Ladies and gentlemen, this is quality awareness. Like brushing your teeth, quality is a daily personal obligation.
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Digitalization enables public organizations to personalize their services, tuning them to the specific situation, abilities, and preferences of the citizens. At the same time, digital services can be experienced as being less personal than face-to-face contact by citizens. The large existing volume of academic literature on personalization mainly represents the service provider perspective. In contrast, in this paper we investigate what makes citizens experience a service as personal. The result are eight dimensions that capture the full range of individual experiences and expectations that citizens expressed in focus groups. These dimensions can serve as a framework for public sector organizations to explore the expectations of citizens of their own services and identify the areas in which they can improve the personal experiences they offer.
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Obesity, especially morbid obesity, is a major health problem with considerable impact on physical, mental and social quality of life. Assessment of quality of life is considered crucial to understand and evaluate the consequences of obesity. Obesity has major consequences for quality of life, e.g., as a result of co-morbidities of obesity and weight stigmatization.Bariatric surgery has been proven to lead to significant weight loss and improvement of quality of life. Besides obesity, also personal and psychosocial variables influence quality of life and affect the outcome of surgery. Moreover, obesity, even after substantial weight loss by gastric bypass surgery, is a chronic disease requiring life long consideration, in order to sustain long standing quality of life improvement.
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Obesity, especially morbid obesity, is a major health problem with considerable impact on physical, mental and social quality of life. Assessment of quality of life is considered crucial to understand and evaluate the consequences of obesity. However, the heterogeneity of the quality of life concept makes it difficult to compare and value studies on quality of life. Both generic -applying to any disease- and obesity specific quality of life instruments can be used as assessment instruments in obesity. Generic instruments have the advantage that they can be used to compare the quality of life consequences of divergent diseases, whereas the major advantage of obesity specific instruments is that these are more sensitive to changes in obesity. Obesity has major consequences for quality of life, as a result of co-morbidities of obesity, weight stigmatization, and other less frequently ventilated problems. Bariatric surgery has been proven to lead to significant weight loss and improvement of quality of life. Instruments differ in the suitability to assess quality of life after surgery and weight loss, and they differ in the domains of quality of life that are tapped by the instruments. Besides obesity, also personal and psychosocial variables influence quality of life and affect the outcome of surgery. Obesity, even after substantial weight loss by gastric bypass surgery, is a chronic disease requiring life long consideration, in order to attain long standing quality of life improvement.
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Objective: A key aspect of psychiatric rehabilitation is supporting individuals with serious mental illness in reaching personal goals. This study aimed to investigate whether various aspects of the working alliance predict successful goal attainment and whether goal attainment improves subjective quality of life, independent of the ehabilitation approach used. Methods: Secondary analyses were conducted of data from a Dutch randomized clinical trial on goal attainment by individuals supported with the Boston University approach to psychiatric rehabilitation (N=80) or a generic approach (N=76). Working alliance was measured with the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI) from the practitioner’s perspective. Rehabilitation practitioners had backgrounds in social work, nursing, or vocational rehabilitation. Multiple logistic regression and multiple regression analyses explored effects of working alliance on goal attainment and of goal attainment on subjective quality of life at 24 months. Analyses were controlled for client- and process-related predictors, baseline quality of life, and rehabilitation approach. Results: The WAI goal subscale predicted goal attainment at 24 months. No effect was found for the bond or task subscale. Goal attainment significantly predicted quality of life at 24 months. These effects were independent of the rehabilitation approach used. Conclusions: A good bond between client and practitioner is not enough to attain successful rehabilitation outcomes. Findings suggest that it is important to discuss clients’ wishes and ambitions and form an agreement on goals. Attaining rehabilitation goals directly influenced the subjective quality of life of individuals with serious mental illness, which underscores the importance of investing in these forms of client support.
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Very little is known about the personal goals of homeless people and how these relate to their quality of life (QoL). By using survey data on 407 homeless adults upon entry to the social relief system in 2011, we examined the personal goals of homeless adults and the association between their perceived goal-related self-efficacy and their QoL. A hierarchical regression analysis was used to analyse the association between QoL and goal-related self-efficacy, relative to factors contributing to QoL, such as demographic characteristics, socioeconomic resources, health and service use. Results indicate that the majority of homeless adults had at least one personal goal for the coming 6 months and that most goals concerned housing and daily life (94.3%) and finances (83.6%). The QoL of homeless adults appeared to be lower in comparison with general population samples. General goal-related self-efficacy was positively related to QoL (β = 0.09, P = 0.042), independent of socioeconomic resources (i.e. income and housing), health and service use. The strongest predictors of QoL were psychological distress (β = −0.45, P < 0.001), income (β = 0.14, P = 0.002) and being institutionalised (β = 0.12, P = 0.004). In conclusion, the majority of homeless adults entering the social relief system have personal goals regarding socioeconomic resources and their goal-related self-efficacy is positively related to QoL. It is therefore important to take the personal goals of homeless people as the starting point of integrated service programmes and to promote their goal-related self-efficacy by strength-based interventions.
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from the article: Abstract Based on a review of recent literature, this paper addresses the question of how urban planners can steer urban environmental quality, given the fact that it is multidimensional in character, is assessed largely in subjective terms and varies across time. The paper explores three questions that are at the core of planning and designing cities: ‘quality of what?’, ‘quality for whom?’ and ‘quality at what time?’ and illustrates the dilemmas that urban planners face in answering these questions. The three questions provide a novel framework that offers urban planners perspectives for action in finding their way out of the dilemmas identified. Rather than further detailing the exact nature of urban quality, these perspectives call for an approach to urban planning that is integrated, participative and adaptive. ; ; sustainable urban development; trade-offs; quality dimensions
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We examined the various career paths of PhDs in the Netherlands. In this publication, we feature the personal stories of ten of our study participants, detailing their careers both within and outside of academia. The ten portraits of PhD graduates are complemented by three portraits of employers describing their experiences working with PhDs. The personal accounts featured in this publication contain a wealth of information and recommendations for PhD students, universities and employers alike.
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In the dynamic environment of increasing regulations, increasing patient demand, decentralization of budgets and enforcement of efficiency, small sized healthcare institutions in the Netherlands are having a difficult time. Although these service providers are usually capable of flexibly delivering healthcare, the investment and overhead for implementing and executing on required quality management standards like ISO 9001 is difficult. In this paper we construct a method for the implementation of an IT-enabled quality management system for small sized healthcare institutions, which is applied through case study. The case organisation provides intra- and extramural care for mentally handicapped persons and young adults with a psychiatric disorder. The quality management system implementation is based on 1) a lightweight IT infrastructure (based at a secure data centre and accessible through remote login) implying secure storage of patients' medical and personal information. Furthermore, the Deming (Deming, 1982) cycle enabled processes and protocols are 2) described in an e-handbook and prototyped via an open source process management system which supports the quality regulation demanded for providing care to patients. The case study supports the validity of our method and the fact that small sized healthcare institutions are able to execute their care while adhering to ISO 9001-like standards, with limited initial costs and relatively low cost of ownership
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The central goal of this study is to gain insight into students' study approach, their personal reasons and the relations between them regarding students who continue or withdraw from the educational system within one year. Results of our questionnaire study show that students who continue their educational careers show higher scores on a meaningful integrative study approach when entering Higher Education, than students who withdraw. Our questionnaire on personal reasons for withdraw revealed three scales: (1) perception and experience of educational and organizational aspects, (2) pragmatic and personal circumstances and (3) loss of interest in the future occupations. Personal reasons for continuing also produced three scales: (1) perception and experience of learning environment quality, (2) pragmatic and personal orientation and (3) future occupational identity. Withdrawing students' scores on meaningful integrative study approach are negatively related to perception and experience of educational and organizational aspects, whereas the superficial study approach positively correlates with pragmatic and personal circumstances. With regard to students who continue, high scores on the meaningful integrative study approach relate positively to all three reasons: future occupational identity, perception and experience of learning environment quality and pragmatic and personal orientation.
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