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The patient-centred management of people with cognitive impairment admitted to acute health care facilities can be challenging. The TOP5 intervention utilises carers’ expert biographical and social knowledge of the patient to facilitate personalised care. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether involvement of carers in the TOP5 initiative could improve patient care and healthcare delivery.

A small-scale longitudinal study was undertaken in two wards of one acute teaching hospital. The wards admitted patients with cognitive impairment, aged 70 years and over, under geriatrician care. Data for patient falls, allocation of one-on-one nurses (“specials”), and length-of-stay (LOS) over 38 months, including baseline, pilot, and establishment phases, were analysed. Surveys of carers and nursing staff were undertaken.

There was a significant reduction in number of falls and number of patients allocated “specials” over the study period, but no statistically significant reduction in LOS. A downward trend in complaints related to communication issues was identified. All carers (n=43) completing the feedback survey were satisfied or very satisfied that staff supported their role as information provider. Most carers (90 per cent) felt that the initiative had a positive impact and 80 per cent felt that their loved one benefitted. Six months after implementation of the initiative, 80 per cent of nurses agreed or strongly agreed that it was now easier to relate to carers of patients with cognitive impairment. At nine-ten months, this increased to 100 per cent.

Actively engaging carers in management of people with cognitive impairment may improve the patient, staff, and carer journeys, and may improve outcomes for patient care and service delivery.

In a diverse society, empathy would intuitively seem to represent a powerful force for social good. In particular, we expect empathic people to tolerate (rather than reject) attitudes that might be different from their own, and to resolve and/or avoid (rather than escalate) potential disagreements with others. Some research supports this benign view of empathy, but somewhat surprisingly, there is a “dark” side to empathy, one that can sometimes exacerbate attitudinal conflict. That is, empathy can often be parochial, in the sense that people are inclined to reserve their compassion for others only when they are deemed to be worthy of such support. In this chapter we review classic and contemporary research on the light and dark side of empathy, and consider its implications for the kinds of dynamics that could potentially emerge when people encounter people and ideas that are different from their own.

THE Fifty‐First Conference of the Library Association takes place in the most modern type of British town. Blackpool is a typical growth of the past fifty years or so, rising from the greater value placed upon the recreations of the people in recent decades. It has the name of the pleasure city of the north, a huge caravansary into which the large industrial cities empty themselves at the holiday seasons. But Blackpool is more than that; it is a town with a vibrating local life of its own; it has its intellectual side even if the casual visitor does not always see it as readily as he does the attractions of the front. A week can be spent profitably there even by the mere intellectualist.

This chapter considers some of the key gaps in resilience research in the public sector, specifically: (1) the potential negative implications of organisational efforts to support resilient behaviour – i.e., ‘the dark side of resilience’; and (2) the relationship between resilience and value-based motivations specific to the sector, primarily public service motivation (PSM).

This piece argues that current studies on resilience have adopted an overly positive tone that may not reflect the full range of consequences associated with building a resilient organisation, especially in the public sector. Issues related to burnout, fatigue and feelings of inadequacy resulting from the ‘need’ to be resilient have not been sufficiently explored, and furthermore, we currently know very little of the link between these issues and employees' desire to have a meaningful contribution to people's lives, i.e., one of the key motivational drivers in the public sector.

This chapter highlights several unanswered questions in the extant literature, and proposes several avenues for further research, aiming to bridge these knowledge gaps and identify new ways to effectively manage future crises and developments in the sector.

While some libraries have done their best over the years to inform the public as to what they are doing and can do as regards helping readers, others seem to move along without making any special effort to publicise their facilities. In the old days modesty was a virtue, but now it is its own reward. Government departments, which used to shun the limelight, now employ public relations officers in large numbers, and professional bodies and big business houses constantly seek publicity. Times have changed, and the battle is to the strong; and it is unfortunately generally felt that the institution or service that does not speak for itself has little to speak about. It may frankly be said that if a service is in a position to enlarge its sphere of influence and esteem it should do so to the utmost of its endeavour. But it will be granted that if its publicity is not justified by performance, there will likely be an unhappy reaction.

WHILE there is no doubt that the system of issuing books at “net” prices is of great benefit to booksellers, there is also no doubt that, unless care is taken, it is a serious drain upon a limited book‐purchasing income. A few years ago the position had become so serious that conferences were held with a view to securing the exemption of Public Libraries from the “net” price. The attempt, as was perhaps to be expected, failed. Since that time, the system has been growing until, at the present time, practically every non‐fictional book worth buying is issued at a “net price.”

Visit time is a crucial aspect of patient–physician interaction; its inadequacy can negatively impact the efficiency of treatment and diagnosis. In addition, visit time is a fundamental demand of patients, and it is one of the rights of every patient. The purpose of this paper is to determine factors influencing the consultation length of physicians and to compare consultation length in different countries.

MEDLINE (PubMed), Web of Science, Cochrane, ProQuest, Scopus, and Google Scholar were searched. In addition, references of references were checked, and publication lists of individual scholars in the field were examined. We used data sources up to June 2018, without language restriction. We used a random-effects model for the meta-analyses. Meta-analyses were conducted using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Version (CMA) 3.0.

Of 16,911 identified studies, 189 studies were assessed of which 125 cases (67 percent) have been conducted in the USA. A total of 189 studies, 164 (86.77 percent) involved face-to face-consultations. The effects of three variables, physician gender, patient gender, and type of consultation were analyzed. According to moderate and strong evidence studies, no significant difference was found in the consultation lengths of female and male doctors (Q=42.72, df=8, I²=81.27, p=0.891) and patients’ gender (Q=55.98, df=11, I²=80.35, p=0.314). In addition, no significant difference was found in the telemedicine or face-to-face visits (Q=41.25, df=5, I²=87.88, p=0.170).

In this systematic review and meta-analysis, all of physicians’ visits in 34 countries were surveyed. The evidence suggests that specified variables do not influence the length of consultations. Good relationship is essential to a safe and high-quality consultation and referral process. A high-quality consultation can improve decisions and quality of visits, treatment effectiveness, efficiency of service, quality of care, patient safety and physician and patient satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to present research in the area of control method for the man‐machine systems with brain machine interface (BMI). Concrete target system is, for instance, a car cruising system and so on.

The improved receding horizon control (RHC) method for the sampled‐data systems and the adaptive digital‐to‐analog (DA) converter which has the way to switch the sampling functions according to the system status are used. The feature selection method based on the kernel support vector machines with the backward stepwise selection for the BMI signals are also used.

This paper proposes the new improved RHC method with the adaptive DA converter for the application of the BMI‐based systems. The proposed method is illustrated as useful and effective method for the systems to which switch of control laws is indispensable by the simulations.

Although the proposed method is effective for the BMI‐based systems with switching of control laws, the faster algorithm for RHC will be need to apply to the man‐machine systems with the BMI in practical use.

The basic concept or framework of the proposed method can be used for the real man‐machine systems with the BMI, for examples, car crusing systems, wheel‐chaired systems and so on.

The paper contributes to the development of the new effective control method for the BMI‐based man‐machine systems.