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This paper uses a ‘grounded’ governmentality framework to examine the political and personal significance of a novel therapeutic intervention targeting chronically homeless individuals with severe alcohol problems. The paper is based on a qualitative case study of ‘Mountainview,’ a residential facility combining medical care and social services with an ‘alcohol management’ program. Drawing on the experiences of program staff and residents, as well as local policy discourses on homelessness, I explore the significance of this intervention in relation to geographies of inclusion and exclusion in the city. The paper traces how Mountainview encompasses novel forms of visualization, valuation, enclosure, and self-examination that together afford ‘street drinkers’ a new, albeit ambivalent, place in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summarizes some of the key findings of academic papers presented at the First World Congress on the Management of Electronic Commerce, which took place in January, 2000, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, sponsored by McMaster University. The conference was attended by 243 delegates from more than 25 countries. Outlines two meta-management issues including: the importance of taking a strategic approach to Internet ventures as well as considering infrastructure design during implementation. Several of the papers presented fell into three broad functional categories including operations, human resources and marketing. Finally, a summary of internationalization and education implications is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a method is proposed that relates several measures of average commute distance (actual, minimum, maximum) explicitly to urban form. Specifically, Brotchie’s urban triangle is modified to represent the commuting benchmarks (minimum and maximum commutes) and urban form of a city. By comparing the urban triangle of a city at different points in time, it is possible to determine whether commuting behaviour is becoming more or less efficient with respect to urban form. Also, comparisons can be made across multiple cities for a specific point in time. The method is applied empirically to examine the commuting efficiencies of three Canadian cities (Hamilton, Halifax and Vancouver) for three census years (1996, 2001 and 2006). Comparative analyses reveal the drawbacks of the excess commuting and commuting potential utilised approaches and demonstrate that the proposed method overcomes these limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent interest in the urban transport challenges posed by the demographic outlook of ageing societies has prompted a growing body of scholarship on the subject. The focus of this paper is on the topic of elderly trip generation and the development of models to help formalise some important relationships between trip-making behaviour and personal, household and contextual variables (such as location). The case study is the Hamilton Metropolitan Area—an important functional component of Greater Toronto, itself one of the regions in Canada where the impact of ageing is expected to be most strongly felt. Using data from Toronto's Transport Tomorrow Survey and mixed ordered probit models, the study investigates the question of spatial and demographic variability in trip-making behaviour. The results support the proposition that trip-making propensity decreases with age. However, it is also found that this behaviour is not spatially homogeneous and in fact exhibits a large degree of variability—a finding that highlights both the challenges of planning transport for the elderly and the potential of spatial analytical approaches to improve transport modelling practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ways in which consumers assess the safety of food in restaurants and other eating-out establishments, and the resulting impact on restaurant choice. The analysis builds on the existing literature on restaurant choice more generally and a growing body of studies on the impact of official inspection information on the perceived safety of restaurants. Based on a two-stage consumer study in the City of Hamilton in Ontario, Canada, involving focus groups and a postal survey, the research highlights how consumers base their assessment of food safety in restaurants using a range of visible indicators of the experience and/or credence characteristics associated with foodborne illness. These include their observed judgments of restaurant hygiene, the overall quality of the restaurant, external information, including official inspection certificates, and the level of patronage. The use of these broad groups of indicators varies across consumer subgroups according to gender, age, level of education and recollections of past incidences when a restaurant was closed and/or convicted for food safety reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the competitive examination culture that pervaded medical education in the 1940s and 1950s the founders of McMaster University's new MD Programme created an assessment system based on group functioning within the tutorial. While the tutorial has served the educational process well, 30 years of experience has highlighted its deficiencies as an assessment tool. This paper describes the accumulation of evidence that led to the awareness of the weakness of tutorial assessment and the attempts to provide reliable assessment by the reintroduction of examinations, but in novel formats which would not alter the goals of the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers some of the policy implications of issues raised during a conference about treatment decision-making in the clinical encounter held in Hamilton, Ontario in May 1999. Policies promoting patient participation in treatment decision-making need to be flexible enough to ensure that they are appropriate across the range of contexts in which health care decisions are made and acceptable to people with diverse preferences and abilities. They should also be formulated in consideration of other health policies and of available resources. Policies of informing people and involving them in decisions about their care are unlikely to be simple to implement. Various strategies might be needed to support them. These include the development of appropriate skills among health professionals and in the general population, the use of interventions to encourage people to play more active roles in decisions about their health care, the provision of decision aids for people facing specific decisions and the provision and accreditation of more general information resources and services. If information and other facilitators of patient participation in decision-making are seen as integral to good quality health care, then funding should be made available for them. This will, however, have opportunity costs. Policy makers’ decisions about how much health care funding should be invested in which strategies should be underpinned by good research evidence about the effects that different types of intervention have on a range of outcomes for individuals, health care systems and populations. The knowledge on which current policies are based is limited. The development of future policies will be enhanced if policy makers invest in critical conceptual thinking, reflective practice, imaginative development work and good quality evaluative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a stratified random sample of adults aged 40 and older, interviewed in Hamilton, Ontario, more than half the respondents indicated that there was someone in their extended family who could be considered a "kinkeeper," someone who works at keeping family members in touch with one another. In this study kinkeeping is viewed as a position in a familial division of labor. The paper examines the identification of the position, the work of kinkeeping, the way in which the position is structured, the dynamics of position occupancy, and the consequences for families of having a kinkeeper. Kinkeeping is primarily a female activity and is related to the importance sibling relationships hold for people. The position of kinkeeper persists over time, and occupancy is frequently passed from mother to daughter. Having a family kin keeper is related to greater extended family interaction and greater emphasis on family ritual at both extended family and lineage levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality clinical supervision is fundamental for the consolidation of knowledge and the development of a professional identity for baccalaureate nursing students. Problems in providing high-quality clinical supervision range from a lack of practitioner role models to inadequate or unsupportive learning environments. Collaboration between the education and service sectors allows for the development of enriched clinical learning experiences for students. This paper describes an innovative collaborative educational process developed by McMaster University School of Nursing and the Nursing and Education Departments at Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Front-line nursing staff are the clinical supervisors, with support from clinical nurse specialists, the hospital educator and the university faculty member. When compared to more traditional approaches, this model ensures that the students receive more variety in placements and access to expert human resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]