Ethical stakeholder engagement: Exploring the relationship between corporations and NGOs in Thailand, Romania, and the UK

The under-theorised field of ethical stakeholder engagement is explored in a three-country study of business-NGO relationships. The influence of the relationships upon the formation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice and theory is considered through discussion of stakeholder theory and ethical stakeholder engagement and the practices of business-NGO linkages in Romania, Thailand and the United Kingdom. The study applied a qualitative approach with 32 in-depth interviews with senior CSR and NGO practitioners. The outcomes include the conceptualisation of business-NGO relationships in three different cultures, the management of engagement and the preparation of CSR communication for relevant stakeholders

Association between perceived social support and occupational burnout in Greek nurses: A preliminary study

Purpose: To examine the relationship between perceived social support and burnout among nurses. Materials and methods: The participants of this study were 42 Greek nurses of a general hospital which were randomly selected. Data was collected using the Greek version of Maslach’s Burnout Inventory for burnout assessment and the Greek version of ‘The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support’ for the assessment of participants’ levels of perceived social support. A self-administered questionnaire with questions about socio-demographic and work-related characteristics was used. Descriptive statistics and Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient analysis were conducted. Results: The results showed a negative association between emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and perceived social support, especially from friends. Social support from significant others found to have the highest impact while family support found to have the least impact in nurses’ social support. Conclusions: Findings could be applied to the assessment of burnout in Greek nurses and to future prevention of burnout through the enhancement of perceived social support

The Mediterranean Island Wetlands (MedIsWet) inventory: strengths and shortfalls of the currently available floristic data

MedIsWet (Conservation of the island wetlands of the Mediterranean Basin) is a MAVA funded project which aims at investigating all seasonal or permanent island wetlands both natural and artificial, with a minimum extent of 0.1 hectares. More than 16,000 wetlands from almost all the Mediterranean, including islands from France, Italy, Malta, Croatia, Cyprus, Tunisia, Turkey, Greece and Spain were mapped. Over 2,500 of them were inventoried in the field and more than 500 scientific contributions catalogued. In total, more than 35,000 plant occurrences were uploaded, in a standardised and comparable way, on the national open-source web portals. These can be related to the recorded threats, uses and other spatially retrievable information. Here, we show strengths and shortfalls of the already available information about the floristic records. Although further improvements are needed, we discuss how these data can be used for research and policy actions and to develop conservation projects

Medication adherence among diabetic and hypertensive patients in Al-Qassim region of Saudi Arabia

Non-adherence to medication is often an unrecognized risk factor that contributes to failure of the therapeutic plan. The purpose of the study was to identify factors related to high, medium and low medication adherence among adult Saudi patients with hypertension and diabetes mellitus. This study is designed as a descriptive cross sectional survey and was conducted in three tertiary care hospitals of Al-Qassim province of Saudi Arabia. The data was collected using the 8-item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS-8) and analyzed by SPSS. Three levels of adherence were considered based on the following scores: 0 to <6 (low); 6 to <8 (medium); 8 (high). Of the 396 patients interviewed, 52% reported low adherence to prescribed medication. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was conducted. Gender, age, literacy level, duration of illness and type of chronic disease were negatively associated with medication adherence. The study shows very high proportion of low and medium adherence on long term medication, which may be responsible for the failure of achieving therapeutic outcome. Further investigation is required to evaluate the applicability of MMAS-8 as a tool of measuring medication adherence among Saudi patients with chronic diseases. Adherence enhancing strategies should also be evaluated in separate patients group

The study of quality of life: Interview with Konstadina Griva

10.5964/ejop.v9i1.582Europe's Journal of Psychology914-

Preventing maritime transport of pathogens: The remarkable antimicrobial properties of silver-supported catalysts for ship ballast water disinfection

Ship ballast water (SBW) antimicrobial treatment is considered as a priority issue for the shipping industry. The present work investigates the possibility of utilizing antimicrobial catalysis as an effective method for the treatment of SBW. Taking into account the well-known antimicrobial properties of ionic silver (Ag+), five silver-supported catalysts (Ag/gamma-Al2O3) with various loadings (0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, and 1 wt%) were prepared and examined for the antimicrobial treatment of SBW. The bactericidal activity of the aforementioned catalysts was investigated towards the inhibition of Escherichia coli (Gram-negative) and Escherichia faecalis (Gram-positive) bacteria. Catalytic experiments were conducted in a three-phase continuous flow stirred tank reactor, used in a semi-batch mode. It was found that using the catalyst with the lowest metal loading, the inhibition of E. coli reached 95.8% after 30 minutes of treatment of an E. coli bacterial solution, while the inhibition obtained for E. faecalis was 76.2% after 60 minutes of treatment of an E. faecalis bacterial solution. Even better results (100% inhibition after 5 min of reaction) were obtained using the catalysts with higher Ag loadings. The results of the present work indicate that the prepared monometallic catalysts exert their antimicrobial activity within a short period of time, revealing, for the first time ever, that the field of antimicrobial heterogeneous catalysis using deposited ionic silver on a solid support may prove decisive for the disinfection of SBW