Search results

The threat of future biological attacks within the United States forces the additional responsibility of preparedness and response onto health care managers. An endless amount of information on this topic can be readily obtained from a variety of sources. The purpose of this resource guide is to provide health care managers with a well-organized, up-to-date listing of credible sources that can be accessed electronically. This resource guide is designed to facilitate the retrieval of relevant information that is crucial in the process of health care managers designing a bioterrorism preparedness and response plan.

The implications of a bioterrorist attack within the United States were well observed in the 2001 anthrax attacks. The effects of these attacks were not only felt by the primary victims but also reached into communities and health care organizations that treated patients. The concerns for future attacks have spurred an enormous amount of interest and forced health care administrators to implement safety measures and develop plans encompassing preparedness and response. With respect to this topic, a major problem facing health care managers is the ability to obtain relevant, up-to-date, reliable information.

Many health care managers are aware of the endless amount of resources that are available pertaining to preparedness and response planning. It should also be noted that the information concerning bioterrorism rapidly changes and the available information can be overwhelming. To that end, the authors have compiled an array of selected websites that provide excellent, up-to-date, and unique resources in attempts to facilitate the gathering of knowledge and make that experience more efficient.

The objective of the following resource guide is to provide a comprehensive list of topics in a “user-friendly” format that can be obtained electronically. To facilitate information retrieval, electronic resources have been categorized according to topic. For example, up-to-date information concerning the multitude of biological agents can be obtained by using the links contained within the biological agents category. Under this topic heading you will find a listing of important resources. Each listing contains a heading that identifies the sponsoring organization, a short explanation of information and materials that can be expected, and a web address identifying its location.

The authors’ compilation was not intended to be exhaustive nor do the authors necessarily endorse or warrant the reliability of the information/products. Websites may change regularly; please visit www.bioterrorism@ba.ttu.edu to obtain an electronic version of this resource guide and for updates to web addresses.

Achieving reliable instrument reprocessing requires finding the right balance among cost, productivity, and safety. However, there have been few attempts to comprehensively examine sterile processing department (SPD) work systems. We considered an SPD as an example of a socio-technical system – where people, tools, technologies, the work environment, and the organization mutually interact – and applied work systems analysis (WSA) to provide a framework for future intervention and improvement.

The study was conducted at two SPD facilities at a 700-bed academic medical center servicing 56 onsite clinics, 31 operating rooms (ORs), and nine ambulatory centers. Process maps, task analyses, abstraction hierarchies, and variance matrices were developed through direct observations of reprocessing work and staff interviews and iteratively refined based on feedback from an expert group composed of eight staff from SPD, infection control, performance improvement, quality and safety, and perioperative services. Performance sampling conducted focused on specific challenges observed, interruptions during case cart preparation, and analysis of tray defect data from administrative databases.

Across five main sterilization tasks (prepare load, perform double-checks, run sterilizers, place trays in cooling, and test the biological indicator), variance analysis identified 16 failures created by 21 performance shaping factors (PSFs), leading to nine different outcome variations. Case cart preparation involved three main tasks: storing trays, picking cases, and prioritizing trays. Variance analysis for case cart preparation identified 11 different failures, 16 different PSFs, and seven different outcomes. Approximately 1% of cases had a tray with a sterilization or case cart preparation defect and 13.5 interruptions per hour were noted during case cart preparation.

While highly dependent upon the individual skills of the sterile processing technicians, making the sterilization process less complex and more visible, managing interruptions during case cart preparation, improving communication with the OR, and improving workspace and technology design could enhance performance in instrument reprocessing.

Although we have yet to experience a major bioterrorism event in the U.S., we are nevertheless preparing for such an event. In this paper, we consider the nature of bioterrorism and the threats and challenges it brings to managing health care organizations. Because existing managerial theory may be inadequate in responding to bioterrorism events, management scholars are advised to approach their research with a great deal of humility and openness. Inasmuch as emerging theoretical frameworks based on complexity science and chaos theory are not fully developed, we propose that stakeholder management theory may be the best approach at this juncture.

