The Impact of Professional and Team Identification on the Leadership Beliefs of Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) Clinicians

Introduction and Aims - The term ‘clinical leadership’ has received widespread promotion in the NHS in recent years and encourages frontline clinicians to be involved in the leadership of services. Few research studies have explored the leadership beliefs of mental health clinicians. The current thesis aims to address this issue by examining the leadership beliefs of mental health clinicians working in MDTs. Applying prominent group identity theories, the association between the strength of professional / team identification and clinicians’ leadership beliefs were examined. Researchers predicted that differences would emerge between professions in their beliefs about shared and distributed leadership. Methodology - Two hundred and twenty nine healthcare clinicians working in MDTs across the East of England completed an online survey. Results - No statistically significant differences emerged between professional groups in their beliefs about distributed or shared leadership. A significant positive association emerged between the strength of participants’ professional identification and their agreement with shared leadership. This association did not reach the level of statistical significance when analyses were completed separately for each profession. However, the same trend emerged for all professional groups; participants who expressed the strongest level of professional identification reported the greatest agreement with shared leadership. The same association was demonstrated for team identification and participants’ shared leadership beliefs. In line with the researchers’ predictions, the level of threat participants experienced to their professional identities mediated the positive association between professional identification and team identification. Conclusions - These findings highlight the potential important link between group identification and healthcare professionals’ leadership beliefs. This link has been demonstrated in business and academic settings, but requires further investigation in health settings. Implications for clinical practice are discussed, focussing on interventions that promote strong professional and team identifications in healthcare. Limitations of the study are presented, in addition to future areas of research

A Method for Modeling Low-Probability, High- Consequence Risk Events: Vessel Traffic on the Lower Mississippi River

[Excerpt] A variety of commodities, from chlorine to corn and petroleum to passengers, are transported on the lower Mississippi River regularly. Corn, wheat and coal are the most commonly carried commodities. From a human health and safety perspective, these are relatively benign products in that a vessel accident and spill of these are not directly hazardous to people, whatever other ecological disturbances may ensue. However, over eighty million tons of petroleum products are transported on the river annually. Over a million tons of liquid natural gas traverse the river through the center of New Orleans. Additionally, over 400,000 tons of ammonium nitrate2 pass through the center of Baton Rouge annually. The potential for a technological disaster is certainly present […] The vast majority of the literature relevant to the question of vessel accident risk concerns the question of on-board causes of vessel accidents. It is assumed that the predictors of which vessel will have an accident are on-board the vessel (i.e., vessel and crew characteristics). The most commonly cited on-board hazards include: the size of the vessel; the age of the vessel; the length of the vessel; whether the vessel is single or double hulled; the maintenance of the vessel; the classification society under which the vessel is registered; the type of ownership; the history of ownership; where the vessel is flagged (i.e., flag of convenience or traditional maritime nation); license qualifications of mates and engineers; the vessel’s casualty history; the vessel’s history of violations; whether the vessel has system (e.g., steering) redundancy; and personnel history (including manning levels and the comparison of the present levels of manning with that of the vessel in the past and with similar type vessels)

The Sociologist As Mitigation Expert In First Degree Murder Cases

This paper describes the experiences of a sociologist as a mitigation expert during the typical first degree murder case, from indictment through the penalty phase of the trial. The author, who has worked in death penalty cases (capital murder) since 1988, has served as a mitigation expert in over 40 such cases. Topics covered include: working with a death penalty mitigation team and what to expect; interviewing the client, family members and others significant to the defense; making a genogram; making a time line of the client\u27s life; preparing for trial; and the style and content of your testimony and getting qualified

The Game of Wardens and Poachers

This paper is a descriptive analysis of the main aspect of the job of game wardens, the apprehension of poachers. Based on data from interviews with 62 game wardens the author describes the actions of game wardens in attempting to enforce wildlife conservation laws. Extensive quotations from interviews with game wardens are presented. The analysis is focused around their responses to guiding questions regarding the probability of apprehension of poachers. These include: (1) poaching alone, (2) very experienced at poaching, (3) nevertalks about their poaching activities, (4) the use of informants, (5) remaining mobile, (6) being familiar with the geographic area in which one poaches, and (7) poaching in a large area (not relegated to hunting in a small specific area). The concept folk crime is discussed

