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How does shift work on placement affect healthcare students’ lives?
No full textAs a healthcare student, it is essential to undertake clinical practice placements in the relevant field. Practice placements enable students to become competent healthcare professionals, increasing clinical confidence and ensuring that statutory, regulated requirements are met. As part of a healthcare professional education, it can be expected that an individual will have to undergo a variety of working hours, including social and anti-social hours, and shift work. Moreover, as a qualified professional, there is an increasing demand to undertake a combination of both day and night shifts within the same week. Research evidence indicates that such shift patterns can lead to shift work disorder (SWD); exacerbated by the demands of the profession, SWD is associated with poor decision making and health implications. Current research focuses on healthcare professionals in general, with little attention given to healthcare students. Therefore, it fails to recognise the detrimental effects that shift work can have, not only on a student’s physiological and mental state, but also on their personal and academic life. The aim of this paper is to determine students’ perceptions of the impact of shift working on their physical health, personal life and academic studies.
Initially a pilot study was developed to explore how data quality could be improved and trustworthiness and credibility maximised. An explorative, qualitative approach was used by means of semi-structured interviews. Prompts were used to enhance a participant’s exploration and to develop rich data.
Thematic analysis of the data identified four overarching themes: professional challenges, resilience, workplace challenges and negative effects of shift work. Participants identified periods of vulnerability and isolation alongside excessive tiredness and stress on family life. Participants also recognised differing eating habits and ill health following shift work. Furthermore, it was highlighted within the data that some participants developed coping strategies and built resilience to the stressors of combining academia and practical placements. Time constraints led to limited participant availability, restricting the amount of data offered and the number of healthcare disciplines represented.
This study identified the physical and mental health implications for future healthcare professionals at an early stage in their career, warranting necessary further research. Healthcare educators should utilise the findings to develop firm support systems to direct students during both clinical placements and theory work. Furthermore, clinical practice administrators need to develop policies to promote a positive training environment where students feel well supported
The fall of Edward II: Failures in kingship and masculinity, the letter of Manuel Fieschi and the cult of resurrected celebrities
No full textEdward II is a monarch whose name is almost synonymous with scandal and failure, and the infamous tale of his murder by red-hot poker at Berkeley Castle is one that looms over the bloody history of English royalty. The theories and historiography surrounding his political errors, his sexuality, the nature of his death and even the date of his death have changed continually since the end of his reign in 1327, both to further changing political agendas and to explore new historical narratives. In this paper, medieval gender norms and concepts of masculinity are used to scrutinise the failure of Edward’s reign, and highlight their role in its doom.
In the late 19th century, a letter penned by Italian cleric Manuel Fieschi and addressed to Edward III further complicated Edward II’s history. Fieschi claimed that the deposed king escaped his doom in 1327 and went on to tour Europe on a pilgrimage to famous shrines and holy places. This letter is analysed and its likelihood of truth assessed through relevant historiography by multiple historical experts on the topic. This analysis establishes that this adventurous tale of Edward’s escape is almost certainly untrue.
However, the narrative does present us with an interesting example of a trope found throughout history of notable people, widely accepted as deceased, secretly living out their lives away from the public eye. The conspiratorial-style narrative of monarchs and famous people living on in secret has its repetitive nature demonstrated through a number of varied examples, both monastic and within popular culture.
This narrative is a common theme in the folklore of many cultures and the idea of resurrection is deeply rooted in religious ideologies. In this paper, this theme is explored through comparative research and analysis of individual cases. It is demonstrated that individuals are more or less likely to accept these deviated narratives depending on their general acceptance of conspiratorial ideas and establishment cover-ups. However, this trope is also examined in a different way, one of hopeful belief in a better outcome for those in the public eye
Characterising Sustainability Requirements: A New Species, Red Herring, or Just an Odd Fish?
