Teamwork Support Research Articles

Intervention Research in a Public Elementary School: A Critical-Collaborative Teacher Education Project on Reading and Writing

This Teacher Education Project is an intervention research aimed at creating new school roles for educating students as readers and writers as well as citizens. The methodological framework was based on Vygotsky’s discussions of method as praxis (Vygotsky, 1921-23/1997, 1930/1999, 1931/1997, 1926- 30/1996), as well as on both the Marxist practical–materialistic–revolutionary activity and Engeström’s (2008, 2009) extensions of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). The work at school was motivated by students’ limited awareness of reading and writing. The goal was to involve the school as a community in understanding and transforming the ways in which reading and writing were addressed in classrooms. The methodology used for organizing and carrying out the project was devised so as to allow for three activity systems that partially interact with their objects – that is, reading and writing as tools for teaching-learning in different areas in order to constitute students as citizens. However, for this paper, we will focus solely on the Teacher Education Activity System, which we termed Teacher Support Team. Three episodes are discussed in this paper: Two video sessions with the Teacher Support Team, the first of which took place in 2010, and the second in 2011; and a classroom reading class session that was videotaped in 2011 as part of the Teacher Support Team work. The theoretical and practical work developed was targeted at creating a mutual Zone of Proximal Development that supported teachers, coordinators, and the principal, through the appropriation of reading and writing as processes. The results show that the organization of the project as interrelated activity systems enhanced the entire school’s prospects of appropriating the reading and writing teaching-learning processes, by focusing on the same object, in the diverse systems that framed the project.

Perceptions of Healthcare Professionals on the Usage of Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy in a Teaching Hospital from a Middle-Income South East Asian Country.

To explore the perceptions of healthcare professionals' (HCPs) in a South East Asian nation towards percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) feeding. Semi-structured, qualitative interviews. A teaching hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A total of 17 healthcare professionals aged 23-43 years, 82% women. Thematic analysis revealed five themes that represent HCPs' perceptions in relation to the usage of PEG feeding: 1) knowledge of HCPs, 2) communication, 3) understanding among patients, and 4) financial and affordability. The rationale for reluctance towards PEG feeding observed in this regions was explained by lack of education, knowledge, communication, team work, and financial support. Future studies should assess the effects of educational programmes among HCPs and changes in policies to promote affordability on the utilization of PEG feeding in this region.

Networks and their traffic in multiplayer games

Computer games called multiplayer real-time, or (MCG) are at the forefront of the use of the possibilities of the network. Research on this subject have been made for military simulations, virtual reality systems, computer support teamwork, the solutions diverge on the problems posed by MCG. With this in mind, this document provides an overview of the four issues affecting networking at the MCG. First, network resources (bandwidth, latency and computing capacity), together with the technical limits within which the MCG must operate. Second, the distribution concepts include communication architectures (peer-to-peer, client / server, server / network), and data and control architectures (centralized, distributed and reproduced) .Thirdly, scalability allows the MCG to adapt to changes in parameterization resources. Finally, security is intended to fend off the traps and vandalism, which are common in online games; to check traffic, particularly these games we decided to take the massively multiplayer game League of Legends, a scene corresponding to a situation of real life in a network of ADSL access network is deployed has been simulated by using NS2 Three variants of TCP, it means SACK TCP, New Reno TCP, and TCP Vegas, have been considered for the cross traffic. The results show that TCP Vegas is able to maintain a constant speed while racing against the game traffic, since it avoids the packet loss and the delays in the tail caused by high peaks, without increasing the size of the sender window. SACK TCP and TCP New Reno, on the other hand, tend to increase continuously the sender window size, which could allow a greater loss of packages and also to cause unwanted delays for the game traffic.

Implicações do Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (PNAE) na Renda e Organização de Agricultores Familiares

The Programa Nacional de Alimentacao Escolar (PNAE) [National School Feeding Program] consists in the transference of financial resources from the Federal Government to the states, Federal District and cities, for the acquisition of food for school feeding, which 30% of these resources should be intended for the buying of food from family agriculture. The objective of the study was to know the changes mentioned by the family farmers from Seara – SC in terms of income and organization, after starting the food supply to the PNAE. Interviews were held with family farmers that delivered food to the Program which answers were submitted to analysis of content. The PNAE brings positive changes to the interviewees, since it not only improves the quality of the meals served in schools but also brings better income to the farmers. There is also improvement in the organization of the farmers, since the association in cooperatives promotes team work and professional support.

