Engaging with The Bridge : Cultural citizenship, cross-border identities and audiences as ‘regionauts’

This article explores civic engagement with the Danish/Swedish crime series The Bridge (Danmarks Radio/Sveriges Television 2011–) based on qualitative interviews with 113 audience members, and drawing on the notion of cultural citizenship. The perspective of cultural citizenship, as understood and operationalized mainly by Hermes, is married with critical perspectives on the crime drama genre and its audiences, along with cultural analysis of the construction of and engagement with the cross-border region in which the drama is set. The analysis shows that civic engagement with the crime series is prompted through the construction of community and allegiances through which audiences feel connected. This argument unfolds in three main analytical sections, detailing how audiences’ articulations of community are focused around distinct yet overlapping dimensions of community as (1) a national social ritual, (2) a sense of Nordic community, and finally (3) community as regional identity and sense of belonging to a borderless Öresund utopia – the integrated region between Denmark and Sweden. In so doing, the article offers rich insights into how audiences shape civic identities as members of nation states, of historical and cultural regions and as border-crossers between these geo-cultural entities - in dialogue with popular culture and around the boundary-work of the different communities offered by such texts

Individualised care and related concepts

The aim of this chapter is to describe and analyse significant evidence of individualised care as related to other concepts, such as care and caring behaviours, patient participation in care, patient satisfaction, nurse satisfaction, patient autonomy, patient empowerment and quality of life. This chapter is based mainly on the results of two international research projects (Care and Individualised Care Projects) that have explored individualised care in relation with caring behaviours and patient satisfaction. Patients were asked to give their own opinion of what they mean by individualised care as well as their experience about the care they received, whether they felt that it was actually individualised according to their own needs and preferences. The results provided evidence that patients and nurses have different perceptions of individualised care, suggesting that both patients’ and nurses’ evaluations are needed to deliver care according to each individual patient’s needs, experiences, behaviours, feelings and perceptions. Other relations are also discussed through smaller-scale studies performed in different countries which underline the internationality and the challenges of exploring the individualised care concept. This chapter could provide useful information to nursing managers and policymakers on introducing nursing approaches and practices based on individualised care so as to improve quality of care, enhance patient dignity, keep people safe and consequently increase patients’ satisfaction