An educational approach for early student self-assessment in clinical periodontology

Background Self-assessment is a mandated educational requirement for use in dental undergraduate programmes. It is weakly supported for use in early clinical training and studies are criticized for the conceptual and methodology shortfalls. The aim of the study was to compare the alignment of student self-assessment to both staff assessment and written exams in early clinical training using an educational approach. Methods In 2014-2015, 55 third-year dental students completed three educational sessions comprising of (a) classroom teaching (lecture, video) with post-lesson written exam and (b) clinical activity with student self-assessment, staff assessment and student reflection. An intra-individual analysis approach, staff validation, and student scoring standardization were implemented. Cognitive (clinical competency) and non-cognitive (professionalism) items were separated in the analyses. Results There were medium correlations (Spearman’s rho, r) between student self-assessment and staff assessment scores for cognitive items (r, 0.32) and for non-cognitive items (r, 0.44) for all three combined sessions. There were large correlations for individual sessions. Compared to the post-lesson written exam, students showed small correlation (r, 0.22, 0.29) and staff showed medium correlation (r, 0.31, 0.34) for cognitive and non-cognitive items. Students showed improvements in their mean scores for both cognitive (t-test; p > 0.05) and non-cognitive items (t-test; p = 0.000). Mean scores of students were not different statistically from that of staff (p > 0.05). Conclusions Students may adequately act as self-assessors at the beginning of their clinical work in periodontology. Self-assessment may potentially improve the clinical performance. Self-assessment may be nurtured through clear guidelines, educational training strategies, feedback and reflection leading to better evaluative judgement and lifelong learning.

Problematika Mahasiswa Pendidikan Bahasa Jerman Yang Belum Pernah Mendapatkan Pelajaran bahasa Jerman di Jenjang Pendidikan Sebelumnya

This study is aimed at knowing the problematics of german education students who have never gotten german lessons in previous education levels. This study belongs to descriptive qualitative. The population in this study is German Education students of State University of Makassar, class of 2019. The samples in the study are students of the class of 2019 who have never learned German in previous education level. The data were collected from observation and questionnaires. The results of the study are problems faced in the learning process including internal factors and external factors. The internal factors are the ability to memorize teaching materials, explore memorized teaching materials, and learning habit. Whilst external factors are academic facilities and infrastructure, teaching staff assessment policies, and the social environment on campus. The main problems are: the lack of vocabulary, difficulties in sentences structure (grammar) and the lack of ability in pronunciation.

A narrative systematic review of randomised controlled trials that compare cannulation techniques for haemodialysis

Background: Cannulation of arteriovenous access for haemodialysis affects longevity of the access, associates with complications and affects patients’ experiences of haemodialysis. Buttonhole and rope ladder techniques were developed to reduce complications. However, studies that compare these two techniques report disparate results. This systematic review performs an in-depth exploration of RCTs, with a specific focus on cannulation as a complex intervention. Methods: A PICO question and protocol was developed as per PRISMA-P guidance and registered on PROSPERO (CRD42018094656 https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=112895 ). The systematic review included any RCT performed on adult patients with end-stage kidney disease undergoing cannulation of arteriovenous fistulae or grafts for in-centre haemodialysis, as performed by healthcare staff. Assessment of quality of RCTs and data extraction were performed by two co-authors independently. Data were extracted on the study design, intervention and comparator and outcomes, including patency, infection and patients’ experiences. Results: The literature search identified 241 records. Ten records met inclusion criteria, which described five different RCTs that compared buttonhole to either rope ladder or usual practice. Results were disparate, with patency and infection results varying. Pain Visual Analogue scores were the only measure used to capture patients’ experiences and results were inconclusive. All RCTs had differences and limitations in study design that could explain the disparity in results. Conclusion: Current evidence does not allow definitive conclusions as to whether buttonhole or rope ladder needling technique is superior. Future RCTs should describe interventions and comparators with adequate detail, embed process evaluation, use standardised outcome measures and build on feasibility studies to produce definitive results.

