Rodrigo Sousa de Miranda

GCC: a knowledge management environment for research centers and universities

Research centers and universities are knowledge-intensive institutions, where the knowledge creation and distribution are constant – and this knowledge should be managed. In spite of it, scientific work had been known for being solitary work, in which human interaction happened only in small groups within a research domain. Nowadays, due to technology improvements, scientific data from different sources is available, communication between researchers is facilitated and scientific information creation and exchange is faster than in the past. However, the focus on information exchange is too limited to create systems that enable true cooperation and knowledge management in scientific environments. To facilitate a more expressive exchanging, sharing and dissemination of knowledge and its management, we create a scientific knowledge management environment in which researchers may share their data, experiences, ideas, process definition and execution, and obtain all the necessary information to execute their tasks, make decisions, learn and disseminate knowledge.

Knowledge Acquisition and Communities of Practice: An Approach to Convert Individual Knowledge into Multi-organizational Knowledge

The implementation of knowledge management mechanisms to convert individual knowledge into organizational knowledge is important to guarantee business success in the global and dynamic economy. Besides that, there is a trend in the software industry to create a consistent body of software process knowledge across different organizations through the conversion of organizational knowledge into multi- organizational knowledge. Since software organizations do not execute software processes in the same way, the creation of such body of knowledge is a difficult task. This work presents a knowledge acquisition approach aimed to acquire organization members’ knowledge and store it in a software process community of practice repository accessible through a Web-based system. The application and evaluation of knowledge captured in the context of a specific organization, and reuse of such knowledge in different contexts provides the means for converting organizational knowledge into multi-organizational knowledge.

Knowledge Management in an Enterprise-Oriented Software Development Environment

Software Development Environments have evolved to support software developers activities, and to support organizations to achieve goals such as productivity enhancement, quality improvement, cost reducing, and decrease of time-to-market solutions. In this context, have appeared the Process-centered Software Development Environments and, more recently, the Enterprise-Oriented SoftwareDevelopment Environments. This paper presents the main approaches adopted on the Taba Workstation, a software development meta-environment, to support knowledge management in the context of Enterprise-Oriented Software Development Environments: an ontology-based infrastructure, a knowledge acquisition tool, and a community of practice system.

SIGN LANGUAGE: HOW THE NURSING STAFF INTERACTS TO TAKE CARE OF DEAF PATIENTS?

