Quality Improvement Cycles that Reduced Waiting Times at Tshwane District Hospital Emergency Department

Background: Tshwane District Hospital (TDH) is a level-one hospital, delivering services in the centre of Pretoria since February 2006. It is unique in location, being only 100 meters away from the tertiary hospital, Pretoria Academic Hospital (PAH). In South Africa, public sector emergency units are under enormous pressure with large patient numbers, understaffing and poor resources. TDH Emergency Department (ED) is a typical example. An average of 3 900 patients per month visited this ED in 2006. Recurrent complaints and dissatisfaction shown by the patients about prolonged waiting times before consulting the medical practitioners (MPs) in the ED were one of the initial challenges faced by the newly established hospital. It was decided to undertake quality improvement (QI) cycles to analyse and improve the situation, using waiting time as a measure of improvement. Methods: A QI team was chosen to conduct two QI cycles. The allocated time for QI cycle 1 was from May to August 2006 and for QI cycle 2 from September to December 2006. A total of 150 waiting times of stable and unstable patients were evaluated. Fifty waiting times were recorded over a span of 24 hours for each data collection in May, September and December 2006. Waiting time was defined as the time from arrival of the patient in the unit until the start of the consultation by the MP. Surveys were done in May and September to analyse the problems causing prolonged waiting times. The implemented change included instituting a functional triage system, improvement of the process of up- and down-referrals to and from the tertiary hospital, easy access to stock, reorganisation of doctors' duty roster, reorganisation of the academic programme, announcement on waiting time to patients, nurses carrying out minor procedures and availability of reference books. Results: The median waiting times for stable patients were as follows: May 2006: 545 minutes (range 200 to 1 260), September 2006: 230 minutes (range 15 to 480) and December 2006: 89 minutes (range 15 to 230). There was a significant difference among these waiting times for May, September and December 2006 (p < 0.001; Kruskal-Wallis H test). The median waiting times for unstable patients were as follows: May 2006: zero minutes (range 0 to 30), September 2006: zero minutes (range 0 to 3) and December 2006: 0.5 minutes (range 0 to 2). There was no difference among the waiting times for unstable patients for May, September and December 2006 (p = 0.90; Kruskal-Wallis H test). Conclusion: This QI exercise identified problems causing prolonged waiting time for stable patients at TDH ED. It rectified most of the identified problems. However, goals regarding registration and laboratory delays could not be successfully achieved. This study showed the significance of QI cycles in improving waiting times for stable patients at TDH ED without any additional financial or human resources. This was done without compromising the time taken to see unstable patients. South African Family Practice Vol. 50 (6) 2008: pp. 43-43

Knowledge of and misconceptions about the spread and prevention of HIV infection among older urban women attending the Tshwane District Hospital, South Africa

Background: Statistics around the world show a rapid increase in HIV infection in the older population. Many older women remain sexually active and are therefore exposed to heterosexual transmission of HIV infection. Older women are most likely considered respected opinion leaders within the families and communities and are likely to influence others’ attitudes and behaviours. An increase in knowledge through information plays a fundamental role and is a prerequisite for behavioural change that may prevent new HIV infections. The purpose of the current study was to assess the knowledge and misconceptions regarding the spread and prevention of HIV in older women attending the Tshwane District Hospital (TDH) in South Africa.Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study of 100 women, aged 50 to 80 years, attending the TDH out-patient section during November and December 2006 was done. The levels of knowledge were determined by using a directed questionnaire.Results: Eight per cent of the participants answered all the questions correctly, showing knowledge gaps in the remaining 92% (95% confidence interval: 86.7%–97.3%). Many participants were unaware of the protective effects of condom use, especially female condoms, and of HIV spread by anal transmission, the sharing of needles and blood transfusion. Three or more misconceptions were present in 48% of the participants, such as HIV spread by casual contact, the sharing of personal items, air-borne infection, mosquito bites, HIV testing and AIDS prevention or cure by traditional medicines or alternatives. Sixty-two per cent of the older women were found to have adequate knowledge (95% confidence interval: 52%–71.5%), knowing the basic concepts regarding HIV transmission.Conclusion: There is a significant need for HIV-related preventive health education in older women, not only to decrease potential high-risk behaviours, but also to reduce unnecessary feelings of anxiety and misconceptions. Family physicians, due to their unique role, might be able to use the present study in their practices in order to optimise the planning and structuring of awar eness interventions and prevention programmes.Keywords: knowledge; HIV; misconceptions; beliefs; older women; transmission; preventio

Four generated, squarefree, monomial ideals

Let $I\supsetneq J$ be two squarefree monomial ideals of a polynomial algebra over a field generated in degree $\geq d$, resp. $\geq d+1$ . Suppose that $I$ is either generated by three monomials of degrees $d$ and a set of monomials of degrees $\geq d+1$, or by four special monomials of degrees $d$. If the Stanley depth of $I/J$ is $\leq d+1$ then the usual depth of $I/J$ is $\leq d+1$ too.Comment: to appear in "Bridging Algebra, Geometry, and Topology", Editors Denis Ibadula, Willem Veys, Springer Proceed. in Math. and Statistics, 96, 201