A seamless repository for pervasive teamwork

Mobile cloud-based collaborative workflow has pervasively empowered teamwork. However, it still suffers from collaborative workflow barriers, such as workflow complexity, poor communication, and teamwork disruption. To ease collaborative workflow barriers, we propose and develop a seamless repository by integrating multiple support systems into a three-layered framework. Under the premises of availability, connectivity, and transparency, the three-layered seamless repository strengthens the collaborative workflow in pervasive teamwork. It supports various critical collaborative workflow activities such as issue tracking, revision control, content management, system visualisation, onsite participation tracking, and team communication. After a test period of one year, active teamwork involvement has been observed, which implies that the barriers are relieved. Furthermore, several hidden patterns of teamwork are discovered through the seamless repository, which are useful to improve future support for pervasive teamwork.

How hospitalists work to pull healthcare teams together.

The purpose of this paper is to document everyday practices by which hospitalist physicians negotiate barriers to effective teamwork. Ethnographic observation with a sample of hospitalists chosen to represent a range of hospital and practice types. Hospitals rely on effective, interprofessional teamwork but typically do not support it. Hospitalist physicians must bridge the internal boundaries within their hospitals to coordinate their patients' care, but they face challenges - scattered patients, fragmented information, uncoordinated teams, and unreliable processes - that can impact the timeliness and safety of care. Hospitalists largely rely on personal presence and memory to deal with these challenges. Some invent low-tech supports for teamwork, but these are typically neither tested nor shared with others. Formal support for teamwork, primarily case management rounds, is applied unevenly and may not be respected by all team members. The findings are drawn from observation over a limited period of time with a small, purposefully chosen sample of physicians and hospitals. Practical implications - Hospitals must recognize the issues hospitalists and other providers face, evaluate and disseminate supports for teamwork, and make interprofessional teamwork a core feature of hospital design and evaluation. The authors show the nuances of how hospitalists struggle to practice teamwork in a challenging context, and how the approaches they take (relying on memory and personal presence) do not address, and may actually contribute to, the system-level problems they face.

Thirty-five years in environmentally assisted cracking in Italy: a point of view

Abstract In this paper, I will attempt to summarize my experience of approximately 35 years on environmental fatigue damage, which I gained from industries outside Milan, Italy, and as a visiting scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. I will present a brief summary of my understanding of the topic of environmentally assisted fatigue of metals. About halfway in my career, I moved from the nuclear industry towards the oil and gas industry. This shift allowed me to understand that environmentally assisted cracking, which is an important topic for pipeline steels, is also similar to the nuclear pressure vessel steel community and that the problems are similar. At the same time, I became aware that the scientific communities are not working well to communicate the issues and challenges. People working in one industrial sector do not seem to appreciate the contribution from another industrial sector. This is understandable, as there are industrial rules and regulations. Because of such constraints, a knowledge gap is introduced into the technical community. This lack of cooperation slows down the progress of relevant research, especially nowadays, when we are facing increasingly complex service situations that may lead to failures. While trying to cope with such difficulties, I became interested in knowledge management. I learned that there is a need to build bridges between contemporary science, engineering, and business. We are facing big challenges in analyzing failures, and maybe it is time to do things differently and consolidate different disciplines of engineering with applications that can give us more reliable predictions. Organizations and companies worldwide are currently facing (a) increasing quantity of available information on material usage, (b) increasing number of people with high education in science and engineering, (c) increasing complexity of the failure problems to be solved, and (d) increasing lack of communication between institutions. It is estimated that the material loss in the US due to corrosion alone is approximately $300 billion per year. The necessity of knowing, understanding, and processing such complex data and problems is a very large task. Thus, there is a need for exploiting the technical information and using communication technology tools to help support teamwork, networking, using available experience and expertise, and, hopefully, international cooperation. Knowledge management involves a cultural change to stimulate a better use of all types of resources. Progress will be slow and difficult if we do not learn how to cope with this new situation.

