Supervisory Tasks Research Articles

The Impact of Computerized Decision Support on the Ability to Supervise Resident Physician Sign-Outs

Attending physicians need to supervise resident physician sign-outs in order to ensure patient safety. In one survey study, 59% of resident physicians reported at least one case of harm to one of their patients due to communication issues during sign-outs in their last rotation. In prior research, we identified ‘best practices’ for sign-outs used by attending physicians. For the outgoing physician, communication strategies improve the informativeness, structure, and coverage of the information. For the incoming physician, communication strategies focus on minimizing interruptions, active listening, and assertively questioning the accuracy of contentious decisions. These may include diagnoses, treatment plans, and prognoses. Real-time monitoring of four teams of resident physicians conducting sign-outs simultaneously is extremely difficult for attending physicians without computerized decision support. In this study, we examined the impact of providing automated highlights of sign-out transcripts on the ability to judge the quality of the sign-out. A between-subject design was employed to compare performance with a system displaying four transcripts of sign-outs simultaneously vs. one with the automated highlights on the transcripts. Study participants were 16 fourth-year medical students. Hypothesized benefits of the computerized support on performance and efficiency were not detected. One explanation is that the participants did not understand or agree with the best practice communication strategies, which were used in the design of the highlighted information. Nevertheless, study participants without the computerized support were more likely to judge the supervisory task as not able to be performed safely (p<0.05). All study participants reported that they would be more comfortable performing the task if they were already familiar with the patients (p<0.05). Implications of the study findings include design revisions to the computerized support and the need to provide training on best practices for software assisted sign-outs.

SUPERVISION IN SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY: THE DEVELOPMENTAL/ECOLOGICAL/PROBLEM‐SOLVING MODEL

Effective supervision models guide the supervisory relationship and supervisory tasks leading to reflective and purposeful practice. The Developmental/Ecological/Problem‐Solving (DEP) Model provides a contemporary framework for supervision specific to school psychology. Designed for the school psychology internship, the DEP Model is also applicable to all pre‐service and advanced field‐based training, as well as career‐long continuing professional development. The Developmental domain initiates training at the functioning skill level of the supervisee and progresses toward independent competency. The Ecological domain addresses the multiple systemic contexts that influence school psychology practice and prepares the intern to intervene within both individual and systemic contexts. The Problem‐Solving domain focuses on the application of data‐based decision making and evidence‐based interventions to the full range of school psychology activities. It provides a systematic schema to address student, family, and school needs.

Unleashing the European Securities and Markets Authority: Governance and Accountability After the ECJ Decision on the Short Selling Regulation (Case C-270/12)

The creation of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has marked a major step towards more integrated rulemaking and supervision in the European financial market sector. ESMA’s organisation and operations are strongly influenced by the position of this new Authority within the EU institutional framework. The European Court of Justice (in Case C-270/12) confirmed the legitimacy of the legal basis of ESMA itself and of its powers. While ESMA’s governance still displays some features of a network among national supervisors, its quasi-regulatory functions and supervisory tasks are constrained by limitations directly or indirectly dictated by the Treaties. This paper highlights how the traditional concepts of independence and accountability towards EU institutions and stakeholders apply to ESMA. ESMA’s relationships with national competent authorities, which retain direct supervisory powers with limited exceptions, and the EU institutions, which are competent for the adoption of legislative and non-legislative regulatory measures, are also considered. The analysis shows that tasks conferred on ESMA fall short to match its relatively high accountability, which is aligned with international best practices. The European Commission announced a possible revision of the European Supervisory Authorities (including ESMA) framework for 2014; we therefore suggest some reform proposals that could help streamline regulatory and supervisory functions at EU level, thus allowing ESMA to better exploit its potential while avoiding the risk of excessive centralisation of supervisory powers.

