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Study Program (study + program)
Selected AbstractsBringing Practitioner Experience into the Classroom: The United Nations Intensive Summer Study ProgramINTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 4 2004Courtney B. Smith Diplomatic practitioners and policy makers represent an important, although frequently neglected, resource for teaching about international relations. The insights and stories provided by practitioners regarding key processes and events are often able to inspire our students to engage complex material and to play a much more active role in their own learning. While it is possible to argue that any type of practitioner contact is beneficial in terms of going beyond the material covered in textbooks, there are definite challenges associated with how to most effectively integrate these experiences with overall student learning. What type of format is most conducive to providing students with an insider's view? What type of preparation is required before contact with practitioners? How can student learning be evaluated in terms of assignments and debriefing activities? And finally, are traditional student feedback mechanisms appropriate for a course that involves a substantial practitioner component? This article investigates each of these challenges in the course of discussing one mechanism for bringing practitioner experience into the classroom, the United Nations Intensive Summer Study Program. [source] The collaborative practice model for bipolar disorder: design and implementation in a multi-site randomized controlled trialBIPOLAR DISORDERS, Issue 5 2001Mark S BauerArticle first published online: 7 JUL 200 Bipolar disorder remains a high morbidity and costly illness in general clinical practice, despite the availability of efficacious medications. This ,efficacy,effectiveness gap'[1,2] may be addressed by better organizing systems of care. One type of intervention is the ,collaborative practice model' which can be defined as an organization of care that a) emphasizes development in the patient of illness management skills, and b) supports provider capability and availability in order to c) engage patients in timely, joint decision-making regarding their illness. This article describes such a collaborative practice model for bipolar disorder, designed to be widely adoptable and sustainable in general clinical practice. The first part of the article describes the theoretical background from which the collaborative practice approach developed, emphasizing its origins in the lithium clinics of the 1970s, in nursing theory and practice, and more recently in the management of chronic medical diseases. The second part describes the structure of one such intervention, the Bipolar Disorders Program (BDP) developed in the Veterans Affairs health care system. The third part summarizes results from single-site studies of the intervention. The fourth part describes several key issues in its implementation in an ongoing multi-site randomized controlled trial, VA Cooperative Study Program (CSP) #430. Data to date indicate that such collaborative practice interventions may improve important process and intermediate outcome variables for bipolar disorder. The BDP provides an example of a multi-faceted collaborative practice model that can be manualized and implemented across multiple sites in a randomized controlled trial. [source] Looking through the Lens of Gender: A Postmodern Critique of a Modern Housing ParadigmJOURNAL OF INTERIOR DESIGN, Issue 2 2002Lucinda Kaukas Havenband M.A., M.Phil. ABSTRACT The shift from a modern to postmodern paradigm has dramatically impacted the nature and content of academic inquiry and has opened new categories and methods for research. Interior design has been traditionally critiqued on the basis of aesthetics, formal qualities, function, health and safety, and social/behavioral factors. A postmodern critique expands that criteria to include analysis of how designs may be inscribed with particular ideologies and meanings and consideration of how these meanings may empower or disempower certain groups, or philosophies. In a feminist critique, that analysis considers specifically the ideology of gender. This paper will demonstrate the use of the postmodern deconstructive method of "close reading" in a feminist critique of the Case Study program, a paradigm for modern housing in postwar America. A close reading makes the assumption that the text is not neutral and attempts to discover its biases by thoroughly examining how information has been edited, framed, explained, and constructed. Through this method every aspect of the design process as it has been documented will be scrutinized as texts to examine ideas about roles for women that are constructed through this method; it will not only demonstrate how ideological issues, specifically in this case about gender, can be inscribed within our designs for built spaces, but also provide a greater awareness of our ability as designers to perpetuate, create, or eliminate stereotypes. [source] The cost-effectiveness of computer-assisted anticoagulant dosage: results from the European Action on Anticoagulation (EAA) multicentre studyJOURNAL OF THROMBOSIS AND HAEMOSTASIS, Issue 9 2009S. JOWETT Summary. Background: Increased demand for oral anticoagulation has resulted in wider adoption of computer-assisted dosing in anticoagulant clinics. An economic evaluation has been performed to investigate the cost-effectiveness of computer-assisted dosing in comparison with manual dosing in patients on oral anticoagulant therapy. Methods: A trial-based cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted as part of the EAA randomized study of computer-assisted dosage vs. manual dosing. The 4.5-year multinational trial was conducted in 32 centres with 13 219 anticoagulation patients randomized to manual or computer-assisted dosage. The main outcome measures were total health care costs, clinical event rates and cost-saving per clinical event prevented by computer dosing compared with manual dosing. Results: Mean dosing costs per patient were lower (difference: ,47) for computer-assisted dosing, but with little difference in clinical event costs. Total overall costs were ,51 lower in the computer-assisted dosing arm. There were a larger number of clinical events in the manual dosing arm. The overall difference between trial arms was not significant (difference in clinical events, ,0.003; 95% CI, ,0.010,0.004) but there was a significant reduction in events with DVT/PE, suggesting computer-assisted dosage with the two study programs (dawn ac or parma 5) was at least as effective clinically as manual dosage. The cost-effectiveness analysis indicated that computer-assisted dosing is less costly than manual dosing. Conclusions: Results indicate that computer-assisted dosage with the two programs (dawn ac and parma 5) is cheaper than manual dosage and is at least as effective clinically, indicating that investment in this technology represents value for money. [source] | ||||||||||