10 research outputs found
‘Having come to university my care was very much in my hands’ : exploration of university students’ perceptions of health care needs and services using common-sense model of self-regulation
No full textFunding: Partial funding for this study was provided by School of Medicine and Enhancement Theme Fund from University of St Andrews.The health care needs and service experiences of higher education students require more research attention, given the increase in students who have a long-term illness, medical condition, or disability (“condition”). It is also important to consider the experiences of rising numbers of international students. This exploratory qualitative study used face-to-face interviews and the common-sense model of self-regulation to investigate students’ perceptions and coping behaviours, in a higher education institution in the UK. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Twenty students who self-identified as having a condition were interviewed. This study adds depth to the understanding of the connections between students’ health-related experiences and their personal, academic, and post-graduation aspirations and the support needs of students, including international students. To optimise institutional support, innovations in partnerships with local care organisations and within the university, staff training about conditions, peer mentorship, and information outreach especially to international students, should be considered.Peer reviewe
Why are dominant suicidology approaches failing nurses? A call for a feminist critical suicidology perspective
No full textIn the UK, 90% of nurses are female, a figure replicated at the global level. A significant proportion are also from the global ethnic majority (NMC, 2023; ONS, 2019). Notably, the risk of suicide among female nurses is 23% higher compared to women in other occupational groups (NCISH, 2020). Despite this significant finding, our understanding of this phenomenon remains limited, in part due to how we interpret suicide in certain contexts. This has clear implications for potential solutions
Methods of connecting primary care patients with community-based physical activity opportunities : a realist scoping review
No full textFunding: NHS Fife Endowment Fund (Grant Number(s): FIF142).Deemed a global public health problem by the World Health Organization, physical inactivity is estimated to be responsible for one in six deaths in the United Kingdom (UK) and to cost the nation's economy £7.4 billion per year. A response to the problem receiving increasing attention is connecting primary care patients with community-based physical activity opportunities. We aimed to explore what is known about the effectiveness of different methods of connecting primary care patients with community-based physical activity opportunities in the United Kingdom by answering three research questions: 1) What methods of connection from primary care to community-based physical activity opportunities have been evaluated?; 2) What processes of physical activity promotion incorporating such methods of connection are (or are not) effective or acceptable, for whom, to what extent and under what circumstances; 3) How and why are (or are not) those processes effective or acceptable? We conducted a realist scoping review in which we searched Cochrane, Medline, PsycNET, Google Advanced Search, National Health Service (NHS) Evidence and NHS Health Scotland from inception until August 2020. We identified that five methods of connection from primary care to community-based physical activity opportunities had been evaluated. These were embedded in 15 processes of physical activity promotion, involving patient identification and behaviour change strategy delivery, as well as connection. In the contexts in which they were implemented, four of those processes had strong positive findings, three had moderately positive findings and eight had negative findings. The underlying theories of change were highly supported for three processes, supported to an extent for four and refuted for eight processes. Comparisons of the processes and their theories of change revealed several indications helpful for future development of effective processes. Our review also highlighted the limited evidence base in the area and the resulting need for well-designed theory-based evaluations.Peer reviewe
Connecting primary care patients to community-based physical activity : a qualitative study of health professional and patient views
No full textFunding: NHS Fife Endowment Fund Grant which was awarded as part of a larger project (FIF142).Background Inconclusive evidence supporting referrals from health professionals to gym-based exercise programmes has raised concern for the roll-out of such schemes, and highlights the importance of developing links between healthcare settings and community-based opportunities to improve physical activity (PA) levels. Aim This study aimed to identify methods, and explore barriers and facilitators, of connecting primary care patients with PA opportunities from the perspectives of both health professionals (HPs) and patients, using the example of jogs cotland. Design & setting An exploratory study utilising semi-structured interviews with primary care patients (n = 14) and HPs (n = 14) from one UK NHS board was conducted. Method Patient and HP transcripts were analysed separately using thematic analysis. Potential methods of connection were identified. The Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, behavioural (COM-B) model and theoretical domains framework (TDF) were employed to facilitate identification of barriers and facilitators for connecting primary care to community jogscotland groups. Results Three methods of connecting patients to community-based groups were identified: informal passive signposting, informal active signposting, and formal referral or prescribing. Barriers and facilitators for patient connection fell into five TDF domains for HPs and two COM-B model components for patients. Conclusion For patients, HPs raising the topic of PA can help to justify, facilitate, and motivate action to change. The workload associated with connecting patients with community-based opportunities is central to implementation by HPs. Integrative resource solutions and social support for patients can provide a greater variety of PA options and the vital information and support for connecting with local opportunities, such as jogscotland.Peer reviewe
