, the isolate AL10 had better activity selected for this study. The isolate mass was cultured and secondary metabolites were extracted using ethyl acetate and subjected to FTIR and GC-MS analysis. Based on functional diversity analysis, the isolate subjected to anti-bacterial activity revealed significant activity against Streptococcus pneumonia, Klebsiella, S. aureus with zone of inhibition in the range of18-20 mm. Based on GC-MS analysis report ten compounds were identified and 1-Octadecane and 1-nonadecanol were found to be responsible for bio-activity. FT-IR results showed that N-H stretching functional group was dominantly present in the extract. Molecular identification of the isolate by 16S rRNA sequencing showed the isolate as Pantoea agglomerans. The results showed that the isolate P.agglomerans, gram negative bacteria had wide antibacterial activity due to 1-Octadecane and 1-nonadecanol. Though Alfalfa plant has been described for various biological activities, this is a first report on rhizosphere region of plant reporting for antibacterial potential microbes