Informal Action—Adjudication—Rule Making: Some Recent Developments in Federal Administrative Law

Direct energy consumption of ICT hardware is only “half the story.” In order to get the “whole story,” energy consumption during the entire life cycle has to be taken into account. This chapter is a first step toward a more comprehensive picture, showing the “grey energy” (i.e., the overall energy requirements) as well as the releases (into air, water, and soil) during the entire life cycle of exemplary ICT hardware devices by applying the life cycle assessment method. The examples calculated show that a focus on direct energy consumption alone fails to take account of relevant parts of the total energy consumption of ICT hardware as well as the relevance of the production phase. As a general tendency, the production phase is more and more important the smaller (and the more energy-efficient) the devices are. When in use, a tablet computer is much more energy-efficient than a desktop computer system with its various components, so its production phase has a much greater relative importance. Accordingly, the impacts due to data transfer when using Internet services are also increasingly relevant the smaller the end-user device is, reaching up to more than 90 % of the overall impact when using a tablet computer.QC 20140825</p

Pharmacists' clinical roles and activities in inpatient hospice and palliative care: a scoping review.

BACKGROUND Pharmacists contribute to medication safety by providing their services in various settings. However, standardized definitions of the role of pharmacists in hospice and palliative care (HPC) are lacking. AIM The purpose of this scoping review was to provide an overview of the evidence on the role of pharmacists and to map clinical activities in inpatient HPC. METHOD We performed a scoping review according to the PRISMA-ScR extension in CINAHL, Embase, and PubMed. We used the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists (ASHP) Guidelines on the Pharmacist's Role in Palliative and Hospice Care as a framework for standardized categorization of the identified roles and clinical activities. RESULTS After screening 635 records (published after January 1st, 2000), the scoping review yielded 23 publications reporting various pharmacy services in HPC. The articles addressed the five main categories in the following descending order: 'Medication order review and reconciliation', 'Medication counseling, education and training', 'Administrative Roles', 'Direct patient care', and 'Education and scholarship'. A total of 172 entries were mapped to the subcategories that were added to the main categories. CONCLUSION This scoping review identified a variety of pharmacists' roles and clinical activities. The gathered evidence will help to establish and define the role of pharmacists in inpatient hospice and palliative care

Prescription Trends in Hospice Care: A Longitudinal Retrospective and Descriptive Medication Analysis.

BACKGROUND In hospice and palliative care, drug therapy is essential for symptom control. However, drug regimens are complex and prone to drug-related problems. Drug regimens must be simplified to improve quality of life and reduce risks associated with drug-related problems, particularly at end-of-life. To support clinical guidance towards a safe and effective drug therapy in hospice care, it is important to understand prescription trends. OBJECTIVES To explore prescription trends and describe changes to drug regimens in inpatient hospice care. DESIGN We performed a retrospective longitudinal and descriptive analysis of prescriptions for regular and as-needed (PRN) medication at three timepoints in deceased patients of one Swiss hospice. SETTING/SUBJECTS Prescription records of all patients ( 18 years) with an inpatient stay of three days and longer (admission and time of death in 2020) were considered eligible for inclusion. RESULTS Prescription records of 58 inpatients (average age 71.7 ± 12.8 [37-95] years) were analyzed. The medication analysis showed that polypharmacy prevalence decreased from 74.1% at admission to 13.8% on the day of death. For regular medication, overall numbers of prescriptions decreased over the patient stay while PRN medication decreased after the first consultation by the attending physician and increased slightly towards death. CONCLUSIONS Prescription records at admission revealed high initial rates of polypharmacy that were reduced steadily until time of death. These findings emphasize the importance of deprescribing at end-of-life and suggest pursuing further research on the contribution of clinical guidance towards optimizing drug therapy and deprescribing in inpatient hospice care

Measuring and Examining the Relevance of Discretionary Corporate Social Responsibility in Tourism: Some Preliminary Evidence From The UK Conference Sector

This article investigates the implementation of environmentally focused discretionary corporate social responsibility (CSR) within the U.K. conference sector. A new framework is proposed that organizes and communicates information detailing business performance regarding 10 environmental policy initiatives (expressed by the acronym GREENER) using a CSR response scale (expressed by the acronym VENUE). This GREENER VENUE framework fills a void in the CSR literature by focusing on discretionary practices, by exhibiting psychometric and conceptual properties enabling its application within a multitude of contexts. Grounded in theory, the framework is simple to implement, practical, easily understandable, and highly relatable. Applying the GREENER VENUE framework to data collected via a self-administered Internet questionnaire of the U.K. conference sector reveals the majority of conference venues are classified as Eager. The study also examines the efficacy of the proposed framework toward influencing U.K. venues’ performance on a range of environmentally friendly best practices relative to environmental accreditation

Value of information analysis for assessing risks and benefits of nanotechnology innovation

Background Decisions on adoption of technological innovation are difficult for manufacturers, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who have limited resources but often drive product development. Decision analytic methods have been applied to regulatory issues in the nanotechnology sector but such applications to market innovation are not found in the literature. Value of information (VoI) is a decision analytic method for quantifying the benefit of acquiring additional information to support such analyses that can be used to help in a wide range of manufacturing decisions. Results This paper develops a VoI methodology for comparative evaluation of technological alternatives and applies it to a real case study aimed at the selection between a coating system containing nano-TiO2 and alternative conventional paints. The aim of this approach is to aid SMEs and larger industries in deciding whether to further develop the nano-enabled product and in evaluating to which extent investing in more research about risks and/or benefits would be worthwhile. Conclusions Results demonstrated how prioritization in information gaining can improve risk–benefit analyses and impact on both risk management and innovation decision making. By applying the proposed methodology, SMEs and larger industries might easily identify optimal data gathering and/or research strategies to formulate solid development and risk management plans