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF STAFF INCENTIVE AND ENGAGEMENT SCHEME

The article deals with the topical issues of the research of staff incentive and en-gagement essence at the enterprises of both budgetary and commercial spheres in the context of their effective management and improvement of innovative activity. The article states that the incentive and engagement scheme, based on a comprehensive assessment of staff, makes it possible to accomplish a number of important tasks: to identify the degree of professional compliance of a candidate with the requirements for specific job functions; to calculate the ratio of “cost-result of work” of an individual employee; to compare the labour costs of different employees in the team and identify factors that affect significant deviations in performance; to work out the optimal mechanism of staff incentive and engagement aimed at solving the identified problems; to determine the criteria for assessing the effectiveness of motivational and stimulating tools. On this basis, business entities form an objective need to develop effective instruments for tangible and intangible incentives, as well as to improve the existing ones and develop new methods of staff assessment. At the same time, the existing tools of staff incentive and engagement do not fully meet the needs of modern organizations. This contradiction determined the choice of the topic for our research. The purpose of the research is to develop methodological approaches and practical recommendations for improving staff incentive and engagement scheme. In our opinion, the methodology for assessing the effectiveness of the employee incentive scheme should consist of a set of indicators that evaluate “economic effectiveness”, “social effectiveness”, “effectiveness for employers” and “effectiveness for employees”. The author proposes the methodology of assessing the effectiveness of the incentive scheme, which will best reflect the specifics of an enterprise activity. This methodology includes a set of indicators to evaluate the “economic” and “social” components of the effectiveness, as well as to take into account the effect for both employees and employers. The article considers the identified disadvantages of employee incentive schemes in organizations of both budgetary and commercial spheres, which determines the necessity of a more in-depth and comprehensive study of the features and problems of employee incentives in organizations of any sphere. Thus, the use of the proposed methodology will make it possible to comprehensively assess the effectiveness of employee incentive schemes in both budgetary and commercial areas and on the basis of the obtained results will promote making reasonable management decisions.

Methodology for staff management assessment efficiency in the medical institutions

This paper considers human resources to be important for the effective functioning and development of the organization in current socio-economic conditions. Corporate management involves the impact on people (corporate staff) primarily. The authors noted that the staff management assessment is a powerful instrument to increase the management process’s effectiveness. The normative documents of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine define the following methods of quality control of medical services: clinical audit and monitoring. The purpose of a clinical audit is to find opportunities to achieve high-quality health care. Continuous tracking of staff provides an opportunity to make effective management decisions and increase productivity. An adequate system for assessing the quality of medical staff should respond not only to the result of medical care but also to prevent defects. Personnel management in health care quality should be carried out to avoid mistakes in the provision of medical care. This concept is designed to create an internal structural quality management system. Therefore, it is essential to understand the assessment process and its interactions at different stages of the management process within the organization. In the paper, the authors determined ways to enhance the medical staff management assessment. The study presents the essence and features of medical staff assessment based on the general principles and methods for assessing the effectiveness of public and private medical institutions. The authors analyzed the medical staff assessment system in medical institutions and identified its features under medical reform. Besides, the study provided the investigation of the current state of the staff assessment of medical institutions. It analyzed the areas of concern in the methods and mechanisms of staff assessment. To investigate the current situation in the medical institution, the structure and movement of medical staff were analyzed. The findings identified the gaps in the current staff assessment system and the reasons for the low rates of nursing staff. The authors highlighted ways to improve the current staff assessment system in the institution through the social satisfaction criterion, interviewing the parturient women and configuration management of quality based on the PDCA cycle. The obtained results showed that the medical institution had different reserves available to increase the parturient women satisfaction with the level of medical services received.

