A Pragmatic Approach to Designing Changes Using Convergent Interviews: Occupational Violence Against Paramedics as an Illustration

Developing a change program to address complex problems can appear overwhelming. This study presents how an inductive diagnostic technique known as convergent interviewing can provide a summary of the critical issues that could be addressed by a change program. A systems perspective is used to show how the issues raised by the diagnostic process can be targeted in order to have the most effect and be pragmatically implementable. The use of the tool is illustrated by analysing an employee problem that needs to be addressed in public services, the high rates of occupational violence against paramedics. The resulting inductive systems model can be used for diagnosis or for informing a variety of change interventions. Convergent interviews are relatively easy to use, powerful, and applicable to many situations. This tool is particularly useful for developing innovations regarding a specific problem, changes that could be a source of substantial public value.     

Use of "therapeutic complication" as a manner of death

Analyses of deaths due to therapeutic complications (TCs) provide important quality of care information for medical providers. In New York City, 463 deaths were investigated by the Office of Chief Medical Examiner and certified with TC as the manner of death in 2003. The TC manner of death is used for fatalities due to predictable complications of appropriate medical therapy. All death certificates and select autopsy, hospital, and investigation reports were reviewed. Data concerning cause of death, contributing conditions, age, race, and sex were extracted. The types of complications and the causes of death were classified into various types of surgical and nonsurgical categories of complications. These included: postoperative infections, pulmonary emboli, and technical and medication complications. The use of TC as a manner of death has benefits and limitations. Without the TC option, one is forced to certify certain deaths (e.g., penicillin anaphylaxis) either as natural or accident. The TC option allows easy identification and tracking of medical complications for public health purposes and also allows more consistent reporting of natural and medical-accidental deaths. In general, complications that occur during emergency surgeries/procedures for natural disease, tend to be certified with a natural manner. The "but for" test may be used to distinguish natural from TC deaths. There are criteria for distinguishing TC from accidents and homicides. TCs that occur during treatment of a potentially life-threatening injury, are superseded by the manner dictated by the circumstances of the initiating injury. The certification of TC usually does not address errors of omission, clinical judgement/management, or missed diagnoses.     

Party affiliation and support for capital punishment: An assessment of lawmakers from Canada and the United States

This article assesses the attitudes supporting capital punishment among lawmakers from two democratic countries — Canada and the United States. Accordingly, data were collected from three different populations responsible for legislating law either permitting or prohibiting the use of capital punishment in their respective jurisdictions — the Canadian House of Commons and the Michigan and Ohio state legislatures. These data were used to assess two general hypotheses: (1) Conservative parties will report higher levels of support for capital punishment; and, (2) Individual members from liberal political parties will report lower levels of support for capital punishment when compared to members of more conservative parties. The research findings supported both hypotheses.     

Women and (in)security: The case of the Philippines

Abstract

This paper takes as its starting point the need to address a gender void and northern‐centrism in the new/critical security agenda. Basing the paper on the security priorities of women in the Philippines, presented in the form of a ‘Security Pillar’, the paper examines how far new/critical security, and feminist security literature incorporates the concerns of women in Southeast Asia in the reconceptualization of security, and considers the ways in which security can be reformulated to address the security needs of women in Southeast Asia.     

Formulae for Estimating Skeletal Height in Modern South‐East Asians

Estimating stature in human skeletal remains of Asian ancestry is problematic for forensic anthropologists due to the paucity and uncertain suitability of regression formulae. To address this issue, our study analyzed 64 individuals from a modern skeletal collection of South‐East Asian origin and developed population‐specific ordinary least squares regression formulae to estimate skeletal height from each of the long bones of the upper and lower limbs, as well as from trunk length. Results indicate that the most accurate estimates of skeletal height from a single bone (as measured by standard error of the estimate—SEE) are from tibial length in males (SEE = 2.40 cm) and from humeral length in females (SEE = 2.59 cm), followed by femoral length (SEE = 2.84 cm). When multiple elements are considered, the combination of femoral and tibial length yields the best estimates in both sexes as well as combined sex samples (male SEE = 2.40 cm; female SEE = 2.77 cm; combined sex SEE = 2.54 cm).