Vetting Process Research Articles

Factors affecting problem-solving court team decisions about medications for opioid use disorder

BackgroundProblem-solving courts (PSCs) provide alternatives to prosecution and incarceration for drug-related crimes and offer integrated support for people who have lost custody of children due to drug use. Methadone and buprenorphine are lifesaving medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) but are underused by PSC clients. Even when PSCs lack a court-level prohibition against MOUD, court staff still make individualized decisions about whether a court client can use MOUD. Therefore, we sought to identify factors involved in such individualized PSC court decisions about clients' use of MOUD. MethodsWe conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups between Summer and Fall 2022 with a convenience sample of 54 PSC staff members from 33 courts across four states. Data were analyzed using iterative categorization. ResultsInterviewees indicated that their courts had eliminated blanket prohibitions against MOUD due to federal and state policy funding requirements, widespread dissemination of voluntary best practice standards, fear of lawsuits, and MOUD education targeting courts. Courts allowed MOUD if the court client accessed it through a treatment provider with whom the court collaborates. Some courts only allowed court clients to access MOUD from non-partnering treatment providers after a court-led “vetting” process of the proposed MOUD provider. MOUD provider characteristics considered during the vetting process included the provider's willingness to communicate with the court, frequent drug testing, adjustments of medication or dosage in response to aberrant results, offering of counseling, and acceptance of Medicaid or sliding scale payments. PSC staff were least comfortable with court clients using methadone treatment. ConclusionsThe presence (or lack of) a PSC-MOUD partnership is a key factor involved in court staff decisions when a court client desires MOUD. Therefore, increasing the number of partnerships between PSCs and MOUD providers could lead to higher rates of MOUD utilization. It is unclear whether court-led vetting processes for non-partnering MOUD treatment providers are necessary or appropriate, and such vetting processes could reduce treatment choice or access in communities with few MOUD providers.

ThP3.7 - Evaluating the Effectiveness of Internal Vetting for General Practitioners Referrals with Urgent Suspicion of Oesophago-Gastric Cancer

Abstract Aim The NHS faces substantial pressure on surgical clinic waiting times especially for urgent suspicion of cancer (USOC). This study audits the effectiveness of internal vetting process and the clinic waiting time for patients referred as USOC for oesophago-gastric cancer. Methods This was a retrospective cohort study of all consecutive USOC referrals with suspected oesophago-gastric cancer who had clinic appointment in a single surgical unit between April to September 2022. All patients who fulfilled the Scottish referral criteria for USOC were included. Patients demographics, the urgency of clinic slot utilised and waiting time to clinic were analysed. This study was registered with Clinical Quality Project (LanQIP 14749). Results 275 patients were included; median age was 63 years (IQR 52-73) and 153 (55.6%) were female. 94 (34.2%) patients were appointed as USOC, 120 (43.6%) as urgent and 61 (22.2%) as routine clinic slot. Overall, the median time for clinic appointment was 42 days (IQR 31-63). The median time to clinic was 47, 42 and 21 days for USOC, urgent and routine clinic appointments, respectively. 21 (7.6%) patients did not attend clinic. Of the patients who attended the clinic, 200 (78.7%) had endoscopy requested. Conclusions Although General Practitioners made appropriate referrals, a noteworthy portion of patients were reassigned to urgent or routine clinic slots. Nevertheless, those downgraded in urgency received prompt clinic reviews. This can be attributed to the strategic use of less urgent slots, ensuring timely assessments for patients with urgent suspicion of oesophago-gastric cancer.

