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Objectives: Newborn infants exposed to lack of oxygen and blood flow to the brain around birth may develop brain dysfunction (hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy-HIE). These infants undergo 72 hours of cooling therapy and most are not held by their parents in the UK. We examined the implementation of 'CoolCuddle', identifying factors that impact embedding of this complex intervention in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) across England., Design: Process evaluation and qualitative study using a standard questionnaire and interviews. Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) core constructs were used to assess relevant issues to staff embedding 'CoolCuddle', to discern change over time and different settings. Qualitative interviews provided valuable contextual exploration of implementation., Setting and Participants: Six tertiary NICUs in England. Thirty-seven families with a newborn baby undergoing cooling therapy for HIE were recruited from September 2022 to August 2023; 17 NICU staff Normalisation MeAsure Development (NoMADs) at six NICUs over 6 months were included; 14 neonatal/research nurses from three participating NICUs were interviewed., Intervention: The family-centred intervention 'CoolCuddle' was developed to enable parents to hold their infant during cooling, without affecting the cooling therapy or intensive care., Outcome Measures: NoMAD questionnaires at three timepoints over 6 months and NPT informed qualitative interviews., Results: NoMAD questionnaires at baseline showed more variation between units, for intervention acceptability, than those at 3 and 6 months. Qualitative data highlighted that staff understood the benefits of CoolCuddle but were apprehensive due to perceived risks involved in moving cooling babies. A rigorous standard operating procedure was flexible enough to incorporate the use of local processes and equipment and provided the relevant procedural knowledge to deliver CoolCuddle safely., Conclusions: The CoolCuddle intervention can be implemented safely under the supervision of standard neonatal teams as part of usual practice in diverse NICU settings in England. The importance of having a rigorous standard operating procedure, which can be adapted to support local settings, is highlighted., Trial Registration Number: ISRCTN10018542; Results: registered on 30 August 2022., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)

Social science literature has documented how the concept of diagnosis can be seen as an interactive process, imbued with uncertainty and contradiction, which undermines a straightforward notion of diagnosis as a way to identify underlying biological problems that cause disease. We contribute to this body of work by examining the process of resolving contradiction in autism diagnosis for adults and adolescents. Autism is a useful case study as diagnosis can be a complex and protracted process due to the heterogeneity of symptoms and the necessity to interpret behaviours that may be ambiguous. We audio-recorded and transcribed 18 specialist clinical assessment meetings in four teams in England, covering 88 cases in two adult, one child and one adolescent (14+) setting. We undertook a qualitative analysis of discursive processes and narrative case-building structure utilised by clinicians to counteract contradiction.We identified a three-part interactional pattern which allows clinicians to forward evidence for and against a diagnosis, facilitates their collaborative decision-making process and enables them to build a plausible narrative which accounts for the diagnostic decision. Pragmatism was found to operate as a strategy to help assign diagnosis within a condition which, diagnostically, is permeated by uncertainty and contradiction. Resolution of contradiction from different aspects of the assessment serves to create a narratively-coherent, intelligible clinical entity that is autism., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Waste prevention is a policy priority in many countries. For example, European Union member states are currently required to prepare a national Waste Prevention Programme. This article reports on a major international review of the evidence base for business waste prevention to underpin such policy-making. A strict definition of waste prevention is used, including waste avoidance, waste reduction at source or in process, and product reuse-recycling is outside the scope of this article. The review was organised with two key dimensions. Eight types of policy intervention were identified: standards, labelling, procurement, commitments and voluntary agreements, communication, incentives, waste minimisation clubs and other business support. Six illustrative sectors were selected: construction and demolition, food and drink, hospitality, retail, automotive and office-based services. Four broad approaches to business waste prevention have been distinguished and used as part of the analytical framework, classified into a two by two matrix, using supply- and demand-side drivers as one axis, and incremental versus radical change as the other. A fundamental focus was on attitudes and behaviours. A conceptual framework is presented to navigate the various behavioural influences on businesses, and to discuss those motivations and barriers for which the evidence is relatively robust. The results suggest that the (financial) benefits to business of waste prevention are potentially huge, and that some progress is being made, but measurement is a challenge. A taster of some of the learnings on the effectiveness of the different policy interventions to promote waste prevention is also presented.