No full textAbstract—Requirements articulating the needs of stakeholders are critical to successful system development and key to influ-encing their long-term effects. As the concept of sustainability has entered the discourse of a number of software-related computing fields, so has the term ‘sustainability requirement’. However, it is unclear whether sustainability requirements are and should be different from how we already understand software requirements. This paper presents the results of a corpus-assisted discourse analysis study that explored the concept of sustainability requirements in order to understand how the term is being used in software and requirements engineering and related fields. The results of this study reveal that the term ‘sustainability requirement’ is generally used ambiguously and reveals significant segmentation across different fields. Our detailed analysis of selected influential papers highlights the segmented use of the term and suggests key focus questions that need to be addressed to establish a shared operative understanding of the term
Is the Public willing to help the Nigerian Police during the Boko Haram crisis? A look at moderating factors.
No full textThis paper sought the opinion of 200 Nigerians on their willingness to cooperate with the Police during the Boko Haram crisis. Public perceptions of Police effectiveness during the crisis, residence location, gender and religious affiliation were used as moderators. Data was analysed using an explanatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Results indicated a strong association between perceived effectiveness and willingness to report to the Police with respondents who question the effectiveness of the Police being less likely to be willing to report criminal activity about Boko Haram. Further to this, the impact of religion on willingness to report was at least partially mediated by perceived effectiveness of the Police with the results showing that Christian respondents perceived the Police as less effective. Females and those living in the North were significantly less willing to report criminal activity to the Police The findings are then discussed in relation to the BH crises and directions for future research are given
The cultural and occupational roles attributed to trust in talent management: Chapter 7
No full textThis chapter considers the significance of ‘trust’ in talent management and
assesses its critical nature through cultural and occupational roles, by observing
group dynamics within the social framework of mutual-equivalence. Positive
forms of trusting beliefs can create an organisational climate that conveys a
sense of confidence. This in turn, could inspire generative learning and an
innate driving force for talent to manifest itself throughout an organisation’s
workforce. Notwithstanding, realities of work-life balance and the management
of change could, for example in recessionary times, impede notions of mistrust,
replacing confidence with some degree of suspicion. By implication this could
cause reduced productivity and talent potential. Managing social diversity
or unpredictability to on-going organisational dilemmas can be assisted when
observed within a cultural setting of in-group (e.g. organisation), out-group (e.g.
occupations) processes. Using an applied concept known as mutual-equivalence
(Wallace, [1961], ed.1964), an analytical insight could assess positive or negative
push-pull environmental and operational behaviours such as, for example, a
‘recession push’ vs. ‘prosperity pull’ (e.g. Brünjes and Diez, 2013). Such social
perceptions (and others) could affect opportunities for talent acquisition or create
or inhibit inspired aspirations amongst employees, for which trust would be an
important variable to consider
Autonomous Discovery and Management in Virtual Container Clusters
No full textGlobal software stacks on scientific cluster computing resources are required to provide a homogeneous software environment which is typically inflexible. Efforts to integrate Virtual Machines (VMs), in order to abstract the software environment of various scientific applications, suffer from performance limitations and require systems administration expertise to maintain. However, the motivation is clear; in addition to increasing resource utilization, the burden of supporting new software installations on existing systems can be reduced. In this paper, we introduce the Virtual Container Cluster (VCC) that encapsulates a typical HPC software environment within Docker containers. The novel component cluster–watcher enables context aware discovery and configuration of the virtual cluster. Containers offer a lightweight alternative to VMs that more closely match the native performance, and presents a solution that is more accessible to customization by the average user. Combined with a Software Defined Networking (SDN) technology, the VCC enables dynamic features such as transparent scaling and spanning across multiple physical resources. Although SDN introduces an additional performance limitation, within the context of a parallel communication network, the benchmarking demonstrates that this cost is application dependent. The Linpack benchmarking shows that the overhead of container virtualization and SDN interconnect is comparable to the native performance
Group work and undergraduate accounting students: a Bourdieusian analysis
Get PDFThis study investigated students’ views and experiences of group work in a vocationally oriented undergraduate Accounting and Finance degree course in an English post-1992 university. In this context tutors prepare students for the profession and for the workplace, and the development of team-working skills is a core element in the curriculum. This presents a significant challenge to tutors given that students commonly report an aversion to aspects of group work, including a perceived loss of individual autonomy, and particularly the fear of a risk to grades arising from working with others. Theoretical constructs drawn from Bourdieu were used to develop an understanding of how tutors could be better informed of students’ perspectives. This supports reflective behaviour by tutors when designing strategies to overcome both commonly reported barriers to effective group work and previously less well understood drivers of student behaviour. A focus group approach was adopted with 28 students participating. The findings have the potential to address the challenge of facilitating students’ effective engagement in group work in Accounting and other vocationally-oriented programmes
