Aims and objectives. To determine the impact of nurse practitioners' counselling on reducing cardiovascular risk factors in patients participating in routine preventive check-ups. Background. A new model of 'renewed' family practice was introduced in Slovenia as a pilot project in 2011, in which nurse practitioners are included in a team carrying out preventive activities and managing patients with stable chronic diseases. Design. A retrospective cohort study. Methods. This study was conducted in 16 family medicine practices (eight renewed and eight regular family practices). In each family practice, a systematic sample was selected of registered patients participating in a cardiovascular preventive check-up. Data on sex, age, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, smoking, level of physical activity and cardiovascular risk were collected. Patients attending renewed family practices received counselling on risk factors from nurse practitioners (test group), and patients attending regular family practices received counselling from family physicians (control group). Data were collected again at least one and no more than five years after the baseline consultation. Results. There were 128 patients in the test group and 129 patients in the control group. At the control visit, the patients counselled by nurse practitioners had sig nificantly lower levels of systolic blood pressure and cholesterol and practiced reg- ular physical activity significantly more often than patients counselled by family physicians. Conclusion. Nurse practitioners can be at least as successful as physicians when counselling patients on cardiovascular risk factors during their preventive check-ups. Relevance to clinical practice. This study showed that nurse practitioners have an important role in managing patients at the primary care level.
F.02 Acquisition of new scientific knowledge
COBISS.SI-ID: 7464979Perceived quality of services and customer satisfaction is a concept that is increasingly important because of its impact on customer loyalty and other effects on the performance of a company. There is growing evidence that the links between quality of services, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty might be non-linear. However, there is no consensus about the actual functional form, since individual studies have discovered linear as well as concave, convex, S-shaped and inversed S-shaped relationships. The aim of this study was to examine the functional forms typical for the vehicle maintenance and repair industry, based on 34,421 computer-aided telephone interviews with customers of Slovenian automotive servicing companies performed between 2005 and 2011. For each of the connections between the constructs under consideration, we used linear and several non-linear regression models with the curve fit procedure in SPSS. The obtained results suggest that in describing the relationship between perceived quality of services and customer satisfaction, the non-linear functional model only slightly outperformed the linear one in terms of explained variance of data (R2). The relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty on the other hand could clearly be best described using a non-linear model. Using the non-linear model that produced a concave functional form enabled us to achieve 41–47% better explanatory power compared to the linear model. On the basis of our research, we can make several recommendations to the management of automobile servicing companies.
F.02 Acquisition of new scientific knowledge
COBISS.SI-ID: 7284243In cooperation with Gorenje gospodinjski aparati, d.d., we have developed a methodology to predict product failure during the warranty period, which is crucial in the production-oriented enterprises. The company needs to reserve financial and other resources for warranty repairs and must know as accurately as possible how many product will fail during this period. With accurate forecasting we have contributed to the favorable economic situation for the company, since it reduces the possibility of error in the reservation of resources.
F.02 Acquisition of new scientific knowledge
COBISS.SI-ID: 645160Hierarchically organized systems are very complex to manage, since a change in the initial level of the hierarchy affects the whole structure. In order to achieve the desired state of the organizational structure, it is necessary to optimize transitions between different levels of the hierarchy. That would be, for example, human resources, where transitions need to be as gradual as possible and without adverse fluctuations. Hence, t is necessary to find an optimal solution with artificial intelligence methods, which were developed in the context of this research. In this way we contributed to the development of a methodology that allows to achieve the desired organizational goals without major disruptions, which has a favorable impact on the organizational climate.
F.02 Acquisition of new scientific knowledge
COBISS.SI-ID: 4034248Within the framework of this research, we have significantly contributed to the development of an autonomous wheelchair. The wheelchair can be used by physically disabled persons who have restricted movement of the upper body or upper limbs, as the movement of such a wheelchair can be controlled by the means of speech. The wheelchair’s control system is based on speech recognition via cloud services.
F.02 Acquisition of new scientific knowledge
COBISS.SI-ID: 7493395