Effectiveness of Sound Therapy Durations in Tinnitus Rehabilitation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Purpose: This systematic review aimed to conduct a statistical analysis comparing subjective evaluations from patients to determine the efficacy of sound therapy durations for tinnitus.Methods: After defining search terms and establishing inclusion and exclusion criteria, 15 research articles from PubMed, ScienceDirect, KCI, and the Cochrane Library met all qualifications through a vetting process involving two reviewers. Extracted data were organized by collection time and analyzed using the R program (R foundation, Vienna, Austra) to calculate the standard mean difference with 95% confidence intervals.Results: The analysis of sound therapy efficacy showed statistically significant improvement in tinnitus symptoms between pre-treatment and 3 months, and between 3 months and 6 months. However, improvement stagnated and stabilized beyond 6 months of treatment.Conclusion: Sound therapy was most effective in providing significant relief and improvement in tinnitus symptoms during the first 6 months of treatment. Longer durations did not further improve symptoms but helped maintain a lower annoyance level.

Identification of the Top TESS Objects of Interest for Atmospheric Characterization of Transiting Exoplanets with JWST

JWST has ushered in an era of unprecedented ability to characterize exoplanetary atmospheres. While there are over 5000 confirmed planets, more than 4000 Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) planet candidates are still unconfirmed and many of the best planets for atmospheric characterization may remain to be identified. We present a sample of TESS planets and planet candidates that we identify as “best-in-class” for transmission and emission spectroscopy with JWST. These targets are sorted into bins across equilibrium temperature T eq and planetary radius R p and are ranked by a transmission and an emission spectroscopy metric (TSM and ESM, respectively) within each bin. We perform cuts for expected signal size and stellar brightness to remove suboptimal targets for JWST. Of the 194 targets in the resulting sample, 103 are unconfirmed TESS planet candidates, also known as TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs). We perform vetting and statistical validation analyses on these 103 targets to determine which are likely planets and which are likely false positives, incorporating ground-based follow-up from the TESS Follow-up Observation Program to aid the vetting and validation process. We statistically validate 18 TOIs, marginally validate 31 TOIs to varying levels of confidence, deem 29 TOIs likely false positives, and leave the dispositions for four TOIs as inconclusive. Twenty-one of the 103 TOIs were confirmed independently over the course of our analysis. We intend for this work to serve as a community resource and motivate formal confirmation and mass measurements of each validated planet. We encourage more detailed analysis of individual targets by the community.

ELECTION OF JUDGES TO THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE: PROPOSALS FOR REFORM WITHOUT AMENDING THE STATUTE

AbstractIn November 2023 the United Nations (UN) General Assembly and Security Council elected (in one case, re-elected) five judges to the International Court of Justice. The electoral system is considered to be overly politicized and to pay lip service to the requirements that judges must be elected on the basis of their qualifications, regardless of their nationality, and that in the body as a whole, the representation of the main forms of civilization and the principal legal systems of the world should be assured. Several amendments to the system of nominations and elections have been proposed that would require a reform of the Court's Statute. This article proposes four measures that could be adopted without amending the Statute or encroaching on the prerogatives of national groups, UN organs or Member States: (1) ensure the representation of the principal legal systems, in part by promoting regional diversity on the bench; (2) remove the use of nationality as a factor in casual elections; (3) establish a vetting process and public hearings; and (4) promote a single vote for Security Council members. It argues that the measures proposed would lead to a change in the present culture of nominations and elections towards one that favours the qualification of the judges over political considerations.

Analysis of Legal and Practical Aspects of the Vetting Process

Albania’s quest for accession to the European Union necessitates sweeping judicial reforms, with a primary focus on bolstering the judiciary’s independence, accountability, and professionalism. Collaborative endeavors with the Venice Commission underscore Albania’s unwavering commitment to this transformative process. At the heart of this reform agenda lie constitutional amendments and legislative enactments, prominently among them being the law governing the re-evaluation of judges and prosecutors. This legislative framework facilitates the establishment of innovative judicial institutions. The inception of the “vetting process” in 2018 marks a pivotal mechanism aimed at combating corruption and fostering public confidence in a fair and impartial judicial system. The evaluative criteria encompass the disclosure of wealth, professional competence, and public image. This analysis critically examines the operations of the Independent Qualification Commission and the Special Appeals Panel, scrutinizing their investigative, administrative, and decision-making processes within the framework of the vetting law. Of particular interest is the examination of auxiliary bodies, notably the Public Commissioner and the International Monitoring Body, as key entities tasked with ensuring transparency and impartiality in the vetting process. Recognizing the vetting process as a transformative, albeit non-panacea, initiative underscores its historical significance. While acknowledging short-term repercussions, such as the suspension of the Constitutional Court, as sacrifices in the pursuit of upholding the rule of law, the overarching objective is to establish a robust and qualitatively sound justice system. This paper aims to contribute to scholarly discourse by offering a comprehensive examination of the vetting process in Albania and its implications for judicial reform, the rule of law, and the country’s European integration aspirations.

