Importance of safety climate, teamwork climate and demographics: understanding nurses, allied health professionals and clerical staff perceptions of patient safety

Background: There is growing evidence regarding the importance of contextual factors for patient/staff outcomes and the likelihood of successfully implementing safety improvement interventions such as checklists; however, certain literature gaps still remain—for example, lack of research examining the interactive effects of safety constructs on outcomes. This study has addressed some of these gaps, together with adding to our understanding of how context influences safety. Purpose: The impact of staff perceptions of safety climate (ie, senior and supervisory leadership support for safety) and teamwork climate on a self-reported safety outcome (ie, overall perceptions of patient safety (PS)) were examined at a hospital in Southern Ontario. Methods: Cross-sectional survey data were collected from nurses, allied health professionals and unit clerks working on intensive care, general medicine, mental health or emergency department. Results: Hierarchical regression analyses showed that perceptions of senior leadership (p<0.001) and teamwork (p<0.001) were significantly associated with overall perceptions of PS. A non-significant association was found between perceptions of supervisory leadership and the outcome variable. However, when staff perceived poorer senior leadership support for safety, the positive effect of supervisory leadership on overall perceptions of PS became significantly stronger (p<0.05). Practice implications: Our results suggest that leadership support at one level (ie, supervisory) can substitute for the absence of leadership support for safety at another level (ie, senior level). While healthcare organisations should recruit into leadership roles and retain individuals who prioritise safety and possess adequate relational competencies, the field would now benefit from evidence regarding how to build leadership support for PS. Also, it is important to provide on-site workshops on topics (eg, conflict management) that can strengthen working relationships across professional and unit boundaries.York University Librarie

Financial social accounting matrix: concepts, constructions and theoretical framework

A Social Accounting Matrix (hereafter, SAM) is a particular tool to represent that whole economic activities incomes and expenditures flows accounts through a socio-economic system, which captures the transactions and transfers between all economic agents and institutions in the system. During the last two decades, the financial market are well developed and significantly impacts the economic growth, it will be more worthy to move from a real SAM to a Financial SAM, containing the details of the financial institutions and transaction of agents’ assets and liabilities. Therefore, this paper will discuss the outlines and constructions framework for the aggregate Financial SAM. The understanding of the structure of Financial SAM can be a database for a financial Computed General Equilibrium (CGE) model and can be used to analyze the behavior of national’s public debt.SOCIAL ACCOUNTING MATRIX (SAM), FINANCIAL, FLOW-OF-FUNDS

Altered white matter structure in auditory tracts following early monocular enucleation

Purpose: Similar to early blindness, monocular enucleation (the removal of one eye) early in life results in crossmodal behavioral and morphological adaptations. Previously it has been shown that partial visual deprivation from early monocular enucleation results in structural white matter changes throughout the visual system (Wong et al., 2018). The current study investigated structural white matter of the auditory system in adults who have undergone early monocular enucleation compared to binocular control participants. Methods: We reconstructed four auditory and audiovisual tracts of interest using probabilistic tractography and compared microstructural properties of these tracts to binocularly intact controls using standard diffusion indices. Results: Although both groups demonstrated asymmetries in indices in intrahemispheric tracts, monocular enucleation participants showed asymmetries opposite to control participants in the auditory and A1-V1 tracts. Monocularenucleation participants also demonstrated significantly lower fractional anisotropy in the audiovisual projections contralateral to the enucleated eye relative to control participants. Conclusions: Partial vision loss from early monocular enucleation results in altered structuralYork University Librarie

Yen Synchronization and Maastricht Convergence among the ASEAN-5, Japan and Korea

In this thesis, the main objective is to investigate whether ASEAN-5+2 countries meet the conditions for creating an AMU with the yen as the currency unit. First, the results of BEKK-GARCH (1, 1) and the dynamic correlation coefficients show that only Singapore, Korea, and Thailand have the potential to adopt the yen as the regional currency unit. Second, the Maastricht criteria only have a significant impact on real GDP per capita growth for Japan, Korea, Singapore and the Philippines in the long term. In addition, the Maastricht criteria show that there were symmetry impacts on the growth of real GDP per capita for Japan, Korea, Singapore and the Philippines. Thus, only these four out of the seven countries (Japan, Korea, Singapore and the Philippines) appear to be potential candidates for establishing the AMU. Overall, the findings do not suggest the possibility of a formation of a full-fledged AMU by the ASEAN-5+2 countries. However, the formation of a sub-grouping of a few of the countries in the ASEAN-5+2 is more feasible, that is Japan, Singapore, and Korea. This is because these countries have higher institutional quality and fulfill the Maastricht treaty as well as being close in exchange rate regimes, and also have symmetrical economic behavior