Background: While much research has been conducted on medication safety, few of these studies have addressed primary care, despite the high volume of prescribing and dispensing of medicines that occurs in this setting. Those studies that have examined primary care dispensing emphasised the need to understand the role of sociotechnical factors (that is, the interactions between people, tasks, equipment and organisational structures) in promoting or preventing medication incidents. The aim of this study was to identify sociotechnical factors that community pharmacy staff encounter in practice, and suggest how these factors might impact on medication safety., Methods: Sixty-seven practitioners, working in the North West of England, took part in ten focus groups on risk management in community pharmacy. The data obtained from these groups was subjected to a qualitative analysis to identify recurrent themes pertaining to sociotechnical aspects of medication safety., Results: The findings indicated several characteristics of participants' work settings that were potentially related to medication safety. These were broadly classified as relationships involving the pharmacist, demands on the pharmacist and management and governance of pharmacists., Conclusion: It is recommended that the issues raised in this study be considered in future work examining medication safety in primary care.

Objective: To develop, and examine the component structure and internal consistency, of a questionnaire designed to assess safety climate in the community pharmacy setting., Methods: 998 pharmacists working in community pharmacies in England completed the questionnaire. Item selection was determined by principal components analysis (PCA) which also defined the underlying structure of the questionnaire. Scales were constructed from the items that loaded on components and were tested for internal consistency using Cronbach alpha scores. Pearson correlation coefficients were used to examine inter-component correlations., Results: A 34-item Pharmacy Safety Climate Questionnaire (PSCQ) was extracted through PCA; seven components were retained which represented the model of choice, and explained 58.3% of the data variance. The components were: investigating and learning from incidents; staffing and management; perceptions of the causes of incidents and reporting; team working; communication; commitment to patient safety; and education and training about safety. The internal consistency for the components was high; Cronbach alpha scores ranged from 0.67 to 0.88., Conclusions: The PSCQ demonstrated good psychometric properties in terms of its face validity, component structure and internal consistency. Community pharmacies can use this new tool to measure staff attitudes relating to seven safety climate domains, to compare themselves with other pharmacies, to prompt interventions to improve the prevailing safety climate within their organisation, and to measure the effectiveness of these interventions.

Background: Despite a growing recognition of the role of human error in anaesthesia, it remains unclear what should be done to mitigate its effects. We addressed this issue by using task analysis to create a systematic description of the behaviours that are involved during anaesthesia, which can be used as a framework for promoting good practice and highlight areas of concern., Methods: The task steps involved in preparing and delivering anaesthesia were identified using hierarchical task analysis (HTA). The systematic human error reduction and prediction approach (SHERPA) was then used to identify potential human errors at each task step and suggest ways of preventing these errors., Results: The number and type of behaviours involved vary according to the 'phase' of anaesthesia, with tasks in the induction room, including induction of anaesthesia itself, being the most demanding. Errors during preoperative planning and perioperative maintenance could be avoided by measures to support information handling and decision-making. Errors during machine checking, induction, and emergence could be reduced by streamlining or automating task steps, or by making changes to the physical design of the work environment., Conclusions: We have demonstrated the value of task analysis in improving anaesthetic practice. Task analysis facilitates the identification of relevant human factors issues and suggests ways in which these issues can be addressed. The output of the task analysis will be of use in focusing future interventions and research in this area.

Objective: To investigate the views and experiences of pharmacists in England before and after they registered as supplementary prescribers., Method: Eight pharmacists were recruited from training courses; seven from secondary care and one from primary care and interviewed during training and again after registration. In the first interviews, topics included previous experience, views on current roles, responsibilities and accountability for prescribing and how these might change. In the second interviews, the pharmacists discussed how these had actually changed after gaining supplementary prescribing authority, how their role worked in practice and how they saw it developing in the future., Main Outcome Measure: Descriptions of anticipated and actual changes in their roles, responsibilities and accountability before and after registration as supplementary prescribers, Results: The pharmacists anticipated that training would legitimise their current 'informal' prescribing practices, with increased legal responsibility and accountability, but experienced many procedural delays in implementing their new role. Pharmacists who were already heavily involved with prescribing were more likely to work as prescribers, but not necessarily within the clinical management plan framework. The desire to maintain the efficiency of their existing clinical services impacted negatively on the pharmacists' ability or willingness to prescribe in this legally approved manner., Conclusion: Clear and realistic expectations need to be set by the pharmacists as to what is achievable and greater attention needs to be paid to minimising delays between the end of training and the beginning of practice, to minimise reduction in motivation and redeployment of staff.

