This article examines digital communication in the workplace and its association with wellbeing at work. The analysis is based mainly on workshop discussions and is complemented with log data (N = ...36). Content analysis was applied to the workshop discussions, while the log data were analyzed by quantifying frequencies. Six themes were found to affect wellbeing at work: the volume of digital communication, expectations of constant connectivity, the quality of the messages, adaptation of new tools, technical problems, and flexibility in communication. In relation to wellbeing at work, digital communication was mostly perceived as demanding. However, some of the factors perceived as demanding could also provide flexibility, which was seen as enhancing wellbeing by increasing autonomy and control. Social factors, such as work habits, practices, and conventions in the workplace, seem to play an important role in the manifestation and management of the digital communication-induced load at work.
Environmental noise directly affects well-being and productivity. On the one hand, high sound levels are related to a variety of health symptoms such as high blood pressure and stress. On the other ...hand, acoustic comfort increases concentration, facilitates communication and promotes productivity. The main objective of this research is to propose a modular and scalable solution for enhanced health and well-being using Internet of Things and mobile computing technologies and also, to present a real-time monitoring system for enhanced acoustic comfort with mobile computing compatibility for data visualization, analysis and notification. The results indicate the proposed system as an adequate sound supervision for enhanced acoustic comfort and acoustic well-being. The system was tested in a laboratory for two months using real-time continuous data collection. The average sound levels range from 47.35 to 52.99 dBA and from 46.22 to 51.84 dBA grouped by the day of the week and time of day, respectively. Continuous real-time monitoring is relevant for enhanced living environments since the analysis of the noise pollution levels of the ecosystem where the patients live may be related to their health symptoms. Moreover, the proposed method presents advances in installation and configuration due to the use of wireless communications technology.
ObjectivesThe aims of the study were to trace the patterns of work environment factors and compensated sickness absence (SA) among nurses and care assistants compared with other occupations and to ...compare SA among exposed and non-exposed nurses and care assistants.DesignA cross-sectional survey on work environment factors based on the biennial Swedish Work Environment Surveys 1991–2013, linked to longitudinal register data on SA 1993–2014.ParticipantsThe study included 98 249 individuals, stratified into nurses and care assistants (n=16 179) and a reference population including all other occupations (n=82 070).Outcome measureAnnual days of compensated SA (>14 days) 3 years after exposure years.ResultsNurses and care assistants had higher SA in 1993–2014 compared with all other occupations, and differences in background factors only partly explained this relationship. For both groups, exposure to physical work factors remained steady, but the number of exposed were 10%–30% higher among nurses and care assistants. Those exposed to heavy physical work and strenuous working postures had in most years significantly higher SA when compared with non-exposed (rate ratio range: 1.4–1.9). Exposure to high job demands increased 10%–25% in 1991–1999 among nurses and care assistants but became more stable in 2001–2013 and high proportions of high job demands coincided with the increase in SA in 1995–1999. Nurses and care assistants exposed to high job demands had for most years significantly higher SA than non-exposed (rate ratio range: 1.5–2.1). Low job control and low support from supervisors elevated SA significantly only for a few years.ConclusionsExposure to negative work factors among nurses and care assistants was weakly associated with variations in SA, but may be related to their higher level of SA when compared with other occupations. Improved physical and psychosocial working conditions may reduce the elevated SA level in these occupations.
This article examines digital communication in the workplace and its association with wellbeing at work. The analysis is based mainly on workshop discussions and is complemented with log data (N = ...36). Content analysis was applied to the workshop discussions, while the log data were analyzed by quantifying frequencies. Six themes were found to affect wellbeing at work: the volume of digital communication, expectations of constant connectivity, the quality of the messages, adaptation of new tools, technical problems, and flexibility in communication. In relation to wellbeing at work, digital communication was mostly perceived as demanding. However, some of the factors perceived as demanding could also provide flexibility, which was seen as enhancing wellbeing by increasing autonomy and control. Social factors, such as work habits, practices, and conventions in the workplace, seem to play an important role in the manifestation and management of the digital communication-induced load at work.
In this paper, the robust estimation fusion problem in multisensor systems with norm-bounded uncertainties concerning the error covariance matrix between local estimates is addressed. A robust fusion ...method by minimizing the worst-case fused mean-squared error (MSE) for all feasible error covariance matrices of local estimates is proposed. The minimax robust fusion weighting matrices can be explicitly formulated as a function of solution of a semidefinite programming (SDP). Some numerical examples demonstrate that when the error covariance matrix suffers disturbance, the proposed fusion method is more robust than the nominal fusion method which ignores the uncertainties, and can improve the performance when the disturbance is considerably large.
