Case Of Services Research Articles

Severity of illness and organ dysfunction scoring systems in pediatric critical care: The impacts on clinician's practices and the future.

Severity and organ dysfunction (OD) scores are increasingly used in pediatric intensive care units (PICU). Therefore, this review aims to provide 1/ an updated state-of-the-art of severity scoring systems and OD scores in pediatric critical care, which explains 2/ the performance measurement tools and the significance of each tool in clinical practice and provides 3/ the usefulness, limits, and impact on future scores in PICU. The following two pediatric systems have been proposed: the PRISMIV, is used to collect data between 2 h before PICU admission and the first 4 h after PICU admission; the PIM3, is used to collect data during the first hour after PICU admission. The PELOD-2 and SOFApediatric scores were the most common OD scores available. Scores used in the PICU should help clinicians answer the following three questions: 1/ Are the most severely ill patients dying in my service: a good discrimination allow us to interpret that there are the most severe patients who died in my service. 2/ Does the overall number of deaths observed in my department consistent with the severity of patients? The standard mortality ratio allow us to determine whether the total number of deaths observed in our service over a given period is in adequacy with the number of deaths predicted, by considering the severity of patients on admission? 3/ Does the number of deaths observed by severity level in my department consistent with the severity of patients? The calibration enabled us to determine whether the number of deaths observed according to the severity of patients at PICU admission in a department over a given period is in adequacy with the number of deaths predicted, according to the severity of the patients at PICU admission. These scoring systems are not interpretable at the patient level. Scoring systems are used to describe patients with PICU in research and evaluate the service's case mix and performance. Therefore, the prospect of automated data collection, which permits their calculation, facilitated by the computerization of services, is a necessity that manufacturers should consider.

Strategy for a Risk-stratified Use of Rapid Antigen Testing: Containing the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic by Integrating Rapid Testing into Case and Contact Tracing Management

The use of rapid testing offers an opportunity to contain the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic; however, the impact of false-positive and false-negative test results and population response must be anticipated and taken into consideration to avoid or mitigate harm. Untargeted use of rapid testing is associated with high direct and indirect costs and will have limited impact on the pandemic if resources are used inefficiently. We suggest using a risk-stratified testing strategy, based on targeted testing directly integrated with the Public Health Service's case and contact tracing management. According to the proposed targeted testing strategy stratified by risk of infection, all persons with acute symptoms of a respiratory infection as well as other population groups with an elevated probability of being infected with SARS-CoV-2 infection should be specifically tested to identify "hidden" infection networks. The strategy should include a uniform communication strategy for dealing with positive and negative test results, a targeted expansion of access to low-threshold testing opportunities, ensuring timely and free access to the results of confirmatory tests, and integration into an overarching documentation system for evaluation. This integration of a risk-stratified targeted testing strategy into case and contact tracing management embedded in a comprehensive strategy can help to reduce infection rates in a resource-efficient and sustainable manner.

DOES POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL CAPITAL HAVE A MEDIATOR EFFECT IN THE RELATION BETWEEN PERCEIVED ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT AND EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE?

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between perceived organizational support and performance and to test whether positive psychological capital has a mediating effect on the case of service sector employees. In this context, the data collected by carrying out a survey with the participation of employees of the companies in the service sector in Istanbul were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 software. First, the reliability and validity of the scales used in the study were tested. Then, the correlation and regression between the variables were examined. Perceived organizational support influences the employee performance positively, and the positive psychological capital has a mediating effect on this relationship.

The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service's Case Against Google Related to Bundling and other Anticompetitive Practices with Respect to Android

The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service's Case Against Google Related to Bundling and other Anticompetitive Practices with Respect to Android

Post-war Japan as a Sea Power: Imperial Legacy, Wartime Experience and the Making of a Navy by Alessio Patalano