Objective: Great importance has been attached to a culture of safe practice in healthcare organisations, but it has proved difficult to engage frontline staff with this complex concept. The present study aimed to develop and test a framework for making the concept of safety culture meaningful and accessible to managers and frontline staff, and facilitating discussion of ways to improve team/organisational safety culture., Setting: Eight primary care trusts and a sample of their associated general practices in north west England., Methods: In phase 1 a comprehensive review of the literature and a postal survey of experts helped identify the key dimensions of safety culture in primary care. Semistructured interviews with 30 clinicians and managers explored the application of these dimensions to an established theory of organisational maturity. In phase 2 the face validity and utility of the framework was assessed in 33 interviews and 14 focus groups., Results: Nine dimensions were identified through which safety culture is expressed in primary care organisations. Organisational descriptions were developed for how these dimensions might be characterised at five levels of organisational maturity. The resulting framework conceptualises patient safety culture as multidimensional and dynamic, and seems to have a high level of face validity and utility within primary care. It aids clinicians' and managers' understanding of the concept of safety culture and promotes discussion within teams about their safety culture maturity., Conclusions: The framework moves the agenda on from rhetoric about the importance of safety culture to a way of understanding why and how the shared values of staff working within a healthcare organisation may be operationalised to create a safe environment for patient care.

Objective: To develop a framework that could be used by community pharmacies to self-assess their current level of safety culture maturity, which has high face validity and is both acceptable and feasible for use in this setting., Design: An iterative review process in which the framework was developed and evaluated through a series of 10 focus groups with a purposive sample of 67 community pharmacists and support staff in the UK., Main Outcome Measures: Development of the framework and qualitative process feedback on its acceptability, face validity, and feasibility for use in community pharmacies., Results: Using this process, a version of the Manchester Patient Safety Assessment Framework (MaPSAF) was developed that is suitable for application to community pharmacies. The participants were able to understand the concepts, recognised differences between the five stages of safety culture maturity, and concurred with the descriptions from personal experience. They also indicated that they would be willing to use the framework but recognised that staff would require protected time in order to complete the assessment., Conclusions: In practice the MaPSAF is likely to have a number of uses including raising awareness about patient safety and illustrating any differences in perception between staff, stimulating discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of patient safety culture within the pharmacy, identifying areas for improvement, and evaluating patient safety interventions and tracking changes over time. This will support the development of a mature safety culture in community pharmacies.

In this study the relationships among self-reported general aggressiveness, impulsiveness, driver anger, and aggressive responses to anger-provoking situations on the road were studied. The British version of a driver anger scale (UK DAS), aggression questionnaire (AQ), and an impulsiveness questionnaire (I7) together with background questions (gender, age, annual mileage) were administered to a sample of 270 British drivers. Variation in strength of correlations between anger and aggressive reactions in the 21 UK DAS items showed that the relationship between driver anger and aggression depends in part on the characteristics of the situation. In addition, three path models for describing the relationships among the measures were constructed separately for women and men. The models suggested that the effects of verbal aggressiveness on self-reported driver aggression were mediated by driver anger whereas physical aggressiveness was directly related to aggressive behaviour. Age was negatively related to both driver anger and aggression among men whereas annual mileage was negatively related to aggression among women. The models constructed indicate that aggressive driver behaviour is a complex phenomenon with a range of psychological causes.

The objectives were to analyse data obtained in a district general hospital medical oncology unit over a 15-year period, and to provide a comparator for standards of care for lymphoma patients in new cancer units. Prospectively collected data were analysed on 208 consecutive patients presenting with lymphoma, on an 'all-comers' basis, between 1981 and 1996. Treatment was with radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy, according to local protocols. The outcome measure was survival from the date of diagnosis. The 5-year actuarial survival was 72.7% for Hodgkin's disease and 55.7% for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Age and stage of disease were the only predictors of survival in a multivariate analysis. Histological classification was not a useful predictor of survival in this analysis. Survival figures comparable with those obtained nationally and across Europe are attainable in a cancer unit. Multiple pathways of referral of lymphoma patients operate in our region.

The objective of this study was to investigate the judgements of British doctors, nurses and midwives about behaviour which complies with a protocol, violates a protocol, or constitutes an improvisation where no protocol exists. Primary data were collected on the judgments of hospital healthcare professionals (N = 310) from three specialties in each of three hospitals. Respondents were required to judge the appropriateness of the behaviour of a fellow professional in each of nine hypothetical scenarios generated on the basis of previous focus group discussions. They were also asked how likely they would be to report this professional to a senior member of staff. Within the scenarios, both behaviour with respect to the relevant clinical protocol and outcome for the patient were experimentally manipulated. Data were collected using a survey questionnaire. The three professional groups studied (doctors, nurses and midwives) were found to make significantly different judgements. Crucially, doctors judged the violation of a protocol as less inappropriate than did nurses or midwives. Midwives were disapproving of violations, even when the patient outcome was good. These differences were reflected in the ratings of reporting likelihood. The proliferation of clinical protocols likely to occur in Britain in the coming years will need to be managed with great care if the regulation of clinical behaviour is the goal. Particular care will be needed to avoid the exacerbation of professional tensions.