Objective: To identify how the professional nursing staff of a university hospital interacts to care for their deaf patients. Method: A descriptive, exploratory, and quanti-qualitative study performed in the second semester of 2012. Results: Twenty-one nurses (57%) reported never having provided care for deaf patients. Sixteen nurses (43%) have provided care for deaf patients and reported the following means of communication: 12 (46.15%) referred using mime; 4 (15.38%) mentioned using lip reading; 8 (30.77%) used writing; 1 (3.85%) used drawing and; 1 (3.85%) used an interpreter. Conclusion: It is necessary to take effective measures for nursing professionals to communicate appropriately with deaf patients starting with the offering of specific disciplines in all courses and education programs. Descriptors: Nursing care, Deafness, Accessibility, Sign language, Disabled persons. RESUMO Objetivo: Identificar como profissionais da equipe de enfermagem de um hospital universitário interagem para cuidar de seus clientes surdos. Método: Pesquisa descritiva, exploratória, quanti-qualitativa, realizada no segundo semestre de 2012. Resultados: 21 (57%) informaram nunca ter prestado cuidados a clientes surdos. 16 (43%) profissionais de enfermagem que já prestaram cuidados aos clientes surdos. 12 (46,15%) referências ao uso da mímica; 4 (15,38%) menções ao uso da leitura labial; 8 (30,77%) referências ao uso da escrita; 1 (3,85%) referência ao uso do desenho; e 1 (3,85%) menção à ajuda de intérprete para se comunicar com clientes surdos. Conclusão: Conclui-se que é preciso a tomada de providências efetivas para que profissionais de enfermagem se comuniquem adequadamente com os clientes surdos, a começar pela oferta regular de disciplinas específicas em todos os cursos e programas de ensino. Descritores: Cuidado de enfermagem, Surdez, Acessibilidade, Língua de sinais, Pessoas com deficiência. RESUMEN Objetivo: Identificar cómo el personal profesional de enfermería de un hospital universitario interactúa para atender a sus clientes sordos. Método: Estudio descriptivo, exploratorio, cuanti-cualitativo, celebrado en el segundo semestre de 2012. Resultados: 21 (57%) indicaron que nunca habían prestado atención a clientes sordos. 16 (43%) de los profesionales de enfermaría que habían atendido a los pacientes sordos.12 (46,15%) hicieran referencias a la utilización de la mímica; 4 (15,38%) mencionaran el uso de la lectura de labios; 8 (30,77%) dijeran respecto a la utilización de la escritura; 1 (3,85%) dijera respecto a la utilización del diseño y 1 (3,85%) mencionara un intérprete para comunicarse con clientes sordos. Conclusión: Se concluye que es necesario tomar medidas efectivas para los profesionales de enfermería comunicarse adecuadamente con los pacientes sordos, comenzando con el suministro regular de disciplinas específicas en todos los cursos y programas de educación. Descriptores: Cuidados de enfermería, La sordera, La accesibilidad, La lengua de signos, Personas con discapacidades. Nurse. PhD in Nursing Sciences by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – UFRJ. Professor and Academic Advisor at the Nursing Graduate School from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro State – UNIRIO. Rua Silva Jardim, 5 – Centro – Três Rios, RJ. CEP 25805-160, Brazil. Telefone: (24) 22555840 wilmachado@uol.com.br. Nurse. Assistant Professor at the Fundamental Nursing Department from the Alfredo Pinto Nursing School. PhD student at the Graduate School of Nursing and Biosciences from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro State – UNIRIO. Clinical Research Nurse at the D’Or Institute of Research and Teaching. daragao23@gmail.com. Nurse. Professor at the Fundamental Nursing Department at the Alfredo Pinto Nursing School from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro State – UNIRIO. Professor and Academic Advisor at the Nursing Graduate School at the Alfredo Pinto Nursing School from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro State, UNIRIO, RJ, Brazil. Email: nebia@unirio.gov.br. Nurse. Professor, PhD, Academic Advisor, and Coordinator of the Nursing Graduate School at the Alfredo Pinto Nursing School from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro State, UNIRIO, RJ, Brazil. Email: ttonini@terra.com.br. Nurse. Graduate student at the Graduate School at the Alfredo Pinto Nursing School from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, UNIRIO, RJ, Brazil. Email: drigo_pan@yahoo.com.br. Undergraduate student at the Alfredo Pinto Nursing School from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro State, UNIRIO, RJ, Brazil. Email: gabrielambo@gmail.com. RESEARCH ISSN 2175-5361 DOI: 10.9789/2175-5361.2013v5n3p283 Machado WCA, Machado DA, Figueiredo NMA et al. Sign language: how the... J. res.: fundam. care. online 2013. jul./set. 5(3):283-292 284 The planning of nursing assistance to people with hearing disabilities and specific care to this clientele represents an element of the frequent exposure of health care teams in their various contexts of practice. In this study, the unpreparedness of the members in the nursing team to interact with deaf people, in particular the lack of control of circumstances or knowledge in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), leads to a substantially compromised image and social commitment of these professionals and reflect negatively on the results achieved by the nursing care provided to this segment of society. It is obvious that, in addition to communication barriers, the deaf still face difficulties that are inherent to the organization of the health care system, especially in the public services. The difficulties of effective communication with deaf people in the institutional environments of health care services, in this case, between members of the nursing staff in an university hospital, reiterates the dissonance between higher education institutional programs and legal precepts, which provide people with disabilities a complete social inclusion such as defined by the UN Convention on the Rights of persons with disabilities ratified by Decree No. 6.949 from August 25, 2009. Unfortunately, contrary to the great legal achievements that make Brazil a reference on the international scene, our deaf individuals have been narrated and defined exclusively from their physical reality of lack of hearing and, therefore, seen exclusively from that point of view in the eyes of the majority in the society without this disability. The effect of this is that deaf people and the languages that they use (LIBRAS and written/oral Portuguese) become canvases with blank spaces for the projection of cultural prejudice and discourses of standardisation. It is a fact that the sign language represents the first language for the deaf, which makes them recognized as social subjects, and therefore, the Portuguese language (in the case of Brazil) can turn the deaf into the enunciator of his own speech in a second language (in writing) and thus, become inserted as a subject in the Brazilian society. Although it is usual to find the use of the expression Brazilian Sign Language in the literature to designate ‘Libras’, it is worth mentioning that this is a language and not an alternative communication method. Thus, it is preferable to use the terminology ‘Brazilian Sign Language’ instead of ‘Brazilian language of signs’ for many reasons. One of the most important reasons is that the Sign Language is a unity that refers to a visual manual-articulatory linguistic modality and not a oroarticulatory-auditive modality. Thus, the Brazilian Sign Language was established because it is the sign language developed and used by the Brazilian deaf community. Therefore, it is clear that there is no Brazilian Language spoken or through signs. The interaction between the nursing professional and the deaf patient demonstrates the difficulty that the latter has to come across a language that is not his own and that is imposed as if it was his first language. Even if the professional try some forms of sign communication imagining to being equivalent to Libras, the difficulty for the deaf in understanding what is being requested is clear. The knowledge of the world refers to the conventional knowledge that people have about the things of the world; this knowledge is brought to the learning process and stored in the memory as blocks of information. That knowledge of the INTRODUCTION ISSN 2175-5361 DOI: 10.9789/2175-5361.2013v5n3p283 Machado WCA, Machado DA, Figueiredo NMA et al. Sign language: how the... J. res.: fundam. care. online 2013. jul./set. 5(3):283-292 285 world refers to experiments built throughout life for both the deaf or non-deaf person.