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To explore why women paediatricians have chosen paediatrics as their specialty when previous research has shown that this was the least favourite career option.

In this qualitative study ten semi‐structured interviews with open‐ended questions were carried out. The interviews were taped and transcribed by a professional transcriber. Two tapes could not be transcribed because of technical problems. This dissertation focuses on the responses of the eight women in relation to the research question. Interviews were carried out face‐to‐face. There were no additional questionnaires. Common themes were identified and content analysis used for data analysis.

All the women felt that they had chosen paediatrics because of the good work atmosphere, supportive colleagues and the attraction of working in a multi‐disciplinary team. All had pursued their career in a dedicated way working full‐time for most of their careers. The women paediatricians interviewed were happy with their career but they realised that they had made sacrifices in terms of family and personal commitments. The work environment has to change for everybody, not just for women, to improve quality of life. Career advice is still thought to be poor and many doctors enter a career without knowing what is expected of them. Modernising medical careers will considerably shorten medical training and the time individuals can spend in a particular specialty.

A qualitative study like this can give both male and female students an insight into what it is like to have a career in paediatrics.

Given that the workforce constitutes a principal resource of primary care, appraisal of models of care requires thorough investigation of the health workforce in all Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) countries. This chapter explores this in terms of workforce composition, remuneration, qualifications and training in relation to the needs of children and young people. We have focused on two principal disciplines of primary care; medicine and nursing, with a specific focus on training and skills to care for children in primary care, particularly those with complex care needs, adolescents and vulnerable groups. We found significant disparities in workforce provision and remuneration, in training curricula and in resultant skills of physicians and nurses in European Union and European Economic Area Countries. A lack of overarching standards and recognition of some of the specific needs of children reflected in training of physicians and nurses may lead to suboptimal care for children. There are, of course, many other professions that also contribute to primary care services for children, some of which are discussed in Chapter 15, but we have not had resources to study these to the same detail.

To identify the papers, and publishing journals, describing psychiatry, surgery and paediatrics research funded by the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. To make comparisons with non‐NHS research and examine the journal impact factors, and importance to clinicians, of journals publishing the most NHS research. To consider the implications, including those for research assessment.

Existing databases were examined: the research outputs database (ROD), which contains information on UK biomedical papers; NHS ROD, which contains details of papers on ROD funded by the NHS; lists of journal impact factors. These were combined with selective findings from surveys conducted to identify journals read and viewed as important for clinical practice by psychiatrists, surgeons and paediatricians.

In each specialty many papers publish NHS‐funded research and they out‐number the non‐NHS papers in the ROD. They appear in a wide range of journals but in each specialty one journal is clearly the most used. The impact factors of journals publishing the most NHS research vary considerably. In each specialty the journal containing most NHS publications is widely perceived to be important by clinicians.

Much NHS‐funded research is also funded by other bodies. Clinician survey response rates were between 38 per cent and 47 per cent. The analysis could be extended to other specialties.

Papers published in the few journals in each specialty that are viewed as important by clinicians could be given additional credit in assessments.

This paper describes outputs from NHS research and shows how assessment could be extended.

This study aims to ascertain the personal characteristics of a group of successful academic entrepreneurs in a South African university enterprise and the prevalent barriers and enablers to their entrepreneurial endeavour.

The authors used a Delphi process to identify and rank the characteristics, enablers, barriers and behaviours of entrepreneurial academics, with a Nominal Group Technique applied to establish challenges they encounter managing their enterprise and to propose solutions.

Perseverance, resilience and innovation are critical personal characteristics, while collaborative networks, efficient research infrastructure and established research competence are essential for success. The university’s support for entrepreneurship is a significant enabler, with unnecessary bureaucracy and poor access to project and general enterprise funding an impediment. Successful academic entrepreneurs have strong leadership, and effective management and communication skills.

The main limitation is the small study participant group drawn from a single university enterprise, which complicates generalisability. The study supported the use of Krueger’s (2009) entrepreneurial intentions model for low- and middle-income country (LMIC) academic entrepreneur investigation but proposed the inclusion of mitigators to entrepreneurial activation to recognise contextual deficiencies and challenges.

Skills-deficient LMIC universities should extensively and directly support their entrepreneurial academics to overcome their contextual deficiencies and challenging environment.

This study contributes to addressing the paucity of academic entrepreneur research in LMIC contexts by identifying LMIC-specific factors that inhibit the entrepreneur’s movement from entrepreneurial intention to entrepreneurial action.

The purpose of this paper is to review and summarise a small but growing body of literature demonstrating that by embedding intervention within a family context offers the greatest promise of success in working with families caring for a child with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

The approach takes the form of a literature review.

The current family-centred evidence-based research indicates the potential benefits for the delivery of family focused interventions following childhood TBI.

The paper adds to the paediatric TBI literature as being of the few papers to incorporate a number of novel family-centred behavioural interventions into the one review paper.

Children with acquired brain injury (ABI) are at significant risk of serious behavioural and social difficulties. The burgeoning growth of research documenting behavioural sequelae after paediatric ABI has not been met with a concomitant level of research aimed at treating the problem. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a manualised behavioural intervention support programme could reduce challenging behaviours in children with ABI and improve family-parental well-being and functioning.