Social prescribing and behaviour change : proposal of a new behaviour change technique concerning the ‘connection’ step
No full textPeer reviewe
Progressing social prescribing with a focus on process of connection:Evidence-informed guidance for robust evaluation and evidence synthesis
No full textPeer reviewe
Increasing physical activity levels : designing a referral pathway to a community- and volunteer-based physical activity programme
No full textFunding: Funded by NHS Fife Endowment Fund.Background/Aim: The NICE guideline on exercise referral schemes to promote physical activity suggests that referral to activities based outside of the gym may be linked to improved adherence. We aim to design and pilot a process of referring patients attending primary care to community-based jogscotland groups and to examine the barriers and facilitators of such a process for health professionals and patients. Methods: GPs and nurses from over 20 practices across Fife have expressed interest in the study. Exploratory interviews with health professionals and patients of primary care practices in Fife will be conducted (N=15-25 primary care registered patients with no physical health barriers to engage in physical activity and N=15-25 GPs/Nurses). These interviews will be guided by Theoretical Domains Framework and analysed using thematic analysis. Informed by findings from the interviews, a process of referral to jogscotland will be designed around how community-based programmes can acceptably be introduced through GP/nurse consultations. Lastly, a feasibility study testing this method of offering referral to jogscotland will be conducted. Results: The findings will enable the design of a full trial to test a community-based approach to physical activity participation that would be scalable cross Scotland. Conclusion: This project will link primary care patients to a structured and volunteer-led physical activity programme in their community that is not gym-based. Given these factors, it has the strong potential of being successful in maintaining behaviour change and achieving positive health outcomes for patients. This project additionally provides a unique opportunity to develop a partnership between primary care and community-based physical activity groups.Non peer reviewe
A study in sixteenth-century performance and artistic networks: British Library, Additional Manuscript 15233
No full textThis thesis is a modern spelling edition of unedited poems and song lyrics from British Library, Additional Manuscript 15233, and a cultural and sociological study of the collection.The manuscript contains music, poetry and fragments of drama attributed to John Redford, Organist, Almoner and Master of the Choristers at St. Paul's Cathedral c.1534–1547, as well as work by at least six other mid Tudor poets. The manuscript has systematically been cited as a ‘St. Paul’s miscellany’(because the main body of work within it is attributed to Redford), and despite its varied content, has been considered almost solely from the perspective of Early Modern drama. This thesis considers the manuscript anew: as a whole, rather than in parts divided along disciplinary lines, as an example of material culture, and separately from the well-researched centres of St. Paul’s and John Redford.Chapters one and two comprise a study of the physical makeup of the manuscript, demonstrating new evidence for its date, and suggesting that it is the product of an artistic network centred on the London parish church of St. Mary-at-Hill.Chapters three and four comprise new studies of the content of the manuscript. Chapter three examines The Play of Wit and Science, with particular attention to its bibliographical status, and its engagement with contemporary artistic debate in performance. It also demonstrates its importance as a source for two later sixteenth-century plays. Chapter four is a case study of a single poem from the manuscript. This demonstrates the overall significance of MS 15233 as a source for verse and song, uncovers a network of printers involved in the transmission of its contents, and calls into question the long-standing theory that the Elizabethan poet George Gascoigne was a contributor to the manuscript.The final chapter of the thesis comprises a modern spelling edition of the poems and song lyrics from MS 15233 with individual commentaries and textual apparatus. This thesis demonstrates that to examine MS 15233 purely in relation to St. Paul’s Cathedral and John Redford, and from any one perspective, is reductive, and that these approaches have caused evidence to be skewed, and scholars to miss more complex possibilities regarding its compilation and provenance
Desiring the east: a comparative study of Middle English romance and modern popular sheikh romance
No full textThis thesis comparatively examines a selection of twenty-first century sheikh romances and Middle English romances from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that imagine an erotic relationship occurring between east and west. They do so against a background of conflict, articulated in military confrontation and binary religious and ethnic division. The thesis explores the strategies used to facilitate the cross-cultural relationship across such a gulf of difference and considers what a comparison of medieval and modern romance can reveal about attitudes towards otherness in popular romance.
