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Objective: To determine impact of undertaking an international educational program during a nurse's or midwife's pre-registration program on subsequent practice, focusing on how nurses and midwives were transformed personally through participation in such programs. Background: Participation in international educational programs has been reported to enhance nursing and midwifery students' personal and professional development, however long-term impacts remain unclear. This paper presents findings drawn from a larger grounded theory study. Study design and Methods: Charmaz's grounded theory methodology was used to elicit experiences from 13 general nurses, two mental health nurses, three midwives and four dual qualified nurse/midwives across eight different countries. Data analysis led to the creation of three categories, with this paper reporting on the category of Developing as a Person. Findings: Participation in international educational programs can be transformative for nurses and midwives with long-lasting impacts, contributing positively to their personal growth and development. Discussion: The study findings underscore significant long-term impacts of international educational programs for nurses and midwives. These outcomes highlight the importance of incorporating international experiences into healthcare education. Conclusion: By providing opportunities for healthcare professionals to engage with diverse settings and populations, organisations and educational institutions can foster the development of well-rounded and globally competent practitioners. Implications for research, policy, and practice: The study's findings hold significant implications for research, policy, and practice in healthcare education. To deepen our understandings, additional longitudinal research across diverse countries is warranted. Policymakers have an opportunity to acknowledge the positive impact of these programs on the personal growth and development of nurses and midwives, potentially leading to the integration of global competency requirements into licensure programs. In order to provide comprehensive education, educational institutions should consider the inclusion of study abroad opportunities, cultural exchanges, and global clinical placements within nursing and midwifery curricula. What is already known about the topic? • International educational programs are widely used as a way of developing nursing and midwifery students' cultural understandings. • Previous studies have reported on short-term impacts of international educational programs. What this paper adds: • Long-term impacts of participation in an international educational program on nurses and midwives are described. • Personal development and subsequent transformations occur for nurses and midwives as a result of participation in international educational programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to answer the research question: in what ways is access to resources related to menstruation a public health issue in the United States (US) and Scotland? Resources will be understood to mean, for example, menstrual products, education, safe restroom facilities, and appropriate and accessible healthcare. The Social Ecological Model (SEM), a conceptual model consisting of four levels of consideration (individual, interpersonal, institutional/community, and societal), was used to structure a narrative review of the factors related to access to menstrual resources. The SEM offers a novel approach within Critical Menstruation Studies that leads to a better understanding of how access to resources affects menstrual health and the menstrual experience in the US and Scotland. This review is intended as an initial step towards collecting data about access to menstrual resources that can inform policy and legislation. It calls for advocates, activists, policymakers, and other interested stakeholders to explore opportunities for change at each of the levels of the SEM: individual, interpersonal, institutional/community, and societal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Peer-reviewed research helps to advance many aspects of medical and surgical practice. This paper determines the main contributors tos joint arthroplasty research in terms of quantity and quality. Methods: A search of the Web of Science™ platform was conducted to identify arthroplasty articles published between 2001 and 2016. The number of articles and citations per article were analysed to assess the quantity and quality of research from individual countries. Results were standardised according to the country's populations and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Results: In total, 43,470 arthroplasty articles were published worldwide from January 2001 through December 2016. There was a 4.5-fold increase in global output during this time period. Twenty-two countries contributed at least 1% to the total number of publications. The United States of America published the most articles (35.40%), followed by England (10.31%) and Germany (10.03%). The USA had the highest absolute number of citations (50,777). Denmark had the highest average citation per item (8.76). When number of articles was normalized to population, Switzerland ranked the highest. When adjusted by GDP, Scotland ranked highest. When standardised according to GDP per capita, the People's Republic of China rated highest. The Journal of Arthroplasty produced the highest number of publications related to arthroplasty with 10.9% of total volume. Conclusion: There has been a substantial increase in worldwide publications relating to arthroplasty. The USA has produced the largest volume whilst Denmark has produced the highest quality publications. When output was normalized according to population and GDP, Switzerland and Scotland ranked highest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provision of