Focusing on Continuous Professional Development for Health Professionals

The context in which health professionals practice is constantly evolving. The entry of new technologies in medicine has put more than one specialist to the test. It is worth noting that these technologies are rapidly updated, generating new solutions every year. While this contributes to offering quality programs for the training of new professionals, how can a professional even aspire to keep up to date with all these developments? This chapter provides some proposals and reflections to develop professional development goals for health professionals based on a continuous professional development mindset.

An Investigation of English-Majored Students’ Learning Styles and Their Preferable Interaction Activities: A Case Study in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam

Many changes have been observed in the Vietnamese education context. As a result, higher education institutions implemented many innovations in English teaching and learning, such as new course books, new programs, and new teaching techniques. Somehow, it creates several challenges for English as a foreign language (EFL) students and their motivation for learning. Learning styles have been considered as one of the course factors.The current study attempted to investigate English-majored students’ learning styles and their preferred interaction activities in EFL classes. The study was administered as a concurrent nested design in which the qualitative strand is embedded within the prominence of the quantitative one. There were 191 students, studying English high-quality programs in a public tertiary institution in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, who were recruited in this research. the results from questionnaires including thirty-one close-ended items and two open-ended ones showed that among the students, there are more visual learning styles than the counterparts, including auditory and kinesthetic ones. In terms of interaction activities in EFL classes, games are dominant. Based on the findings, some discussions and implications are presented at the end of the paper.

Hospital accreditation and patient care, a dilemma?

Despite the massive financial and human efforts of hospitals in the Flemish part of Belgium to increase quality through the path of external accreditation, so far this has not convinced the end user, in casu the patient. In this study of 307 hospital patients we conclude that the knowledge about accreditation is very limited to none existent (2%) in a sample of Belgian patients not working in medical practice and that patients do not choose their hospital care in accordance to the accreditation status of the hospital. We remain convinced that improving quality is a continuous concern for medical professionals and hospital management. However, we believe that patients, medical professionals and hospital managers might define quality care in a somewhat different way and we question the methodology of imposing a 2 vast amount of strict protocols as a way to improve quality in patient care. There is no conclusive evidence to support that these uniformly imposed “quality programs” improve patient care, except on safety issues.

SRAMM: Short Read Alignment Mapping Metrics

Short Read Alignment Mapping Metrics (SRAMM): is an efficient and versatile command line tool providing additional short read mapping metrics, filtering, and graphs. Short read aligners report MAPing Quality (MAPQ), but these methods generally are neither standardized nor well described in literature or software manuals. Additionally, third party mapping quality programs are typically computationally intensive or designed for specific applications. SRAMM efficiently generates multiple different concept-based mapping scores to provide for an informative post alignment examination and filtering process of aligned short reads for various downstream applications. SRAMM is compatible with Python 2.6+ and Python 3.6+ on all operating systems. It works with any short read aligner that generates SAM/BAM/CRAM file outputs and reports 'AS' tags. It is freely available under the MIT license at http://github.com/achon/sramm.

Complying and Resisting: A Qualitative Metasynthesis of the Race and Gender Discourses found in the Play of Young Children

For many in the field of early childhood education, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is considered to be the source for information on high-quality approaches. Currently, NAEYC (2005) states that high-quality programs are programs that include diversity within the physical environment of the room and considers the cultural backgrounds of the students in the class.This acknowledgment of there being bias in our society sheds light on the responsibility early childhood educators have regarding teaching children about biases in order to prevent the continued growth of systematic inequalities. The purpose of this qualitative metasynthesis is to synthesize the findings of various high-quality studies dealing with issues of race and gender and the play of young children as a way to understand better what messages young children are exposed to, are accepting and rejecting. The two research questions that guided the study are (a) How is intertextuality used in the discourse of young children in extant studies involving issues of hegemony in early childhood classrooms? (b) What societal discourses are present in the speech and actions of young children in extant studies involving hegemony in early childhood classrooms? Findings show that young children in extant research confirmed hegemonic messages more than any of the other intertextual responses.

Designing Quality Sport Environments to Support Newcomer Youth and Their Families: The Case of One Program Founder/Leader

Appropriately structured youth sport programs have been shown to promote participants’ physical activity and well-being. When compared to Canadian citizens and permanent residents, newcomers to Canada have lessened access to sport programs due to a multitude of interrelated factors. In the present case study, the authors explored the experiences of one founder/leader who created a sport program to support Canadian newcomer youth and their families. Two semistructured interviews were conducted with the program founder/leader to examine her experiences in intentionally promoting the physical activity and well-being of newcomer youth. Transcripts and program documents were subjected to a reflexive thematic analysis. Findings portray the complex set of factors that the program founder/leader considered to address the realities and needs of newcomer youth and their families. The practical considerations and reflections focus on the importance of designing culturally sensitive, inclusive, and quality programs with newcomers.