At present, foreigners form over four percent of the Czech population. According to the Czech Statistical Office, nearly six thousand of them are immigrants from Mongolia. The reason for this ...migration is usually the possibility of getting a job and therefore improving their economic situation. The aim of the research, which is part of the project entitled “Social Determinants of Health in Selected Target Groups”, was to analyze the relationship between a set of selected social characteristics and characteristics of health. The paper refers to immigrants from Mongolia who are living in South Bohemia. The qualitative survey was performed by interviewing nineteen respondents. After the interviews and analysis of the data, major semantic categories and subcategories were identified. This paper focuses on the current health status of immigrants, the type of health insurance, experience with doctors, and their level of satisfaction with receiving healthcare. The results helped to reveal numerous problems concerning the health of immigrants, and the use of healthcare in our country. Respondents reported health problems such as chronic backache, headaches, fatigue and hearing impairments. These problems were all associated with an unsuitable work environment. While receiving healthcare, the respondents met with a negative attitude from medical staff. According to the respondents, the most common causes of this were language barriers, and doctors and nurses prejudice towards foreigners.
Background:
Several parameters of the nurse's work environment lead to fewer patient complications and lower nurse burnout. The aim of this systematic review was the analysis of research data related ...to the effect of nurses' work environments on outcomes for both patients and nurses.
Methods:
Medline was searched by using keywords: ‘working conditions’, ‘work environment’, ‘nurses’, ‘nursing staff’, ‘patients’, ‘outcomes’.
Results:
In total, 10 studies were included, of which 4 were cross-sectional and the remaining were descriptive correlational studies. Patients who were hospitalised in units with good work environments for the nurses were more satisfied with the nursing care than the patients in units with poor work environments. Nurses who perceived their work environment to be good experienced higher job satisfaction and lower rates of burnout syndrome.
Conclusions:
A good work environment constitutes a determinant factor for high care quality and, at the same time, relates to improved outcomes for the nurses.
Surgical knot tying is one of the most fundamental and important procedures in surgery, and a high-quality knot can significantly benefit the postoperative recovery of the patient. However, a ...longtime operation may easily cause fatigue to surgeons, especially during the tedious wound closure task. In this paper, we present a vision-based method to automate the suture thread grasping, which is a sub-task in surgical knot tying and an intermediate step between the stitching and looping manipulations. To achieve this goal, the acquisition of a suture's three-dimensional (3D) information is critical. Towards this objective, we adopt a transfer-learning strategy first to fine-tune a pre-trained model by learning the information from large legacy surgical data and images obtained by the onsite equipment. Thus, a robust suture segmentation can be achieved regardless of inherent environment noises. We further leverage a searching strategy with termination policies for a suture's sequence inference based on the analysis of multiple topologies. Exact results of the pixel-level sequence along a suture can be obtained, and they can be further applied for a 3D shape reconstruction using our optimized shortest path approach. The grasping point considering the suturing criterion can be ultimately acquired. Experiments regarding the suture 2D segmentation and ordering sequence inference under environmental noises were extensively evaluated. Results related to the automated grasping operation were demonstrated by simulations in V-REP and by robot experiments using Universal Robot (UR) together with the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) adopting our learning-driven framework.
Lung granulomas are uncommon in Thailand. The disease typically develops from an occupational environment and is mostly caused by infection. Herein is a case report of a female patient, aged 48, ...working as a nurse in an Accident and Emergency Department at a hospital. Eighteen years prior to admission the patient was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis and pulmonary tuberculosis. The chest X-ray and CT scans showed a solitary pulmonary nodule in the lower left lung. The patient received an open thoracotomy with a left lobectomy. Granulomatous and nonseptate hyphae were found in the pathology diagnosis. The patient was thus diagnosed as having a lung granuloma. The galactomannan antigen test was positive. The solitary pulmonary nodule—found from the use of a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test—was an Aspergillus spp. The fungus culture was collected from air samples. The air samples were collected by the impaction technique using a microbial air sampler. Three types of Aspergillus spp. were found as well as Penicillium spp. and Monilia sitophila. The Aspergillus spp. was a match for the patient's disease. The patient was diagnosed as having a lung granuloma possibly Aspergillus nodule which was caused by airborne Aspergillus spp. from the occupational environment.
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