Grand Designs: a study of student midwives' use of a 'Room Planner' App to create a normal birthing environment

The environment within which women give birth has a direct effect upon their birthing experience (RCM 2008, Hodnett et al 2009, Walsh 2010, RCM 2010a, Igarashi et al 2014, Hammond et al 2013). Due to the shift from home to hospital birth most women now birth in an environment which is highly medicalised and one that affects her privacy and sense of control (Walsh 2010a). If a woman does not choose to give birth at home a ‘home from home’ modified type birth setting is the next preferable environment and has been demonstrated to lead to positive outcomes. (Hodnett et al 2009). From the evidence it is vital that midwives and student midwives provide the most positive birthing environment they can for the women they are caring for. In view of this student midwives were asked to design an optimum birthing environment using a free ‘Room Planner’ App which was downloaded onto I-pads. The App contained no medical appliances or equipment thus the students could only design a ‘home like’ birth environment. The students’ use of the App was explored in relation to birthing environment and as an educational tool. Methodology The study design was mixed methods and data was collected by a 10 point Questionnaire (n=17) focus group (n=6) and printouts of the birth environment designs. Data was analysed manually for the questionnaire, by thematic analysis for the focus group and via critical visual analysis in relation to the designs. Results The students placed great emphasis on the birthing ‘triad’ of woman, birth partner(s) and midwife when designing their rooms, which featured three main themes: comfort, usefulness and aesthetics. Comfort was strongly aligned to the psychological nature of labour and birth, with an emphasis on reducing anxiety. Lighting, space and privacy were paramount for the woman. This also included space and privacy for the midwife to observe labour and to make records, and for the birthing partner(s) to relax and rejuvenate themselves. Usefulness was very much focused on the physical process of labour and birth, with water featuring in all of the rooms (shower or bath) and furniture that would aid an upright position. L-shaped sofas were often included in order for the woman, birth partner and midwife to be together. Aesthetics were additions that were often personal to the students enabling them to have some ‘ownership’ of the birth environment, and promote familiarity. From an educational perspective the students felt that using the app aided their visual learning, increased retention of knowledge, made them ‘think outside the box’ and prepared them for clinical practice. Discussion It is evident the students viewed the design of an optimum birthing environment as one that needed to be inclusive of the birthing ‘triad’ of woman, birth partner and midwife. In addition the room design was aligned to practical, psychological and physical needs. Birthing rooms design needs to consider those supporting a woman during labour and birth, and their individual requirements in order to maximise care and outcome

Exploring employee engagement with (corporate) social responsibility : a social exchange perspective on organisational participation

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a recognised and common part of business activity. Some of the regularly cited motives behind CSR are employee morale, recruitment and retention, with employees acknowledged as a key organisational stakeholder. Despite the significance of employees in relation to CSR, relatively few studies have examined their engagement with CSR and the impediments relevant to this engagement. This exploratory case study-based research addresses this paucity of attention, drawing on one to one interviews and observation in a large UK energy company. A diversity of engagement was found, ranging from employees who exhibited detachment from the CSR activities within the company, to those who were fully engaged with the CSR activities, and to others who were content with their own personal, but not organisational, engagement with CSR. A number of organisational context impediments, including poor communication, a perceived weak and low visibility of CSR culture, and lack of strategic alignment of CSR to business and personal objectives, served to explain this diversity of employee engagement. Social exchange theory is applied to help explore the volition that individual employees have towards their engagement with CSR activities, and to consider the implications of an implicit social, rather than explicit economic, contract between an organisation and its employees in their engagement with CSR

MBLWHOI LIBRARY Recommendation for Webinar Series

This report was completed for a graduate level class at Syracuse University entitled IST 613 Library Planning, Marketing, and Assessment. This report was completed in partnership with Lisa Raymond and Jennifer Walton, Co-Directors of the MBLWHOI Library in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The following report delivers information on the existing value and impact areas of the library including an analysis of the existing stakeholders, services, and resources. The MBLWHOI Library is a vital resource to the five science institutions located in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, as it provides both strong core and specialized services to assist patrons in furthering their endeavors in discovery, education, and research; however, communicating the value and impact of the library and its specialized services to its busy user community can be challenging. Bridging this gap is how the recommendation of the monthly lunch and learn webinar series was developed. The lunch and learn webinar series will not only help the library to share its specialized services and resources with its community, but it will also allow the library to meet and expand a good number of the goals listed within its Strategic Plan for 2018. A focus on identifying user needs via assessment will be key to creating a webinar series that is both relevant and inviting to the library’s community. By using webinar services that are provided at no cost by the institutions, the library can reinforce communication with its users, while also ensuring that the library budget remains primarily focused on resources, such as journal articles, that are of great importance to library patrons. Strengths for the recommendation stem from dedicated library staff, evidence of user needs for instruction on specialized services, as well as the library’s strong core values of furthering the education and research projects within the Woods Hole community. Marketing of the webinar series via flyers, social media, and email newsletters will refresh the library’s presence on campus, thus helping it to meet its goal of being viewed by the community as the primary knowledge resource on campus. The increased communication efforts will be tailored to various audience types by using key messages for each user group, as well as ensuring that the communication initiated by the library is brief, informative, and timely. Assessing the webinar series will be essential, and the continued success of the program will rest on the library’s ability to identify strengths and weaknesses in the series, as well as user need areas. User surveys, focus groups, informal conversations, and library statistics will all be collected and used as assessment tools. Assessment of the webinar series will help the library to ensure that the series’ outcomes and strategic plan goals are being met. Available library staff time and library budget will determine the ability of the library to implement the webinar series; however, the benefits of implementing the webinar series will not only create a platform for the increased exchange of knowledge between the library and its users, but it will also bring renewed focus to the library that will allow for the library to maximize the value and impact they are able to bestow on their user community