Научные и практические подходы к управлению производительностью труда (лекция 4)

This article continues the abstract of lectures on discipline «Economics of personnel management» under the bachelor program. Thechange in the principles of labor productivity management in the context of management evolution is displayed.Thefeatures of labor productivity managementdependent on the type of management are reviewed.The article reveals distinctive features of high performance organizations focused on noneconomic factors of productivity growth:increasing of commitment, involvement; development of competencies and multitasking of employees; support of creativity and teamwork. Areas of labor productivity management are identifi ed: performance management, managing costs of labor, management of labor factors, and management of people as bearers of ability to productive labor. Management processes of successful companies, that provide stable labor performance, are characterized.

System facilitators and barriers to discussing older driver safety in primary care settings

BackgroundPrimary care physicians play a leading role in counselling older drivers, but discussions often do not occur until safety concerns arise. Prior work suggests that routine questioning about driving might...

Board #254 - Program Innovation A Perioperative Teamwork Instructor Training Program for Supporting Perioperative Teamwork Training (Submission #10164)

ObjectivesBeginning in 2001, the captive insurer of the Harvard affiliated teaching hospitals (CRICO/RMF), created premium incentives for anesthesiologists and OB/GYN physicians to participate in simulation-based CRM/teamwork training. In 2013, CRICO began offering a premium rebate for surgeons in h

Retracted: Nurses learning in the workplace: a comparison of workplace attributes in acute care settings in Australia and Singapore

Workplaces need to foster teaching and learning interactions so staff collaborate and learn from each other. Internationally, many countries provide support to graduates and experienced staff to foster engagement necessary for learning and quality care. Workplace attributes can differ across countries depending on managerial, contextual, social and policy issues. This study compared workplace attributes of two Australian hospitals with a Singaporean hospital. A representative sample of nurses in two acute care facilities in Australia (n = 203) and a comparable facility in Singapore (n = 154) during 2010 and 2011 responded to a survey requesting demographic data and responses about workplace attributes. Attributes were determined through validated tools that measure staff perception of support when facilitating others learning (Support Instrument for Nurses Facilitating the Learning of Others) and the clinical learning organizational culture (Clinical Learning Organizational Culture Survey). Results indicated Singaporean nurses rated perception of acknowledgement, workload management and teamwork support in facilitating learners in their hospital as significantly better than the Australian cohort despite similar provisions for support and development. There were no significant differences across the two sites in the clinical learning culture. Analysis across three health facilities only provides a snapshot. Targeting more facilities would assist in confirming the extent of reported trends. Findings indicate differences in nurses' perceptions of support when facilitating learners. Further exploration of Singaporean nurses' increased perceptions of support is worthy. Clinical learning organizational culture findings across Australian and Singaporean acute care facilities suggest common attributes within the nursing profession that transcend contextual factors, for example, a strong sense of task accomplishment. Nurses across both countries demonstrate strengths in accomplishing tasks but less so in recognizing nurses' contributions that may also impact nurses' influence in the practice context. As these attributes are common, nursing can collectively lobby and develop policy, thereby strengthening their cause to be recognized.

Asmeninių kompetencijų reikšmė tarpdisciplininės komandos veikloje

Vilniaus universitetasSocialinio darbo katedraUniversiteto g. 9/1 – 309 kab.LT-01513 VilniusTel. 8 615 17 924El. paštas: violeta.gevorgianiene@fsf.vu.lt
 