Programmable Controller with Flexible Redundancy for Safety Functions in a Nuclear Power Plant

This paper presents the redundancy architecture of the Programmable Logic Controller called the Safety PLC(SPLC) for the safety functions such as reactor protection in a nuclear power plant. The architecture of the SPLC is designed to switch flexibly redundancy model between the Dual Modular Redundancy(DMR) and Triple Modular Redundancy(TMR). Using this flexible redundancy architecture, the controller can be optimally configured to the application area, and the reliability and availability of the overall system can be increased because redundancy model varies as failures occur. The operating system of the SPLC is also specially designed to guarantee the strict real-time operation using the non-preemptive state-based scheduler and the supervisory task that manages timing violation of each task. The data communication of the SPLC uses the deterministic state-based protocol based on the Guaranteed Time Slot(GTS) protocol. The reliability analysis results show that MTTF of SPLC is 41,630 hours, which is about 15% and 50% more reliable than the TMR or DMR architecture, respectively.

The Influence of Leadership Empowerment Behavior on Organizational Performance

Employee empowerment is an expression frequently used in today's executive circles and it has gained importance in the management policies and practices. The purpose of this study is to determine the conditions under which leaders of organization lend hand in empowerment implementation and sustain its level as per the cultural context of that particular organization and then its overall impact on organizational performance. Data is collected from a sample of 300 middle managers through structured questionnaire and interviews. Results indicate positively significant relationship of employee empowerment sustainability to supervisory support, capable authorities, trust, task clarity, responsibility, co-operative relationships, teamwork, and motivation. Global weighted indices are obtained through the application of Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP). Results show that the potential or the well-managed factors in sport industry include authorities' competence, professional attitude, and the concern for the development of their employees. Whereas the potential factors for textile sector are competence, trustworthiness, and abilities of higher authorities. The potential factors for automobiles industry are depicted by competence, hard work of higher authorities, and trustworthiness on their departmental managers. In Pakistan, however, mostly authorities work with directive management instead of providing their employees with added control and discretion over task, rewards and empowerment training. Originality of this study uses multidimensional AHP technique to prioritize factors that influence the leadership empowerment behavior on organizational performance in different business settings within the context of Pakistan.

PENINGKATAN PELAKSANAAN PENGAWASAN OLEH PENGAWAS TK/SD DI KECAMATAN TIGO NAGARI KABUPATEN PASAMAN

This study aims to describe the implementation of supervisory tasks kindergarten / elementary school in the District Tigo Nagari, and describes the obstacles that may be encountered in the implementation of the supervision and put forth the effort that may be made ​​by the supervisor kindergarten / elementary school to improve supervision in the District Tigo Nagari. After an examination of the supervisory TK / SD District of Tigo Nagari, it can be concluded that the lack of effective supervisory done it can be seen from the lack of supervision is carried out by the passage of such supervisory managerial supervision and academic supervision.

A Human-machine Interface Evaluation Method Based on Balancing Principles

Human factors principles provide foundation for guidelines of various codes and standards in designing Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs). Also in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs), a lot of guidelines from various codes and standard and derived from various research and development projects are available for designing Main Control Room (MCR) HMIs. However it is not easy to optimize and balance a great deal of information sources provided in NPP MCRs in a systematic manner. In this study, a balancing principle for HMI design optimization is proposed to be used in the HMI design of complex supervisory tasks in NPPs. The balancing principle is that a HMI element (e.g., an indicator or a push button) should be designed according to its importance. Design and importance attributes in the HMI design are recognized to apply the balancing principle, respectively. Two measures, Design preference to Importance Ratio (DIR) and Balancing Index (BI), based on the balancing principle are developed. The proposed principle and measures are then successfully applied to an HMI design evaluation. By using the proposed measures, unbalanced design features could be found out and reasonable recommendation could be made based on the evaluation results. As a further study, more extensive attention should be paid to considerations on how to find out and apply various design and importance attributes in the HMI design.