Salsal: blockchain for vetting cultural object collections

Many modern cultural object collections suffer from the problem of being obtained in unethical and illegal circumstances. Additionally, information about collections, including their status, object descriptions, and other data need up-to-date information presented to users. We propose a novel blockchain tool called Salsal that enables the vetting of objects, individually or as part of more extensive collections, to meet required ethical and legal guidelines while informing users about relevant information regarding collections. Blockchain provides a better and more rapid way for users to know about collections using a decentralized and immutable ledger technology. Blockchain can be used to incentivize or even pressure collections to vet their objects for ethical and legal guidelines that can benefit the public who use object collections. The prototype software we have made is presented and compared to other blockchains, with code and demonstration provided. We present how our blockchain can enable benefit, providing a useful vetting process for cultural objects, and allowing a user community to contribute to collections in a transparent and secure manner.

Contextual E-Comics in Geography: A Modern Pedagogical Tool for Volcanic Hazard Mitigation Awareness

Technological advancements have profoundly reshaped educational paradigms, leading to an expansive array of instructional media. Nevertheless, empirical observations reveal educators' hesitancy in assimilating these technologies, notably within geography instruction. Predominantly, geography pedagogy has gravitated towards memorization-based approaches, thereby constricting students' capacity to correlate academic content with their empirical experiences—a consequence of an entrenched reliance on conventional textbooks. Addressing this instructional void, our research endeavoured to devise an E-Comic media, underpinned by a contextual approach, to elucidate strategies for mitigating volcanic eruptions. The empirical setting for this study was situated at SMA PGRI 1 Lumajang. The research harnessed the Research and Development (R&D) methodology, employing the comprehensive ADDIE model. This model delineates five distinct phases: 1) Curricular, student demographic, and educator need analysis; 2) Storyboard conceptualisation for the impending product; 3) Product realisation in conformity with the established design; 4) Implementation, encompassing a rigorous vetting process by domain-specific expert validators and the intended research demographic. Evaluation metrics showcased robust approval ratings: 87% from media specialists, 97% from subject-matter experts, 95% from educator respondents, and 87% endorsement from student participants. In light of these affirmations, as conceptualised and developed in this study, the E-Comic medium is posited as an academically sound and pedagogically effective tool.

On the Quality of Privacy Policy Documents of Virtual Personal Assistant Applications

An app ecosystem built around virtual personal assistant (VPA) services becomes flourishing in recent years, fueled by the booming of the Internet of Things (IoT). A large number of functionality-rich VPA applications (or apps for short) have been released through app stores, and become easily-accessible by users through their smart speakers. In response to the increasingly stringent data protection regulations around the world, VPA service providers require app developers to include a privacy policy that declares their data handling practices. These privacy policies serve as the de facto agreement between developers and users, and may be taken as the basis in resolving conflicts in the event of a data breach. Therefore, it is essential that privacy policy documents are crafted in a clear, easy-to-understand, and unambiguous way. In this work, we conduct the first systematic study on the quality of privacy policies in the VPA app domain. Based on our review of literature and documents from standard working groups, we identify four metrics that enable the quality of the privacy policy to become measurable, including timeliness, availability, completeness and readability. We then develop QuPer, which extracts the meta features (e.g., update history) and linguistic features (e.g., sentence semantics) from privacy policies, and assesses their quality. Our analysis reveals that the status of the quality of privacy policies in the VPA app domain is concerning. For instance, only 1.17% of privacy policies completely cover all contents that are regarded as privacy concerns by legislation (e.g., GDPR article 13) and relevant literature. Our findings are expected to raise an alert among the VPA app developers and provide them with guidelines for creating high-quality privacy policy documents. We also encourage app store operators to implement a vetting process that ensures the quality of privacy policies before apps are released to the public.

