Measuring Hospital Performance: The Importance of Process Measures

Evaluates the effectiveness of Hospital Quality Alliance standards, and identifies specific activities hospitals can work on to improve performance and deliver higher quality health care

Learning from writing reflective learning journals in a theory-based translation module: students’ perspectives

This paper reports on an action research project intended to engage undergraduate translation students in learning translation theories. Students were guided to write reflective learning journal entries as part of their assessment in a translation theory-based module. Two questionnaires were designed to elicit data, mainly in terms of students’ perception of translation theories, both at the beginning and at the end of the term, and students’ experiences of writing reflective learning journals. The data suggests that most students seem to think of translation theories as guidelines, methods or techniques, both at the beginning and at the end of the term, even though they also claim that writing reflective learning journals changes the way they view translation theories to a certain extent and, consequently, helps them to learn these theories. This study demonstrates that with careful design and instruction, the educational value of learning journals can be successfully applied to a theory-based module within a subject area that is not traditionally practice- or vocation-oriented in higher education

Problem-solving and decision-making in translation revision: two case studies

This project investigates two young professional translators’ problem-solving and decision-making behaviour during revision processes. It sets out to qualitatively describe the complexity of interplay involved in problem-solving and decision-making in translation revision, using think-aloud protocols as a research method. The data I elicited suggest that, for a revision point to occur, the translator first has to find a translation problem. However, the translation problem itself can evolve over time in the revision process in either a divergent or convergent manner. In other words, a single translation problem can be subdivided into several smaller problems and be tackled individually. Meanwhile, the translator may choose to merge several problems into a single problem that requires a holistic problem-solving approach. In terms of decision-making, the translator does not generally verbalise his/her reasons for choosing a translation solution. Nevertheless, s/he has an appropriateness threshold in mind, so that s/he can judge and compare the appropriateness of translation choices and make a decision accordingly. A tentative model of end-revision problem-solving and decision-making has been produced to summarise the findings of this project

Spontaneous breaking of the Fermi surface symmetry in the t-J model: a numerical study

We present a variational Monte Carlo (VMC) study of spontaneous Fermi surface symmetry breaking in the t-J model. We find that the variational energy of a Gutzwiller projected Fermi sea is lowered by allowing for a finite asymmetry between the x- and the y-directions. However, the best variational state remains a pure superconducting state with d-wave symmetry, as long as the underlying lattice is isotropic. Our VMC results are in good overall agreement with slave boson mean field theory (SBMFT) and renormalized mean field theory (RMFT), although apparent discrepancies do show up in the half-filled limit, revealing some limitations of mean field theories. VMC and complementary RMFT calculations also confirm the SBMFT predictions that many-body interactions can enhance any anisotropy in the underlying crystal lattice. Thus, our results may be of consequence for the description of strongly correlated superconductors with an anisotropic lattice structure.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures; final versio