Rebecca Conlan-Trant, Paula Connolly, Alison O’Sullivan, Anurag Nasa, Mary Sammon and Lauren Alexander
Sleep disturbance is a common difficulty in the general population. It has become particularly prevalent in the context of disruption to routine brought about by the COVID-19…
Abstract
Purpose
Sleep disturbance is a common difficulty in the general population. It has become particularly prevalent in the context of disruption to routine brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to trial a patient-guided “sleep workbook” intervention, which was developed by multidisciplinary team members, combining principles of sleep hygiene education and cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia behavioural strategies, and to evaluate its efficacy in a mixed-methods study.
Design/methodology/approach
Service users of the community mental health service were invited to participate. A total of 30 service users agreed to participate. A total of 15 participants completed both the intervention and the mixed-methods survey. Four participated in the focus group. Descriptive and inferential statistics were performed on the collected quantitative data. A thematic analysis was carried out of qualitative survey responses and focus group discourse.
Findings
There was a statistically and clinically significant improvement in quantity and quality of sleep following intervention. Mean hours of sleep prior to the intervention was 4.4 hours [standard deviation (SD) = 2.2], compared to 6.1 hours (SD = 2.2) afterwards (p = 0.003). Quality of sleep improved from a mean of 2.5 (SD = 2.1) to 6.1 (SD = 2.3) following the intervention (p = <0.001). Four themes were developed using the qualitative data: “under-recognition of sleep difficulties”, “ruminations”, “practical utility” and “therapeutic autonomy”.
Originality/value
There is a growing need for occupational therapists and clinicians to provide interventions for patients with sleep difficulties and to develop sleep management practice. This patient-guided sleep workbook may be an effective intervention for these patients.
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Jane O’Sullivan and Alison Sheridan
Popular representations of the workplace have tended to construct women as unsuited to management and leadership roles. In their reflective capacity these popular fictional texts…
Abstract
Popular representations of the workplace have tended to construct women as unsuited to management and leadership roles. In their reflective capacity these popular fictional texts illustrate the workplace. In their capacity to construct popular perceptions of “reality”, the texts offer an important insight into women’s and men’s understandings and expectations of their workplace relationships. In this article we reflect on how popular films, plays and television shows can make visible some manifestations of the kinds of resistance women continue to experience in non‐traditional domains such as management. While these kinds of texts have not been central to the analysis of workplace relations within the management literature, we argue that as social documents they have much to contribute to an understanding of the limited advancement of women.
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Alison Sheridan and Jane O'Sullivan
This paper aims to demonstrate how close analysis of cultural narratives can be employed as effective pedagogical tools in the explication and critique of specific workplace…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to demonstrate how close analysis of cultural narratives can be employed as effective pedagogical tools in the explication and critique of specific workplace issues relevant to health management education.
Design/methodology/approach
Two narratives have been selected to illustrate this point: the apparently “fictional” UK-based medical television drama series Bodies (2005-2006) and the apparently “factual” report of an Australian state government public inquiry into acute health care, the Garling Report.
Findings
Through their demonstration of how analyses of selected segments of these texts can be used in health management education, the authors conclude that the comparative analyses of ostensibly “fictional” and “factual” narratives allow for analysis and critique of the inadequacies of new public management (NPM) applied to the health care industry, leading to a greater understanding of wider ideological effects on public perceptions.
Practical implications
The authors argue that these understandings enliven students' learning experiences, and that such comparative analyses should be applied more widely across health management education to develop students' critical skills and openness to exploring alternative models.
Originality/value
Comparative analysis of cultural texts is novel in health care education, and allows for the interrogation of ideology and its effects.
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David Nichol, William McGovern and Ruth McGovern
Any topic can be sensitive, and every subject area will have sensitive issues and topics that academics in higher education and further education settings will be expected to…
Abstract
Any topic can be sensitive, and every subject area will have sensitive issues and topics that academics in higher education and further education settings will be expected to negotiate. Your ability to negotiate sensitive topics is important because the ways in which you engage and teach about sensitive topics will affect your ability to provide a positive learning experience and teaching alliance with students. In practice, you will face enormous pressure to ‘deliver’ on teaching, which will only be mirrored by similar freedoms in deciding on how and what needs to be done to get students to where they need to be. Negotiating, identifying, preparing for and delivering teaching on sensitive subjects and topics can be difficult in individual academics. This chapter, seeks to prepare you for developing a deeper understanding of some of the philosophical, theoretical, and practical-based concerns and issues related to teaching sensitive topics and subjects. This chapter begins with providing a rationale for what follows, and it explores some of the key themes, positionality, identity, transformational learning and lived experience, that are explored in greater depth in the collection. This chapter also contains a detailed breakdown of the structure and the content of this edited collection, and it concludes with some reflective comments about the implications of the collection for you as an individual and your career.
