Speaking up during the COVID-19 pandemic: Nurses' experiences of organizational disregard and silence.

AIM: To critically examine nurses' experiences of speaking up during COVID-19 and the consequences of doing so. DESIGN: Longitudinal qualitative study. METHODS: Participants were purposively sampled to represent differing geographical locations, specialities, settings and redeployment experiences. They were interviewed (remotely) between July 2020 and April 2022 using a semi-structured interview topic guide. RESULTS: Three key themes were identified inductively from our analysis including: (1) Under threat: The ability to speak up or not; (2) Risk tolerance and avoidance: Consequences of speaking up; and (3) Deafness and hostility: Responses to speaking up. Nurses reported that their attempts to speak up typically focused on PPE, patient safety and redeployment. Findings indicate that when NHS Trusts and community services initiated their pandemic response policies, nurses' opportunities to speak up were frequently thwarted. CONCLUSION: Accounts presented in this article include nurses' feeling a sense of futility or of suffering in silence in relation to speaking up. Nurses also fear the consequences of speaking up. Those who did speak up encountered a 'deaf' or hostile response, leaving nurses feeling disregarded by their organization. This points to missed opportunities to learn from those on the front line. IMPACT: Speaking up interventions need to focus on enhancing the skills to both speak up, and respond appropriately, particularly when power, hierarchy, fear and threat might be concerned. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: Nurses working clinically during COVID-19 were involved in the development of this study. Participants were also involved in the development of our interview topic guide and comments obtained from the initial survey helped to shape the study design

The assimilation and retention of carbon in upland heath plant communities typical of contrasting management regimes : a 13C tracer study

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Echo in Optical Lattices: Stimulated Revival of Breathing Oscillations

We analyze a stimulated revival (echo) effect for the breathing modes of the atomic oscillations in optical lattices. The effect arises from the dephasing due to the weak anharmonicity being partly reversed in time by means of additional parametric excitation of the optical lattice. The shape of the echo response is obtained by numerically simulating the equation of motion for the atoms with subsequent averaging over the thermal initial conditions. A qualitative analysis of the phenomenon shows that the suggested echo mechanism combines the features of both spin and phonon echoes.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

The long-term ecology of agricultural terraces and enclosed fields from Antikythera, Greece

Terraces are ubiquitous, in some ways defining, features of Mediterranean environments, yet their longer-­‐term history and relationship to human populations and food economies are not well understood. This paper discusses a complete system of terraces across the small island of Antikythera, Greece. We bring together the evidence from archaeology, ethnography, archival history, botany and geoarchaeology, supported by direct dating of buried terrace soils, and consider terrace investment in relation to major episodes in the island’s punctuated history of human activity. This broad-­‐spectrum approach leads to a range of interesting insights on the spatial structure of terraces, on the degree of correlation between terrace construction and changing human population, and on the implications of terrace abandonment for vegetation and soils