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Patients with severe asthma were choosing not to use the emergency department (ED) in extremis and were self-medicating when experiencing severe asthma, putting their lives at risk. This local issue reflected a nationwide situation. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the reasons behind patients’ reluctance to attend ED and to consider practical solutions in a structured way.

Systems thinking (soft systems methodology) was used to examine the issues resulting in this reluctance to attend the ED. Once this tame (well-defined) problem was revealed, a potential solution was developed in co-production with patients.

Patients feared attending the ED and felt vulnerable while in the ED for several reasons. This appeared to be a well-defined and solvable problem. The solution proposed was an asthma patient passport (APP), which increased patient’s confidence in their ability to communicate their needs while in severe distress. The APP decreases (from 12 to 5 steps) the work patients had to do to achieve care. The APP project is currently being evaluated.

The APP should be offered to all people with severe asthma.

By revisiting systems thinking and identifying problems, a solution was identified. Although methods such as soft systems methodology have limitations when used in wicked (difficult or impossible to resolve) problems, such methods still have merit in tame problems and were applicable in this case to fully understand the issues, and to design practical solutions.

Incident reporting systems are commonly deployed in healthcare but resulting datasets are largely warehoused. This study explores if intelligence from such datasets could be used to improve quality, efficiency, and safety.

Incident reporting data recorded in one NHS acute Trust was mined for insight (n = 133,893 April 2005–July 2016 across 201 fields, 26,912,493 items). An a priori dataset was overlaid consisting of staffing, vital signs, and national safety indicators such as falls. Analysis was primarily nonlinear statistical approaches using Mathematica V11.

The organization developed a deeper understanding of the use of incident reporting systems both in terms of usability and possible reflection of culture. Signals emerged which focused areas of improvement or risk. An example of this is a deeper understanding of the timing and staffing levels associated with falls. Insight into the nature and grading of reporting was also gained.

Healthcare incident reporting data is underused and with a small amount of analysis can provide real insight and application to patient safety.

This study shows that insight can be gained by mining incident reporting datasets, particularly when integrated with other routinely collected data.

Despite the generation of mass data by the nursing workforce, determining the impact of the contribution to patient safety remains challenging. Several cross-sectional studies have indicated a relationship between staffing and safety. The purpose of this paper is to uncover possible associations and explore if a deeper understanding of relationships between staffing and other factors such as safety could be revealed within routinely collected national data sets.

Two longitudinal routinely collected data sets consisting of 30 years of UK nurse staffing data and seven years of National Health Service (NHS) benchmark data such as survey results, safety and other indicators were used. A correlation matrix was built and a linear correlation operation was applied (Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient).

A number of associations were revealed within both the UK staffing data set and the NHS benchmarking data set. However, the challenges of using these data sets soon became apparent.

Staff time and effort are required to collect these data. The limitations of these data sets include inconsistent data collection and quality. The mode of data collection and the itemset collected should be reviewed to generate a data set with robust clinical application.

This paper revealed that relationships are likely to be complex and non-linear; however, the main contribution of the paper is the identification of the limitations of routinely collected data. Much time and effort is expended in collecting this data; however, its validity, usefulness and method of routine national data collection appear to require re-examination.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences in international student mobility (SM) in two contrasting countries: UK and China, at national, institutional and individual levels. Both are countries in transition in a greater global context. The objective is to identify what these countries can learn from each other about the issues and policies surrounding the management of educational mobility.

An inductive approach was employed to understand real-life experience via multiple case studies. Participant observation and semi-structured interview methods with a variety of stakeholders were used to collect data which were then subjected to a thematic analysis to identify in which areas countries had developed good practice.

Over-arching themes were developed through comparing national findings. These reveal that national policy and family support are most influential in China, while British universities largely drive SM at an institutional level.

The significance of this knowledge lies in the potential for social impact and reform of successful mobility schemes. International mobility equates to social mobility through global employability of those who engage. Global citizenship is regarded as one of the paths to world peace and understanding. Mobilising a younger generation can contribute to better regional integration and international stability as part of an idealistic approach to geopolitics.