Startup Acquisitions as a Hiring Strategy: Turnover Differences Between Acquired and Regular Hires

Prior studies suggest that acquisitions can increase employee turnover. However, acquired workers are technically new hires, who are generally prone to turnover. Therefore, it is important to benchmark acquired workers against other new hires in the organization. One view suggests that compared with regular hires who select their employer based on a mutual vetting process, acquired workers can experience a poor fit with their new employer (e.g., culture clash), resulting in elevated rates of turnover. Meanwhile, as acquisitions represent a bundle of assets, acquired workers can possess complementarities accumulated with the target firm that reinforce worker–employer fit and thus their retention prospects. Using population-level data from the United States, I find empirical support for both perspectives. Acquired workers from startups exhibit significantly higher turnover rates than regular hires. Moreover, in conditions under which acquired workers’ complementarities are more likely to be preserved—specifically, individuals with longer prior tenure, teams in which the founders remain intact, and target organizations that are structurally separated rather than integrated into the acquirer—I find reduced turnover differences for acquired workers relative to regular hires. Together, these results elucidate whether and when firms can harness human capital through startup acquisitions (“acqui-hiring”). Funding: This research was funded in part by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/stsc.2022.0026 .

35 Enhanced Vetting of Urology Referrals in NHS Lanarkshire

Abstract Aim There is an unmatched need for outpatient clinic appointments across all specialties in the NHS. We aimed to reduce unnecessary clinic appointments within the Lanarkshire Urology Department and thus allow timely access to outpatient appointments for newly referred patients with greater clinical need. Method Following a successful pilot in December 2018 all referrals to Lanarkshire Urology department underwent an enhanced vetting process by a consultant urologist with particular attention to:Detailed review of electronic records and imagingBooking of scans/ repeat blood tests prior to consultationsSignposting to more appropriate services such as the community continence clinic were indicatedWritten advice, with returned referrals giving clear guidance and evidence-based recommendations where appropriate Subsequently 3 phases have been completed Phase 1: June-December 2019. Phase 2: June-December 2020. Phase 3: January - November 2021 Results Pilot and Phase 1 6.3% of referrals were clinically canceled with the referrer being sent case specific clinical advice. This increased to 9.5% in phase 1. Phase 2: There were 3012 outpatient urology referrals between June and December 2020. 762 patients were vetted as clinically canceled, an 87% increase from 2019, reducing the number of clinic appointments required by 25%. Phase 3: 9634 patients were referred between January 2021 and November 2021, 15.8% (n = 1484) vetted as clinically canceled/ advised only. Furthermore, 548 patients were taken straight to test decreasing duplicate appointments. Conclusions We have recognized that vetting is a factor that, done well, can mitigate unmatched demand in outpatient services.

Business Models for Open Source Hardware Repositories

Free and open source hardware repositories provide massive public good, but funding their operation has proven tenuous with conventional business models. This study evaluates business models to foster that public good. Business models for online design repositories are reviewed and a new model is conceptualized to fund repository operations. The greatest added value an open hardware repository brings to the user-developer community is validation and vetting of the designs. A business model was proposed that uses revenue from the vetting process to fund validation studies and sustainable operations of the open hardware repository itself. As the return on investment of laterally-scaled open hardware that can leverage distributed manufacturing has the potential for creating enormous value, maintaining repositories for this hardware enables vast wealth generation for everyone. This is the first study specifically focused on ways to ensure economic sustainability of open hardware repositories.