Energy use occupies an important place among the service activities offered to tourists that guide the tourism industry. The realization of basic needs such as heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting and decontamination in these enterprises are among the important factors that directly affect energy use. In order to obtain the energy needed for the sustainability of services at a more affordable cost, renewable energy sources should be put into operation. In this direction, it makes it more advantageous for businesses in the tourism sector to invest by turning to renewable energy sources in order to maintain their activities more economically. In this context, the main purpose of the study carried out in this part of the book is to reveal the latest developments in the field of evaluation of renewable energy sources in tourism enterprises. Bibliometric analysis was carried out by using the Web of Science (WoS) database in the research and with the findings obtained, it was concluded that the field is new and up-to-date and needs to be studied more. When looking at the WoS categories of studies titled renewable energy in tourism enterprises; it was concluded that more energy fuel, green sustainable science technology, science themes were given weight. According to the network analysis, the most cited authors and countries' densities were determined and the intensive expressions in the network keywords in their studies titled renewable energy in tourism enterprises are renewable energy, renewable energy sources, sustainable tourism, sustainability, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, green marketing, blue economy, and energy efficiency.

Purpose – We investigate the impact of overlapping crises of COVID-19 and the George Floyd protests on one major US police department, focusing on staffing and officer proactivity.

Methodology/Approach – The study investigates the impact of the two crises on operational capacity. Using Bayesian interrupted time-series analysis, the authors investigate if officer proactivity levels were adversely impacted in the short and long terms.

Findings – A statewide stay-at-home order (SAHO) was associated with a sharp decline in proactive contacts, but that effect dissipated quickly. However, the Floyd protests were associated with a sharp decline in proactivity, which persisted throughout the study period.

Originality/Value – The findings of this study contribute to ongoing research agendas that seek to understand the impact of dual, overlapping crises on US police departments and the communities they serve. The authors demonstrate a methodological approach capable of disentangling both crises’ effects on police activity levels.

The goal in this research is to offer a new interpretation of activism by focusing not on the various ideologies but on the order of worth that coordinates activism.

Ethnographic approaches of participant observation and nondirective interviewing were the methods used in this study.

Drawing on the order models (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991), the authors introduce the existence of an “activist order.” This order is composed of rules that coordinate activists’ practices. Activists draw on this “activist order” to justify their practices but also to criticize other orders such as the market order.

This “activist order” serves as the structure underpinning both activists’ institutional frameworks (such as CSA and LETS) and their actions (e.g., antiadvertising campaigns). This paper also has implications for our understanding of the relationship between the Marketplace and consumer movements. The authors demonstrate that people navigate between different order of worth, from the market order to the “activist order” and vice versa.

As a key component of the American health care system, the physician office could be the front line in a bioterrorist attack. Nationally and locally, the primary focus on this subject appears to be from a hospital preparedness and public health agency perspective, with little attention devoted to primary physician providers in their own offices, and those specialists to whom patients may be referred. While unrelated to bioterrorism, the recent SARS outbreak also brings to the forefront the need for physicians offices to be able to clinically, operationally, and managerially respond to illnesses that mirror the symptoms of known illnesses, but may be more virulent new organisms or hybrids of existing organisms. If the face of bioterrorism is subtle and slow in its presentation, physicians, in their own offices, could be the first providers of care. Will they be prepared, or will they be among the first fatalities in a bioterrorist attack?

When modeling environmental jolts from terrorist attacks, various aspects should be analyzed in order to properly present an accurate configuration. The following article discusses how asymmetrical warfare has an impact on the outcomes of a terrorist attack. The several dimensions of terrorist attacks can be extracted to deduce the ways that asymmetrical warfare can damage the health care system. The article will relate real life terrorist attacks and hypothetical scenarios to better inform the reader about the weak attacking the strong, and then explain how this relates to health care providers.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.