1st Global Conference
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Monday 12th February - Wednesday 14th February
2007
Sydney, Australia
Conference Programme, Abstract and Papers
Session 8: Knowledge, Competence, Practice
Chair: Megan Poore
Contemporary Nursing’s Struggle to Articulate its Knowledge
Base
Heather
McKenzie, Maureen Boughton, Lillian Hayes, Sue Forsyth
Faculty of Nursing & Midwifery,
University of Sydney, Australia
This paper focuses on a number of issues
that it argues are central to the worldwide crisis in nursing and,
therefore, healthcare today. It
is argued here that a failure on the part of the nursing profession
to adequately articulate the value and significance of its own discrete
knowledge base for effective delivery of appropriate health care and
optimum patient outcomes largely underpins this crisis.
The paper draws
on current debates about the nature and significance of nursing knowledge,
utilising findings from recent research into the complexities involved
in community care of cancer patients as a case in point. Themes explored
include nursing’s limited vocabulary
for articulating the complexity of its knowledge and skill, the associated
lack of public recognition of the highly specialised nature of nursing
work, and the problems that these factors present for nursing academics
seeking to attract, and adequately and creatively prepare, students
who will welcome the intellectual, social and cognitive challenges
of contemporary nursing work.
More broadly, the paper raises for discussion
questions concerning the emphasis in the academy today on particular
kinds of research-based knowledge, and the ways in which this emphasis
disadvantages certain forms of knowledge. It draws attention to the
difficulties that this situation presents for nursing, given its relatively
new status as a research and applied discipline and its ongoing struggle
to properly articulate the value of its own knowledge base.
The Theory vs Practice Balance at Universities
Christine
Lee
Department of Management,
Monash University,
Victoria, Austrlaia
Historically, the traditional
differentiating factor between universities and technical colleges
is that the former focuses more on the concepts and theory of the
discipline, and the latter on the teaching of skills and competence
in practice. Therefore,
the training of certain professions such as accounting is a fairly
new addition into the university environment last century. Similarly,
disciplines such as tourism that has increased in popularity with
the students over the past decades have also been introduced into
the university environment. As with new courses and associated
research activity, these eventually evolve to become recognised disciplines. Such
disciplines are often in business or commercially orientated areas. However,
to provide the students with a competitive advantage in the job market
or to become the entrepreneurs of the future, practical knowledge
and training are essential.
This paper evaluates the
training used in some practical orientated courses taught at universities. The value and using of case
studies, industry guest speakers, field trips and other strategies
to address the practical aspect of the training from a number of
disciplines is discussed. Interestingly, the increasing focus
on practice and practical training has also resulted in the recruitment
of non-traditional ‘academics’ from industry into the
university. Consequently, this paper concludes that the universities’ environment
and culture are not static and will continue to evolve.
Data Management in e-Governance through “push-and-pull” Technique – A
Case Study
Gopalkrishna
Joshi*, Narasimha
H. Ayachit* and Kamakshi Prasad**
1
SDM College of Engineering and Technology, Dharwad 580 002,
India
2 JNTU, Hyderabad, India
The impact of decisions based on poor quality data on organizations is significant. This impact is more profound in case of Government Organizations because of volume of data, enormity of operations and quantum of money in projects,. The problem is of more serious type in case of developing and under developed countries because of lack of holistic understanding of the systems and poor exposure to Information Technology. Further the situation is getting worsened, as inspite of the above lacunae, Governments are increasing their dependence on IT infrastructure and making significant investment hoping to reap the benefits. Although this investment has increased the availability of data to policyholders to a great extent but the quality of data is yet to get its due attention. In e-Governance applications, while the data related to policies taken by Government flows from top to bottom, considerable amount of data flows bottom up that influences the policies as well as implementation. Redundant data sources, inconsistency in formats and units etc are the factors affecting the data quality in top down mode. The data volume, credibility and commitment of data agent, assumptions due to non availability of data on time and poor or no systems are some of the factors affecting the quality of data in the bottom up mode. This paper discusses the issues related to quality of data in e-Governance projects in the light of the above facts and proposes a framework that incorporates the quality aspects of data. This framework proposed uses a push-pull model. As per this model, the data generated due to policies taken by Governments has to be pushed into the system where as the data collected in the bottom up mode has to be pulled into the system. The methodology also brings out some aspects of the processes that consider other issues of data quality as well. As a case study, the data collected regarding the common information collected at state level in India was taken up and the parameters have been discussed.