Physician Experiences and Perceived Barriers to Providing Quality Infertility Care in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana

High-quality, patient-centered care is essential to achieving equity and dignity for individuals with infertility, yet few studies have explored quality of infertility care in sub-Saharan Africa. We interviewed 13 non-specialist physicians and 2 medical school faculty to explore experiences in and perceptions of providing infertility care in Greater Accra, Ghana. We used a patient-centered infertility care model to inform our analysis and results. Individualized care and taking time to counsel and emotionally support patients were perceived as the most important things a physician can do to provide quality infertility care. Financial costs and lack of infertility services within a single facility were the most common barriers reported to providing quality infertility care. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to explore quality of infertility care provided by physicians in public sector facilities in Ghana, shedding light on existing barriers and identifying strategies for improvement.

SDGs: A Responsible Research Assessment Tool toward Impactful Business Research

An alternative research assessment (RA) tool was constructed to assess the relatedness of published business school research to the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The RA tool was created using Leximancer™, an on-line cloud-based text analytic software tool, that identified core themes within the SDG framework. Eight (8) core themes found to define the ‘spirit of the SDGs’: Sustainable Development, Governance, Vulnerable Populations, Water, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Food Security, Restoration, and Public Health. These themes were compared to the core themes found in the content of 4576 academic articles, published in 2019, in journals that comprise the Financial Times (FT) 50 list. Their relatedness to the SDGs was assessed. Overall, 10.6% of the themes found in the FT50 journal articles had an explicit relationship to the SDG themes while 24.5% were implied. Using themes generated from machine learning (ML), augmented by researcher judgement (to account for synonyms, similar concepts, and discipline specific examples), improved the robustness of the relationships found between the SDG framework and the published articles. Although there are compelling reasons for business schools to focus research on advancing the SDGs, this study and others highlight that there is much opportunity for improvement. Recommendations are made to better align academic research with the SDGs, influencing how business school faculty and their schools prioritize research and its role in the world.

One size doesn’t fit all: framework and resources for individualized interventions for struggling medical students

When helping struggling medical students, a “one size fits all” approach is often ineffective, as many different factors affect academic success. In our experience, these factors may overlap or be distinct for each student, and thus require individualized interventions based on student needs. We recommend an individualized model of academic support includes an intake interview, assessment, individualized interventions, and follow up to assess progress. This paper provides a recommended framework of resources for medical school faculty and staff who work with struggling students. Different issues that lead students to struggle are categorized in the main domains of Bloom’s taxonomy: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. A discussion of the impact of the factors in each domain includes detailed tables with corresponding manifestations, assessments, and support strategies literature for each issue. An application of a proposed framework is presented on a case example. Individualized approaches to improving medical student success are presented to address the complex and interrelated areas of academic success, wellbeing, quality of life, career potential, and satisfaction with medical school.

Pedagogical practices and sexual diversity: the teacher as a facilitator in LGBTQIA+ students’ school experiences

In Brazil and all over the world, the need for affirmative actions aimed at the inclusion and well-being of LGBTQIA+ students is palpable. Unprepared professionals and students facing instances of psychological and physical abuse inside the school environment due to said lack of preparation can be easily found. This article sought to bring tools to these educators, gathering data from Brazil and other countries, through bibliometric research and systematic revision of primary and secondary data, related to the school experience of LGBTQIA+ students, as well as reports by professionals either in formation or in activity about how to take actions that have a positive impact towards the creation of a safe and welcoming environment for everyone. The data collected was mainly published between the years of 2015 and 2020, focusing on primary and secondary students. It has been ascertained that the environments where LGBTQIA+ students feel most comfortable were those in which the school faculty members made use of dialog and took a stand on behalf of these students, and thus served as role models so that others would do the same.

