Barriers and facilitators to GP-patient communication about emotional concerns in UK primary care: a systematic review.

Background In the UK, general practitioners (GPs) are the most commonly used providers of care for emotional concerns. Objective To update and synthesize literature on barriers and facilitators to GP–patient communication about emotional concerns in UK primary care. Design Systematic review and qualitative synthesis. Method We conducted a systematic search on MEDLINE (OvidSP), PsycInfo and EMBASE, supplemented by citation chasing. Eligible papers focused on how GPs and adult patients in the UK communicated about emotional concerns. Results were synthesized using thematic analysis. Results Across 30 studies involving 342 GPs and 720 patients, four themes relating to barriers were: (i) emotional concerns are difficult to disclose; (ii) tension between understanding emotional concerns as a medical condition or arising from social stressors; (iii) unspoken assumptions about agency resulting in too little or too much involvement in decisions and (iv) providing limited care driven by little time. Three facilitative themes were: (v) a human connection improves identification of emotional concerns and is therapeutic; (vi) exploring, explaining and negotiating a shared understanding or guiding patients towards new understandings and (vii) upfront information provision and involvement manages expectations about recovery and improves engagement in treatment. Conclusion The findings suggest that treatment guidelines should acknowledge: the therapeutic value of a positive GP–patient relationship; that diagnosis is a two-way negotiated process rather than an activity strictly in the doctor’s domain of expertise; and the value of exploring and shaping new understandings about patients’ emotional concerns and their management

'First Portal in a Storm': A Virtual Space for Transition Students

The lives of millennial students are epitomised by ubiquitous information, merged technologies, blurred social-study-work boundaries, multitasking and hyperlinked online interactions (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005). These characteristics have implications for the design of online spaces that aim to provide virtual access to course materials, administrative processes and support information, all of which is required by students to steer a course through the storm of their transition university experience. Previously we summarised the challenges facing first year students (Kift & Nelson, 2005) and investigated their current online engagement patterns, which revealed three issues for consideration when designing virtual spaces (Nelson, Kift & Harper, 2005). In this paper we continue our examination of students’ interactions with online spaces by considering the perceptions and use of technology by millennial students as well as projections for managing the virtual learning environments of the future. The findings from this analysis are informed by our previous work to conceptualise and describe the architecture of a transition portal

What Triggers Multiple Job-Holding? : A Stated Preference Investigation

Publisher PD

Employers' policies for third age employment – the case for action and the rational for reaction

This paper reports on findings from a study which explores employers’ perceptions of the careers of those in third age employment and the extent to which these organisations have in place policies and practices to manage older worker careers. Drawing on interviews with UK HR managers and advisory bodies, the study finds that there was an absence of formal policies which addressed the career needs of older works despite employers being aware of the issue associated with an aging workforce. Instead employers responded to career related requests from older workers on an ad hoc basis as they felt that specific policies for this group of people would potentially create legal issues for the organisation. Employers also believed that the aged workforce had little impact on their business and as a result did not engage in collective dialogue with older workers about their requirements and instead made assumptions about their career needs

Assessing partnership alternatives in an IT network employing analytical methods

One of the main critical success factors for the companies is their ability to build and maintain an effective collaborative network. This is more critical in the IT industry where the development of sustainable competitive advantage requires an integration of various resources, platforms, and capabilities provided by various actors. Employing such a collaborative network will dramatically change the operations management and promote flexibility and agility. Despite its importance, there is a lack of an analytical tool on collaborative network building process. In this paper, we propose an optimization model employing AHP and multiobjective programming for collaborative network building process based on two interorganizational relationships’ theories, namely, (i) transaction cost theory and (ii) resource-based view, which are representative of short-term and long-term considerations. The five different methods were employed to solve the formulation and their performances were compared. The model is implemented in an IT company who was in process of developing a large-scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The results show that the collaborative network formed through this selection process was more efficient in terms of cost, time, and development speed. The framework offers novel theoretical underpinning and analytical solutions and can be used as an effective tool in selecting network alternatives

Desires, norms and constraints

This paper deals with modeling mental states of a rational agent, in particular states based on agent’s desires. It shows that the world the agent belongs to forces it to restrict its desires. More precisely, desires of a rational agent are restricted by the constraints that exist in the world and which express what is possible or necessary. Furthermore, if the agent is law-abiding, its desires are restricted by the regulations that are defined in the world and which express what is obligatory, permitted or forbidden. This paper characterizes how desires are restricted depending on the fact that the agent is law-abiding or not. This work considers the general case when the agent orders its own desires according to a preference order. The solution is based on modeling desires, regulations and constraints in an unique formal system which is a logic of conditional preferences

Women cotton farmers: Their perceptions and experiences with transgenic varieties: A case study for Colombia

This paper explores gender differences in cotton cultivation and looks into the perceptions and experiences of women and men with transgenic varieties. With few exceptions, researchers in the area of impact evaluation of crop biotechnology have only marginally included gender considerations in their work. This exploratory pilot study was developed in order to incorporate gender into our quantitative evaluation work. This study used a participatory and descriptive approach that allowed us to listen to women and men farmers' perceptions and insights. The project was conducted in the main cotton-producing regions of Colombia where a handful of transgenic varieties have been in the market for the past six years.crop biotechnology, Genetically modified crops, Genetic engineering, Cotton, Gender,

Coping Difficulties After Hospitalization

Coping difficulties of 113 adults 3 weeks after hospital discharge were identified using the Post-Discharge Coping Difficulty Scale and a brief focused telephone interview (11-item guide). Overall, low difficulty scores were reported (M = 23.9, SD = 18.2, range = 0 to 100). Qualitative data reveal specific coping difficulties in the categories of stressors, specific difficulties, caring for self, managing the condition, family, advice needed, contact with the health care system, and what they wished they knew before discharge. A core theme of biographical reconstruction emerged