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Motivated by disparities in gun violence, sharp increases in gun ownership, and a changing gun policy landscape, we conducted a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (n=2,778) in 2021 to compare safety-related views of white, Black, and Hispanic gun owners and non-owners. Black gun owners were most aware of homicide disparities and least expecting of personal safety improvements from gun ownership or more permissive gun carrying. Non-owner views differed. Health equity and policy opportunities are discussed.

Nurses are critical to the physical management and psychological support of patients undergoing chemotherapy, which is a vulnerable time for many. This article presents the results of a qualitative study intended to explore the experience of Japanese patients with breast cancer during chemotherapy, including the finding that participants created personal safety nets in physical, emotional, and social contexts that helped them to gain confidence in their ability to exert control over their lives. Understanding each patient's personal safety net allows nurses to support their patients in maintaining and improving their function and well-being.

Copyright of Safety & Fire Technology / Bezpieczeństwo i Technika Pożarnicza is the property of Centrum Naukowo-Badawcze Ochrony Przeciwpozarowej and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose Senior citizen falls are one of the highest-cost factors of healthcare within this population group. Various approaches for automatic fall detection exist. However, little is known about the seniors’ acceptance of these systems. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the acceptance of automatic fall detection devices as well as the technological commitment and the health status in community-dwelling adults with a predefined risk of falling.Design/methodology/approach Seniors with a risk of falling were equipped with either an accelerometer or an accelerometer with an additional visual and optical fall detection system in a sub-group of the study population for a period of eight weeks. Pre- and post-study questionnaires were used to assess attitudes and acceptance toward technology.Findings In total, 14 subjects with a mean age of 75.1 years completed the study. Acceptance toward all sensors was high and subjects were confident in their ability to handle technology. Medical assessments showed only very mild physical and no mental impairments. Measures that assured subjects privacy protection were welcomed. Sensor technology should be as unobtrusive as possible.Originality/value Privacy protection and uncomplicated use of the fall detection equipment led to high acceptance in seniors with high-technical commitment and good health status. Issues to further improve acceptance could be identified. Future research on different populations is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Internal Security is the property of Police Academy in Szczytno and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article deals with problems of personal safety and security in current times. It addresses a variety of dangerous situations and their prudent avoidance. Training and education for classes at risk are suggested, along with the kinds of professional help that may be sought and utilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nurses have been advised to encourage older persons to keep their doors locked, but there is little guidance about how home care providers should best gain access to the homes of clients. During a descriptive phenomenological study of the experience of home care (N = 25), 9 frail older women explained their strategies for allowing providers access to their homes. Women who typically left their doors open for their own reasons were not uncomfortable leaving the door open when a provider was expected. However, women who left the door unlocked at the request of a provider expressed misgivings about doing so. Older women need personalized counseling about ensuring access to care providers while maximizing safety. For practical, ethical, and legal reasons, home care providers who ask older women to leave their doors open should reconsider that strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assessed perceptions of vulnerability and the desire for personal safety/self-defense (PS/SD) training among 67 female veterans receiving outpatient mental health treatment, primarily for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from sexual and/or physical trauma. Consistent with the literature on the impact of such training on nonclinical populations and on individuals with visual impairments, the results of this study indicate that traumatized female veterans believe that PS/SD training would be an effective and powerful addition to more traditional treatments for PTSD. Study participants indicated they believe such training would positively affect their sense of personal safety; promote increased competence in thwarting future assaults; improve their self-esteem, confidence, and assertiveness; and reduce avoidant and agoraphobic behaviors. These pilot results support the development of an adjunct intervention to augment current PTSD treatments for women veterans with histories of sexual and physical trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The murder of Catherine (Kitty) Genovese in New York in 1964 by Winston Moseley has generated numerous academic publications. One of the major focal points in the debates is the role of gender in bystanders' reactions to violent incidents. Some analysts drew on experiments that found that men did not intervene in incidents involving a man as a perpetrator and a woman as a victim to explain the lack of intervention in the incident by the so-called 38 bystanders falsely reported by The New York Times in 1964. This current article analyzed three videos containing four different assaults that occurred on the busy streets of Argentina, the United States and the United Kingdom to assess whether the gender of the perpetrators and victims affected bystanders' reactions or not. In Incident 1 and Incident 2 involving men as perpetrators with female victims, none of the male and female bystanders physically intervened. In Incident 3 involving a man as a perpetrator and a woman as his victim, both male and female bystanders intervened to save the victim. However, in Incident 4 involving a woman as a perpetrator with a male victim, nobody intervened instead, some of the bystanders laughed at the male victim. The article concludes that whilst gender seemed to have determined intervention in Incident 3 (saving a female victim from a violent man) and its lack in Incident 4 (leaving a male victim to save himself from a violent woman), other factors could be responsible for lack of intervention in Incident 1 and Incident 2 and these include the duration of the assault, the level of violence applied by the perpetrator and bystanders' perception of their own safety. The implications of the bystanders' reactions were highlighted. • Gender does not always affect bystanders' reactions to physical assaults. • Bystanders are more sympathetic of female victims of physical assault than male victims. • Dangerous emergencies do not always affect diffusion of responsibility as extant research suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Safe organizations need to be designed for concurrent stability and flexibility. • These demands result in an apparent contradiction between safety and autonomy. • Process/personal safety and operational/higher-order autonomy are key distinctions. • Uncertainty is a crucial moderating influence in the safety-autonomy relationship. • Safety and autonomy can be reconciled through appropriate safety management. Much of current research on designing safe organizations centers around the question of how to best manage concurrent demands for stability and flexibility in the face of external and internal uncertainties. Classic approaches to safety management have favored centralized decision-making in organizations which promises stability through hierarchical control and adherence to predefined procedures. Newer research has stressed the need for decentralized decision-making to enable flexibility through fast local adaptations and improvisation in unprecedented situations, thereby confronting the apparent contradiction between safety and autonomy. Especially research on high-reliability organizations (HROs) has aimed to resolve this contradiction by identifying mechanisms for bridging centralization and decentralization through what has been termed loose coupling. However, the contradiction still lives on in many debates in safety research, for instance concerning safety rules, safety leadership, and safety culture. Using these research domains as examples, it is argued in this paper that by distinguishing between process and personal safety and between operational and higher-order autonomy the relationship between safety and autonomy can be better understood and eventually better managed. Moreover, uncertainty is assumed to be a crucial moderating influence in this relationship. Based on this framework, propositions are developed to guide future research towards reconciling safety and autonomy in safety management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]