https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figures?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0275920

Background: The Collaborative Practice Assessment Tool (CPAT) is a self-administered questionnaire that can be used to measure the degree of inter-professional collaboration (IPC) within a healthcare team. However, the CPAT has not been validated in Singapore, and there is currently no validated instrument to measure the degree of IPC among healthcare professionals in Singapore. Objective: To validate the CPAT in a community hospital (CH) in Singapore. Methods: Data was collected prospectively from 148 participants from a CH in Singapore from October 2019 to April 2020. Using the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) framework, we assessed content validity, construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the CPAT. We started by assessing content validity through cognitive interviews with healthcare professionals. We assessed construct validity by testing 12 a priori hypotheses on the correlation of CPAT domain scores with global impression and Assessment of Inter-professional Team Collaboration Scale (AITCS). We assessed internal consistency using Cronbach's alpha and assessed test-retest reliability using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between responses at 2 time points (baseline and 2 weeks). Results: From the responses of the 148 participants, we established construct validity by meeting >75% of the hypotheses formulated a priori. We showed high internal consistency in 7 domains (Cronbach's alpha >0.7) of the CPAT, and moderate internal consistency in one domain (Cronbach's alpha = 0.63) of the CPAT. We also demonstrated acceptable test-retest reliability in seven domains of the CPAT (ICC >0.5). Conclusion: This study provides support for the content validity, construct validity, internal consistency and test–retest reliability of the CPAT to measure the degree of inter-professional collaboration in a community hospital in Singapore. This enables clinicians and researchers to use the CPAT to measure the interventions to enhance inter-professional collaboration in Singapore. © 2022

Purpose: This study aims to show how major service developments in China, India and Singapore offer different perspectives on how cost-effective service excellence (CESE) can be achieved in health care. Resulting research opportunities are highlighted. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on the authors’ in-depth experience in these three countries. Findings: Digital platforms and related technologies seem more advanced in China than in most western economies in terms of their application, user acceptance and market penetration. The resulting digital ecosystem enabled innovation that provides CESE in digital health care. Second, India benefitted from a large health care market without excessive regulation, litigation risks and interlocking stakeholders. These allowed a number of organizations to achieve CESE through new business models and frugal innovation. Likewise, Singapore is a global leader in health outcomes while it also has one of the lowest health care cost per capita. This is achieved through focus on costs and productivity, standardization and digitization while being intensely focused on health outcomes and the patient experience. Research limitations/implications: The three countries stand out in the ways they achieved CESE in health care and offer interesting research opportunities. China has fully integrated digital platforms with rapid innovation capabilities, India has extremely high volumes that met focused service factory and frugal service innovation approaches, and Singapore is a tightly controlled health care market with high levels of discipline, both facilitated by its culture and small size. These markets invite research to explore their successes in more depth and deduct lessons for CESE in health care elsewhere. Originality/value: Together, the author team has decades of managerial, executive teaching and research experience related to service in Asia. The observations and reflections in this study originate from this unique perspective. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Many infectious diseases such as coronavirus disease 2019 spread through preexisting social networks. Although network models consider the implications of micro-level interaction patterns for disease transmission, epidemiologists and social scientists know little about the meso-structure of disease transmission. Meso-structure refers to the pattern of disease spread at a higher level of aggregation, that is, among infection clusters corresponding to organizations, locales, and events. The authors visualizes this meso-structure using publicly available contact tracing data from Singapore. Visualization shows that one highly central infection cluster appears to have generated on the order of seven or eight infection chains, amounting to 60 percent of nonimported cases during the period considered. However, no other cluster generated more than two infection chains. This heterogeneity suggests that network meso-structure is highly consequential for epidemic dynamics.

Background: Internationally, and particularly in Singapore, health education institutions are facing challenges in attracting school leavers to enter nursing courses.

Objectives: To identify the factors influencing the career choice of Singaporean healthcare students and determine the deterrents in choosing nursing as a career choice.

Design: An exploratory descriptive qualitative study design was used. Participants Fifty‐nine healthcare students from three higher education institutions were recruited.

Method: Four nursing and four non‐nursing focus groups discussion were held. Interview transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis.

Results: Six themes emerged as follows: ‘personal interest’; ‘prior healthcare exposure’; ‘job prospects’; ‘academic performance’; ‘perceived nature of work’; and ‘social influences’.

Discussion: The personal interests to help and care along with prior healthcare exposures were found to influence the students’ choice. Job prospects such as the ease of getting a job, job stability, and job salary were considered. Nursing was perceived as a course for students with poor academic ability. Misconceptions about the nature of work and a lack of social recognition were identified as deterring factors in students’ choice of nursing as a career.

Conclusions: An understanding of the career decision process among healthcare students enables educational leaders and policy‐makers to enhance the focus of nursing recruitment strategies.

Implications for nursing and/or health policy: Strategies for nursing recruitment in Singapore must include creating more opportunities for exposure to nursing in early school years, reviewing the admission policies for nursing programmes to attract academically abled students, ensuring that nursing graduates’ salaries are comparable with other healthcare graduates, promoting a better understanding on the role of a registered nurse and its career developments, and providing support for those who are interested in nursing but are faced with career decision‐making difficulties due to their families.

Disasters like COVID-19 adversely affect young adults but also present opportunities for civic and community engagement. Cognizant of and personally experiencing the pandemic’s disproportionate socio-economic fallout on disadvantaged communities, civically engaged young adults have mobilized and questioned government actors and structures which perpetuated pre-pandemic vulnerabilities. However, research gaps exist about their motivations, community engagement processes, and implications of post-disaster mobilization on long-term socio-political engagement with communities and governments. A thematic analysis of public podcast episodes produced by the author during Singapore’s COVID-19 lockdown revealed five chronologically related themes: “Pandemic and lockdown as triggers,” “Motivations,” “Online mobilization,” “Action,” and “Future directions.” Respondents, triggered by COVID-19, were motivated by new socio-economic needs and existing inequalities and responded quickly. Their seamless online mobilization and action informed future civic and political directions, resulting in two distinct approaches to long-term engagement. Those framing their initiatives as addressing preexisting needs called for more fundamental changes to ensure communities were not vulnerable to start with. Others who believed that the government’s pandemic response was adequate focused solely on their own initiatives, which they saw as filling gaps that the government could not. Youth COVID-19 engagement is thus likely to shape community-building and young adults’ expectations of governments. © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.