Statistical modelling of networked human-automation performance using working memory capacity

This study examines the challenging problem of modelling the interaction between individual attentional limitations and decision-making performance in networked human-automation system tasks. Analysis of real experimental data from a task involving networked supervision of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles by human participants shows that both task load and network message quality affect performance, but that these effects are modulated by individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity. These insights were used to assess three statistical approaches for modelling and making predictions with real experimental networked supervisory performance data: classical linear regression, non-parametric Gaussian processes and probabilistic Bayesian networks. It is shown that each of these approaches can help designers of networked human-automated systems cope with various uncertainties in order to accommodate future users by linking expected operating conditions and performance from real experimental data to observable cognitive traits like WM capacity.Practitioner Summary: Working memory (WM) capacity helps account for inter-individual variability in operator performance in networked unmanned aerial vehicle supervisory tasks. This is useful for reliable performance prediction near experimental conditions via linear models; robust statistical prediction beyond experimental conditions via Gaussian process models and probabilistic inference about unknown task conditions/WM capacities via Bayesian network models.

INVOLVEMENT OF THE EUROPEAN SYSTEM OF CENTRAL BANKS IN SAFEGUARDING FINANCIAL STABILITY

This paper discusses the development of the role of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) in safeguarding financial stability. This is extremely important in the circumstances of globalised banking industry and financial market complexity and along the path to a new post-crisis world. The financial crisis forced European policy makers to reshape the institutional architecture of the European Union's (EU) framework of financial sector and market supervision as well as to define responsibilities in macro-prudential policy-making and coordination at the EU level. The European System of Financial Supervision (ESFS) started its activities in 2011. At the same time in 2012, the Council of the EU set out its position on establishing a single supervision mechanism (SSM), conferring supervisory tasks on the European Central Bank (ECB) and modifying the responsibilities of the European Banking Authority (EBA). The EU national central banks (NCBs) play an essential role in the process of safeguarding financial stability, and it will become more complex in the near future. The new institutional architecture is a challenge for NCBs. The analysis of NCBs experience in the ESFS and their involvement in safeguarding financial stability at the national level are a good opportunity for promoting the integrity of the financial system. Following the centralisation of a part of the decision-making process, the effectiveness of the NCBs was questioned. Specific developments in the financial system of each country determine the mode of operation and the place of the NCB in the financial environment. At the same time in the context of financial market globalisation and turbulence, the NCBs are subject to financial risks. The paper pursues the aim to propose solutions for further improvements in safeguarding financial stability as well as the ESCB's operation and policy. In the pursuit of the objectives set, the author has made use of such methods as the statistical analysis of indicators, and the graphic and monographic approach. The author builds her research on the analysis of functions of the ESFS, the ESCB and views of a number of researchers on various aspects of modern central banking and NCB role in the process of safeguarding financial stability. Some differences have been detected for the national system of safeguarding financial stability and the involvement of NCBs in the micro-prudential supervision. The institutional architecture for macro-prudential and micro-prudential supervision becomes more complex and centralised only for the group of EU countries. Therefore there is still room for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of this framework. The findings of the research suggest that there exist inconsistencies between the tasks of the ESFS and the SSM and that the integration process is gaining momentum. The innovative aspect of this paper lies in finding trends for the development of NCBs in the micro-prudential supervision and the SSM and the ESFS. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.7.4129

Predicted Failure Alerting in a Supervisory Control Task Does Not Always Enhance Performance

Many emerging technologies mandate supervisory control of automation, with operators monitoring and intervening within systems that change dynamically over time. Providing decision aiding to these operators at critical moments has the potential to improve performance. The current study employed a supervisory control task to examine the effects of supplying a secondary aid (an alert to a predicted automation failure) to task performance. The aid signified potential anomalies in automated planning, and was either present throughout training, or only after some task experience was obtained. The aid occasionally changed operator decision-making, but did not consistently improve task performance. Crucially, the presence of the aid did not improve operators’ abilities to reject bad automated plans. Overall these results highlight a critical issue for the development of detection systems to effectively support future supervisory control activities, and the implications are discussed.