Assessing the Impact of Chokepoints in a Customer Onboarding Process

Customer onboarding processes have become dysfunctional, especially with regards to the increasing number, complexity, and often, competing demands, of regulatory and law enforcement bodies with oversight over a firm’s practices. Prospective customers are screened across any number of considerations ranging from conventional ones such as financial considerations (i. e., “Does this customer have an acceptable balance sheet?”) to the more recent socio-cultural ones (i. e. “Does this customer have an effective diversity program?” “Has this customer expressed a commitment to environmentally sustainable business practices?”). A compromised sales pipeline resulting from an impaired customer vetting process may diminish economic returns, reduce profitability, and erode market share. Does repairing customer intake processes by rescinding or reducing extant customer acceptance thresholds enhance firm performance? In this paper, an onboarding process simulation is used to isolate the effect of changes in established acceptance thresholds on customer’s likelihood of success. When only One Class (“Successful” or “Performing”) customers are available, One-Class algorithms can be used for resolving the matter. Results show that there exists a tradeoff between reductions in customer thresholds and the firm’s commitment to ensuring customer success.

The Nexus of Judiciary Power and Corruption in Albania: Strategies of Defiance and Evasions

The article aims to study the actions of the network of elite members of a society in diverting financial flows. It is about the way the judiciary elite of a postcommunist and transitional society of Albania has practiced corruption. Prior and during the vetting or reevaluation process of the judges and prosecutors for integrity, ethics, and competence launched in 2017, it has uncovered the scale and luxury involved in the corruptive practices of judges and prosecutors. More than half of reevaluated judges and prosecutors have been dismissed due to past corruptive behavior. The vetting process has shown that over the last three decades of the transition history of Albania, a particular corruption scheme has emerged, catering to the needs of the corrupt judges and prosecutors. Based on fieldwork, this article examines the stories of the corruptive practices by judges and prosecutors of Albania. The article examines the complex mix of legal and illegal dynamics that were combined to produce defiance regime for the corruption within the judiciary of Albania. The article aims to conceptualize how this corruption regime was constructed and maintained. It also examines how interventions undertaken in fighting the corruption failed to deal with the defiance phenomenon within the Albanian judiciary.

Consumers’ Preferences for Egg Attributes with Tendency Purchase Organic Eggs and Willingness to Pay for the Preferences within Central Region and Southern Region of Malaysia

Purpose: Egg is one of the few foods consists of complete high quality protein source and as a main protein source in Malaysia. Organic eggs industry is an underdeveloped niche market in Malaysia but exponential grow industry in develop countries. The objectives of the study are examined consumers’ preferences toward egg attributes and tendency of consumers choose organic eggs with willingness to pay for the attributes within Central Region and Southern Region of Malaysia. Theoretical framework: Based on previous study, Lancaster’s theory argue that consumers derive utility not from good directly but from the attributes of the good that satisfy consumer need and wants (Lancaster, 1971). TRA explained the relationship between attitudes and subjective norm that influenced human intention and behavior and this theory is used to predict human reaction towards a subject based on the attitudes and behavioral intentions (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). TPB is differ from TRA where it has additional of perceived behavioral control, where together with the attitudes and subjective norm, shaped both intention and behaviors (Ajzen, 1991). Design/Methodology/Approach: The target population of this study will focus on consumer adults with the age more than 18 years old and purchase eggs within 3 months. The location of respondents will be within Central Region and Southern Region of Malaysia. The consumers 18 years old above with purchase eggs within 3 months, will be include in the sampling frame from the target population. Any adults not consume eggs within 3 months will exclude in the study. A simple random sampling technique stemmed from probability sampling technique was used to select the respondents (Ajina, 2019), where questionnaires were sent out to all the end-users in the list of sampling frame and all responses will be recorded accordingly. The obtained surveys had gone through a vetting process after the actual data collection. Incomplete questionnaires having a response rate of more than 15% will be deleted from the data set because they compromise the results' reliability and validity. The respondents not purchase any eggs within 3 months will exclude in the conjoint analysis. Findings: Total 156 respondents and 149 respondents were purchasing egg within 3 months selected as sample for conjoint analysis. The results of conjoint analysis indicated price is the most important attribute for consumer preferences follow by size, production type, color and packaging. The best combination of egg attribute with highest total utilities value is RM 0.4/egg, size A, brown color, 10 eggs per pack and organic production type with total utility value 7.477 and WTP RM0.51/egg. The result indicates tendency of consumer toward organic egg and higher than other production type. This is the first study in Malaysia showed positive preference of consumers toward organic eggs with positive WTP RM 0.11/egg for attribute organic egg alone. Research, practical & social implications: The finding of relative importance attributes for this study is different from the study by (Hanis, Nasir, Jinap, Alias, & Karim, 2013) where size is the most important attribute follow by size of packaging, color and functional of egg without consider production type and price. This study allows producers have clear picture and direction to produce eggs with low price, bigger brown eggs, organic or conventional with nutrient enrichment and low size of packaging to fulfil consumers’ need and want. Originality/Value: This study is the first finding showed positive tendency of consumers in Malaysia toward organic eggs and more important than other type of production system. In term of Willing to Pay (WTP), consumer WTP for some of the attribute like size A, size B, organic, conventional with nutrient enrichment and brown eggs. The finding gives a clear picture to industry player to strategy planning the products according to consumers’ preferences and fulfil their need and want.

