An exploration of women’s identity work in career choices and transitions: implications for executive coaching

Career transitions are a common topic in executive coaching sessions. It has been established that career transitions involve identity and identity work, and can be challenging. The process of identity work in career transitions can be particularly complex for women, due to sex and gender. Yet this topic is rarely included in coaching education, and coaches are often unaware of what their clients might experience. This study adopts a constructivist, qualitative research approach using Conceptual Encounter (CE) methodology to explore women’s experience of identity work in career choices and transitions. A total of 41 women age 25-55 from organisations based in the UK, and 12 coaches were interviewed. The study builds on existing research to make three significant contributions to the field of Coaching and Mentoring. The primary contribution is ‘The MAP (Me-As-a-Process) Coaching Model: women’s experience of identity work in career choices and transitions’. The model consists of two sections: an integrated perspective of the four stages of identity work in career transitions; and coaching questions by stage. It has been generated by synthesising the literature on identity work in career transitions, input from coaching practice, and evidence from women with recent experience of career transition. The study’s second contribution is in giving voice and insight into the process of women’s identity work in career choices and transitions as experienced by these participants, with implications for coaching practice. The final contribution is a modification of the methodology, adopting questions rather than labels in order to create an accessible coaching model of enquiry rather than simply description. The research is unique in its generation of a new coaching model on the topic, and in its use in this field of CE methodology. Specific implications relating to supporting clients’ identity work in executive coaching arise from this study and highlight the value of including identity and identity work in coach training and education

Development of a novel, multifunctional, membrane-interactive pyridinium salt with potent anticancer activity

The synthesis and biological evaluation of a novel pyridinium salt is reported. Initial membrane interaction with isolated phospholipid monolayers was obtained with the pyridinium salt, and two neutral analogues for comparison, and the anticancer effects of the best compound established using a cytotoxicity screening assay against glioma cells using both an established cell line and three short-term cell cultures – one of which has been largely resistant to all chemotherapeutic drugs tested to date. The results indicate that the pyridinium salt exhibits potent anticancer activity (EC50s = 9.8-312.5 μM) on all cell types, including the resistant one, for a continuous treatment of 72 hours. Microscopic examination of the treated cells using a trypan blue exclusion assay showed membrane lysis had occurred. Therefore, this letter highlights the potential for a new class of pyridinium salt to be developed as a much needed alternative treatment for glioma chemotherapy

Functionalising the azobenzene motif delivers a light-responsive membrane-interactive compound with the potential for photodynamic therapy applications

When adorned with n-octyl chains azobenzene is able to disrupt a variety of calcein-loaded phospholipid liposomes. The levels of lysis observed are dependent both on the lipid headgroup and the conformation of the azobenzene compound. In all cases studied, it has been shown that the cis-conformer is more membrane-interactive than the trans-conformer, suggesting that this class of molecule could be optimised for photo-dynamic therapy applications against infectious pathogens

Antibody persistence and booster responses to split-virion H5N1 avian influenza vaccine in young and elderly adults

Avian influenza continues to circulate and remains a global health threat not least because of the associated high mortality. In this study antibody persistence, booster vaccine response and cross-clade immune response between two influenza A(H5N1) vaccines were compared. Participants aged over 18-years who had previously been immunized with a clade 1, A/Vietnam vaccine were re-immunized at 6-months with 7.5 mu g of the homologous strain or at 22-months with a clade 2, alum-adjuvanted, A/Indonesia vaccine. Blood sampled at 6, 15 and 22-months after the primary course was used to assess antibody persistence. Antibody concentrations 6-months after primary immunisation with either A/Vietnam vaccine 30 mu g alum-adjuvanted vaccine or 7.5 mu g dose vaccine were lower than 21days after the primary course and waned further with time. Re-immunization with the clade 2, 30 mu g alum-adjuvanted vaccine confirmed cross-clade reactogenicity. Antibody crossreactivity between A(H5N1) clades suggests that in principle a prime-boost vaccination strategy may provide both early protection at the start of a pandemic and improved antibody responses to specific vaccination once available

Functional foldamers that target bacterial membranes: the effect of charge, amphiphilicity and conformation

By varying the molecular charge, shape and amphiphilicity of a series of conformationally distinct diarylureas it is possible to control the levels of phospholipid membrane lysis using membranes composed of bacterial lipid extracts. From the data obtained, it appears as though the lysis activity observed is not due to charge, conformation or amphiphilicity in isolation, but that surface aggregation, H-bonding and other factors may also play a part. The work provides evidence that this class of foldamer possesses potential for optimisation into new antibacterial agents

Evolutionary breeding of wheat for low input systems

Genetically diverse Composite Cross Populations (CCPs) may be useful in environmentally variable low-input systems as an alternative to pure varieties. They are formed by assembling seed stocks with diverse evolutionary origins, recombining these stocks by hybridisation, bulking the F1 progeny, and subsequent natural selection of the progeny in suc-cessive natural cropping environments. CCPs derived from either 10 high yielding parents (YCCPs), 12 high quality parents (QCCPs), or all 22 parents (YQCCPs), were grown at four sites (2 organic, 2 conventional) in the UK. The YCCPs out yielded the QCCPs, which had higher protein concentrations and Hagberg falling numbers. Although the CCPs performed within the range of the parents, they often performed better than the mean of the parents

Balancing health care education and patient care in the UK workplace: a realist synthesis

Introduction: Patient care activity has recently increased without a proportionate rise in workforce numbers, impacting negatively on healthcare workplace learning. Healthcare professionals are prepared in part by spending time in clinical practice, and for medical staff this constitutes a contribution to service. While stakeholders have identified the balance between healthcare professional education and patient care as a key priority for medical education research, there have been very few reviews to date on this important topic.Methods: We conducted a realist synthesis of the UK literature from 1998 to answer two research questions: (1) What are the key workplace interventions designed to help achieve a balance between healthcare professional education and patient care delivery? (2) In what ways do interventions enable or inhibit this balance within thehealthcare workplace, for whom and in what contexts? We followed Pawson's five stages of realist review: clarifying scope, searching for evidence, assessment of quality, data extraction, and data synthesis.Results: The most common interventions identified to balance healthcare professional education and patient care delivery were ward round teaching, protected learning time and continuous professional development. The most common positive outcomes were simultaneous improvements in learning and patient care or improved learning or improved patient care. The most common contexts in which interventions were effective were primary care, postgraduate trainee, nurse, and allied health professional contexts. By far the most common mechanisms through which interventions worked were organisational funding, workload management and support.Discussion: Our novel findings extend existing literature in this emerging area of healthcare education research. We provide recommendations for the development of educational policy and practice at the individual, interpersonal and organisational levels and call for more research using realist approaches to evaluate the increasing range of complex interventions to help balance healthcare professional education and patient care delivery