Scientific Paper Production by Iranian Dental Schools Between 2015 and 2019

Background: Journal articles published by Iranian dental school faculty members have followed an upward trend Since 2000, based on: (1) the global growth rate; (2) the increase in the number of country’s dental schools and their relatively higher number of faculty members; and (3) the health ministry’s emphasis on research and scientific publications. Hence, it is important to keep ourselves up to date about the trend of scientific articles published by Iranian dental schools. Objectives: This study aimed to extract the number and quantitative value of articles authored by faculty members of Iranian dental schools that are indexed in three databases of SCOPUS, PubMed, and the Web of Science (WoS/ISI) from 2015 to 2019. Methods: A five-year cross-sectional study was conducted on the above-mentioned databases, using a similar strategy for all databases. Words “Iran” and “dent*” were searched in affiliations. The obtained results were investigated in-depth. The details of search results were checked out one by one. Only those articles with at least one author genuinely affiliated to an Iranian dental school were included for further assessment. The “number of articles” authored by at least one author and those with the “first author” affiliated to an Iranian dental school were counted. Then, the “quantitative value” or share of each author was calculated by dividing one by the number of authors of the article. The three variables were compared among databases, dental schools, and study years. Results: A total of 3922, 2473, and 2345 articles were retrieved from SCOPUS, PubMed, and WoS, respectively. Concerning SCOPUS and WoS databased, all three study variables had an increasing trend from 2015 to 2018 but decreased in 2019. In PubMed, however, the decline started from the beginning of the study period. Conclusions: The observed decline in the number of scientific papers produced or published at the end of the study period is worrying. The novel variable of “quantitative value” that was calculated in this study can be regarded as an appropriate and feasible indicator to determine the number of scientific papers published by individuals, dental schools, and the whole country’s dental research society, compared to other variables. Policymakers should rethink facilitating publication in accredited journals, especially those indexed in PubMed.

Antecedents of Emotional Intelligence: Perceived Organizational Support Impact on Ambidextrous Behavior of Standalone Business School Faculty

The present study was designed to examine the significance of emotional intelligence (EI), perceived organizational support (POS), and its impact on organizational ambidexterity of faculty members working with standalone business schools in southern India. The study argues that the moderating effect of emotional intelligence (EI) is significant in the association between perceived organizational support and two antecedents of organizational ambidexterity of faculty members. The research on institutional exploration and exploitation ambidexterity variants highlights vital ways to realize organizational ambidexterity. Very few researchers have investigated organizational ambidexterity in the higher education sector, and no research is available on standalone business school faculty members. The study proposes a novel research framework, and the findings reveal that perceived organizational support is highly influencing two antecedents of organizational ambidexterity. The research also observes a slight moderating effect of emotional intelligence between the association of perceived organizational support and organizational ambidexterity and the positive relationship identified among emotional intelligence, perceived organizational support and organizational ambidexterity.

Examining the Schoolwide Expectations Survey for Specific Settings: Descriptive Properties

In tiered systems, all school faculty and staff ideally recognize student academic, behavioral, and social achievement as a shared responsibility. In an ideal system, faculty and staff collaborate in a data-informed process to define common student expectations to facilitate success. Adults provide clarity for all students by defining expectations for instructional and non-instructional settings, allowing equitable access to all areas of the school experience. In this replication study, we explored educator priorities of behavioral expectations in classroom and non-instructional settings for students as measured by the Schoolwide Expectations Survey for Specific Settings (SESSS). We analyzed faculty and staff data from 10 schools whose leadership team participated in a yearlong professional learning series to design their comprehensive, integrated, three-tiered (Ci3T) model of prevention. Results indicated educators across school levels (elementary, middle, high) had similar views on what expectations should be prioritized for student success, with statistically significant differences found for the hallway setting. Implications and future directions for research in this area are discussed.

Law, Literature, and War

The volume opens with the plenary panel from the original conference on War in Law and Literature in February 2018, at which Justice Stephen Breyer, Chief Judge Diane Wood, and scholar Paul Woodruff discussed the volume’s themes. The panel was preceded by a production of Euripides’s The Trojan Women (415 BCE) in modern translation, acted by a group of law-school faculty and students, and the three panelists often refer to the production they have just seen. Why The Trojan Women? The editors wanted to begin the conference with a vivid and emotionally rich example of the literature of war. Although Euripides’s play is obviously not about an American war, it was chosen for its universally resonant depiction of war’s devastation, and its effect on both combatants and the women and children they leave behind.