How Sensitive are Individual Retirement Expectations to Raising the Retirement Age?

This paper investigates the causal effects of the announcement of an increase in the statutory pension age on employee retirement expectations. In June 2010, the Dutch government signed a new pension agreement with the employer and employee organizations that entailed an increase in the statutory pension age from 65 currently to 66 in 2020 for all inhabitants born after 1954. Given the expected increase in average life expectancy, it was also decided that in 2025 the pension age would be further increased to 67 for those born after 1959. This new pension agreement received huge media coverage. Using representative matched administrative and survey data of public sector employees, we find that the proposed policy reform increased the expected retirement age by 3.6 months for employees born between 1954 and 1959 and by 10.8 months for those born after 1959. This increase is reflected in a clear shift in the retirement peak from age 65 to ages 66 and 67 for the respective treated cohorts. Men respond less strongly to the policy reform than women, but within couples we find no evidence that the retirement expectations of one spouse are affected by an increase in the statutory pension age of the other. Furthermore, we show that treatment effects are largely driven by highly educated individuals but are lower for employees whose job involves physically demanding tasks or managerial and supervisory tasks.

New consultants mastering the role of on‐call supervisor: a longitudinal qualitative study

The supervision of specialty registrars during on-call shifts is essential to ensure the quality of both health care and medical education, but has been identified as a major novelty and stressor for new consultants in the transition from specialty training. There is a paucity of research on how consultants deal with their new supervisory roles and which factors influence this process. These issues are addressed in a prospective study designed to gather insights that can inform measures to ensure the provision of high-quality supervision and specialty training. A longitudinal qualitative study was performed in the Netherlands. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with new consultants. The study was guided by an interpretative phenomenological approach until saturation was reached. At 3-month intervals between July 2011 and March 2012, eight novice consultants in internal medicine were interviewed three times each about their supervisory role while on call. Interviews focused on their preparation for the role in training, the actions they took to master the role, and their progression over time. Three interrelated domains of relevant factors emerged from the data: preparedness; personal characteristics, and contextual characteristics. Preparedness referred to the extent to which new consultants were prepared by training to take full responsibility for registrars' actions while supervising them from a distance. Personal characteristics, such as coping strategies and views on supervision, guided consultants' development as supervisors. Essential to this process were contextual characteristics, especially those concerning the extent to which the consultant knew the registrar, was familiar with departmental procedures, and had access to support from colleagues. New consultants should be prepared for their supervisory role by training and by being given a proper introduction to their workplace. The former requires progressive independence and exposure to supervisory tasks during specialty training; the latter requires an induction programme to enable new consultants to familiarise themselves with the departmental environment and the registrars they will be supervising.

Significant tasks in training of job‐shop supervisors

PurposeThe need for effective training of first‐line supervisors is well established. Well‐trained supervision is essential to our future as a country. A fundamental step in developing effective training is to develop a jobs needs assessment. In order to develop an effective needs assessment, it is necessary to know what the tasks are of supervisors. This study aims to develop a task list with a rating for job importance. It also aims to provide suggestions for training.Design/methodology/approachThe study used the Delphi survey process methodology. An initial survey instrument was developed and pilot tested. The survey was modified and used for three Delphi rounds. A fourth round was initiated to triangulate the results.FindingsThe result of the panel was a task list of 49 tasks, with an importance to their job rating range from 1.9 to 3.7, based on 0 to 4. Using a Pareto concept of reviewing the top 20 percent or top ten tasks as sorted for importance to the job, seven of the top ten tasks were most closely related to interpersonal relationships.Practical implicationsThis study provides suggestions for the type of courses needed for an effective supervisory training curriculum.Originality/valueFew studies evaluate supervisory tasks from the supervisor's perspective. This study is unique in that it directly surveys supervisors as to their job tasks and the importance of the tasks to their job. The training recommendations focus on areas that supervisors could immediately apply to their jobs.

How Sensitive are Individual Retirement Expectations to Raising the Retirement Age?

