Month: October 2024

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Choosing a Travel Clinic for Your Travel Health Needs

Whether for business or pleasure, travelers planning a trip outside the country should remember to set aside some time in during their plan-making to address important health and safety precautions. In fact, studies show that almost half of travelers from a developed country visiting a developing country get sick when they stay for a month or more. The guidelines and regulations for necessary vaccinations and medications vary greatly from one destination to another, and failure to receive the right immunizations could be life-threatening. To ensure the highest degree of accuracy and safety, the Center for Disease Control recommends seeing a physician who specializes in travel medicine. Usually this means a visit to a travel clinic.

So first things first; what is a travel clinic? It is a medical facility that focuses specifically on the preventative care of those planning to travel internationally. At a travel clinic, patients can meet with doctors who specialize in emporiatrics, or travel medicine, and deal exclusively with travel-related health issues on a daily basis. Patients generally visit a travel clinic for a consultation and vaccination, and then again after their return for a wellness checkup.

Some people might be curious as to why visiting a travel clinic would be any better than visiting their family doctor. The simplest answer is that while family doctors are trained to deal with a large range of health concerns, travel health providers focus only on emporiatrics. This means that travel medicine physicians put more time and effort into having the up-to-date information about location-specific travel health issues that you need, and since the focus of travel health is in large part on educating the traveler about disease prevention, the more knowledgeable your physician is the more you’ll learn. Additionally, travel clinics have all the vaccinations you need in stock, whereas family physicians may not always have vaccines against rarer diseases like yellow fever or typhoid on hand. Travel clinics can also provide you with the yellow fever certificate necessary for entry into certain countries requiring proof of immunization. Travel clinics’ rates are usually competitive with those of regular physicians, and most offer evening and weekend hours and even same-day or walk-in appointments to accommodate travelers’ busy schedules; such flexibility is not often a practice of regular physicians.

When you visit a travel clinic, the consultation is very important. This is the time when you can ask the doctor questions and he or she will provide destination-specific information about the necessary precautions for you to take. Some good areas of focus for your consult are appropriate vaccinations and what some travel health specialists refer to as the “six Is”: ingestions (such as food and water safety), insects, immersions (waterborne illnesses contracted through swimming) injuries, indiscretions (sexually transmitted diseases), and insurance. It is essential that you share your specific travel itinerary with your travel health provider, in order that he or she can give you the most accurate information possible about vaccines and whether antimalarial drugs will be necessary. Activity plans should also be noted, as the CDC recommends rabies vaccines in many countries for travelers who plan to spend a lot of time outdoors or participate in camping, hiking or cycling. Altitude sickness prevention and water purification plans might also be necessary, depending on your destination.

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Status – Cross Cultural Differences

Status exists in all societies but varies in fundamental ways. Cross cultural differences in they way in which we perceive status, gain status and react to status differ from culture to culture.

In this article we examine the cross cultural differences with relation to status and analyse how they manifest in certain areas in the workplace. For the sake of simplicity we identify two types of status; ‘ascribed-status’ and ‘achieved-status’.

Ascribed-status:

Ascribed-status refers to those cultures that base status upon external qualities such as age, wealth, education or gender. If one has the right external characteristics, status is ascribed to them. In such cultures there is little room for others to gain status through actions and achievements.

Achieved-status:

Achieved-status, as its title suggests, is earned. Internal qualities are valued more than external ones. Therefore, status is achieved through accomplishments such as hard work and contributions to a company or community. In such cultures status is malleable, in that it can be lost as quickly as it is gained and status can shift to other individuals.

Status and Hierarchy:

An area that status impacts within businesses is organisational hierarchies. In ascribed-status cultures there tends to be rigid hierarchies that define roles, practices and processes. For example, employees will tend to focus solely on their own responsibilities and generally not offer suggestions to those above them in the hierarchy, as to do so would be disrespectful. In such organisations, change is very rarely bottom up.

In achieved-status cultures, hierarchies exist but are less formal. The egalitarian nature of such cultures usually means that more value is placed on development and progression rather than respect for status. Consequently, lower level employees would generally feel empowered to make suggestions directly to seniors.

