Quality of care in University Hospitals in Saudi Arabia: systematic review

Objectives: To identify the key issues, problems, barriers and challenges particularly in relation to the quality of care in university hospitals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), and to provide recommendations for improvement. Methods: A systematic search was carried out using five electronic databases, for articles published between January 2004 and January 2015. We included studies conducted in university hospitals in KSA that focused on the quality of healthcare. Three independent reviewers verified that the studies met the inclusion criteria, assessed the quality of the studies and extracted their relevant characteristics. All studies were assessed using the Institute of Medicine indicators of quality of care. Results: Of the 1430 references identified in the initial search, eight studies were identified that met the inclusion criteria. The included studies clearly highlight a need to improve the quality of healthcare delivery, specifically in areas of patient safety, clinical effectiveness and patient-centredness, at university hospitals in KSA. Problems with quality of care could be due to failures of leadership, a requirement for better management and a need to establish a culture of safety alongside leadership reform in university hospitals. Lack of instructions given to patients and language communication were key factors impeding optimum delivery of patient-centred care. Decisionmakers in KSA university hospitals should consider programmes and assessment tools to reveal problems and issues related to language as a barrier to quality of care. Conclusions: This review exemplifies the need for further improvement in the quality of healthcare in university hospitals in KSA. Many of the problems identified in this review could be addressed by establishing an independent body in KSA, which could monitor healthcare services and push for improvements in efficiency and quality of care

Correlations between axial stiffness and microstructure of a species of bamboo

Bamboo is a ubiquitous monocotyledonous flowering plant and is a member of the true grass family Poaceae . In many parts of the world, it is widely used as a structural material especially in scaffolding and buildings. In spite of its wide use, there is no accepted methodology for standardizing a species of bamboo for a particular structural purpose. The task of developing structure–property correlations is complicated by the fact that bamboo is a hierarchical material whose structure at the nanoscopic level is not very well explored. However, we show that as far as stiffness is concerned, it is possible to obtain reliable estimates of important structural properties like the axial modulus from the knowledge of certain key elements of the microstructure. Stiffness of bamboo depends most sensitively on the size and arrangement of the fibre sheaths surrounding the vascular bundles and the arrangement of crystalline cellulose microfibrils in their secondary cell walls. For the species of bamboo studied in this work, we have quantitatively determined the radial gradation that the arrangement of fibres renders to the structure. The arrangement of the fibres gives bamboo a radially graded property variation across its cross section

Self modulated dynamics of a relativistic charged particle beam in plasma wake field excitation

Self modulated dynamics of a relativistic charged particle beam is reviewed within the context of the theory of plasma wake field excitation. The self-consistent description of the beam dynamics is provided by coupling the Vlasov equation with a Poisson-type equation relating the plasma wake potential to the beam density. An analysis of the beam envelope self-modulation is then carried out and the criteria for the occurrence of the instability are discussed thereby.Comment: This is a 10 pages manuscript which contain 4 figures. This manuscript is recently submitted in 'Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A' as a proceeding of the conference 'EAAC 2015

Semi-Active Suspension System Simulation Using SIMULINK

This paper describes a simulation design procedure aimed to achieve improved performance of the vehicle semi-active suspension. The issues related to the design of vehicle models with skyhook control are discussed. Three basic models with linear parameters are explained: quarter-, half- and full-car. The road profile is generated from a spatial power spectral density (PSD) to represent a typical road (based on ISO 8608 classification). The normalized root-mean-square values of sprung mass acceleration and tyre load forces are used to assess the vehicle ride comfort and handling performance based on five benchmark road profiles employed in industrial tests

Probabilistic Methods of Quantitative Risk Analysis: A Case Study with Bayesian Networks and Petri Nets Approach

PresentationConventional risk assessment methods such as Bow Ties have been incapable of capturing the dynamic nature of a system and hence have failed to properly predict the time dependent failure of barriers. Modifications made to incorporate time dependencies in such methods have not found wide application yet. Rapidly changing physical parameters necessitate techniques capable of considering the dynamic aspects of a system throughout its lifetime. The present work is aimed at demonstrating the applicability of Bayesian Networks and Petri Nets to capture the time dependencies of systems to carry out a quantitative risk analysis. A case study is to be carried out using both Bayesian Network and Petri Nets to provide an insight into the pros and cons of using each method to model the system. This insight is to provide a starting point for the development of a model that will enable us to conduct a quantitative risk analysis considering all factors that can lead to an incident

Investigation on The Factors Affecting Lifestyle of Professionals in The Construction Industries (Kerala and Tamil Nadu)

One of the vital assets of any industry is human resources. In general, the majority of works are carried out by humans in the construction industries. Study on the assessment of quality of civil engineering construction professionals’ lifestyle is very limited and hence the motto of this study is to understand the lifestyle of construction professionals and to assess the various factors affecting the lifestyle of them. To analyze the effects of societal behavior and to develop a model to study the impact of various factors in a construction professional’s lifestyle; a mixed approach had been adopted in this study. The instrument used in the study was a questionnaire survey conducted from 180 construction professionals working in different firms in Kerala and Tamil Nadu states of India and these were analyzed using structural equation modeling techniques. Factors affecting the construction professional’s lifestyle are: financial factors, organizational factors, quality, health and environmental factors, work-related factors, and social factors. Hence by foreseeing the factors and adopting favorable changes in a construction professional’s life, they may attain a better lifestyle. This study recommends the strategy to be considered for the improvements of lifestyle of the construction professional especially for “Civil Engineersâ€