This paper investigates the causal effects of the announcement of an increase in the statutory pension age on employee retirement expectations. In June 2010, the Dutch government signed a new pension agreement with the employer and employee organizations that entailed an increase in the statutory pension age from 65 currently to 66 in 2020 for all inhabitants born after 1954. Given the expected increase in average life expectancy, it was also decided that in 2025 the pension age would be further increased to 67 for those born after 1959. This new pension agreement received huge media coverage. Using representative matched administrative and survey data of public sector employees, we find that the proposed policy reform increased the expected retirement age by 3.6 months for employees born between 1954 and 1959 and by 10.8 months for those born after 1959. This increase is reflected in a clear shift in the retirement peak from age 65 to ages 66 and 67 for the respective treated cohorts. Men respond less strongly to the policy reform than women, but within couples we find no evidence that the retirement expectations of one spouse are affected by an increase in the statutory pension age of the other. Furthermore, we show that treatment effects are largely driven by highly educated individuals but are lower for employees whose job involves physically demanding tasks or managerial and supervisory tasks.

고신뢰도 안전등급 제어기기 개발

This paper presents the design of the Safety Programmable Logic Controller (SPLC) used in the Nuclear Power Plants, an analysis of a reliability for the SPLC using a markov model. The architecture of the SPLC is designed to have the multiple modular redundancy composed of the Dual Modular Redundancy(DMR) and the Triple Modular Redundancy(TMR). The operating system of the SPLC is designed to have the non-preemptive state based scheduler and the supervisory task managing the sequential scheduling, timing of tasks, diagnostic and security. The data communication of the SPLC is designed to have the deterministic state based protocol, and is designed to satisfy the effective transmission capacity of 20Mbps. Using Markov model, the reliability of SPLC is analyzed, and assessed. To have the reasonable reliability such as the mean time to failure (MTTF) more than 10,000 hours, the failure rate of each SPLC module should be less than 2 ×10<SUP>-5</SUP> /hour. When the fault coverage factor (FCF) is increased by 0.1 the MTTF is improved by about 4 months, thus to enhance the MTTF effectively, it is needed that the diagnostic ability of each SPLC module should be strengthened. Also as the result of comparison the SPLC and the existing safety grade PLCs, the reliability and MTTF of SPLC is up to 1.6-times and up to 22,000 hours better than the existing PLCs

Experiences, opportunities and challenges of implementing task shifting in underserved remote settings: the case of Kongwa district, central Tanzania

BackgroundTanzania is experiencing acute shortages of Health Workers (HWs), a situation which has forced health managers, especially in the underserved districts, to hastily cope with health workers’ shortages by adopting task shifting. This has however been due to limited options for dealing with the crisis of health personnel. There are on-going discussions in the country on whether to scale up task shifting as one of the strategies for addressing health personnel crisis. However, these discussions are not backed up by rigorous scientific evidence. The aim of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, to describe the current situation of implementing task shifting in the context of acute shortages of health workers and, secondly, to provide a descriptive account of the potential opportunities or benefits and the likely challenges which might ensue as a result of implementing task shifting.MethodsWe employed in-depth interviews with informants at the district level and supplemented the information with additional interviews with informants at the national level. Interviews focussed on the informants’ practical experiences of implementing task shifting in their respective health facilities (district level) and their opinions regarding opportunities and challenges which might be associated with implementation of task shifting practices. At the national level, the main focus was on policy issues related to management of health personnel in the context of implementation of task shifting, in addition to seeking their opinions and perceptions regarding opportunities and challenges of implementing task shifting if formally adopted.ResultsTask shifting has been in practice for many years in Tanzania and has been perceived as an inevitable coping mechanism due to limited options for addressing health personnel shortages in the country. Majority of informants had the concern that quality of services is likely to be affected if appropriate policy infrastructures are not in place before formalising tasks shifting. There was also a perception that implementation of task shifting has ensured access to services especially in underserved remote areas. Professional discontent and challenges related to the management of health personnel policies were also perceived as important issues to consider when implementing task shifting practices. Additional resources for additional training and supervisory tasks were also considered important in the implementation of task shifting in order to make it deliver much the same way as it is for conventional modalities of delivering care.ConclusionsTask shifting implementation occurs as an ad hoc coping mechanism to the existing shortages of health workers in many undeserved areas of the country, not just in the study site whose findings are reported in this paper. It is recommended that the most important thing to do now is not to determine whether task shifting is possible or effective but to define the limits of task shifting so as to reach a consensus on where it can have the strongest and most sustainable impact in the delivery of quality health services. Any action towards this end needs to be evidence-based.

