Means Of Best Practices Research Articles

Best practices in primary healthcare and the meanings of integrality

This study aimed to analyze the best practices implemented in primary healthcare (PHC) services and their defining criteria, according to the perceptions of managers, healthcare professionals and users. The theoretical framework of integrality, in three meanings: organization of the services, practices of the healthcare professionals and governmental policy, allowed the characterization of the best practices in PHC and their criteria. This was a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and analytical study, based on Grounded Theory. Interviews were conducted with seven coordinators, ten healthcare professionals and twelve users of healthcare centers in Florianopolis, Brazil, comprising three sample groups. Two categories of analysis dealing with the meaning of best practice resulted. Perceptions were related to the context and the interactions established between social actors, who prepare their positions based on their experience and positions held in healthcare services.

Exploring the Meaning of Best Practice: A Discussion on the Way Client-Centred Psychosocial Rehabilitation Services Might Address the Needs of Australian Veterans in the Future

AbstractThis article presents a summary of 10 priorities for the delivery of best practices in psychosocial rehabilitation relevant to the Australian veteran population. The first section interrogates the empirical principles characteristically identified with best practices before presenting an alternative, heuristic framework organised by three reference points and informed by principles of efficacy, external validity, and the meaning of efficacy in the context of parity. The article presents the strategy used in reviewing the literature, before presenting the findings according to 10 key priorities. The 10 priorities are described in the context of the literature informing them and are set out with regard to the centrality of the client-centred service model in the design and delivery of pertinent and effective services into the future.

Best Practices in Designing and Developing OnlineCourses at the Canadian Foreign Service Institute

This paper describes the approach and considerations taken into account while designing and developing online courses at the Canadian Foreign Service Institute at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada and how research is applied in achieving desired goals and work objectives. It details what is common to the design and development of online courses in the application of lessons from educational literature in a practical setting, in relating to concepts of eLearning and instructional design: doing a needs assessment; gathering content and working with SMEs; developing a Master Design Chart, detailed storyboard; designing activities and an overall interactive interface; and finally, conducting evaluations. The linkages between theory and practice include the applications of various theoretical propositions, such as Alessi & Trollip's eight steps to address computer-based instructional design; Gagne's nine events of instruction; Mayer's ten research-based principles of multimedia learning; Dick & Carey's six stages of formative evaluation; and Kirkpatrick four levels evaluation model. The paper proposes five stages of online course development employed at the Canadian Foreign Service Institute as a means of best practices for corporate training.

Collective inquiry: understanding the essence of best practice construction in mental health

Delivering quality services has become a committed aspiration of mental health services over the past decade. Service planners look to validated care models to give guidance on what constitutes best practice. While there are many different views of what is 'best', there is a growing acknowledgement that services need to listen to the experiences of a network of frontline stakeholders in order to create quality mental health services. This paper describes an exploratory study within a regional mental health service that aimed to understand the meaning and enactment of best practice from the perspectives of a representative sample of service users and providers. A number of themes emerged as important and include the inherent value placed on consistent familial style relationships between service user and provider. This was deemed pivotal to the provision of expertise, good clinical decision-making, choice and collaboration. The study also highlighted stakeholder preference for autonomy and openness to inquiry into developing practice. In deconstructing the meaning of best practice, the study prompts a closer consideration of how best practice is created and suggests a view of best practice as a fluid dialogic process that is co-constructed by its participants in ongoing dialogic communication and reflection.

Best practicable means (BPM) and as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP) in action atSellafield**Presentation to SRP Meeting ‘ALARP: Principles and Practices’, Oxford, 2–4 April2003.

Operators within the UK nuclear industry are required to employ ‘best practicable means’(BPM) to control and minimise radioactive discharges. The requirement for the use ofBPM is in order to ensure that doses from discharges are as low as reasonably practicable(ALARP). This facet is increasingly becoming the principal feature of dischargeauthorisations issued by the Environment Agencies under the Radioactive SubstancesAct, 1993 (RSA 93), which are enforceable by law. It is important to state atthe outset, however, that scientific assessments to date indicate that there areno expectations of environmental harm from authorised discharges, even wherethose discharges have historically been up to two orders of magnitude higherthan current levels. There is also no evidence to indicate that foreseeable futuredischarges from the Sellafield site will make any contribution to environmental harm.

Defining best practice in waste minimisation

The Radioactive Substances Act 1993 requires operators to be authorised to dispose of radioactive wastes from their sites. Furthermore, the Act places a statutory duty on operators to demonstrate that they are applying the Best Practicable Means (BPM) to prevent, and where this is not practicable, minimise waste arisings and discharges. The proposed UKAEA Harwell Authorisation and recently issued AWE Authorisation have placed a series of Improvement Requirements on the operator with respect to several aspects of waste management. One of these requires the operators to review best practice in waste minimisation. RM Consultants, under contract to UKAEA Harwell and AWE, have developed a methodology that provides a basis for responding to this requirement. This paper explains the sets of Best Practice Principles which were defined and points out that they may have wider application to other nuclear radioactive waste producers, in developing a common achievement of best practice across the industry.

Best Practice in Health Care: Confusion and Contribution?

As the health care industry adopts the language of more commercially oriented industries, terms such as best practice emerge in the health literature (Health and Community Services Victoria, 1995). This occurs often without qualification or definition and in different contexts. Consequently, there is a need to develop consistency in the use of such terms and some understanding of the concepts. This discussion revolves around the answers to questions which it is hoped will provide a framework for consistency in the use of the term best practice. As language evolves, meanings change as understanding increases and the context of usage alters. Therefore, it is neither claimed that this analysis is unchallengeable, nor that the definition is absolute. It is simply an attempt to create a degree of order in the debate on best practice; a term which has been used loosely. The two principal questions to be addressed are: what is the meaning of best practice? and is it a concept that has anything of value to offer health service management and service delivery?