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Barriers and facilitators to the delivery of a biopsychosocial education and exercise programme for patients with chronic low back pain in Ghana. A qualitative study
Get PDFPurpose
Low back pain management has evolved with researchers advocating for a biopsychosocial management model. The biopsychosocial management model has been predominantly applied in high-income countries and underexplored in low- and middle-income countries including Ghana. This study aimed to explore the potential barriers and facilitators to patients with chronic low back pain (CLBP) and physiotherapists engagement with a biopsychosocial intervention (exercise and patient education) as part of a feasibility study.
Material and methods
This was a qualitative study embedded within a mixed-methods, sequential, feasibility study, in Ghana, applying semi-structured interviews. Two categories of participants involved in this study were, two trained physiotherapists, and six patients with CLBP, sampled within the feasibility study.
Results
Regarding the barriers and facilitators to the delivery of the BPS intervention, five interlinked themes emerged from the thematic analysis. These were: structure and process of delivery; patients’ expectations; patients’ health beliefs, autonomy, and engagement; external influences and personal and professional characteristics of physiotherapists.
Conclusion
The themes that emerged from this study demonstrated many positive facilitators based on participants’ improved understanding of LBP and the clarity and purpose of the biopsychosocial intervention. The results therefore demonstrate a potential to deliver the biopsychosocial intervention in a Ghanaian context
WeChat Adoption among Older Adults and Urban-Rural Differences in China
Get PDFAt the intersection of social digitization and population aging, the challenge of older adults fitting into digital life is becoming more prominent. To understand how to help older adults adopt digital life, this study builds upon the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and developed the Digital Technology Motivation Interaction Model (DTMIM) to study the complex effects of autonomous motivation (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment), controlled motivation, and digital feedback on WeChat adoption among older adults, as well as the urban-rural differences. The results of the questionnaire survey and Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) show that: First, no single construct is a necessary condition for a high (non-high) attitude toward using (ATU) or high (non-high) actual using (AU). Second, we identified two configurations that trigger high ATU including the autonomy-motivation type and digital feedback under motivational synergy, and three configurations that enable high AU including motivational synergy type, digital feedback under autonomous extrinsic motivation, and digital feedback under motivational synergy. Third, the configurations of high ATU and high AU show significant differences between urban and rural areas. Autonomy motivation plays a universal role in urban older adults’ WeChat adoption, while digital feedback is critical for rural older adults. The configuration analysis of DTMIM and urban-rural differences is not only an adaptive improvement of TAM but also provides new methods and perspectives for future research on the adoption of digital technology
Post-entry internationalization of born globals: The role of dynamic capabilities in accelerating growth
Get PDFAcademics and policymakers worldwide recognize the importance of born globals (BGs) and actively promote rapid internationalization. Despite this, our knowledge of the post-entry behavior of BGs is limited. We address this problem by investigating the dynamic capabilities that accelerate the post-entry international growth of BGs. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Chinese BG managers, this study reveals the dynamic capabilities that substantiate three key dimensions of international growth: spread, diversification, and sales intensity. Furthermore, we disclose the managerial and organizational capabilities that underpin the sensing and seizing of international opportunities as well as the reconfiguration of the resource base. We contribute to the BG literature and the dynamic capabilities perspective
Demand-Avoidance Phenomena: Further research is required to evaluate risks.
No full textThis is a short correspondence type article responding to Gillberg et al (2024) to discuss various risks associated with "Pathological Demand Avoidance" (PDA), and how further research is required to evaluate these risks. The essay draws heavily on literature above its 5 reference limit, and so there is an appendix of suggested further reading
Form Follows Fever: Malaria and the Construction of Hong Kong, 1841–1849 (Introduction)
Get PDFForm Follows Fever is the first in-depth account of the turbulent early years of settlement and growth of colonial Hong Kong across the 1840s. During this period, the island gained a terrible reputation as a diseased and deadly location. Malaria, then perceived as a mysterious vapour or miasma, intermittently carried off settlers by the hundreds. Various attempts to arrest its effects acted as a catalyst, reconfiguring both the city’s physical and political landscape, though not necessarily for the better.