Constraining Young Hot Jupiter Occurrence Rate in Stellar Associations Using 2-min Cadence TESS Data

The characterization of young planet distribution is essential for our understanding of the early evolution of exoplanets. Here we conduct a systematic search for young planets from young open clusters and associations using the 2-min cadence TESS survey data. We obtain TESS light curves for a total of 1075 young stars, which are selected with the aid of Gaia data. There are a total of 16 possible transiting signals. After a thorough vetting process, some have been confirmed as planets, and others are likely caused by eclipsing binaries. The final sample contains six confirmed planets, of which one is a hot Jupiter. After accounting for survey completeness using a Monte Carlo simulation, we can put a 95% confidence level upper limit on the hot Jupiter (P < 10 days, Rp = 0.7–2.9 RJup) occurrence rate orbiting stars in young associations at <5.1% and a 68% confidence level upper limit at <2.5%. We estimate that a sample size of ∼5000 dwarf stars with 2-min cadence data will be needed to reach a 0.5% upper limit on the hot Jupiter occurrence rate, which is the typical hot Jupiter occurrence rate around main sequence stars. Thus, future studies with larger sample sizes are required to put more constraints on planet formation and evolution theories.

Polish Mother

Polish Mother

The TESS Triple-9 Catalog II: a new set of 999 uniformly vetted exoplanet candidates

ABSTRACTThe Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission is providing the scientific community with millions of light curves of stars spread across the whole sky. Since 2018, the telescope has detected thousands of planet candidates that need to be meticulously scrutinized before being considered amenable targets for follow-up programs. We present the second catalog of the Planet Patrol citizen science project containing 999 uniformly vetted exoplanet candidates within the TESS ExoFOP archive. The catalog was produced by fully exploiting the power of the Citizen Science Planet Patrol project. We vetted TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs) based on the results of Discovery And Vetting of Exoplanets (dave) pipeline. We also implemented the automatic disposition generator, a custom procedure aimed at generating the final classification for each TOI that was vetted by at least three vetters. The majority of the candidates in our catalog, 752 TOIs, passed the vetting process and were labelled as planet candidates. We ruled out 142 candidates as false positives and flagged 105 as potential false positives. Our final dispositions and comments for all the planet candidates are provided as a publicly available supplementary table.