menstrual products for free has become one part of the larger push by menstrual activists to make menstrual equity a global priority. Menstrual equity includes addressing and solving concerns that connect menstruation to public health issues, gender equality, and access to complete and comprehensive health and menstrual education. This last point is the focus of this paper. The Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Bill in Scotland did not emerge out of nowhere; neither did legislation across the US that addresses period poverty. Rather, these legal advances are the latest in a complicated and complex fight for menstrual education and healthcare. The Period Products Act's emphasis on 'access'--access to education and to menstrual products--is rooted in Scottish sex and menstrual education. This seemingly subtle difference from American menstrual education reveals how access has historically been integrated into Scottish menstrual education, a comparison particularly visible in the American and Scottish films studied here, Naturally ... a Girl (1973) and Having a Period: Menstruation (1980), respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of socio-economic inequalities from a cross-national perspective has been hampered by the lack of adequate common indices of socioeconomic status that can be used in a self-report survey instrument. This paper examines the construction and the properties of global social indexes in general, and of the Family Affluence Scale (henceforth FAS) in particular. The paper proposes a new strategy for making comparisons of the global index with stratified data, building a revised FAS based on Adapted Canonical Variate Analysis (henceforth ACVA). This alternative strategy for constructing a global index is available in standard software, and the new proposal for stratified data only requires a simple program, which is justified, explained and provided in the text. Data come from the 1998 Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC), a WHO Cross-National Study using cluster sampling of schoolchildren from five countries: Denmark, Latvia, Portugal, Scotland and the USA. The results reveal that in every country we would have had a completely different evaluation of the three indicators of Family Affluence if we had used either linear or non linear approaches to compute the global indexes. Moreover, Family Affluence comparisons among countries shows that the relative contribution of the three indicators to the overall FAS, changes from country to country. We conclude that separate indicators of Family Affluence are not equally relevant in each country and, as a consequence, do not contribute equally to the global index. For cross-cultural studies, the strategy for constructing an index should be country specific. The methodological developments presented in the paper open up opportunities to study socio-economic patterning of health among young people in the developed world, since self completed surveys can now employ a common measure of family material wealth. The findings show that the RFAS (Revised FAS) is a useful index of socio-economic status for use in national and cross-national surveys of adolescent health and health behaviour. The new strategy for weighing observed indicators in the index gives it enhanced power to detect inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Reformed clergy across two different settings - the United States and Scotland in an effort to determine how theological orthodoxy is related to political participation. The paper demonstrates that (1) clergy in both settings tend to be politically active (2) the level of clergy political activity tends to be greater in the United States than in Scotland (3) the relationship between orthodoxy and political activity is complex, varying by the specific type of activity examined and (4) while theological orthodoxy and modernist clergy tend to differ in the nature of their political activities, there is no longer a major "gap" in level of political activity between the two groups of ministers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates surrounding the ostensibly ‘transformative’ potential of personalisation for social work services, and service users, have variously illustrated the risks and opportunities this presents, although the implications for criminal justice social work services have received comparatively limited attention. By extending the concept of ‘service user’ to include not only offenders, but wider stakeholders (victims and communities), this paper considers the practical application of theories of personalisation and co-production by reviewing proposed and extant strategies for maximising stakeholder involvement in criminal justice services. It is argued that, in progressing beyond the more individualistic interpretations of this somewhat controversial reform agenda—in prioritising not only the individual, their rights, strengths and subjective identities, but locating the individual in situ, in the concrete realities and textures of their lives and communities—the strength of the personalisation agenda rests in its potential to develop and strengthen the collective organisation of service users, service providers and communities in a co-productive endeavour. It is argued that both this reading and the principles underpinning it resonate more widely with the empirical and theoretical literature on just and effective penal practices and, in so doing, this paper exposes the complexities that lie behind the apparent simplicity of this argument. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a comparison of prescribing habits for patients hospitalized in medical wards of university hospitals in America and Scotland. American patients received almost twice as many drugs both during and prior to hospitalization than did comparable Scots. The differences between the countries were consistent for symptomatic and for more specific therapies. As compared to Scotland, drug therapy in America costs patients more in terms of financial outlay and adverse drug effects. The data do not permit evaluation of the relative benefits to the patients of the different quantities or types of drug used for similar circumstances in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There appears to be considerable variation between different national jurisdictions and between different sectors of public policy in the use of evidence and particularly the use of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate non-healthcare sector programmes. Methods: As part of a wider study attempting to identify RCTs of public policy sector programmes and the reasons for variation between countries and sectors in their use, we carried out a pilot study which interviewed 10 policy makers and researchers in six countries to elicit views on barriers to and facilitators of the use of RCTs for social programmes. Results: While in common with earlier studies, those interviewed expressed a need for unambiguous findings, timely results and significant effect sizes, users could, in fact, be ambivalent about robust methods and robust answers about what works, does not work or makes no difference, particularly where investment or a policy announcement was planned. Different national and policy sector cultures varied in their use of and support for RCTs. Conclusions: In order to maximise the use of robust evaluations of public programmes across the world it would be useful to examine, systematically, cross-national and cross-sectoral variations in the use of different methods including RCTs and barriers to and facilitators of their use. Sound research methods, whatever their scientific value, are no guarantee that findings will be useful or used. 'Stories' have been shown to influence policy; those advocating the use of RCTs may need to provide convincing narratives to avoid repetition about their value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question whether schools have "effects" may be rephrased as the question of the degree to which schools reflect the pattern of their inputs, and the degree to which they disrupt that pattern by their autonomous activity. In this paper a coefficient is employed to quantify the autonomous effects of schools, and its complement (which represents heteronomy, or the degree to which schools simply transmit the pattern of their inputs) is broken down into universalistic and particularistic components. By these means it is possible to make a quantified macrosociological statement about pattern of stratification in a society. Values of the components are reported for two societies which harbor contrasting norms and myths concerning the proper operation of stratification. In a comparison between American and Scottish education it is shown that, so far from American high schools not having effects, they actually exert stronger effects than do their Scottish counterpanes. It is generally believed that, at the time when these data were collected, Scottish education was, at least for the more academically gifted child, more efficacious than American. The relation between the efficacy and the effects of a merit elective system is explained by reference by Meyer's (1970) concept of a charter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to benchmark roles that veterinary librarians at universities and colleges play in systematic reviews (SRs) and scoping reviews that are conducted by faculty and students at their institutions, to benchmark the level of training that veterinary librarians have in conducting SRs, to identify barriers to their participation in SRs, and to identify other types of literature reviews that veterinary librarians participate in. Methods: Sixty veterinary librarians in universities and colleges in Canada, the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand were surveyed online about their roles and training in conducting SRs, barriers to participation in SRs, and participation in other types of literature reviews. Results: Veterinary librarians' highest participation was at an advising level in traditional librarian roles as question formulator, database selector, search strategy developer, and reference manager. Most respondents reported pretty good to extensive training in traditional roles and no or some training in less traditional roles. Sixty percent of respondents received few or no requests to participate in SRs, and only half of respondents had participated in SRs as a review team member. Sixty percent of respondents stated that their libraries had no policies regarding librarian roles and participation in SRs. Conclusions: The surveyed veterinary librarians participated in SRs to a lesser degree than human health sciences librarians, experienced low demand from veterinary faculty and students to participate in SRs, and participated as review team members at significantly lower rates than human health sciences librarians. The main barriers to participation in SRs were lack of library policies, insufficient training, and lack of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the developments of various research projects in different universities in the world. The University of British Columbia Institute of Industrial Relations is now on its 10th year where Stuart M. Jamieson will still be the acting director and Noel Hall's two projects are currently in progress including the disputes settlement machinery in British Columbia and the patterns of dispute settlement under Mediation Commission Act. Institute staff members of University of California, Los Angeles Institute of Industrial Relations have continue research in industrial relations specifically on current problems in the U.S. The study done by staff members at University of Glasgow in Scotland on the working of urban labor markets is now being processed for publication.