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David Punter and Glennis Byron note how the Gothic novel has been divided into two categories: the ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ Gothic. Where the former emphasizes violence and ghosts, the…
Abstract
David Punter and Glennis Byron note how the Gothic novel has been divided into two categories: the ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ Gothic. Where the former emphasizes violence and ghosts, the latter focuses on female representation and the disavowal of the supernatural. The Hollywood Gothic films of the 1940s can be said to translate this aspect of the Female Gothic onto the cinema screen: Rebecca (1940), Gaslight (1944) and Secret Beyond the Door (1947) all feature narratives stressing the haunting nature of domestic spaces but there are no actual ghosts present. Robert Zemeckis’s What Lies Beneath (2000) breaks this convention. The film clearly draws on the Female Gothic lineage, situating Claire as a Gothic heroine, and yet there is an important difference: the supernatural is now an integral – and acknowledged – part of the story. This chapter explores this twenty-first century change, arguing that whilst the inclusion of the supernatural can be said to break with previous definitions of the Female Gothic, What Lies Beneath’s depiction of a ghost actually re-imagines and re-emphasizes the concerns at the centre of this tradition: the dramatization of marital and domestic experiences; an interrogation of feminine perception; and the reality of male violence against women.
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Describes the development of the Healthy Schools Award in Hampshire. The award scheme has been developed by an alliance of pilot schools, health authorities, education inspectors…
Abstract
Describes the development of the Healthy Schools Award in Hampshire. The award scheme has been developed by an alliance of pilot schools, health authorities, education inspectors and advisers. Offers schools an opportunity to develop a focus and a framework for cross‐curricular planning and the delivery of health education. Gives an account of two successful projects resulting from the scheme. One is the Family Food Challenge, a teaching pack for schools which contains ten challenges for children and their families to teach them the significance and benefits of adequate nutrition. The second is the Food Forum, a primary school project which aims to improve the school’s philosophy relating to healthy eating.
To explore and critically analyse entrepreneurship theories and concepts within the context of the small family tourism business, and the extent to which owner‐managers and their…
Abstract
Purpose
To explore and critically analyse entrepreneurship theories and concepts within the context of the small family tourism business, and the extent to which owner‐managers and their enterprises can be classified as entrepreneurial.
Design/methodology/approach
A model has been developed and applied to support a “drilling down” approach that moves from a surface understanding of entrepreneurship as a process through to an industry setting, to penetrate the organisational context and consequential entrepreneurial socio‐economic outcomes.
Findings
It has been demonstrated that understanding of the entrepreneurial process, as it interplays with family business, is best served by reference to the cultural, industry setting and organisational context within which entrepreneurs are embedded.
Originality/value
The tourism industry has been deliberately selected as an illustrative context due to the low degree of entrepreneurial behaviour that it has traditionally exhibited. Through the application of the model explanations are provided for this, and conclusions are drawn that do classify small family tourism businesses as a manifestation of entrepreneurship as broadly conceived.
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Hon Keung Yau and Alison Lai Fong Cheng
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the IT professionals in a Hong Kong public transport company have a general perception of influence of the organisational…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the IT professionals in a Hong Kong public transport company have a general perception of influence of the organisational defensive patterns on learning of ICT; and whether skilled incompetence, organisational defensive routines and fancy footwork are positively associated with each other in IT group of a transport company.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper investigated the influence of organisational defensive patterns by means of a survey of 171 IT professionals at a Hong Kong public transport company. Each selected employee completed a questionnaire that asked them to indicate the influence of the organisational defensive patterns (skilled incompetence, organisational defensive routines and fancy footwork) on the learning of ICT in their organisation.
Findings
The employees indicated that skilled incompetence, organisational defensive routines and fancy footwork had influence on the learning of ICT. The findings show that the IT professionals in a Hong Kong transport company have the general perception of influence of skilled incompetence, defensive routines and fancy footwork on learning of ICT. The findings also indicate that skilled incompetence, defensive routines and fancy footwork are positively associated with each other in IT group of the transport company.
Originality/value
This article is a first step towards extending the theory and practice of organisational defensive patterns to IT group of a transport company.
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Caroline Wolski, Kathryn Freeman Anderson and Simone Rambotti
Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health…
Abstract
Purpose
Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.
Methodology/Approach
In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.
Findings
We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.
Originality/Value of Paper
We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.