A total of 61 parents (48 mothers and 13 fathers) of 48 children aged between three and 12 years with mild, moderate, or severe ABI received an ABI adapted “Signposts for Building Better Behaviour” programme (Hudson et al., 2001) in group-support (GS) or telephone-support (TS) format. Trained “Signposts” practitioners delivered the programme over a five-month period. The programme consisted of nine information booklets, a DVD, and workbook. All families completed pre-intervention and post-intervention evaluations.

On an average parents completed 7.92 out of a possible nine intervention sessions (range 7-9). Parents in both TS and GS formats reported significant reductions in challenging child behaviours irrespective of injury severity. They also reported significant reductions in dysfunctional parenting practices, stress and family burden.

Overall, the current research provides support for Signposts to be used with families of children with ABI in an attempt to ameliorate negative outcomes for family, parent, and child.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the preliminary clinical utility of a telephone-support format of the “Signposts” (Hudson et al., 2003) behavioural intervention programme to be used with a paediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) population.

Nine families caring for a child with moderate or severe TBI, participated in a pilot study of a TBI adapted “Signposts for Building Better Behaviour” manualised programme. The programme is designed to help parents learn positive parenting skills and strategies that empower them to successfully manage their child's challenging behaviour post-TBI. The programme consists of seven core sessions and two supplemental sessions. Parents work through the sessions with an accompaniment of guiding information booklets, a DVD with scenes modelling positive parenting strategies, and a workbook containing written exercises. At the completion of each session parents receive a telephone-support call from a trained Signposts practitioner who provides assistance and feedback on programme content.

On average parents completed eight sessions (range seven to nine) and every family completed the seven core sessions. Participation in the telephone-support calls was high with 96 per cent of calls having been successfully received by families. All parents agreed that the telephone calls were a useful part of the programme and felt that the materials were helpful for managing challenging behaviour. Paired-samples t-tests showed significant reductions for challenging behaviour from pre- to post-intervention. Parenting practices also significantly improved over the course of the intervention. In general, parents rated a high level of consumer satisfaction with the Signposts programme and its content.

Overall, these preliminary findings support the potential clinical utility of a telephone-support version of the Signposts programme to improve parenting skills and to reduce challenging child behaviour following TBI. This study has provided the impetus for a larger clinical research trial to be conducted.

The purpose of this study is to provide a framework useful for identifying the elements that aim for success in the construction of collaborative governance and to investigate how international governance systems have characterized the international collaborative projects developed by the International Division of Gaslini Children Hospital in Genoa (Italy). Critical and successful factors in developing partnerships in the healthcare sector have been identified.

A total of 15 projects implemented by the Gaslini Hospital in collaboration with a global network of low and middle-income countries were examined using a content analysis of the project reports. Later, a conceptual framework proposed by Emerson and colleagues was used to design a theoretical map for investigating elements of international governance systems.

A matrix developed in two categories (health cooperation and training, and exchange of best practices) and three branches of medicine (oncology, paediatrics and cardiology) made it possible to cluster the research projects. However, details of the collaborative process often overlooked by research on public-private partnerships emerged from the framework.

The growing demand for higher quality health services in low- and middle-income countries has led to an increasing number of partnerships with industrialized countries to enable access to wider resources and technologies and develop useful skills to adapt to changes in society. Through the application of collaborative governance’s framework to healthcare collaboration, different elements of the collaborative process emerged which have been previously neglected.

To review the experience of managing two patients with identical names in the same ward during a five‐month period.

The records of the patients were reviewed to look for incorrect entries, errors in specimens sampling, administration of blood products and chemotherapy, and misplacement of clinical notes. Doctors and nurses involved were also invited to complete a questionnaire study to comment on the usefulness of the measures implemented for correct patient identification. A random sample of 60 patients was also selected to see if their full names were shared with other patients attending the same hospital.

Among the 1,442 sheets of hospital records from the two patients, no errors pertaining to the clinical activities were found. However, 13 (0.9 per cent) sheets of the hospital records were misplaced. The 21 doctors and nurses participating in the questionnaire study gave positive support to all the additional measures implemented for safeguarding patient identification, of which the automated alerting feature in the electronic clinical management system received the highest scores. A total of 32 (53 per cent) of the 60 sampled patients shared a common full name with one to 101 other patients attending the same hospital.

Patients with identical names staying in the same ward present a unique challenge to acute health‐care settings. The situation is especially relevant in communities where most people's names are not unique. Specific guidelines and measures are needed to prevent patient misidentification. Errors in filing of patient notes and laboratory reports to the hospital record deserve further attention.

Presents the results of a medical audit of the records of 199 children diagnosed as diabetic and admitted to Al‐Amiri Hospital, Kuwait. Uses the measurement of glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1) to indicate the levels of control achieved. Finds that the degree of glycaemic control compares favourably with studies done in other hospitals, but unfavourably with specialized diabetic clinics. Proposes that glycaemic control could be improved by provision of the services of specialized support staff such as dietitian, educator, psychologist and health visitor.