 Šio straipsnio tikslas – remiantis skirtingoms disciplinoms atstovaujančių specialistų nuomonių tyrimu aptarti asmeninių kompetencijų reikšmę tarpdisciplininių ankstyvosios intervencijos vaikystėje komandų veiklai. Įvairioms profesinėms sritims atstovaujančių specialistų kompleksinė pagalba rizikos situacijoje esančiam žmogui reikalauja darnių veiksmų. Tokių veiksmų sėkmė priklauso ne tik nuo sprendžiamos problemos sudėtingumo, bet ir nuo kompetencijų, kurias demonstruoja atskiri komandos nariai ir visa komanda. Ankstyvosios intervencijos tarnybų specialistų sudaryti kompetencijų sąrašai parodė, kad dabartiniame tarpdisciplininio bendradarbiavimo etape (nesant senų tokio bendradarbiavimo tradicijų) didžiausia reikšmė yra skiriama komandos nario geranoriškumui ir atvirumui patirčiai.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: tarpdisciplininė komanda, asmeninė kompetencija, refleksija.
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PERSONAL COMPETENCIES IN THE WORK OF AN INTERDISCIPLINARY TEAMVioleta Gevorgianienė
 SummaryA complex support of a person in a difficult life situation requires coordinated efforts of specialists representing various professional fields. The quality of support and successful interdisciplinary team work in general depends not only on the complexity of the task, but also on competencies demonstrated by individual members of a team and the whole team in general. In the article the significance of personal competencies in interdisciplinary teams is analysed, based on the opinions survey of professionals working in early childhood intervention services. The method of expert evaluation (questionnaire) was used. Respondents were asked to compose two lists of competencies: firstly, to cognitively reflect on competencies which they considered important for the team work and, secondly, to recall most important competencies which they observed in practice and which most contributed to the successful team work. The lists of competencies composed by professionals revealed that in the current stage of interdisciplinary cooperation (when traditions of common work of different professionals are not yet strong) experts allocate the highest importance to competencies closely related to personal qualities of a colleague, such as agreeableness (revealed in the cognitive reflection) and openness to new experience (revealed in practice reflection).Key words: interdisciplinary team, personal competence, reflection.
 

Reasons attributed by professionals of an Intensive Care Unit for the absence at work

This is an exploratory, descriptive study, with a qualitative approach, which aimed to identify the reasons attributed by nursing professionals for the absences at work; and to describe the alternatives proposed for the reduction of the absences in a teaching hospital. It was carried out in a Federal Public Hospital with 29 professionals from the Intensive Care Unit, the unit with the greater number of absences at work in 2008. Data were collected through focus groups and submitted to thematic content analysis. It was evidenced, as reasons for the occurrence of absenteeism, the influence of the physical environment, management and interpersonal skills. It was highlighted, as alternatives for the reduction of absences at work, the participatory management, team work, service organization and therapeutic support. It was concluded that the absenteeism involves subjective issues with multiple dimensions, which cannot be clarified only through quantitative perspective.

A fond adieu and reflections on nine years at the helm of the Journal: 2005-2013

This editorial marks the conclusion of my final (five-year) term after nine years at the helm of the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia (the Journal). I assumed this role as your fifth Editor-in-Chief in January 2005. It has been an honour and, at the same time, a rather humbling experience to have served in the footsteps of former Editors-in-Chief: Dr. Roderick Gordon (1954-1982), Dr. Douglas Craig (19831988), Dr. David Bevan (1989-2000), and Dr. Jean Francois Hardy (2001-2004). I take this opportunity to reflect on various accomplishments and some of the challenges of the past nine years. I shall also recognize the many outstanding individuals whose unwavering support and unparalleled teamwork have been instrumental in enhancing the relevance and importance of the Journal for the benefit of our readers, in growing our international presence, and in fostering our realization of the vision and mission of the Journal. None of the accomplishments of the past nine years would have been possible without such a remarkable team of expert and dedicated editors, board members (former and present), guest reviewers, and dedicated authors with their precious manuscripts. I especially thank Dr. Francois Donati who has been a superb Deputy Editor-in-Chief and a visionary Section Editor for continuing professional development (CPD) features of the Journal. Dr. Donati will step down from his role at the end of this year. I am deeply appreciative of the sage advice of our Associate Editors, Dr. David Mazer and Dr. Scott Beattie, whose expertise in scientific publication in critical care medicine, cardiac anesthesia, and outcomes-based research has greatly enriched the Journal. I sincerely thank our biostatistician, Dr. Penelope Brasher, for her dedication and remarkably insightful statistical reviews that go to the core of ensuring accurate and transparent scientific reporting. I extend my warm and sincerest thanks to all of our board members who have consistently gone above and beyond in support of the mission: Drs. Steven Backman, Andrew Baker, Gregory Bryson, Davy Cheng, Mark Crawford, Alain Deschamps, Pierre Drolet, Hilary Grocott, Gregory Hare, Keyvan Karkouti, Bradley Kerr, Etienne de Medicis, Patricia Morley-Forster, Roanne Preston, Ban Tsui, and Alexis Turgeon. I acknowledge and thank guest editors, Drs. Paul Hebert and David Moher, for their shared wisdom and advice over the years. I also recognize the unique contributions of Dr. Alan Merry (New Zealand), Drs. Robert Sladen and Adrian Gelb (United States), Dr. Christian Werner (Germany), and Dr. Benoit Plaud (France), who have enriched our editorial board enormously. To our many guest reviewers (a list of over 200!), I extend a very special thanks for being such important contributors to our peer review system. We owe a world of thanks to our Editorial Assistant, Ms. Carolyn Gillis, who is the heart and soul of managing our editorial peer review process. Ms. Gillis communicates daily with Vision and Mission of the Journal: ‘‘Excellence in research and knowledge translation in anesthesia, pain, perioperative medicine and critical care’’ Vision et mission du Journal: «Excellence en recherche et en transfert des connaissances liees a l’exercice clinique de l’anesthesie, du controle de la douleur, de la medecine perioperatoire et des soins intensifs»