Measuring clinical trial set-up complexity: development and content validation of a pharmacy scoring tool to support workload planning

Abstract Introduction Clinical trials are essential for advancing medical knowledge and patient care. Pharmacy plays a vital role in research delivery, safeguarding participants, healthcare professionals and Trusts by ensuring Investigational Medicinal Products (IMPs) are procured, handled, stored, dispensed and used safely. Data have emerged indicating that clinical trial protocols are increasingly more complex for site personnel to execute. Whilst various tools have been developed to support workload planning and costing of clinical trials for clinicians and nursing personnel, the equivalent tool for pharmacy activities is not available.1,2 Aim This study aims to locally develop and validate a pharmacy scoring tool to assess clinical trial complexity at the set-up stage. Objectives are to develop pharmacy-scoring tool to quantify clinical trials execution complexity with respect to pharmacy activities and determine Content Validity Index (CVI) and Inter-Rater Agreement (IRA) of the scoring tool through an internal vetting process. Methods A three-stage process was used to develop and validate the scoring tool. Two researchers contextualised the pharmacy–specific items, organised the content and constructed the tool based on suitable elements for inclusion through a targeted literature search and outputs from an expert panel meeting. Four experts independently rated each items on its relevance, clarity and alignment with clinical trial complexity considerations at the set-up stage using a 4-point Likert scale. Following data analysis, researchers made a judgement on whether to retain, modify, omit or add new items to the tool. Where the desired level of content validity had not been achieved for an item, revisions were made following a group discussion and the tool was re-distributed to the same expert panel for a second round of assessment. Item level-CVI (I-CVI) and tool level-CVI (average-CVI) was calculated for each round. Four experts then utilised the revised tool to retrospectively review 20 random studies to evaluate clinical trial complexity scores independently. IRA among assessors was measured for each individual pharmacy-specific item by dividing the responses into dichotomous ratings (one or two vs. three or four). The study was deemed a service evaluation and approved by the Trust Pharmacy Research and Audit Group therefore ethical submission was waived. Results Fourteen pharmacy-specific items were identified for inclusion in the tool with a possible score of 0-3 points per item. The highest possible complexity score when adding up all items is 42 points with a scale of low 0-14, moderate >14-28, and high >28-42. Following two rounds of content validity assessment where clarity revisions were made to four items, 14 out of 14 scored I-CVI of 1 with overall tool level average-CVI score of 1. The IRA shows 100% agreement by item and tool. Discussion/Conclusion This clinical trial’s complexity-scoring tool is the first of its kind tailored for pharmacy set-up in the UK. Overall, the results from this study support validity and reliability (content and construct) of this locally developed tool. The formal agreement on the use of this tool with the Trust Research Lead has better facilitated workload and capacity planning as well as ensuing costings for Pharmacy clinical trial activities.

Service evaluation of radiographer-led vetting and protocoling of Computed Tomography (CT) scan requests in a Singapore public healthcare institution

IntroductionA service improvement project involving the vetting and protocoling of Computed Tomography (CT) scan requests by qualified CT radiographers was initiated in 2018. AimThis study provides a comprehensive evaluation of how a radiographer-led initiative aims to ensure that the CT scan requests received by the Radiology department are clinically appropriate, which in turn will reduce interruptions to the interpretation and reporting of imaging examinations by radiologists, who might otherwise be required to attend to clinically inappropriate and wrongly protocolled CT scan requests. MethodOutpatient CT scan requests received from July to October 2021 were vetted and protocolled by a qualified CT-trained radiographer for parameters which included the appropriateness of the clinical indication, adequacy of patient preparation for the scan, as well as the suitability of the requested examination protocol pertaining to the need for contrast media, multiple contrast-enhanced imaging phases, and the appropriateness of the scan range. ResultsPoor patient preparation and insufficient or inaccurate clinical indications were the most common findings during the vetting process (71%). Out of the 64 CT scan requests with protocol errors, 77% were attributed to contrast media type errors. The odds of incorrect CT scan requests increased with the requesting clinician’s rank, while there was no such significant correlation with the clinical specialty of the requesting clinician or the CT scan type. ConclusionThe meticulous vetting of imaging requests helps to ensure that limited imaging hardware resources are allocated to more clinically appropriate cases, correct protocols are applied to requested imaging scans, and that patients undergoing imaging are adequately prepared, thereby enhancing overall patient care. Implications for practiceVetting of imaging requests by radiographers, who are capable to make appropriate clinical decisions related to their enhanced level of practice ensures patient safety and optimisation of Radiology resources.