A Critical Assessment of Trait versus Situationalist Positions and the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R)
No full textOver time, the concept of personality has stimulated considerable theorising and debate amongst researchers. Thought to be characteristics within an individual that account for consistent patterns of thought, feelings and behaviours, the quest to understand individual differences between human beings has led to the increased uptake of psychological measurement tools, known as psychometric tests. Many variations of psychometric tests that have been devised to date attempt to operationalise the theoretical principles of Trait theory and the dimensions therein. Typically, these are applied within occupational, educational and clinical settings, where such personality measures are considered increasingly useful in the evaluation of individuals either being assessed, or due to begin working within an organisation. However, despite researchers implementing psychometric tests such as the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa and McCrae, 1992a) reporting high levels of construct validity for the measure (Widiger and Trull, 1997), criticism surrounding the reliability of findings obtained from applications of the tool, resulting from the general lack of agreement around the trait dimensions that underpin psychometric testing, remain important. Another highly contented issue surrounding the basis of such tests are the stability and situationalist arguments, which criticise such methods as inaccurately representing a true picture of the individual due to failing to take the full environmental influences upon people into account. Such issues are undoubtedly more complex than such a summarisation can accredit, and upon paying systematic and critical consideration to the related assessments, a greater depth of analysis may be drawn
Does competition only impact on insolvency risk? New evidence from the Chinese banking industry
No full textPurpose- This paper investigates the impact of competition on credit risk, liquidity risk, capital risk and insolvency risk in the Chinese banking industry during the period 2003-2013.
Design/methodology/approach- This study uses a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) system estimator to examine the impact of competition on risk. In particular, translog specifications are used to measure the competition and insolvency risk.
Findings- The results show that greater competition within each bank ownership type (state-owned commercial banks, joint-stock commercial banks and city commercial banks) leads to higher credit risk, higher liquidity risk, higher capital risk, but lower insolvency risk.
Originality- This paper is the first piece of research testing the impact of competition on different types of risk in banking industry and it further contributes to the empirical literature by using a more accurate competition indicator (efficiency-adjusted Lerner index) and a more precise insolvency risk indicator (stability inefficiency)
Can group-based reassuring information alter low back pain behavior? A cluster-randomized controlled trial?
No full textBackground
Low back pain (LBP) is common in the population and multifactorial in nature, often involving negative consequences. Reassuring information to improve coping is recommended for reducing the negative consequences of LBP. Adding a simple non-threatening explanation for the pain (temporary muscular dysfunction) has been successful at altering beliefs and behavior when delivered with other intervention elements. This study investigates the isolated effect of this specific information on future occupational behavior outcomes when delivered to the workforce.
Design
A cluster-randomized controlled trial.
Methods
Publically employed workers (n=505) from 11 Danish municipality centers were randomized at center-level (cluster) to either intervention (two 1-hour group-based talks at the workplace) or control. The talks provided reassuring information together with a simple non-threatening explanation for LBP - the ‘functional-disturbance’-model. Data collections took place monthly over a 1-year period using text message tracking (SMS). Primary outcomes were self-reported days of cutting down usual activities and work participation. Secondary outcomes were self-reported back beliefs, work ability, number of healthcare visits, bothersomeness, restricted activity, use of pain medication, and sadness/depression.
Results
There was no between-group difference in the development of LBP during follow-up. Cumulative logistic regression analyses showed no between-group difference on days of cutting down activities, but increased odds for more days of work participation in the intervention group (OR=1.83 95% CI: 1.08-3.12). Furthermore, the intervention group was more likely to report: higher work ability, reduced visits to healthcare professionals, lower bothersomeness, lower levels of sadness/depression, and positive back beliefs.
Conclusion
Reassuring information involving a simple non-threatening explanation for LBP significantly increased the odds for days of work participation and higher work ability among workers who went on to experience LBP during the 12-month follow-up. Our results confirm the potential for public-health education for LBP, and add to the discussion of simple versus multidisciplinary interventions
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