046 Guideline Development Tool (GDT) – Web-Based Solution for Guideline Developers and Authors of Systematic Reviews

BackgroundGuideline developers and other health care decision makers benefit from following a structured process of specifying the health care questions they intend to answer and the outcomes of interest, assessing...

P307 Guideline Development Tool (GDT) – Web-Based Solution For Guideline Developers And Authors Of Systematic Reviews

BackgroundGuideline developers and other health care decision makers benefit from following a structured process of specifying the health care questions they intend to answer and the outcomes of interest, assessing...

Implementing health system change: What are the lessons from the African Health Initiative?

Implementing health system change: What are the lessons from the African Health Initiative?

WordNetLoom: a WordNet development system integrating form-based and graph-based perspectives

The paper presents WordNetLoom – an application for WordNet development used in the construction of a Polish WordNet called plWordNet. WordNetLoom provides two means of interaction: a form-based, implemented initially, and a graph-based introduced recently. The graphical, active presentation of WordNet structure enables direct work on the structure of synsets and lexico-semantic relations. In the paper, the both means of interaction are compared and the results of the usability evaluation performed on a group of experienced WordNetLoom users are presented. Directions of the application development were identified. A new version of WordNetWeaver – a tool supporting semi-automated WordNet expansion – is also presented. The new version is based on the user interface similar to WordNetLoom, utilises all types of WordNet relations and is embedded in WordNetLoom. The paper discusses also the role of the application in WordNet development and the extent to which the application can be used for other WordNets. A set of WWW-based tools supporting team work coordination and verification is presented, too.

Supporting collaborative sense-making in emergency management through geo-visualization

In emergency management, collaborative decision-making usually involves collaborative sense-making of diverse information by a group of experts from different knowledge domains, and needs better tools to analyze role-specific information, share and synthesize relevant information, and remain aware of the activities of others. This paper presents our research on the design of a collaborative sense-making system to support team work. We propose a multi-view, role-based design to help team members analyze geo-spatial information, share and integrate critical information, and monitor individual activities. Our design uses coordinated maps and activity visualization to aid decision-making as well as group activity awareness. The paper discusses design rationale, iterative design of visualization tools, prototype implementation, and system evaluation. Our work can potentially improve and extend collaborative tasks in emergency management.

An Examination of the Preventive Process: Comparison of Behaviour and Education Support Team Work with Children's Services

Behaviour and Education Support Teams (BESTs) were developed as a significant element of the Every Child Matters programme. Although varying in composition, they were generally designed to provide support for groups of schools in relation to behavioural, emotional and educational issues. They have not been subject, however, to a great deal of published research and their development, furthermore, raised significant issues about prevention and the preventive process, in particular the capacity to reach vulnerable children and families where thresholds for mainstream services were high. This paper, comparing a BEST with a children's services team, examines the nature of work undertaken. It shows the ‘service on offer’ from the two agencies differed markedly, with BESTs undertaking a more child‐focused approach. The implications of the development of additional services for prevention and the preventive process are discussed Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.‘Designed to provide support for groups of schools in relation to behavioural, emotional and educational issues’Key Practitioner Message Social intervention teams closely related to schools can provide an alternative to conventional children's services They work with groups different from children's services and at an earlier stage of prevention and hence have added value, particularly where children's services thresholds are high. They work differently from children's services with a characteristically more individualised child-focus rather than parenting and family-focused modus operandi. Which approach is more beneficial, however, is as yet unclear.