Background: Sexual violence is widespread, yet relatively few survivors receive healthcare or complete treatment. In low and middle-income countries, community health workers (CHWs) have the potential to provide support services to large numbers of survivors. The aim of this review was to document the role of CHWs in sexual violence services. We aimed to: 1) describe existing models of CHWs services including characteristics of CHWs, services delivered and populations served; 2) explore acceptability of CHWs' services to survivors and feasibility of delivering such services; and 3) document the benefits and challenges of CHW-provided sexual violence services. Methods: Quantitative and qualitative studies reporting on CHWs and other community-level paraprofessional volunteer services for sexual violence were eligible for inclusion. CHWs and sexual violence were defined according to WHO criteria. The review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Quality of included studies was assessed using two quality assessment tools for quantitative, and, the methodology checklist by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence for qualitative studies. Data were extracted and analysed separately for quantitative and qualitative studies and results integrated using a framework approach. Results: Seven studies conducted in six countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burma, United States of America, Scotland, Israel) met the inclusion criteria. Different models of care had diverse CHWs roles including awareness creation, identifying, educating and building relationships with survivors, psychosocial support and follow up. Although sociocultural factors may influence CHWs' performance and willingness of survivors to use their services, studies often did not report on CHWs characteristics. Few studies assessed acceptability of CHWs' to survivors or feasibility of delivery of services. However, participants mentioned a range of benefits including decreased incidence of violence, CHWs being trusted, approachable, non-judgmental and compassionate. Challenges identified were high workload, confidentiality issues and community norms influencing performance. Conclusions: There is a dearth of research on CHWs services for sexual violence. Findings suggest that involving CHWs may be beneficial, but potential challenges and harms related to CHW-provided services exist. No different models of CHW-provided care have been robustly evaluated for effects on patient outcomes. Further research to establish survivors' views on these services, and, their effectiveness is desperately needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Low fruit and vegetable consumption is a risk factor for poor health. Studies have shown consumption varies across neighbourhoods, with lower intakes in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. However, findings are inconsistent, suggesting that socio-spatial inequities in diet could be context-specific, highlighting a need for international comparisons across contexts. This study examined variations in fruit and vegetable consumption among adults from neighbourhoods of varying socioeconomic status (SES) across seven countries (Australia, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Scotland, US). Methods: Data from seven existing studies, identified through literature searches and knowledge of co-authors, which collected measures of both neighbourhood-level SES and fruit and vegetable consumption were used. Logistic regression was used to examine associations between neighbourhood-level SES and binary fruit and vegetable consumption separately, adjusting for neighbourhood clustering and age, gender and education. As much as possible, variables were treated in a consistent manner in the analysis for each study to allow the identification of patterns of association within study and to examine differences in the associations across studies. Results: Adjusted analyses showed evidence of an association between neighbourhood-level SES and fruit consumption in Canada, New Zealand and Scotland, with increased odds of greater fruit intake in higher SES neighbourhoods. In Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Portugal, those residing in higher SES neighbourhoods had increased odds of greater vegetable intake. The other studies showed no evidence of a difference by neighbourhood-level SES. Conclusions: Acknowledging discrepancies across studies in terms of sampling, measures, and definitions of neighbourhoods, this opportunistic study, which treated data in a consistent manner, suggests that associations between diet and neighbourhood-level socioeconomic status vary across countries. Neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage may differentially impact on access to resources in which produce is available in different countries. Neighbourhood environments have the potential to influence behaviour and further research is required to examine the context in which these associations arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review assesses scholarly attempts to synthesize various forms of Scottish philosophy in the context of eighteenth-century America. It suggests potential new directions for the study of Scottish Enlightenment ethical theories on the western side of the Atlantic, and then examines scholarship on a separate and neglected Scottish influence in American thought: an evangelical notion of religious authority that was not opposed to wider incorporation in multi-denominational political unions. The ideological basis for American independence owed much to a tense counterpoise between Scottish moral sense reasoning and Presbyterian evangelicalism, rather than to their singular and starkly binary contributions to colonial American ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the author's reflections on his experiences as a teacher of U.S. history at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, discussing the challenges he faced in teaching the material, his engagement with the different cultural and historical attitudes of his foreign students, and the larger benefits of teaching transnational history. Focus is aimed at his courses on the U.S. Civil War and the prominent cultural significance of its themes to Scottish political culture. The direct connections shared between Scotland and the Southern Confederacy are mentioned. The different preconceptions and interests of the British/Scottish students towards the conflict as compared to Americans is also addressed.

The article presents information on social services in Scotland, which were consolidated at the local level of authority into unified social work departments. Personal social services in Scotland were administered previously by several governmental and voluntary agencies. The arguments for unification of personal social services in Scotland stemmed from prevalence of such problems as gaps in service, the complexity and inaccessibility of service, overlapping services, waste of resources and inefficiency in using the scarce resources of skilled professional staff. These problems all of which are familiar to social workers in the United States indicated Scotland's need to develop a coherent social policy. To develop the new social policy the old systems had to be restructured. Some consequences of the Social Work Act of 1968 are firstly local social work services for child care, welfare, mental health, and probation were unified. Secondly local authority social work departments were established. Thirdly area teams with ten to fifteen members, many of whom had a variety of levels of training, were established to serve approximately 50000 people and home helps were also available to serve them. The act indicated specifically the responsibilities of the social work departments to administer a variety of institutions for children and the elderly and to provide hostels for the handicapped.

