Search results

The purpose of this article to study referrals to our hand service to find out how long they had been waiting and with what sort of clinical conditions. The Department of Health monitors outpatient's waiting time as the percentage of patients seen within a 13‐week target. This target does not include patients referred by consultants or other health professionals.

All the referral letters from other consultants or healthcare professionals still awaiting appointments were collected. The referrals were read and studied to ascertain the most likely diagnosis. This was recorded along with the source of the referral and the details to whom the referral was made. The date of the referral letter being received by the department (date stamped) was also noted.

A total of 157 referrals from consultants or healthcare professionals were waiting outpatient dates. The median waiting time was 448 days (range 20‐952 days). The most frequent source of referrals was from the orthopaedic department. Carpal tunnel syndrome was the most common problem awaiting an outpatient appointment.

The wait for a clinic appointment for these patients is long. This has come about as the result of the fact that the government targets for outpatient waiting times have been set for GP referrals alone and exclude referrals that have been made by other consultants or other healthcare professionals. This is a clinical governance issue for the Hospital Trust, the Primary Care Trust and for general practitioners.

Many mathematical models have been shared to communicate about the COVID-19 outbreak; however, they require advanced mathematical skills. The main purpose of this study is to investigate in which way computational thinking (CT) tools and concepts are helpful to better understand the outbreak, and how the context of disease could be used as a real-world context to promote elementary and middle-grade students' mathematical and computational knowledge and skills.

In this study, the authors used a qualitative research design, specifically content analysis, and analyzed two simulations of basic SIR models designed in a Scratch. The authors examine the extent to which they help with the understanding of the parameters, rates and the effect of variations in control measures in the mathematical models.

This paper investigated the four dimensions of sample simulations: initialization, movements, transmission, recovery process and their connections to school mathematical and computational concepts.

A major limitation is that this study took place during the pandemic and the authors could not collect empirical data.

Teaching mathematical modeling and computer programming is enhanced by elaborating in a specific context. This may serve as a springboard for encouraging students to engage in real-world problems and to promote using their knowledge and skills in making well-informed decisions in future crises.

This research not only sheds light on the way of helping students respond to the challenges of the outbreak but also explores the opportunities it offers to motivate students by showing the value and relevance of CT and mathematics (Albrecht and Karabenick, 2018).

Large or increasing stocks of non-performing loans in the banking sector constitute threats to financial stability. This paper considers to which extent various macroeconomic and macro-financial factors may serve as leading indicators for the dynamics of the ratio of non-performing loans to total loans.

The paper estimates panel data models for all EU countries and two groups of EU countries using quarterly data over approximately 20 years.

The estimations show that many macroeconomic and macro-financial variables are leading indicators for non-performing loans in the EU countries, even years ahead. Higher GDP growth, lower inflation and lower debt are robust leading indicators of a lower ratio of non-performing loans in the future. The current account balance and real house prices are important indicators for the Western European group but not for the Central and Eastern European group.

The estimations are carried out for panels of EU countries and the effects may hence be seen as averages for the countries in the particular panel and may not apply for individual countries.

National and international authorities have brought in systems to detect and address imbalances and emerging problems in the financial sectors. Many of the measures operate with long lags, and so it is important to assess whether various macroeconomic and macro-financial variables may serve as leading indicators for future developments of non-performing loans.

The main contribution of the paper is that it estimates models meant expressly for predicting non-performing loans several years ahead. The results are thus of practical use for national and international authorities which typically have access to measures that operate with a long delay. The analysis also includes more macroeconomic and macro-financial variables as leading indicators than have typically been used in earlier studies.

This chapter is about the value and costs of the work of children – to themselves, their families, and their communities. I present a range of situations in which children in Zimbabwe have to work, placing the employment of children in the broader context of children's work. I point to benefits and harm that can accrue to children from their work, paying attention to how the children themselves perceive it. The vignettes I present illustrate the complexity surrounding the work of children, and the need to understand the contexts in which they work before we try to intervene.

The aim of this paper is to explore qualitatively and holistically the experience of international students in the context of Portuguese higher education. This paper interrogates the potential that an experience abroad provides for multicultural learning and for enhancing interaction between students with different cultural backgrounds.

To provide depth to the understanding of their experiences abroad, the narratives of 12 international students in Portugal were constructed and analysed interpretatively. The findings presented in this paper result from a solid set of data based on 41 interviews with an average duration of two hours each.

Regarding students’ levels of multicultural contact, the findings presented in this paper are not consistent with previous research literature which indicates a tendency for segregation among international and local students. Aside from one exception, all the interviewed students were rather comfortable to interact with their local peers and even established meaningful friendships with them. Concerning students’ learning throughout the sojourn, the findings indicate that the experience of living in a different country provides numerous opportunities for multicultural learning.

Even though the findings suggest that multicultural learning is part of international students’ lives, it is beyond the scope of this paper to identify institutional strategies to further support students’ learning.

The study adds to knowledge production in the field of multicultural education by bringing data from Portugal, a country seldom approached in the research literature.

Previously, a questionnaire survey was conducted and it was found that some management practices were more influential to service quality than others. The purpose of this paper is to identify in more detail the reasons behind the survey findings.

Eighteen in‐depth interviews into a range of management practices which support service quality were conducted.

It was found that there were difficulties in implementing some of the management practices due to the type of staff employed and to the nature of tasks undertaken.

As the purpose of this research is to facilitate interpretation of the quantitative data, the investigation did not go in detail beyond mass and technological services. Hence, individual organisational characteristics, individual circumstances, or details of the service offered to customers are not considered beyond the category of either mass or technological services.

The paper identifies that the actual contribution from different management practices to service quality varied, and explains the reasons behind the diverse contributions in each type of service business.

The global financial crisis of 2008 still has an impact on the financial systems around the world, for which funding liquidity has been mentioned as one of the main concerns during that period. This study aims to consider the impact of and extent to which the funding structure of Islamic banks along with deposit structure, macroeconomic variables, other bank-specific variables, including alternative funding mix variables (in terms of funding structure measured as financing/deposit ratio), could play a part in explaining the financial conditions and predicting the failures and performances of Islamic banks in the case of Malaysia under the distress created by the global financial crisis.

Multivariate logit model was used with a sample including 17 full-fledged Islamic banks in Malaysia for the period from December 2005 to September 2010 by using quarterly data.

This study found that the funding mix variable (financing/deposit ratio), the composition of deposits, alternative bank-specific variables and alternative funding mix variables are statistically significant. In contrast, none of the macroeconomic variables is found to have a significant impact on bank liquidity. In the final models, the variables that showed significant performance were selected as explanatory variables. The results of McFadden R-squared for both selected models showed an excellent fit to predict the Islamic banks’ performance.

This empirical study contributes to the literature in two ways: to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the role of the funding structures of Islamic banks in determining their performance; and it also examines the effect of deposit composition (the mudharabah and non-mudharabah deposits) on Islamic banks’ performance.