Einsatz von Simulationspatienten im Kommunikations- und Interaktionstraining für Medizinerinnen und Mediziner (Medi-KIT): Bedarfsanalyse — Training — Perspektiven

Communication skills are of central importance within daily medical life providing effective treatment. In the modern high-tech field of medicine, trustful conversations play a prominent role. In order to help students of the Heidelberg Medical Faculty to be ready for their highly responsible role as communication partner, training is carried out in the framework of HeiCuMed (short for Heidelberger Curriculum Medicinale) using specially trained simulation patients. The communication and interaction training program (referred to as Medi-KIT) enables to practice conducting conversations with challenging communication partners and grave conversational content in difficult situations. Feedback from the standardized patients, as well as from peers and tutors represents a central didactic element.In order to secure knowledge transfer into daily clinic life and as well to build a relation to cognitive knowledge transfer, all medical students are assigned, alongside Medi-KIT lessons, to a ward, and training units are coordinated in terms of content to correspond with symptom-oriented lectures and parallel POL-groups (problem-oriented learning groups). In addition, communication learning objectives are examined at the end of the semester in the form of a clinical practical exam (OSCE: Objective Structured Clinical Examination) and at patient’s bedside (Mini-CEX: Mini Clinical Examination). The goal in imparting communication skills within medical education is that the longitudinal communication curriculum be maintained and continued in subsequent medical specialization studies.     

Die Einstellung zur Einführung des „Doppelpasses“

In this study the attitude towards the new nationality law in Germany is explained by a value/expectancy theory of attitude. 215 standardized face-to-face-interviews were performed with a quota sample. The results of this survey show that the value and expectancy theory of attitude is extremely successful in explaining the attitude towards the new nationality law. Models explaining the predictor variable of the attitude theory and a feedback-model were tested.     

Ability, individual development and optimal selection decisions

The paper analyzes different selection policies in education and business. We show that incorrect self-perceptions combined with imperfect performance measurement may cause significant welfare losses in selective educational systems, in particular if selection starts too early. Of course, these welfare losses can be mitigated by an investment in better ability assessment. However, an affirmative action policy could serve the same purpose as such an investment. We apply our analysis also to diversity management in firms. Based on positive discrimination we establish an efficiency argument for diversity management.     

The impact of acquisitions on firm performance: A review of the evidence

This paper presents a review of empirical research on the impact of acquisitions on firm performance. The evidence suggests that, in the short run, acquisitions have at best an insignificant impact on shareholder wealth. Long‐run performance analysis reveals overwhelmingly negative returns, while the evidence using accounting performance measures is mixed. The review also examines the impact of bid characteristics on performance. The acquisition of hostile targets, transactions that are paid for with cash and acquisitions of larger targets are associated with superior (or at least less negative) performance, while there is mixed evidence on the benefits of related acquisitions. A number of recent studies find that acquirers with superior pre‐bid performance tend to experience significant underperformance in the post‐bid period.     

Serial dependence and regression of Poisson INARMA models

Time series of counts occur in many fields of practice, with the Poisson distribution as a popular choice for the marginal process distribution. A great variety of serial dependence structures of stationary count processes can be modelled by the INARMA family. In this article, we propose a new approach to the INMA(q) family in general, including previously known results as special cases. In the particular case of Poisson marginals, we will derive new results concerning regression properties and the serial dependence structure of INAR(1) and INMA(q) models. Finally, we present explicit expressions for the distribution of jumps in such processes.     

Judgment aggregation without full rationality

Several recent results on the aggregation of judgments over logically connected propositions show that, under certain conditions, dictatorships are the only propositionwise aggregation functions generating fully rational (i.e., complete and consistent) collective judgments. A frequently mentioned route to avoid dictatorships is to allow incomplete collective judgments. We show that this route does not lead very far: we obtain oligarchies rather than dictatorships if instead of full rationality we merely require that collective judgments be deductively closed, arguably a minimal condition of rationality, compatible even with empty judgment sets. We derive several characterizations of oligarchies and provide illustrative applications to Arrowian preference aggregation and Kasher and Rubinstein’s group identification problem. This paper was circulated in August 2006 and presented at the Yale workshop on Aggregation of Opinions, September 2006, at the Centre interuniversitaire de rechere en économie quantitative, Montreal, October 2006, and at the 1st International Workshop on Computational Social Choice, Amsterdam, December 2006. We are grateful to the participants at these occasions and the anonymous referees for comments. We also thank Ton Storcken for discussion. Elad Dokow and Ron Holzman have independently proved closely related results, which were also presented at the Yale workshop in September 2006, and circulated in the December 2006 paper (Dokow and Holzman 2006).     

‘How to be a Happy Homosexual?!’ Non‐monogamy and Governmentality in Relationship Manuals for Gay Men in the 1980s and 1990s

This article explores discourses on non‐monogamy in relationship manuals published in the 1980s and 1990s for gay men from a perspective of governmentality. A distinctive feature of relationship manuals for gay men is the presentation of (non‐) monogamy as a matter of choice and negotiation. However, within this paradigm, most manuals problematise recreational, casual, or non‐relational sex or relationships with multiple partners through a set of discourses around the concepts intimacy, maturity, addiction and compulsion. The normative ideal of a successful gay male partnership is fleshed out in the provision of narrative schemata based on stage model theories which naturalise white middle class relationship experiences and concerns. Governmental rationality thereby enfolds itself in an interplay of several strategies including psychologisation, individualisation, normalisation, problematisation, and responsibilisation.     

Does job complexity mitigate the negative effect of emotion-rule dissonance on employee burnout?

In interactions with clients or patients, human service workers are at risk of experiencing discrepancies between felt and organizationally mandated emotions (i.e. emotion-rule dissonance). Given the documented detrimental effects of such discrepancies on employee strain, the present study investigated whether job complexity mitigates the relation between emotion-rule dissonance and employee burnout using data from a two-wave panel study of eldercare workers (N?=?583, 16-month time lag). Structural equation modelling revealed that emotion-rule dissonance at Time 1 preceded emotional exhaustion and depersonalization at Time 2. Beyond that, employees whose work offered job complexity were found to suffer less from emotional exhaustion and depersonalization when encountering discrepancies between felt and stipulated emotions compared to employees who conducted noncomplex work. Thus, designing complex tasks appears to be a crucial starting point for alleviating employee burnout in jobs that provoke emotion-rule dissonance.     

The Inherent Politics of Managing the Quality of Urban Green Spaces

Although the term ‘quality’ has a universal positive connotation and typically is framed by a focus on improvements, its application includes as well as excludes the access, values and world views of particular actors and interests. In this article, we highlight the relevance and implications of such ‘inherent politics’ through a case study of a widespread approach to operationalizing quality in urban green space management. We conclude that adoption of any quality model has both limiting and enabling implications for public participation and decision-making and that a critical stance is needed within both research and practice for the development of quality models that connect to values of broader societal relevance.