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Offices are evolving rapidly to facilitate organizational cost reductions and to better support contemporary working practices. We investigate relationships between the design of contemporary offices (physical proximity and breakout areas) and autonomy in predicting individual outcomes (ease of communication, job satisfaction, and well-being). We extend Social Interference Theory to include features of contemporary office design and explicitly explore the moderating role of autonomy. Working in differing office configurations of a global engineering company, 406 employees provided data. Access to breakout areas was strongly related to ease of communication, higher job satisfaction, and well-being. In the absence of breakout areas, employees with higher autonomy were able to better manage the challenges arising from contemporary offices. Practical implications include incorporating breakout areas to enhance employee experience within open-plan offices, using job design to optimize employee experience in open-plan offices, and manager and employee involvement in office design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although automation has become widely utilized in certain areas of diagnostic testing, its adoption in diagnostic microbiology has proceeded much more slowly. Objective: To describe our real-world experience of integrating an automated instrument for diagnostic microbiology (Walk-Away Specimen Processor, WASPLab) within a model of total laboratory automation (TLA). Methods: The implementation process was divided into 2 phases. The former period, lasting approximately 6 weeks, entailed the installation of the WASPLab processor to operate as a standalone instrumentation, whereas the latter, lasting approximately 2 weeks, involved physical connection of the WASPLab with the automation. Results: Using the WASPLab instrument in conjunction with the TLA model, we obtained a time savings equivalent to the work of 1.2 full-time laboratory technicians for diagnostic microbiology. The connection of WASPLab to TLA allowed its management by a generalist or clinical chemistry technician, with no need for microbiology skills on the part of either worker. Hence, diagnostic microbiology could be performed by the staff that is already using the TLA, extending their activities to include processing urgent clinical chemistry and hematology specimens. The time to result was also substantially improved. Conclusions: According to our experience, using the WASPLab instrument as part of a TLA in diagnostic microbiology holds great promise for optimizing laboratory workflow and improving the quality of testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the impact of consolidation of microbiology laboratories on hospital finances and quality of care. Method: A literature review of multiple articles and case studies was conducted on the topic of consolidation of microbiology services among multiple health care facilities. Results: Elimination of duplicate testing and instrumentation can result in significant cost savings. The quality of results can be improved by staffing the core laboratory with educated, experienced microbiologists. Consolidation of services allows for new, technologically advanced instrumentation, which improves turnaround time. Conclusions: Consolidation of microbiology services, when performed with proper planning, can improve the productivity and turnaround time of testing, as well as reducing the cost of providing care, resulting in positive effects on hospital finances and improved quality of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Primary Care Dressing Scheme (PCDS) was introduced to primary care in Northumberland in 2010 and was designed to deliver improvements to the quality of care provided to patients in a large rural trust. The scheme was developed by the tissue viability service in collaboration with the prescribing lead for the Trust commissioners. The initial aim of the PCDS was a reduction in the wastage of wound care products prescribed for patients and to provide instant access to appropriate products at point of contact with the patient. Lean methodology for the management of the wound care product stock held by the district nurses was introduced, ensuring delivery of the right treatment at the right time. In addition, the number of dressings dispensed could be managed to reduce both wastage and costs. The use of Lean methodology in managing the PCDS has reduced costs by £125 000. The use of Lean methodology in the management of the total dressing scheme has enabled the realisation of significant financial savings in treating wounds in the primary care setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents the design of nonlinear stabilization techniques for the finite element discretization of Euler equations in both steady and transient form. Implicit time integration is used in the case of the transient form. A differentiable local bounds preserving method has been developed, which combines a Rusanov artificial diffusion operator and a differentiable shock detector. Nonlinear stabilization schemes are usually stiff and highly nonlinear. This issue is mitigated by the differentiability properties of the proposed method. Moreover, in order to further improve the nonlinear convergence, we also propose a continuation method for a subset of the stabilization parameters. The resulting method has been successfully applied to steady and transient problems with complex shock patterns. Numerical experiments show that it is able to provide sharp and well resolved shocks. The importance of the differentiability is assessed by comparing the new scheme with its non-differentiable counterpart. Numerical experiments suggest that, for up to moderate nonlinear tolerances, the method exhibits improved robustness and nonlinear convergence behavior for steady problems. In the case of transient problem, we also observe a reduction in the computational cost. • A nonlinear stabilization technique for the finite element discretization of Euler equations is proposed. • The method is differentiable, linearly and local bounds preserving for Euler equations. • A continuation method using parameters of the stabilization is also proposed to enhance nonlinear convergence. • Numerical results show an improvement of the robustness and the nonlinear convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]