Concluding that neither country has a comprehensive and complete approach, this study proposes the areas in which all both could develop and details good practice. The value therefore emerges from the comparison and contrast and the practical focus of the research.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of professional and leader identity and the maintenance of identity, through identity work as IT professionals transitioned to a permanent hybrid role. This study therefore contributes to the under-researched area of permanent transition to a hybrid role in the context of IT, where there is a requirement to enact both the professional and leader roles together.

The study utilised a longitudinal design and two qualitative methods (interviews and reflective diaries) to gather data from 17 IT professionals transitioning to hybrid roles.

The study findings reveal that IT professionals engage in an ongoing process of reconciliation of professional and leader identity as they transition to a permanent hybrid role, and they construct hybrid professional–leader identities while continuing to value their professional identity. They experience professional–leader identity conflict resulting from reluctance to reconcile both professional and leader identities. They used both integration and differentiation identity work tactics to ameliorate these tensions.

The longitudinal study design, the qualitative approaches used and the unique context of the participants provide a dynamic and deep understanding of the challenges involved in performing hybrid roles in the context of IT.

There has been an increasing emphasis on developing officers who can effectively make decisions in dynamic and stressful environments to manage volatile situations. The aim of this paper is to guide those seeking to optimize the limited resources dedicated to police training.

Drawing on research related to stress exposure training, principles of adult learning, the event-based approach to training and policing more broadly, the authors show how carefully crafted training scenarios can maximize the benefits of police training.

The authors’ review highlights various training principles that, if relied on, can result in scenarios that are likely to result in the development of flexible, sound decision-making skills when operating under stressful conditions. The paper concludes with an example of scenario development, which takes the reviewed principles into account.

The authors hope this discussion will be useful for police instructors and curriculum designers in making evidence-informed decisions when designing training scenarios.

This study examines the experiences of five teachers working in two English secondary school subject departments after being given the opportunity to engage with Lesson Study (LS) to increase student performance in their subject areas. This study aimed to reveal the drivers for the teachers' engagement in LS, and how this experience of Joint Professional Development (JPD) might be contributing to their learning as teachers.

This study applies an analytic approach to evidencing teacher learning, based on the work of Knud Illeris, offering this as a methodological contribution to the field of professional development literature.

Findings reveal that, despite all the teachers developing a passion for learning through LS, there are constraints on its sustainability and impact which can be attributed to the teachers' broader contexts and which affected them differently. The constraints centre on tensions between priorities and agendas within and beyond the school, related largely to budgets and visions of staff development.

This focused study on two subject departments engaging in LS limits its generalisability in terms of findings. However, the study offers a practical research application of a model of learning for analysis of teacher reflections on collaborative learning experiences.

Understanding individual teacher reflections on LS experiences is under-represented in the literature, in particular studies providing insights into conditions conducive and constraining to JPD.

Downloading and uploading offer labour‐saving advantages and are now accepted as useful options in online searching. All aspects are here considered, from recent technical advances, applications and legal attitudes. There is also a review of current software for downloading. Recent developments mean a trend to higher internal memory and storage capacity, and greater transmission speeds. Packages now offer access to more than one host, give maximum assistance to the user without being menu‐driven and incorporate the latest developments in artificial intelligence. Disadvantages are in the length of time involved in the process and the fact that the legal issue of copyright has not yet been finalised. Database producers have turned to licensing under contract law, but there is still need to rely on user ethics, and the need for a standard permissions form is highlighted.

While women have continued to increase their representation in the paid workforce, their representation in the most senior ranks of management in Australia remains very low. In this paper, the backgrounds and experiences of women board members of publicly‐listed companies in Australia are explored to identify the factors they perceive as important to their nomination and selection to boards. It seems that these “successful” women have overcome the resistance to including women on boards by not only being well‐educated and able to demonstrate a strong track record in their field to be nominated to a board position, but also having valuable business contacts. For women seeking to access this most privileged level of management, the importance of networks should not be overlooked.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories: