Comprehensive Evaluation System of Occupational Hazard Prevention and Control in Iron and Steel Enterprises Based on A Modified Delphi Technique

Identifying strategic human resource management ability in the clinical departments of public hospitals in China: a modified Delphi study

OBJECTIVES

Chinese public hospitals are managed like a bureaucracy, which is divided into two levels of hospital and departmental management. Improving strategic human resource management ability (SHRMA) within clinical departments can improve department performance and service quality, which is an important way for public hospitals to obtain an advantage in a diversified competitive medical market. However, there is a lack of specialised evaluation tools for SHRMA in clinical departments to support this effort. Therefore, this study aims to develop an index for evaluating the SHRMA of clinical departments in public hospitals.

STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING

The Delphi technique was carried out with 22 experts, and an evaluation index of the SHRMA in the clinical departments of public hospitals was constructed. The weight of each indicator was calculated by the intuitive fuzzy analytic hierarchy process.

RESULTS

The SHRMA index constructed in this study for the clinical departments in public hospitals includes 5 first-level indicators, 13 second-level indicators and 36 third-level indicators. The first-level indicators are distributed in weight among human resource maintenance (0.204), human resource planning (0.201), human resource development (0.200), human resource stimulation (0.198) and human resource absorption (0.198). The top three weighted indicators on the second level are job analysis and position evaluation (0.105), career management (0.103) and salary incentivisation (0.100).

CONCLUSIONS

The index constructed in this study is scientific and feasible and is expected to provide an effective tool for the quantitative evaluation of SHRMA in the clinical departments of public hospitals in China.

Impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 lockdown on Schistosoma host Oncomelania hupensis density in Wuhan

BACKGROUND

Snails that host the parasitic worm Schistosoma were once controlled or eliminated in Wuhan, China. However, safety measures associated with the outbreak of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) halted snail detection and extermination efforts. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on urban schistosomiasis transmission remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate snail density and the associated risk of a schistosomiasis outbreak in Wuhan.

METHODS

The density and infection status of snails were monitored by global positioning system satellites, and outbreak risk was calculated by adjusting the Kaiser model. SigmaPlot was used to create a three-dimensional risk matrix.

RESULTS

The living snail frame occurrence rate was 1.48%, and the average living snail density was 0.054/0.11 m² in 2020, indicating an increase relative to the respective 2019 values (0.019/0.11 m²). No infectious snails were observed in the survey area. The possibility, harmfulness, and uncontrollability indicator values were 0.842, 0.870, and 0.866, respectively. The areas at greatest risk were the northern bank of Tianxingzhou and the Tianxingzhou and Hongshan districts overall. The existing snail sites in the northern bank of Tianxingzhou exhibited the highest risk scores, followed by those in Pak Sha Chau, with the highest risk score found in Yangsiji Village. The events likely to occur in Hongshan District were also likely to have high severity.

CONCLUSIONS

During the COVID-19 outbreak, the risk of schistosomiasis increased due to snail colonies returning to their sites of origin in Wuhan, suggesting a need for strengthened infection control and prevention measures.

Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)-Based Aggregation Mechanism for Resilience Measurement: NATO Aggregated Resilience Decision Support Model

Resilience is a complex system that represents dynamic behaviours through its complicated structure with various nodes, interrelations, and information flows. Like other international organizations NATO has also been dealing with the measurement of this complex phenomenon in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the civil environment and its impact on military operations. With this ultimate purpose, NATO had developed and executed a prototype model with the system dynamics modelling and simulation paradigm. NATO has created an aggregated resilience model as an upgrade of the prototype one, as discussed within this study. The structure of the model, aggregation mechanism and shock parametrization methodologies used in the development of the model comprise the scope of this study. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is a multi-criteria decision-making technique is the methodology that is used for the development of the aggregation mechanism. The main idea of selecting the AHP methodology is its power and usefulness in mitigating bias in the decision-making process, its capability to increase the number of what-if scenarios to be created, and its contribution to the quality of causal explanations with the granularity it provides. The parametrized strategic shock input page, AHP-based weighted resilience and risk parameters input pages, one more country insertion to the model, and the decision support system page enhance the capacity of the prototype model. As part of the model, the decision support system page stands out as the strategic level cockpit where the colour codes give a clear idea at first about the overall situational picture and country-wise resilience and risk status. At the validation workshop, users not only validated the model but also discussed further development opportunities, such as adding more strategic shocks into the model and introduction of new parameters that will be determined by a big data analysis on relevant open source databases. The developed model has the potential to inspire high-level decision-makers dealing with resilience management in other international organizations, such as the United Nations.