Research on virtual learning groups is still in its infancy, despite the related technology’s proliferation in education institutions. This paper reports on an experiment investigating the relationships among type of technology, gender, social presence, and learning outcomes. Using a 2x2 factorial design, each same-gender group collaborated on a learning task, using either videoconferencing, or...

Social Presence is the concept of ‘being there’, of emotional connectedness to another person. As relationships are increasingly formed by spatially disparate partners, supporting social presence has become more important. As many intimate acts involve touching, this paper investigates the impact that heat, one aspect of touch, has upon social presence. This is presented in the form of a therma...

BACKGROUND Poor-quality life-saving medicines are a major public health threat, particularly in settings with a weak regulatory environment. Insufficient amounts of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) endanger patient safety and may contribute to the development of drug resistance. In the case of malaria, concerns relate to implications for the efficacy of artemisinin-based combination ther...

BACKGROUND Medical literature has demonstrated that referral hospitals often receive inadequate information about the care and medications their patients received from referring hospitals. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to assess the completeness of referral letters, especially the medication history, for patient presenting at the children emergency room of a teaching hospital in Lagos, Nigeria. ...

INTRODUCTION Drug-related problems (DRPs) are common in the elderly, leading to suboptimal therapy, hospitalisations and increased mortality. The integrated medicines management (IMM) model is a multifactorial interdisciplinary methodology aiming to optimise individual medication therapy throughout the hospital stay. IMM has been shown to reduce readmissions and drug-related hospital readmissio...

With the growing popularity of information and communication technologies (ICT), researchers from information systems (IS) field are increasingly interested in the factors influencing user satisfaction in computer-mediated environment. Drawing on media synchronicity theory (MST), this study explores how various media characteristics influence user satisfaction through social presence. The resul...

BACKGROUND Among the most vulnerable people in society are children and this is especially so in their access to health care Off-label prescription of paediatric medicines is known to be associated with safety outcomes some of which may be serious. This study identifies frequently prescribed children's medicines that are not readily available in Ghana and are prepared extemporaneously. METHOD...

OBJECTIVE To describe the magnitude of the expenditure on medicines in Brazil according to region, household size and composition in terms of residents in a situation of dependency. METHODS Population-based data from the national household survey were used, with probabilistic sample, applied between September 2013 and February 2014 in urban households. The expenditure on medicines was the mai...

OBJECTIVE To learn the opinion of health professionals regarding the presence of family during pediatric emergency care. METHODS Cross-sectional study, performed with 46 health professionals, members of the medical and nursing team of a pediatric emergency service. The data were collected via the application of a questionnaire composed by variables related to the opinion of professionals abou...