ABSTRACT
AIM: Pharmacists are essential members of hospital antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) teams. A lack of self-perceived confidence can limit pharmacists' involvement and contributions. Pharmacists working in AMS have reported a lack of confidence. There is currently a lack of validated measures to assess pharmacists' self-perceived confidence when working in AMS and contributors to this confidence. This study aimed to identify variables contributing to pharmacist self-perceived confidence and validate an AMS hospital pharmacist survey tool using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). METHODS: Responses from a survey of Australian and French hospital pharmacists were used to undertake CFA and path analysis on factors related to pharmacists' self-perceived confidence. It was hypothesized that pharmacists' self-perceived confidence would be impacted by time working in AMS, perceived importance of AMS programmes, perceived barriers to participating in AMS and current participation. RESULTS: CFA demonstrated a good model fit between the factors. Items included in the model loaded well to their respective factors with acceptable reliability. Path analysis demonstrated that time working in AMS had a significant impact on pharmacists' self-perceived confidence, while perceived barriers had a negatively significant relationship. Pharmacy participation in AMS and perceived importance of AMS programmes had a non-significant impact. CONCLUSION: Findings demonstrated that the survey tool showed good validity and identified factors that can impact pharmacists' self-perceived confidence when working in hospital AMS programmes. Having a validated survey tool can identify factors that can reduce pharmacists' self-perceived confidence. Strategies can then be developed to address these factors and subsequently improve pharmacists' self-perceived confidence.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: As the world's largest coal producer, China was accounted for about 46% of global coal production. Among present coal mining risks, methane gas (called gas in this paper) explosion or ignition in an underground mine remains ever-present. Although many techniques have been used, gas accidents associated with the complex elements of underground gassy mines need more robust monitoring or warning systems to identify risks. This paper aimed to determine which single method between the PCA and Entropy methods better establishes a responsive weighted indexing measurement to improve coal mining safety. METHODS: Qualitative and quantitative mixed research methodologies were adopted for this research, including analysis of two case studies, correlation analysis, and comparative analysis. The literature reviewed the most-used multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods, including subjective methods and objective methods. The advantages and disadvantages of each MCDM method were briefly discussed. One more round literature review was conducted to search publications between 2017 and 2019 in CNKI. Followed two case studies, correlation analysis and comparative analysis were then conducted. Research ethics was approved by the Shanxi Coking Coal Group Research Committee. RESULTS: The literature searched a total of 25,831publications and found that the PCA method was the predominant method adopted, and the Entropy method was the second most widely adopted method. Two weighting methods were compared using two case studies. For the comparative analysis of Case Study 1, the PCA method appeared to be more responsive than the Entropy. For Case Study 2, the Entropy method is more responsive than the PCA. As a result, both methods were adopted for different cases in the case study mine and finally deployed for user acceptance testing on 5 November 2020. CONCLUSIONS: The findings and suggestions were provided as further scopes for further research. This research indicated that no single method could be adopted as the better option for establishing indexing measurement in all cases. The practical implication suggests that comparative analysis should always be conducted on each case and determine the appropriate weighting method to the relevant case. This research recommended that the PCA method was a dimension reduction technique that could be handy for identifying the critical variables or factors and effectively used in hazard, risk, and emergency assessment. The PCA method might also be well-applied for developing predicting and forecasting systems as it was sensitive to outliers. The Entropy method might be suitable for all the cases requiring the MCDM. There is also a need to conduct further research to probe the causal reasons why the PCA and Entropy methods were applied to each case and not the other way round. This research found that the Entropy method provides higher accuracy than the PCA method. This research also found that the Entropy method demonstrated to assess the weights of the higher dimension dataset was higher sensitivity than the lower dimensions. Finally, the comprehensive analysis indicates a need to explore a more responsive method for establishing a weighted indexing measurement for warning applications in hazard, risk, and emergency assessments.
Subject(s)
Coal Mining/methods , Coal/adverse effects , Principal Component Analysis/methods , Safety Management/methods , Accidents, Occupational/prevention & control , China , Entropy , Evaluation Studies as TopicABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: As supermarkets continue to expand their healthcare categories, consumers now have more choice and access to non-prescription medicines. The aim of this current research is to empirically examine the drivers and barriers of consumer purchase intentions, namely trust and perceived risk, of non-prescription medicines in both supermarkets and community pharmacy settings. METHOD: Data were collected using an in-store intercept survey of 402 supermarket shoppers and 310 community pharmacy shoppers. Confirmatory factor analysis including a measurement and structural model tests were employed using AMOS software package to identify variances in the drivers and barriers of purchase intentions between these retail settings. KEY FINDINGS: This study found an association between the purchase intention of non-prescription medicines in community pharmacies with their perceived competence, benevolence and provision accurate information. Other than time risk, no other elements of risk were associated with purchase intentions within this setting. In contrast, the perceived risks associated with the purchase of non-prescription medicines within the supermarkets setting - specifically physical and social risk, were present. Results indicate respondents were more likely to intend to purchase medicines from a supermarket if they perceived that the retailer was competent in providing access to safe non-prescription medicines and had the ability to handle transactions. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to examine the psychological drivers and barriers of purchase intentions of non-prescription medicines in supermarkets and community pharmacies, finding very different results across both retail settings. The study presents a comprehensive model of purchase intentions of non-prescription medicines and recommends directions for pharmacy practitioners and supermarkets.