Perceived Usefulness of Internet for Adopters and Non-adopters: An Empirical Analysis of Retired Senior Citizens in Hong Kong

Intense competition in Hong Kong Internetservice market has resulted in increasingly sophisticatedmarketing practices by service providers, such as marketsegmentation and targeting. Senior citizens have nowbecome a focus of attention of Internet businesscompanies. However, perceived usefulness of Internet onpart of retired senior citizens has not been studiedadequately. The present study is intended to fill thisimportant gap. Survey questionnaire was employed as themeans of data collection. The main results revealed thatadopters perceive Internet services significantly moreuseful than non-adopters. However, there is no significantdifference between perceptions of male and femaleadopters

The Moderating Effect of Switching Barriers: Online Stock and Derivatives Trading

This study attempts to develop a researchmodel that examines the direct effects of customersatisfaction and switching barriers on customer retention aswell as the moderating effect of switching barriers on therelationship between customer satisfaction and customerretention in retail online stock and derivatives tradingindustry in Hong Kong. An online questionnaire wasemployed as the means of data collection. The significantpositive effects of customer satisfaction and switchingbarriers on customer retention are confirmed. In addition,the significant negative moderating effect of switchingbarriers on the relationship between customer satisfactionand customer retention are also confirmed

THE ASEAN-5 FUTURE CURRENCY: MAASTRICHT CRITERIA

In this recent decade, many of the economists and policymakers attempted to investigate the suitability of the East Asian region to form a currency union and based on the European countries experience as a benchmark. This study aims to investigate the long-run real convergence in GDP per capita growth among Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, over 1978 to 2004. The Dickey-Fuller (DF) and Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) unit root tests were conducted at first difference of GDP per capita for each country; the results demonstrated that all countries GDP per capita are stationary at first difference. The results of the Bound Testing Approach (Auto-Regression Distributed Lag (ARDL)) indicated that there is a long run relationship between variables in the Maastricht Criteria. The results showed that interest rate, inflation rate and the debt ratio experience that negative relationship to the GDP per capita. However, the exchange rate and surplus (or deficit) ratio shown the positive related to the GDP per capita. Therefore, the findings showed the ASEAN 5 countries have fulfilled the Maastricht Criteria with consistent to expected sign(s) except for Singapore’ exchange rate and Indonesia’s debt ratio. Hence, those ASEAN 5 countries in this study have potential to form a single currency.Monetary Union (MU), Bound Test (ARDL), Maastricht Criteria, Single Currency

Impact of climate change and economic factors on Malaysian food price

This paper is motivated by the increasing food price over the recent years (2010 – 2017) in Malaysia. Food is a necessity for mankind and everyone has equal rights to enjoy adequate food protecting from hunger and malnutrition. In general, we understand that food and agriculture production are highly related. Crop production is affected biophysically by climatic variables, i.e. suitable rainfall and temperature for photosynthesis process to take place. If these climatic variables alter extremely in a long-term period, crop production will be affected and crop damage can occur due to the climate change effect such as extreme flood and drought. Hence, if climate change effect is defined as a linear relationship, it will result in a misleading explanation whereby as long as rainfall and temperature increase (or decrease) it will cause the crop production to decrease (or increase). Given the problem associated with food price, this paper investigated the food price determinants by looking at both economic factors and climate change. Non-linear time series analysis namely Engle-Granger (EG) cointegration test and Error Correction Mechanism (ECM) were performed by including the determinants such as Carbon Dioxide (CO2), crude oil price, exchange rate and real gross domestic product (RGDP). The results showed that both economic Real Gross Domestic Product and climate factors jointly affect food price significantly and climate factor (CO2) exhibits a strong non-linear U-shaped impact on food price in the long run. In addition, the Error Correction Term (ECT) showed that food market will have a slower self-recovery mechanism to adjust and return the temporary food market demand-supply shock to the equilibrium

Mainland Chinese Tourists’ Expectations, Perceived Performance of and Satisfaction towards Shopping Malls in Hong Kong

Tourists from mainland China constitute one of the world's biggest and fastest-growing travel markets. The Hong Kong Tourism Board expects the frequency of the mainland Chinese tourists to grow steadily. One of the beneficiaries of this phenomenon is Hong Kong’s shopping malls. However, understanding of tourists from mainland China’s expectations from, perceived performance of and satisfaction with the shopping malls’ attributes in Hong Kong is inadequate. This study intends to fill this important gap. A survey questionnaire was employed for data collection. The main results reveal the mainland Chinese tourists’ levels of satisfaction, indifference and dissatisfaction as well as the relationship between shopping malls’ attributes and customer satisfaction