Patients' internet use in New Zealand for information about medicines: Implications for policy and practice

BACKGROUND: The ubiquitous use of the internet sees patients increasingly look online for information about their medicines. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to understand the use of internet to meet medicine information needs of a sample of New Zealand patients. METHOD: Using a descriptive exploratory approach 60 mental health and general medical adult patients at one large urban were interviewed. These semi-structured interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and coded for inductive thematic analysis. FINDINGS: This study found that the internet is frequently used to meet the medicines information needs of patients. Despite the ease of access to information on the internet patients need guidance to locate credible and trustworthy online resources. CONCLUSIONS: Implications from this study relate to both practice and policy, and include the need for health professionals to have enhanced communication skills as they become information brokers who provide supplementary, reliable sources of patient-centric medicines information. Having a New Zealand specific website that includes an extensive section on medicines is a policy recommendation of this study, as is identifying tools to readily identify patients’ needs and preferences for medicines information

Political Entrepreneurship in the Field of Māori Sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand

Individual actors have the potential to shape political outcomes through creative use of opportunities. Political entrepreneurship identifies how such actors recognise and exploit opportunities, for personal or collective gain. The existing literature focuses on individuals operating within institutional settings, with less attention paid to other types of actors. In this article, I argue for an expansion of the political entrepreneurship framework, by considering individuals in the electoral and protest arenas. An examination of the field of Māori sovereignty, or tino rangatiratanga, in Aotearoa New Zealand allows exploration of prominent actors’ innovative strategies and practices. The findings highlight the actors’ reliance on identity in mobilising support within the community, to press claims. Broadening the application of political entrepreneurship demonstrates the roles of social, cultural and political capital in influencing outcomes, by identifying opportunities available to individuals embedded in the community and according to the context of the arena

Evaluating the community outcomes of Australian learning community initiatives: innovative approaches to assessing complex outcomes

Learning communities are towns, cities, or regions where a series of actions are implemented to enhance lifelong learning and community capacity. These efforts include improving access to further education, mentoring, increasing opportunities for informal learning, sharing skills across sectors, and supporting innovation and entrepreneurship. In Australia, over 45 learning communities are contributing to social capital, social inclusion, and local partnership development. The outcomes of learning communities have been difficult to evaluate. Evaluation frameworks have been developed to assess a range of aspects of learning community outcomes. A key approach used is the Victorian Performance Management Framework, which consists of four tiers - the function of the learning community, learning delivery, lifelong learning, and community capacity. Evaluation experiences have shown: (1) the need for comprehensive but workable frameworks; (2) the involvement of community members in developing frameworks; (3) the need for different levels of impacts to be included in evaluation; (4) evaluation needs to be iterative and part of continuous improvement; and (5) the limitations of evaluation need to be understood and mitigated