PENGARUH KOMPETENSI GURU TERHADAP PERILAKU PROFESIONAL GURU SEKOLAH DASAR DI KECAMATAN LIUKANG TANGAYA KABUPATEN PANGKEP

Jenis penelitian ini adalah penelitian kuantitatif, dan tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui dan menganalisis (1) Kompetensi guru SD di Kecamatan Liukang Tangaya Kabupaten Pangkep, (2) Perilaku profesional guru SD di Kecamatan Liukang Tangaya Kabupaten Pangkep, (3) Besarnya pengaruh kompetensi guru terhadap perilaku profesional guru SD di Kecamatan Liukang Tangaya Kabupaten Pangkep. Populasi penelitian ini adalah semua guru pada SD di Kecamatan Liukang Tangaya Kabupaten Pangkep yang berjumlah 341 guru. Sampel yang diambil dalam penelitian ini adalah 55 orang. Teknik pengumpulan data yang digunakan yaitu (1) Observasi, (2) Angket, (3) Data dokumentasi, dan teknik analisis data yang digunakan adalah analisis statistik deskriptif dan analisis statistik inferensial. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa : (1) Pencapaian kompetensi guru SD di Kecamatan Liukang Tangaya Kabupaten Pangkep tergolong dalam kategori baik. Dalam hal ini didukung oleh penguasaan guru terhadap kompetensi pedagogik, Kepribadian, Profesional dan sosial (2) Perilaku profesional guru SD di Kecamatan Liukang Tangaya Kabupaten Pangkep tergolong dalam kategori sangat baik, (3) Kompetensi guru berpengaruh secara signifikan terhadap perilaku profesional guru SD di Kecamatan Liukang Tangaya Kabupaten Pangkep. Artinya, semakin baik pencapaian kompetensi guru, maka semakin tinggi pula perilaku profesional guru dalam melaksanakan tugasnya terutama dalam hal pelaksanaan proses belajar mengajar. Kata kunci : Kompetensi, guru, dan profesional.

Deep Clustering for Data Cleaning and Integration

Deep Learning (DL) techniques now constitute the state-of-theart for important problems in areas such as text and image processing, and there have been impactful results that deploy DL in several data management tasks. Deep Clustering (DC) has recently emerged as a sub-discipline of DL, in which data representations are learned in tandem with clustering, with a view to automatically identifying the features of the data that lead to improved clustering results. While DC has been used to good effect in several domains, particularly in image processing, the potential of DC for data management tasks remains unexplored. In this paper, we address this gap by investigating the suitability of DC for data cleaning and integration tasks, specifically schema inference, entity resolution and domain discovery, from the perspective of tables, rows and columns, respectively. In this setting, we compare and contrast several DC and non-DC clustering algorithms using standard benchmarks. The results show, among other things, that the most effective DC algorithms consistently outperform non-DC clustering algorithms for data integration tasks. Experiments also show consistently strong performance compared with state-of-the-art bespoke algorithms for each of the data integration tasks

Deep Clustering for Data Cleaning and Integration

Deep Learning (DL) techniques now constitute the state-of-the-art for important problems in areas such as text and image processing, and there have been impactful results that deploy DL in several data management tasks. Deep Clustering (DC) has recently emerged as a sub-discipline of DL, in which data representations are learned in tandem with clustering, with a view to automatically identifying the features of the data that lead to improved clustering results. While DC has been used to good effect in several domains, particularly in image processing, the impact of DC on mainstream data management tasks remains unexplored. In this paper, we address this gap by investigating the impact of DC in data cleaning and integration tasks, specifically schema inference, entity resolution, and domain discovery, tasks that represent clustering from the perspective of tables, rows, and columns, respectively. In this setting, we compare and contrast several DC and non-DC clustering algorithms using standard benchmarks. The results show, among other things, that the most effective DC algorithms consistently outperform non-DC clustering algorithms for data integration tasks. However, we observed a significant correlation between the DC method and embedding approaches for rows, columns, and tables, highlighting that the suitable combination can enhance the efficiency of DC methods.Comment: The following enhancements have been carried out in the updated version of the manuscript: *Evaluated each data integration problem on additional datasets. *Added more DC and SC methods to the evaluation *Discussed algorithmic-specific observation

Temperature dependence of the single photon source efficiency based on QD-cQED

We study a photonic circuit consisting of a quantum dot, QD, coupled to a photon cavity over a wide range of temperature up to room temperature. A key component of such a system is presented here in the form of a Purcell-enhanced single-photon source based on Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics, cQED. We use a real set of pure dephasing data extracted from experimental measurements of InGaAs QD to calculate the effective QD-cavity coupling strength, the Purcell factor, and the single photon efficiency emerged from the QD-cavity system in the cases without and with detuning. In the non-detuned system, the effective coupling strength between the QD and the resonator decreases with increasing temperature, results in a decrease in efficiency. However, when the temperature of the QD-cavity system increases under Purcell effect conditions, the detuned QD-cavity system induces spontaneous emission rate enhancement. As a result, we found that the increase in efficiency can be obtained under a certain condition, when the maximum effective coupling strength and the Purcell factor are related to the spontaneous emission and the pure dephasing rates. Additionally, the influences of the pumping mechanism on the efficiency of the QD-system were examined and showed that the pumping process can be used to further increase in efficiency. Our results can be advantageous for advanced quantum optics applications once temperature is taken into account.Comment: RevTeX - pdfLaTeX, 9 pages with 10 included pdf figure