The zwitterion 1-butylimidazolium-3- (n-butanesulfonate)

The mol&shy;ecule of the title compound, C11H20N2O3S, contains a positively charged imidazolium head group and a negatively charged sulfonate tethered together by a four-carbon chain. There is weak intermolecular hydrogen bonding within the structure between the sulfonate O atoms and the H atoms of the imidazolium ring. The sulfonate group causes a twisting of the butyl chain and a decrease in the dihedral angle between the second and third carbon chain compared to the unsubstituted butyl group.<br /

Lexical and Discourse Analysis of Online Chat Dialog

One of the ultimate goals of natural language processing (NLP) systems is understanding the meaning of what is being transmitted, irrespective of the medium (e.g., written versus spoken) or the form (e.g., static documents versus dynamic dialogues). Although much work has been done in traditional language domains such as speech and static written text, little has yet been done in the newer communication domains enabled by the Internet, e.g., online chat and instant messaging. This is in part due to the fact that there are no annotated chat corpora available to the broader research community. The purpose of this research is to build a chat corpus, tagged with lexical (token part-of-speech labels), syntactic (post parse tree), and discourse (post classification) information. Such a corpus can then be used to develop more complex, statistical-based NLP applications that perform tasks such as author profiling, entity identification, and social network analysis

Special Moments, Special Times: Problematic Occasions Following the Death of a Child

Using data obtained from 14 interviews representing 9 families and 10 child deaths, this paper examines moments in time that occasion or may occasion social encounters that are problematic for bereaved parent(s): 1) holidays in general, e.g., Christmas, New Years; 2) particular events, e.g., weddings, funerals, graduations; and 3) those occasions specifically associated with the deceased child, e.g., the child\u27s birthday and/or death anniversary. For bereaved parents such occasions may be excruciating. In the case of holidays or special events, the absence of the deceased may be especially poignant since he or she would have been present had he/she lived. In the case of the birthday or death anniversary of the deceased, the failure of others to take note of the significance of the day accentuates the loneliness of loss. Such moments in time, however, are sociologically as well as psychologically important for they mark events that belong to the group as a whole as well as to individual members of the group. The bereaved parent, then, must contend not only with the members of the group but also with the group itself. Erving Goffman\u27s conceptualization of the social encounter provides additional insight into why these occasions are so problematic for the bereaved parent. Implications for grief counseling are discussed

An Empirical Examination of Two Models of Cultural Causation

The traditional macroscopic model of cultural causation advanced by Weber and modified by Parsons assumes that values provide orientation for human action. Thus, values are conceptualized as the intervening link between culture and behavior and in general, are viewed as predictive of human action. Swidler (1986) contends that values are a poor predictor of behavior. As an a/tentative model, Swidler asserts that cultures provide actors with a limited array of behavioral options. Because this array is finite and indicative of a particular cultural setting, inuacultural behavioral similatities are observable. We empirically test the link between culture and behavior in a situation which Swidler defines as "unsettled lives." Our findings offer little support for the traditionally assumed link between values and behavior. The theoretical implications of our findings are discussed and an expansion of Swidler's model is offered

The Lifestyle of Merchant Seamen: a Sociological Analysis of Occupationally Induced Marginality.

Marginality is a theme which pervades the social existence of merchant seamen. Work takes place in a setting without long term personal commitments to job, to place, or to co-workers. On the beach, social relations tend toward the transitory, and where long term relations are established, the seaman is forced to partial participation. This research explores the influence of this occupation on social marginality and social integration of its members. Data were collected using a survey instrument from a sample of 251 seamen, both officers and crew. Factors determining variance in levels of alienation are examined, as well as the effects of life as a merchant seaman on family organization and community participation. Supplementary qualitative data from participant observation and depth interview are also used. A typology of the lifestyle adaptations and social identities of merchant seamen are developed. Implications of industry changes for the occupational lifestyle are discussed

Criminal Futures on the Ruralside: A Preliminary Examination of Antisocial Behaviors of Rural and Urban Students

Based on data from the 2012 Communities that Care Youth Survey (CCYS), the authors compare the delinquency of rural and urban adolescents across eight behaviors that comprise the surveys antisocial behavior profile. The authors created a two category urban/rural variable