data presented in this report derive from a small-scale investigation of the actual and perceived comprehension of frequently employed medical terms by lower working-class users and underusers of maternity service in Aberdeen, Scotland. It was found that; a) there was a consistently higher level of word comprehension among the utilizers, as rated blind and independently by two physicians; b) for the utilizers only, multiparous women appeared to have a slightly higher level of comprehension than the primiparae; the physicians included in the study consistently and markedly underestimated the level of word comprehension among the lower working-class respondents. The findings from this exploratory study are, despite limited numbers, consisted with those from earlier studies in the United States [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information related to the field of accounting. In December, 1947, the Association of University Teachers of Accounting was formed. The Secretary advises that, until this group was formed, there existed in Great Britain no organization which was the counterpart of the American Accounting Association. The list of members is very small, by comparison, about thirty in number, but nevertheless includes virtually all university teachers of accounting in England and Scotland. At a recent meeting in Fort Worth of the Texas Association of University Instructors in Accounting, the following officers were elected President, O.J. Curry, North Texas State College; Vice-President, Charles Zlatkovitch, University of Texas; Secretary-Treasurer, Zeb B. Freeeman, Southern Methodist University. D. M. Beights served on the summer school staff at University of North Carolina, conducting a special course under joint sponsorship of the University and the North Carolina Society of Certified Public Accountants.

Keith Hope's objections to the author's review of the book "As Others See Us" concern the author's remarks on the comparability of models, measures, and samples in Hope's comparison of Scotland and the U.S. The author noted that the comparison was problematic because correlations between later intelligence and six other variables in a model were guessed for Scotland based on relationships among these variables in the U.S. data. Hope is correct that this is a problem in only one model-but it is the only model on which the key chapter comparing the stratification systems in the two countries is based. The author also find it difficult to see how these guessed-at correlations could not affect the conclusions of the analysis, since they force certain aspects of the stratification process to be the same in the two countries and may at the same time distort other aspects of the process. In discussing the comparability of measures in Hope's Scotland-U.S. comparison, the author noted that Hope used two measures of occupation for Scottish data, neither of which is strictly comparable to the prestige or SES measures used in U.S. data.

The author write to comment briefly on certain observations Robert V. Robinson makes in his otherwise excellent review of the author's book "As Others See Us." Robinson writes, "In his models comparing, Scotland and the U.S., correlations of later intelligence with other variables were guessed in the Scottish data on the basis of relations in the American data." In fact guesses were inserted in only one model, and they do not affect conclusions of the analysis. The Scottish occupations were measured on one, not two, nine-point scales. The second ranking of Scottish occupations was obtained from a standard prestige-grading experiment, and it was the latter that was employed in the comparisons with the U.S. Comparisons based on the nine-point scale yield greater differences between the two countries. Robinson's remaining criticism, that the education variable for Scotland is ordered on the basis of the mean IQ of boys in each category, is true, but it should be remarked that the ordering of the categories is the same for girls as for boys, and it is the ordering provided by the Scottish researchers themselves.

Background: National health surveys linked to vital statistics and health care information provide a growing source of individual-level population health data. Pooling linked surveys across jurisdictions would create comprehensive datasets that are larger than most existing cohort studies, and that have a unique international and population perspective. This paper's objectives are to examine the feasibility of pooling linked population health surveys from three countries, facilitate the examination of health behaviours, and present useful information to assist in the planning of international population health surveillance and research studies., Data and Methods: The design, methodologies and content of the Canadian Community Health Survey (2003 to 2008), the United States National Health Interview Survey (2000, 2005) and the Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) (2003, 2008 to 2010) were examined for comparability and consistency. The feasibility of creating common variables for measuring smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity and diet was assessed. Sample size and estimated mortality events were collected., Results: The surveys have comparable purposes, designs, sampling and administration methodologies, target populations, exclusions, and content. Similar health behaviour questions allow for comparable variables to be created across the surveys. However, the SHeS uses a more detailed risk factor evaluation for alcohol consumption and diet data. Therefore, comparisons of alcohol consumption and diet data between the SHeS and the other two surveys should be performed with caution. Pooling these linked surveys would create a dataset with over 350,000 participants, 28,424 deaths and over 2.4 million person-years of follow-up., Discussion: Pooling linked national population health surveys could improve population health research and surveillance. Innovative methodologies must be used to account for survey dissimilarities, and further discussion is needed on how to best access and analyze data across jurisdictions.