Status and Formality:

The formality of a culture is usually a good indication of the significance of status. The use of names between colleagues is one of the more observable manifestations of status in the workplace.

In ascribed-status cultures colleagues will generally address each other using titles and surnames. Professionals, such as doctors, architects and lawyers, would expect to be addressed by their professional titles. First names are usually only used between family and friends.

In achieved-status cultures, people commonly use first names. This is because individuals will usually feel of equal worth with one another and see no need to demonstrate deference to a more senior ranked colleague.

Status and Management:

A manager in an achieved-status culture will usually take on the role of a mentor. The manager will be a reference point and will guide those under him/her to develop their skills and perform their duties with minimal guidance. Subordinates can and do challenge a manager’s decision.

In contrast, in ascribed-status cultures, the manager is expected to give orders and know all the answers. The manager is seen to be experienced, knowledgeable and able to deal with problems effectively. Rather than a mentor, the manager in such a culture takes on more of a parental role as he/she is expected to take care of employees by ascribing duties and overseeing how they handle them. Manager’s decisions are typically not challenged.

Status and Information:

The flow of information between people in companies and organisations is another area affected by cross cultural differences in status. In cultures where status is achieved, information usually flows easily between ranks. Directly approaching a senior colleague of another department for consultation, advice or feedback will have a certain amount of protocol attached to it, but is commonplace.

Conversely, in achieved-status cultures information flow is a lot less fluid. There are only certain avenues one can take to either relay or gain information. For example, if the scenario mentioned above occurred in such a culture, the senior colleague would probably feel offended. In this circumstance, the correct protocol would be for the lower ranking colleague to approach his/her manager and ask them to approach the manager of the other department for information or feedback.

As we have seen from the few examples cited above, cross cultural differences with relation to status can and do impact upon a business. If a business is multi-cultural, problems can occur where differences in hierarchy, status and protocol lead to poor communication between staff and frustration with colleagues.

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The Restaurant Wait List Management System That Has Caught the Attention of the Savvy Restaurateur

The coolest trend in restaurant and hotel guest services is the move away from traditional restaurant pagers to cell phone pager systems that offer robust wait list or reservation system integrated with voice or text guest paging. No restaurant pager system offers the integration of a reservation or wait list management system along with an optional SMS mobile marketing application all in one solution. Sounds expensive, well it isn’t.

The evolution of the restaurant pager system to a cell phone pager enables patrons to receive a SMS text message or voice messages when a table opens. This eliminates the over head associated with today’s clunky restaurant guest pagers that seemed to constantly walk out the door every week (despite your best efforts), with restaurant cell phone pagers those people waiting for your best tables to avail themselves will receive a text or voice message directly to their mobile phone (with there permission of course).

No need to worry about your current restaurant wait List management system as some of these restaurant text pager system automate your existing restaurant wait list management system perfectly. According to the Blog.SocialMobileTrends chains are testing cell phone based restaurant cell phone pager / wait list management system to replace their manual restaurant wait management system of a grease pen and white board. What attracts restaurant managers to our wait management system is the ability to manage and track the restaurant’s wait list using a cue system that tracks quote time verse wait time, a party description field and an integrated restaurant call a heading seating systems. In the case of popular chain restaurants this is extremely valuable for their high volume locations.

Call-a-heads and walk-ins will not be in competition for your prime tables if you choose the right cell text pager solution that will seamlessly and efficiently enables you to accommodate both with a web hosted restaurant wait list management system. Restaurant’s that want a more efficient way to manage their call a head seating without slowing down their staff’s ability to manage the restaurant’s wait list. They also wanted to avoid purchasing restaurant coaster pagers to manager their wait list. Restaurant coaster pagers can cost upwards to $3000 for the initial system and each restaurant coaster pager can cost more than $70 to replace. A busy restaurant could perceivably go through one or two restaurant coaster pagers per month. That can get pretty costly over 12 months with little to know ROI. Creative solutions using the last trends in technology such as mobile phones can dramatically optimize operations.