In Chapter 1, I analyse the construction of the east in each genre, investigating how the homogenisation of the romance east in sheikh romance distances it from the geopolitical reality of those parts of the Middle East seen, by the west, to be "other". Chapter 2 examines the articulation of gender identity and the ways in which these romances subvert and reassert binary gender difference to uphold normative heterosexual relations. Chapter 3 considers how ethnic and religious difference is nuanced, in particular through the use of fabric, breaking down the disjunction between east and west. Chapter 4 investigates the way ethnicity, religion and gender affect hierarchies of power in the abduction motif, enabling undesirable aspects of the east to be recast.
The key finding of this thesis is that both romance genres facilitate the cross-cultural erotic relationship by rewriting apparently binary differences of religion and ethnicity to create sameness. While the east is figured differently in Middle English and modern sheikh romance, the strategies they use to facilitate the cross-cultural erotic relationship are similar. The thesis concludes that the constancy of certain attitudes towards the east in both medieval and modern romance reveals a persistence of conservative values in representations of the east in romance
Altimetry for the future: Building on 25 years of progress
No full textIn 2018 we celebrated 25 years of development of radar altimetry, and the progress achieved by this methodology in the fields of global and coastal oceanography, hydrology, geodesy and cryospheric sciences. Many symbolic major events have celebrated these developments, e.g., in Venice, Italy, the 15th (2006) and 20th (2012) years of progress and more recently, in 2018, in Ponta Delgada, Portugal, 25 Years of Progress in Radar Altimetry. On this latter occasion it was decided to collect contributions of scientists, engineers and managers involved in the worldwide altimetry community to depict the state of altimetry and propose recommendations for the altimetry of the future. This paper summarizes contributions and recommendations that were collected and provides guidance for future mission design, research activities, and sustainable operational radar altimetry data exploitation. Recommendations provided are fundamental for optimizing further scientific and operational advances of oceanographic observations by altimetry, including requirements for spatial and temporal resolution of altimetric measurements, their accuracy and continuity. There are also new challenges and new openings mentioned in the paper that are particularly crucial for observations at higher latitudes, for coastal oceanography, for cryospheric studies and for hydrology.
The paper starts with a general introduction followed by a section on Earth System Science including Ocean Dynamics, Sea Level, the Coastal Ocean, Hydrology, the Cryosphere and Polar Oceans and the “Green” Ocean, extending the frontier from biogeochemistry to marine ecology. Applications are described in a subsequent section, which covers Operational Oceanography, Weather, Hurricane Wave and Wind Forecasting, Climate projection. Instruments’ development and satellite missions’ evolutions are described in a fourth section. A fifth section covers the key observations that altimeters provide and their potential complements, from other Earth observation measurements to in situ data. Section 6 identifies the data and methods and provides some accuracy and resolution requirements for the wet tropospheric correction, the orbit and other geodetic requirements, the Mean Sea Surface, Geoid and Mean Dynamic Topography, Calibration and Validation, data accuracy, data access and handling (including the DUACS system). Section 7 brings a transversal view on scales, integration, artificial intelligence, and capacity building (education and training). Section 8 reviews the programmatic issues followed by a conclusion