Improvement of the Salary Organization on the Basis of the Personnel Professional-Qualification Level Evaluation Method

It is justified the use of a generic integral indicator and its graphical interpretation for the enterprise staff incentives system establishing, which makes it possible to determine the influence of group indicators as well as to establish the functional links between indicators. The integral index of personnel incentives efficiency and influence factors are determined. The most important quantitative factors that affect the high efficiency of staff incentives are defined. The relevance between the results of enterprises and indicators of the effectiveness of staff incentives is determined. The educational and professional quality of the staff is determined by means of a score. The employee motivational profile diagram is constructed. The staff assessment system has been developed to improve staff skills. The based on a competent and attributive approach review of grades and categories for staff is proposed.

Banking front-line personnel assessment by fuzzy logic approaches

The article is dedicated to the qualitative assessment of banking personnel and the interpretation of the results with a developed fuzzy logic expert system. The authors proposed to evaluate human resources based on the Company Loyalty, Customer Service Quality and Intra-Corporate Communication which are linguistic terms for personnel to be assessed. To interpret the results of the received staff assessment, a fuzzy expert system was developed which enables the Business Efficiency of Personnel to be estimated. The expert system was tested at the front-line office of the regional bank. Regression and correlation analysis revealed high correlations between the Business Efficiency of Personnel and the quantitative results of employees. The practical relevance of the research is conditioned by the growing need to assess credit managers during the trial period or at the introduction of new products, while quantitative indicators are absent. The methods used for research comprise survey, ranking of the factors and factor analysis.

Assessment of the relative educational efficiency of the academic staff in the field of health care

Annual assessment of academic staff and regular publication of the results of such evaluations on the official websites of higher education institutions, on information boards and in any other way is a regulatory requirement laid down in subparagraph 3 of paragraph 2 of Article 16 of the Law of Ukraine «On Higher Education». Existing methods of academic staff assessment found in literature do not allow to make judgments about the quality of educational work, or are based on student surveys and therefore incorporate a number of errors introduced by the subjective nature of assessment. The purpose of this work is to develop an objective way to assess the educational work of academic staff in the field of health care. We propose a system for such assessment, which consists of a subsystem of external independent assessment of students’ knowledge, for example in the format of unified state qualifying exams (USQE: «Step-1», «Step-2», «Step-B» etc.), and a subsystem of internal administrative analysis. The internal administrative analysis subsystem combines the results of students who were taught by a particular teacher in a particular discipline, in the relevant USQE subtest using a special formula and adjusts them to the potential of each student, the complexity of the subtest and the total complexity of USQE in that academic year. The proposed system is implemented in the medical faculty of Uzhhorod National University, and the result of the academic staff assessment was discussed at the academic council of the faculty and at the meetings of departments. The application of the developed system provides an objective assessment of the educational work in the field of health care, and the results of its application are a motivating factor in educational activities and can be taken into account during the renegotiation of contracts for academic staff in higher education.

Commercial organization staff assessment of the role of money in their lives: the relationship with psychological and organizational-functional characteristics of the organization

Introduction. Pursue of an effective monetary policy by commercial organizations should be based, among others, on the organizations' characteristics that affect their staff's assessment of the role of money in their lives. The aim of the study: to investigate the relationship between psychological and organizational-functional characteristics of commercial organizations and staff assessment of the role of money in their lives. Research methods. L.M. Karamushka and O.I. Parshak's «My Attitude towards Money», R.B. Shaw's «Understanding the Company's Goals» and «Manifestation of Concern by Management», D. Cole's «Inclination to the Type of Organizational Culture» (supplemented and modified by T.Yu. Bazarov and P.V. Malinovsky). Research results. The results of the study have showed statistically significant relationships, both positive and negative, between the commercial organizations psychological characteristics (staff understanding of the goals of the organization, organization managements concern for staff, and organizational culture type) and organizational-functional characteristics (number of people in the organization, organizations age ) and some indicators of staff assessment of the role of money in their lives. The strongest relationship has been found between the type of organizational culture and staff assessment of the role of money in their lives. Conclusions. The findings can be helpful in determining the organizational and psychological conditions of and improving monetary policy of commercial organizations as well as for in staff psychological counseling.