Browsing by Subject "Questionnaire"

Municipal environmental authorities are required to conduct environmental monitoring. Unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, may be helpful in environmental monitoring but their applicability as a tool for municipal environmental monitoring has not been studied. In this thesis it was studied, how municipalities have been utilizing UAVs. Additionally, UAVs applicability for environmental monitoring and inspection work was tested using a litter monitoring experiment as an example. In the first part of the study, a questionnaire was sent to municipal environmental authorities in Finland, to municipalities in Sweden and to those participating in Eurocities WG Waste group (n = 512), covering the used applications, their utilization frequencies and successfulness, reasons for failures and future plans. The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics. In the second part of the study, a UAV was utilized in a litter monitoring experiment on four sites in Helsinki. Litter by category and leaves were counted based on visual observations from UAV imagery. The accuracy of UAV imagery detection was assessed by comparing its and ground assessment (GA) results. On one site, a control group also carried out UAV imagery detections in order to assess the magnitude of bias or offset occurring when both the GA and the litter detection from UAV imagery are conducted by a single individual. The Wilcoxon signed rank and Cronbach’s α reliability tests were used for statistical analysis of the results. Response rate of the questionnaire was low, 3.7% (n = 19). The pool of used applications was extensive and covered a variety of monitoring and inspecting targets with emphasis on the presumably manually piloted applications. Utilization was very successful. The most important reasons for failures were poor weather followed by lack of information and expertise. UAVs were included in the future plans of most participants for municipal environmental monitoring purposes. The UAV imagery detection accuracies of litter and leaves compared to the GA results were high, 90.5% for litter and 87.5% for litter and leaves, and no statistically significant differences existed between the assessment results. Especially leaves proved challenging to detect from UAV imagery. The control group’s detection accuracies were 67.9% without and 49.0% with leaves, and with leaves the results differed with statistical significance (p = 0.028). The internal reliability of the control group was relatively high, α = 0.776 without and α = 0.805 with leaves. UAVs are deemed sufficiently accurate and versatile as monitoring and inspecting tools for municipal environmental authorities. They have the capability to complement ground assessments or, with certain prerequisites, even function as an independent monitoring method. Further application and detection method development and research on municipal UAV utilization are needed.

Diabetes on yleinen krooninen sairaus, jota sairastaa noin puoli miljoonaa suomalaista. Diabeettinen neuropatia eli diabeteksen aiheuttama hermoston vaurio on yleinen diabeteksen lisätauti. Elämänsä aikana noin puolet diabetesta sairastavista potilaista sairastuu diabeettiseen neuropatiaan, lisäksi noin viidennes kehittää kivuliaan diabeettisen neuropatian. Diabeettisen neuropatian oireet ovat moninaisia. Keskeisessä roolissa ovat yleensä ensimmäisenä ilmenevät erilaiset tuntohäiriöt, joiden arvioiminen on hankalaa ilman potilaiden omakohtaista palautetta. Diagnoosin asettamisen ja oirekuvaston arvioimisen helpottamiseksi on tämän vuoksi kehitetty lukuisia tutkittavien itsensä täytettäviä kyselylomakkeita. Kirjallisuushaun ja -katsauksen avulla selvitettiin, mitä diabeettisen perifeerisen neuropatian aineistossa validoituja, tutkittavien itse täyttämiä kyselylomakkeita on käytössä. Tuloksista valikoitiin mukaan ainoastaan kokonaan diabetespotilasaineistossa validoitujen kyselylomakkeiden alkuperäistutkimukset, sekä tässä aineistossa myöhemmin validoidut kyselylomakkeet. Lääkärin kliinistä tutkimusta sisältävät kyselylomakkeet sekä elämänlaadun arvioon keskittyvät kyselylomakkeet jätettiin katsauksen ulkopuolelle. Neljä perifeerisessä diabeettisessa neuropatiassa ja neljä kivuliaassa perifeerisessä diabeettisessa neuropatiassa käytössä olevaa kyselylomaketta täytti määritellyt vaatimukset. Kyselylomakkeiden validointitutkimuksista pyrittiin selvittämään, miten hyvin kehityksessä on otettu huomioon lomakkeen luotettavuuden, pätevyyden ja muutosherkkyyden varmistaminen; minkälainen diabetespotilasaineisto on kyseessä, ja mitä lomakkeen herkkyydeksi ja tarkkuudeksi ilmoitetaan. Tutkimuksessa ilmenneitä kyselylomakkeiden vahvuuksia ovat yksinkertaisuus, helppokäyttöisyys eri terveydenhuoltoammattilaisten vastaanotoilla, sekä käyttö epidemiologisissa tutkimuksissa. Heikkouksina lomakkeissa esiintyy erilaisia vääristymiä, eivätkä ne tunnista 10–20 % tautitapauksista. Kyselylomakkeet kuitenkin auttavat tunnistamaan lisätutkimusten tarpeessa olevat potilaat.

The Finnish Medicines Agency, Fimea, is the authority responsible for supervision pharmacies in Finland. Recently, there has been more interest in Fimea to improve its supervision of community pharmacies. For this purpose, a questionnaire was made. Prior to the making of the questionnaire, community pharmacy supervision practices were studied in Nordic countries and in the UK. Additionally, faults found in Finnish community pharmacy inspections in 2016–2018 were classified by analysing anonymized fault lists (n=94) separated from inspection reports. When the most common faults were identified, it was possible to include questions concerning these faults into the questionnaire. A modified version of the Delphi method was used when developing the questionnaire. Comments on the applicability of the questions were given by a panel of experts consisting of inspectors of Fimea. The questionnaire was subsequently edited in accordance with the given comments. Separate versions of the questionnaire form were developed for community pharmacies and for their subsidiary pharmacies. At the end of this study, the questionnaire was sent to seven pharmacies and to three subsidiary pharmacies. After the results of the questionnaire were collected, Fimea gave feedback on the questionnaire. 25 categories were created by classifying faults found from pharmacy inspections. The most common inspection observations were faults in storage condition monitoring (97 % of pharmacies), narcotics (86 %), implementation of code of conduct (86 %), product errors (86 %) and preparation of medicines ready for use (81 %). The questionnaire begins by asking basic information about the pharmacy. Following questions concern the personnel and their further adequacy training. The questionnaire also includes several questions on the code of conduct within the pharmacy. Additionally, there are questions about storage condition monitoring, dispensary and accounting of narcotics. At the end of the questionnaire, there are also a few questions about the European Medicines Verification System (EMVS) which will be implemented by February 2019. Support from the inspectors of Fimea and studying regulations of pharmacies helped identify appropriate questions for the questionnaire. However, the perspective of the questionnaire may be limited due to the questionnaire being developed based up on faults found from inspections. The faults observed from inspections across pharmacies in Finland have been very similar with some of them being also alarmingly common. Because many of the observed faults are relatively easy to fix, simple corrective measures could be implemented to improve the situation across several pharmacies. Thus, usage of questionnaires, such as one made in this study, could be considered a feasible way of improving supervision of pharmacies.