Caught in a frenzy to re-build the city in the devastating aftermath, the book charts the complex interplay between a cast of figures, from military surveyors, naval doctors, Indian sepoys, and corrupt and paranoid officials to opium traders, arsonists, Chinese contractors, and sojourner architects and artists. However, Hong Kong’s ‘construction’ was not just physical but also imagined. Architecture, cartography, epidemiology, and urban infrastructure offer a critical forensic lens through which to examine the shifting ideologies of public health and space, race and placemaking, and commerce and politics, all set against the radical alteration of the settlement—from shore-hugging to climbing city—in response to miasma theory, a pre-bacteriological belief in gaseous emanations from a sickly environment.
This kaleidoscopic study draws upon many unpublished textual sources, including medical reports, personal diaries and letters, government records, journal accounts, newspaper articles, and advertisements. As this history is set a decade before the introduction of photography to the colony, the book relies upon a variety of alternate visual evidence—from previously lost watercolour illustrations of the city to maps, plans, and drawings—that individually and in combination provide trace material enabling the reconstruction of this strange and rapidly evolving society. Form Follows Fever sheds new light on a period often considered the colonial Dark Ages in the territory’s history
Qualified by virtue of experience? Professional youth work in Britain 1960-1989
No full textThis chapter explores the role of experiential expertise in the professionalisation of youth work following the influential Albemarle Report in 1960. It argues that this form of knowledge was valued and fully integrated into the recruitment, training and practice of youth workers in South London and Liverpool after 1960. The model of youth work at this time joined together academic and theoretical underpinnings with reflective practice and the expertise of experience. The youth workers who came into practice at this time also brought their experience of post-war welfare cultures, broadly speaking, and within youth work itself, to their roles in the Youth Service.
The chapter explores how the local experiences that youth workers shared with young people, and the lived experience of having grown up in the same social contexts and localities, shaped youth work to include or indeed sometimes be centred on a variety of forms of activism. While youth work did professionalise between 1960 and 1989, this process was incomplete and youth work struggled to gain the same status as other educational and welfare professions
Machine Learning Techniques for Autonomous Lesion Detection in Microwave Breast Imaging Clinical Data
No full textMicrowave breast imaging is becoming a promising new approach in the early detection of breast cancer. In this study, we have used advanced machine learning techniques to identify breast lesions from clinical data obtained via MammoWave scanner. To improve the performance of our model, we have explored refinements such as adjusting the number of principal components (PCs) in principal component analysis (PCA) and transitioning to generative adversarial network (GAN)-generated raw data. Leveraging this data, we have used PCA feature extraction, and utilized it to train a support vector machine (SVM). Our analysis has yielded promising results, with a ternary classification approach achieving an accuracy of 0.80
Automated Marker-based Abnormal Gait Pattern Detection Using Novel 6-dimensional Skeleton
No full textMarker-based motion-capturing technologies are widely used in clinics to diagnose motor-related pathologies due to their high resolution and accuracy. However, it often requires manual intervention to process the raw marker data. Although previous research has proposed algorithms to automate these processes, they do not address different marker placement models, abnormal gait patterns, or variations in the anthropometric measurements which limits their scalability. Therefore, this research proposes a novel automated algorithm to process the raw marker data and generate a novel 6D skeleton representation. It is used in machine learning classifiers to identify abnormal gait patterns. The proposed algorithm was tested with marker-based gait analysis data and achieved 99.7% accuracy in classifying normal and abnormal gait patterns using multilayer perceptron classifiers
A guide to back pain
Get PDFIn this article, Amy Noakes looks at back pain, a leading cause of morbidity and sickness absence in healthcare worker
Beyond tick boxes: re-imagining education for sustainable development in higher education
Get PDFWe are in an era of climate breakdown, mass extinction and global injustice. Through analysis of the new UK Professional Standards Framework (PSF) for academics, this paper explores some global challenges of incorporating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the neoliberal university. The PSF is a globally recognised framework for professional development, yet its recent review concluded that ESD could not be included within it. The paper discusses the disconnect between the growing recognition of the need for education that responds to our planetary predicament and the particular logics and rationalities of a neoliberal framework. In its critique of the underpinning assumptions of the PSF and its wider context, it discusses (im)possibilities of values and unlearning in a performativity driven setting. Next, it provides generative provocations to those using such frameworks for their own professional development or to support the development of peers. It invites academics to find new ways of using the limits of these narrow professional development practices as prefigurative for a less disconnected university where other possibilities for responding to our planetary predicament can be imagined