Reviewed by: Post-war Japan as a Sea Power: Imperial Legacy, Wartime Experience and the Making of a Navy by Alessio Patalano James R. Holmes Post-war Japan as a Sea Power: Imperial Legacy, Wartime Experience and the Making of a Navy. By Alessio Patalano. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. 272 pages. Hardcover £85.00; softcover £28.99. Japan operates a world-class if modest-sized navy, euphemistically named the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) to conform to the nation's post–World War II constitution, which forswears the use of arms for political purposes. The JMSDF is part of a combined US-Japanese fleet that constitutes the enforcement arm of allied strategy vis-à-vis surging Chinese economic and military might. And yet little has been written in English about this close partner to the US Navy, a shortfall that is doubly striking in light of the profusion of studies on the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), the JMSDF's institutional forebear. Chinese strategist Sun Tzu urged sovereigns and generals to know themselves and their foes to succeed in martial enterprises; he might have counseled them to know their allies as well. That's where Alessio Patalano's book comes in so handy. (One imagines it will be read avidly in China as well.) The compact community of Japan watchers in the West has long depended on a handful of works for insight into the JMSDF's past and present. Best known is James E. Auer's The Postwar Rearmament of Japanese Maritime Forces, 1945–71 (New York: Praeger, 1973), which appeared over forty years ago. Peter J. Woolley brought the story up to the turn of the century with Japan's Navy: Politics and Paradox, 1971–2000 (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000). Post-war Japan as a Sea Power supplies a sorely needed update founded on interviews along with primary-source research in the JMSDF archives. Japan's navy [End Page 354] now confronts a rising China as well as a renegade, nuclear-armed North Korea. On such pressing recent matters, Auer's and Woolley's books are silent for obvious reasons. This is not a narrative history of postwar Japanese sea power per se, and that constitutes one of its strengths. The treatise is thematic in outlook, with chapters reviewing, for example, the imperial navy's ethos and traditions; the JMSDF's interpretation of the imperial experience and its incorporation of that experience into its own service subculture; Japanese maritime policy and strategy; and the navy's pursuit of a balanced fleet. Japan's postwar navy studied the reasons for the IJN's downfall closely and fashioned policy and strategy to avoid committing similar mistakes. Antisubmarine warfare, for example, figured prominently in postwar strategy, doubtless because of painful memories of US submarines sending Japanese merchantmen and warships to the bottom. Logistics was another core takeaway. The imperial navy seized vast territories and sea space from 1941 to 1942, yet little thought was given to how to hold all that area once it had been seized. JMSDF commanders faulted their predecessors for neglecting sea-lane defense—a crucial oversight for any island empire dependent on resource imports. And on and on. Culture is the common denominator among these strands of inquiry. Patalano concentrates in large measure on organizational culture, namely, the habits of mind and deed that are imprinted on the bureaucracy and individual seafarers by an institution's founders and founding legends, and by which the institution acculturates newcomers—chiefly through naval education in any sea service's case. He thus puts the US Navy's part in the JMSDF's founding in perspective. He observes that while American seafarers such as Admiral Arleigh Burke were indeed key figures in the JMSDF's early history, Japan's navy is by no means a simple appendage of its US patron and ally. Nor is it a direct descendant of the World War II navy. Henry Steele Commager once wrote in The Search for a Usable Past (New York: Knopf, 1967) about the American founders' efforts to fabricate a "usable past" binding together thirteen disparate states clustered along the eastern seaboard of North America. A central point for Commager was that the...

Regional Trade Agreements and Trade Costs in Services

This paper analyses the relationship between regional trade integration and trade costs in servicesindustries. The empirical analysis relies, on the one hand, on a dataset of theory-consistentbilateral trade costs calculated for 61 countries over the period 2000-2011 and, on the otherhand, on an analysis of services commitments in 66 regional trade agreements to which thesecountries are parties. Despite the proliferation of services RTAs in the past decade, we do notfind significantly lower bilateral trade costs among countries having signed such agreements.Several possible explanations are discussed. First, the gaps in services trade data and the difficultyto account for all modes of supply could influence our results. Second, the nature ofservices trade liberalisation makes it difficult to discriminate between domestic and foreignservice providers (thus not impacting the relative costs they face). Third, there is no clear evidencethat countries signing services RTAs do intend to create actual preferences for companiesin partner countries. Services RTAs are about preferential “bindings”. Regionalism in the caseof services seems non-discriminatory and does not lead to trade preferences.