Search

BackgroundNational strategies from North America call for substantive improvements in entry-level pain management education to help reduce the burden of chronic pain. Past work has generated a valuable set of interprofessional pain management competencies to guide the education of future health professionals. However, there has been very limited work that has explored the development of such competencies for individual professions in different regions. Developing profession-specific competencies tailored to the local context is a necessary first step to integrate them within local regulatory systems. Our group is working toward this goal within the context of entry-level physiotherapy (PT) programs across Canada.AimsThis study aimed to create a consensus-based competency profile for pain management, specific to the Canadian PT context.MethodsA modified Delphi design was used to achieve consensus across Canadian university-based and clinical pain educators.ResultsRepresentatives from 14 entry-level PT programs (93% of Canadian programs) and six clinical educators were recruited. After two rounds, a total of 15 competencies reached the predetermined endorsement threshold (75%). Most participants (85%) reported being "very satisfied" with the process.ConclusionsThis process achieved consensus on a novel pain management competency profile specific to the Canadian PT context. The resulting profile delineates the necessary abilities required by physiotherapists to manage pain upon entry to practice. Participants were very satisfied with the process. This study also contributes to the emerging literature on integrated research in pain management by profiling research methodology that can be used to inform related work in other health professions and regions.

The impressive architecture of Angkor Wat conveys a sense of harmonious design, but recent survey using ground-penetrating radar (GPR), coupled with targeted excavation, reveals a more complex picture. Fragmentary traces of a quincunx of earlier towers have been detected, which were partially demolished when the outer enclosure and western gateway were completed. Are these the remains of a shrine used during the construction period? If so, they throw new light on associated ritual activity during the building of Angkor Wat. Keywords: Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Angkor, ground-penetrating radar, Introduction Angkor Wat (Figure 1) is an icon of World Heritage and one of the worlds most intensively visited and studied monuments (Fletcher et al. 2015: 1390 & 1398). Yet [...]

For over a century, the landscape of Angkor Wat and its surrounding area have been the focus of archaeological study. These studies have been constrained substantially, however, by a lack of chronological resolution in the features of the landscape and the difficulty of dating elements of the cultural assemblage. Recently obtained LiDAR data have transformed understanding of the Angkor Wat complex, enabling archaeologists to map terrain usually obscured by dense and protected vegetation. The results have informed targeted ground-based research, demonstrated previously unknown relationships between elements of the site, shown that the complex is much more extensive than previously thought and revealed a massive, unique and unknown structure. Keywords: Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Angkorian period, LiDAR, remote sensing, landscape archaeology, Introduction Over the previous 20 years, successive remote-sensing projects have offered crucial new insights into the archaeological landscape of medieval Angkor. Angkor is increasingly understood both as a collection of [...]

The temple of Angkor Wat, visited annually by tens of thousands of tourists, is without question one of the great archaeological sites of mainland Southeast Asia. Less obvious to the casual visitor is that it was but a single element in a large dispersed city. The papers in this special section demonstrate how recent research using LiDAR, ground-penetrating radar and targeted excavation have transformed our understanding of Angkor Wat and its surroundings., Introduction Angkor (Figure 1), the location of the urban complex of Greater Angkor (Figure 2), and the capital of the Khmer empire between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries AD, [...]

The role of the educational professional and the speed at which educational reforms have been introduced within higher education has transformed the academic into a manager. This is explained through a variety of changes; for example, technology and the transformation of traditional workplaces being replaced by virtual workplaces through the use of computing and advanced communication networks. The UK government has developed the role of the academic by producing policies that have initiated mass higher education and increased the number of knowledge-based workers to manage employability within a global labour market. This process has produced the managerial tutor. The managerial tutor is the amalgamation of the academic and manager who must be committed to the development of total quality through the delivery of educational provision within both domestic and global markets. This discussion draws upon the national and international policies that have led to the various changes within higher educational institutions and the direct effect these changes have had on the role of the educational profession. It will be shown how tutors have been re-positioned as knowledge producers for a knowledge economy in a global market, and who must be able to trade through a new form of currency--education.

In the tropical regions of southern Asia, Southeast Asia and the southern Maya lowlands, the management of water was crucial to the maintenance of political power and the distribution of communities in the landscape. Between the ninth and sixteenth centuries AD, however, this diverse range of medieval socio-political systems were destabilised by climatic change. Comparative study reveals that despite their diversity, the outcome for each society was the same: the breakdown of low-density urban centres in favour of compact communities in peripheral regions. The result of this, an 'urban diaspora', highlights the relationship between the control of water and power, but also reveals that the collapse of urban centres was a political phenomenon with society-wide repercussions. Keywords: Angkor, Anuradhapura, South Asia, Maya lowlands, tropics, water management, low-density urbanism, climate instability, Past agrarian-based, low-density urban tropical societies in the western and eastern hemispheres faced significant climatic challenges. These included: distinct wet and dry seasons; tropical storms or monsoons with torrential downpours; [...]

Investigating the use of land during the medieval period at the celebrated ceremonial area of Angkor, the authors took a soil column over 2.5m deep from the inner moat of the Bakong temple. The dated pollen sequence showed that the temple moat was dug in the eighth century AD and that the agriculture of the immediate area subsequently flourished. In the tenth century AD agriculture declined and the moat became choked with water-plants. It was at this time, according to historical documents, that a new centre at Phnom Bakeng was founded by Yasovarman I. Keywords: Angkor, Cambodia, Southeast Asia, palynology, Borassus, agriculture, Introduction Angkor was the location of the capital of the Khmer state for most of the period from the eighth to sometime in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD. By [...]