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Are hills like white elephants?
No full text'Are Hills Like White Elephants?' is, of course, inspired by Hemingway; the tribute reflects on the abiding relevance of serious art in a changed world and extends the boundaries of his message to other human situations
Review of Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum.
No full textReview of Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum
Review of Overlooking Saskatchewan: Minding the Gap edited by Randal Rogers and Christine Ramsay.
No full textReview of Overlooking Saskatchewan: Minding the Gap edited by Randal Rogers and Christine Ramsay
Transnational Literature November 2016: Complete book reviews: history, theory and criticism
No full textAll history, theory and criticism book reviews from Transnational Literature, November 2015, in one file for ease of printing and downloadin
Visualising Human Motion: a First Principles Approach using Vicon data in Maya
No full textAuthor version made available in accordance with publisher copyright policy.This paper describes a first principles approach to understanding how 3D digital animation of human motion can be processed and produced from raw data, without the use of proprietary software. The paper describes how students collected motion data using a custom marker set, how this was used to create a point cloud, how errors were corrected, and finally how the skeleton was rigged, skinned and modelled in Maya
Construct Validity of the Dutch Version of the 12-Item Partners in Health Scale: Measuring Patient Self-Management Behaviour and Knowledge in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
No full textThis is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Objective
The 12-item Partners in Health scale (PIH) was developed in Australia to measure self-management behaviour and knowledge in patients with chronic diseases, and has undergone several changes. Our aim was to assess the construct validity and reliability of the latest PIH version in Dutch COPD patients.
Methods
The 12 items of the PIH, scored on a self-rated 9-point Likert scale, are used to calculate total and subscale scores (knowledge; coping; recognition and management of symptoms; and adherence to treatment). We used forward-backward translation of the latest version of the Australian PIH to define a Dutch PIH (PIH(Du)). Mokken Scale Analysis and common Factor Analysis were performed on data from a Dutch COPD sample to investigate the psychometric properties of the Dutch PIH; and to determine whether the four-subscale solution previously found for the original Australian PIH could be replicated for the Dutch PIH.
Results
Two subscales were found for the Dutch PIH data (n = 118); 1) knowledge and coping; 2) recognition and management of symptoms, adherence to treatment. The correlation between the two Dutch subscales was 0.43. The lower-bound of the reliability of the total scale equalled 0.84. Factor analysis indicated that the first two factors explained a larger percentage of common variance (39.4% and 19.9%) than could be expected when using random data (17.5% and 15.1%).
Conclusion
We recommend using two PIH subscale scores when assessing self-management in Dutch COPD patients. Our results did not support the four-subscale structure as previously reported for the original Australian PIH
Improving management of student clinical placements: insights from activity theory
No full textOpen AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background
An approach to improve management of student clinical placements, the Building Teams for Quality Learning project, was trialed in three different health services. In a previous paper the authors explored in some detail the factors associated with considerable success of this approach at one of these services. In this paper, the authors extend this work with further analysis to determine if the more limited outcomes observed with participants at the other two services could be explained by application of activity theory and in particular the expansive learning cycle.
Methods
Staff at three health services participated in the Building Teams for Quality Learning project: a dental clinic, a community aged care facility and a rural hospital. At each site a team of seven multi-disciplinary staff completed the project over 9 to 12 months (total 21 participants). Evaluation data were collected through interviews, focus groups and direct observation of staff and students. Following initial thematic analysis, further analysis was conducted to compare the processes and outcomes at each participating health service drawing on activity theory and the expansive learning cycle.
Results
Fifty-one interview transcripts, 33 h of workplace observation and 31 sets of workshop field notes (from 36 h of workshops) were generated. All participants were individually supportive of, and committed to, high quality student learning experiences. As was observed with staff at the dental clinic, a number of potentially effective strategies were discussed at the aged care facility and the rural hospital workshops. However, participants in these two health services could not develop a successful implementation plan. The expansive learning cycle element of modeling and testing new solutions was not achieved and participants were unable, collectively to reassess and reinterpret the object of their activities.
Conclusion
The application of activity theory and the expansive learning cycle assisted a deeper understanding of the differences in outcomes observed across the three groups of participants. This included identifying specific points in the expansive learning cycle at which the three groups diverged. These findings support some practical recommendations for health services that host student clinical placements
Training for impact: the socio-economic impact of a fit for purpose health workforce on communities
No full textOpen AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Across the globe, a “fit for purpose” health professional workforce is needed to meet health needs and challenges while capitalizing on existing resources and strengths of communities. However, the socio-economic impact of educating and deploying a fit for purpose health workforce can be challenging to evaluate. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of six promising strategies and interventions that provide context-relevant health professional education within the health system. The strategies focused on in the paper are:
1. Distributed community-engaged learning: Education occurs in or near underserved communities using a variety of educational modalities including distance learning. Communities served provide input into and actively participate in the education process.
2. Curriculum aligned with health needs: The health and social needs of targeted communities guide education, research and service programmes.
3. Fit for purpose workers: Education and career tracks are designed to meet the needs of the communities served. This includes cadres such as community health workers, accelerated medically trained clinicians and extended generalists.
4. Gender and social empowerment: Ensuring a diverse workforce that includes women having equal opportunity in education and are supported in their delivery of health services.
5. Interprofessional training: Teaching the knowledge, skills and attitudes for working in effective teams across professions.
6. South-south and north-south partnerships: Sharing of best practices and resources within and between countries.
In sum, the sharing of resources, the development of a diverse and interprofessional workforce, the advancement of primary care and a strong community focus all contribute to a world where transformational education improves community health and maximizes the social and economic return on investment
Overconfidence in psychosis: The foundation of delusional conviction
No full textThis open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.A number of recent studies have identified an “overconfidence effect” in psychosis, whereby people with schizophrenia are overconfident in errors while simultaneously slightly underconfident when accurate. This effect may have implications for why delusions, which are based on inaccurate inferences, perceptions and judgements, are typically held with high conviction. Given the importance the overconfidence effect may have in accounting for delusional conviction, the current narrative review aims to summarise and critique the recent evidence for the effect within schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia were consistently found to be overconfident in errors and slightly underconfident in correct appraisals, and this effect appears not to be an artefact of poor task performance. While the overconfidence effect has been linked to delusion-proneness in the general population, there was less direct evidence linking overconfidence to delusional symptoms in clinical populations. Future studies need to adopt longitudinal designs and include additional measures of overconfidence to investigate this association more appropriately, and to also investigate possibl