From a View of the Hospital as a System to a View of the Suffering Patient

Purpose: Hospitals aspire to provide patient-centered care but are far from achieving it. This qualitative mixed methods study explored the capacity of hospital directors to shift from a hospital systemic-view to a suffering patient-view applying the Salutogenic theory.Methods: Following IRB, we conducted in-depth narrative interviews with six directors of the six Israeli academic tertiary public hospitals, focusing on their managerial role. In a second meeting we conducted vignette interviews in which we presented each director with a narrative of a suffering young patient who died at 33 due to medical misconduct, allowing self-introspection. Provisional coding was performed for data analysis to identify categories and themes by the three dimensions of the sense-of-coherence, an anchor of Salutogenics: comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness.Results: While at the system level, directors reported high comprehensibility and manageability in coping with complexity, at the patient level, when confronted with the vignette, directors acknowledged their poor comprehensibility of patients' needs and patient's experience during hospitalizations. They acknowledged their poor capacity to provide patient-centered care. Meaningfulness in the narrative interview focused on the system while meaningfulness in the vignette interview focused on providing patient care.Conclusions: The evident gaps between the system level and the patient level create lack of coherence, hindering the ability to cope with complexity, and are barriers to providing patient-centered care. To improve the delivery of patient-centered care, we suggest ways to consolidate the views, enabling the shift from a systemic-view to a patient-view.

The Socratic Guide on My Side

In this essay, the author argues that no person can just step into self-directed learning without a mentor who guides students into learning. Learning is an unending relational process, based on trust, that begins in wonder. The chapter examines arguments from Plato, Polanyi, Pieper, and others who contend that learning is other-centered rather than self-directed, and as such, learning demands the need for guides—either as individuals, books, or sets of “guiding questions” that push us to grasp a larger, systemic view of the world.

Understanding Pandemics Such as COVID-19 through the Lenses of the “One Health” Approach

This study aims to contribute to research on systemic thinking in biology education, particularly how to best equip pre-service teachers to introduce health problems such as the COVID-19 pandemic using the “One Health” approach. We attempt to explore to what extent a group of pre-service teachers identify our lifestyle and relationships with nature as factors that contribute to the emergence of future pandemics. The research questions are as follows: (1) What dimensions of the One Health approach did the students identify as potential causes that can produce and prevent future pandemics such as the COVID-19 disease? (2) To what extent did the students show a systemic view aligned to the One Health approach? The participants were 43 pre-service elementary teachers working on a set of activities about the COVID-19 pandemic, in which they were asked about the potential causes of and ways to prevent future pandemics. Content analysis of individual written responses is applied for addressing the research questions, focusing on the dimensions of the One Health approach and the level of system thinking reflected. Most participants focused on the human dimension and a few mentioned environmental and animal dimensions, which points to the need to integrate the One Health notion into teacher training.

Laimdots Ceplītis – nozīmīga personība latviešu valodniecībā

The article deals with the personality of Laimdots Ceplītis and his most significant contribution to the development of several linguistic fields: intonation of speech and phonetics, syntax, lexicography, improvement of writing. Ceplītis has been described as a diligent and hardworking, studious and persistent person; as an erudite researcher with a systemic view and a refined scientific methodology; as a demanding teacher, and understanding and forgiving at the same time. Ceplītis has been remembered as a responsive and helpful colleague, an intelligent, highly cultured, and very tactful person.

Interdisciplinary Urban Tunnel Control within Smart Cities

Nowadays, urban road tunnels are considered to be independent entities within a city. Their interactions with the rest of the city and vice versa are usually not considered and, if they are, are only considered in a limited way (for example, through the nearest traffic controller). Typically, only the traffic parameters and not the environmental impacts are considered. This paper has two major objectives. First, we provide a systemic view on a road urban tunnel. The major focus is on the interfaces between the tunnel and the rest of the city and the way they will be managed. We are providing a tool to take into consideration a sustainable development of a tunnel (i.e., not only traffic flow parameters such as average speed, but also environmental and societal characteristics). This model expresses the actual traffic situation in a monetary form (i.e., cost of congestions). The second objective is to provide a new road urban tunnel control approach that follows the original methodology and systemic view described in the paper. If the tunnel is controlled autonomously, which corresponds to the current state-of-the-art in many cities, the algorithm decides to close it based on only local parameters. However, the proposed new algorithm takes into consideration not only the traffic situation in the tunnel (expressed by the parameter traffic density), but also the actual traffic situation within the city (expressed by its level of service (LOS)). This allows more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable oriented road urban tunnel management. The described algorithm is demonstrated on a specific example of the tunnel complex Blanka in Prague.

ARCHITECTONICS OF TRADITIONAL AND DISTANT EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

The concept of “architectonics of the educational process” should be one of the key concepts when the traditional and distant educational processes are compared. This is the main systemic view of the educational process to be discussed in this article. The research shows that the differences between the traditional educational process and the distance one can be analyzed, in particular, from the standpoint of such a phenomenon as a “didactic communicative impact” of the teacher on the trainees.

Sociotechnical factors and Industry 4.0: an integrative perspective for the adoption of smart manufacturing technologies

PurposeAs the level of implementation of Industry 4.0 increases, misalignments between adopted technologies and organizational factors may result in benefits below expected. This paper aims to analyze how organizational factors can contribute to a higher level of adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies. The paper uses a sociotechnical perspective lens to achieve this aim.Design/methodology/approachUsing a sample of 231 manufacturing companies in Denmark, a leading country in Industry 4.0 readiness, the paper analyzes through cluster analysis and logistic regression whether the development of four sociotechnical dimensions – that is, Social, Technical, Work Organization and Environmental factors – in these companies can benefit the achievement of higher levels of Industry 4.0 technology adoption.FindingsThe results show that companies focused on the development of sociotechnical aspects generally present higher Industry 4.0 adoption levels. However, some sociotechnical factors are less supportive than others.Originality/valueBased on these results, practitioners can plan the adoption of advanced technologies, using a systemic organizational view. This study provides evidence on a growing field with few empirical studies available. The paper contributes by providing an analysis of a leading country in Industry 4.0 implementation, presenting a systemic view on technology adoption in the Industry 4.0 context.