Embodiment and the supervisory task: The supervision of Dance Movement Psychotherapists in training

Supervision is an intimate act of creation and this article endeavours to understand the mercurial nature of this task, drawing on theoretical perspectives grounded in a Jungian framework. With a focus on training, supervisor and supervisee negotiate a labyrinth as they co-create a process within a triangular relationship, in which one key player, the client, is absent. The role of embodied knowing shapes a process involving the body as an active agent of change, whilst the wider matrix of the institution offers a multi-layered universe of parallel processes. The article offers composite vignettes to illustrate how unarticulated embodied wisdom transforms into a conceptualised understanding of clinical material through the transcendent function. The article illuminates the value of the body as radar for unconscious communication within the supervisory relationship.

Training for Unmanned Vehicle Allocation with Automation in a Dynamic Microworld

Recently, questions about the nature of automation use during training have emerged. Several studies have shown that at best, training with automation does not aid learning, but this has not yet been examined in supervisory control tasks. Using a dynamic microworld program, Networked Fire Chief, we show that vehicle allocation training significantly interacts with automation during training, impacting not only performance, but also situation awareness and the absolute number of vehicles users can allocate.

Time Pressure, Memory, and Task Knowledge Facilitate the Opportunism Heuristic in Dynamic Tasks

There are a variety of strategies that operators can utilize when performing a dynamic task, yet operator strategies are typically studied in a well-controlled environment that prevents the possibility of these strategies from interacting or competing with one another. In this study we investigated operator strategy use in a dynamic supervisory control task. We identified four possible strategies that the operator may use: scanning, opportunism, task knowledge, and memory. In order to determine the impact of time pressure on strategy use, we manipulated the speed of the vehicles. We found that as time pressure increased, operators shifted from a scanning strategy to a heuristic opportunistic strategy. We also found that when operators used task knowledge and memory they were more likely to be opportunistic.

Measuring workload during a dynamic supervisory control task using cerebral blood flow velocity and the NASA-TLX

While automated systems have been shown to improve safety and efficiency in operational environments, automation failures can lead to abrupt shifts in workload. Subjective workload scales have been shown to be sensitive to differences in workload, but they are limited in their ability to assess dynamic, moment-to-moment workload variations. Physiological measures may be better suited to assess dynamic workload in complex environments. This study explored the feasibility of a relatively new physiological measure, Transcranial Doppler Sonography (TCD), as a candidate for adaptive automation studies. Participants performed long duration, supervisory control tasks under varying levels of taskload. In one group, enemy threats increased once late in the simulation, and in another group enemy threats increased at two points; once early and once late within the simulation. All participants completed a comparison condition in which there was no variation in the number of incoming enemy threats. Cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV), as measured by TCD, was measured during task performance. Performance was assessed by the ability of the operator to protect a no-fly zone from enemy incursion. Subjective mental workload was assessed using the NASA-TLX. As performance decreased during periods of high load, CBFV increased, and there was a close parallel between the CBFV and performance measures. The NASA-TLX was sensitive in detecting differences in workload between the two conditions, but the patterns of results of this subjective measure were insensitive to specific task elements. The results are interpreted in terms of a resource theory of task performance and show that the CBFV measure is sensitive to dynamic changes in taskload in complex environments.