Illusions and Delusions: Relating Experimentally-Induced False Memories to Anomalous Experiences and Ideas

The salience hypothesis of psychosis rests on a simple but profound observation that subtle alterations in the way that we perceive and experience stimuli have important consequences for how important these stimuli become for us, how much they draw our attention, how they embed themselves in our memory and, ultimately, how they shape our beliefs. We put forward the idea that a classical memory illusion – the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) effect – offers a useful way of exploring processes related to such aberrant belief formation. The illusion occurs when, as a consequence of its relationship to previous stimuli, a stimulus that has not previously been presented is falsely remembered. Such illusory familiarity is thought to be generated by the surprising fluency with which the stimulus is processed. In this respect, the illusion relates directly to the salience hypothesis and may share common cognitive underpinnings with aberrations of perception and attribution that are found in psychosis. In this paper, we explore the theoretical importance of this experimentally-induced illusion in relation to the salience model of psychosis. We present data showing that, in healthy volunteers, the illusion relates directly to self reported anomalies of experience and magical thinking. We discuss this finding in terms of the salience hypothesis and of a broader Bayesian framework of perception and cognition which emphasizes the salience both of predictable and unpredictable experiences

An insight into light as a chronobiological therapy in affective disorders

The field of chronobiology has vastly expanded over the past few decades, bringing together research from the fields of circadian rhythms and sleep. The importance of the environmental day–night cycle on our health is becoming increasingly evident as we evolve into a 24-hour society. Reducing or changing sleep times against our natural instincts to rest at night has a detrimental impact on our well-being. The mammalian circadian clock, termed "the suprachiasmatic nucleus", is responsible for synchronizing our behavioral and physiological outputs to the environment. It utilizes light transcoded by specialized retinal photoreceptors as its cue to set internal rhythms to be in phase with the light–dark cycle. Misalignment of these outputs results in symptoms such as altered/disturbed sleep patterns, changes in mood, and physical and mental exhaustion – symptoms shared by many affective clinical disorders. Key links to circadian abnormalities have been found in a number of disorders, such as seasonal affective disorder, nonseasonal depression, and bipolar affective disorder. Furthermore, therapies developed through chronobiological research have been shown to be beneficial in the treatment of these conditions. In this article, we discuss the impact of circadian research on the management of affective disorders, giving evidence of how a misaligned circadian system may be a contributor to the symptoms of depression and how moderating circadian rhythms with light therapy benefits patients

Evidence of vectorial photoelectric effect on Copper

Quantum Efficiency (QE) measurements of single photon photoemission from a Cu(111) single crystal and a Cu polycrystal photocathodes, irradiated by 150 fs-6.28 eV laser pulses, are reported over a broad range of incidence angle, both in s and p polarizations. The maximum QE (\simeq 4\times10^{-4}) for polycrystalline Cu is obtained in p polarization at an angle of incidence {\theta} = 65deg. We observe a QE enhancement in p polarization which can not be explained in terms of optical absorption, a phenomenon known as vectorial photoelectric effect. Issues concerning surface roughness and symmetry considerations are addressed. An explanation in terms of non local conductivity tensor is proposed.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure

Medicine burden experiences of people living with HIV and association with stigma

The medicine burden of people living with HIV (PLWH) is unknown. Between 2018 and 2020,participants completed a survey comprising outcome measures for medicine burden (LMQ-3)and stigma experiences (SSCI-8). Participants were HIV+ adults (≥18 years), using antiretrovirals(ARV) with or without non-ARV medicines, recruited via two outpatient clinics in southeastEngland and online via HIV charities across the UK. Spearman’s correlations between medicineburden levels and stigma scores were calculated. Participants were mostly males (72%, 101/141)of mean (SD) age 48.6 (±12.31) years. Total number of medicines ranged from 1-20. Highmedicine burden was self-reported by 21.3% (30) and was associated with polypharmacy (≥5medicines) (101.52 Vs 85.08,p= 0.006); multiple doses versus once daily regimes (109.31 Vs85.65,p= 0.001); unemployment (98.23 Vs 84.46,p= 0.004); and ethnicity (97 Vs 86.85,p= 0.041for non-White versus White participants). A correlation between medicine burden and stigmawas observed (r = 0.576,p< 0.001). The LMQ-3 demonstrated adequate construct validity andreliability (domain loadings ranging 0.617-0.933 and Cronbach’sαof 0.714-0.932). Assessmentof medicine burden and psychosocial stigma in PLWH could enable identification of thoseneeding additional support in future research and practice

Generation of angular-momentum-dominated electron beams from a photoinjector

Various projects under study require an angular-momentum-dominated electron beam generated by a photoinjector. Some of the proposals directly use the angular-momentum-dominated beams (e.g. electron cooling of heavy ions), while others require the beam to be transformed into a flat beam (e.g. possible electron injectors for light sources and linear colliders). In this paper, we report our experimental study of an angular-momentum-dominated beam produced in a photoinjector, addressing the dependencies of angular momentum on initial conditions. We also briefly discuss the removal of angular momentum. The results of the experiment, carried out at the Fermilab/NICADD Photoinjector Laboratory, are found to be in good agreement with theoretical and numerical models.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beam