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The effectiveness of healthcare depends on successful teamwork. Current understanding of teamwork in healthcare is limited due to the complexity of the context, variety of team structures, and unique demands of healthcare work. This qualitative study aimed to identify different types of healthcare teams based on their structure, membership, and function. The study used an ethnographic approach to observe five teams in an English hospital. Data were analyzed using a combined inductive-deductive approach based on the Temporal Observational Analysis of Teamwork framework. A typology was developed, consisting of five team types: structural, hybrid, satellite, responsive, and coordinating. Teams were challenged to varying degrees with staffing, membership instability, equipment shortages, and other elements of the healthcare environment. Teams varied in their ability to respond to these challenges depending on their characteristics, such as their teamworking style, location, and membership. The typology developed in this study can help healthcare organizations to better understand and design effective teams for different healthcare contexts. It can also guide future research on healthcare teams and provide a framework for comparing teams across settings. To improve teamwork, healthcare organizations should consider the unique needs of different team types and design effective training programs accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The coronavirus pandemic has swept across the United Kingdom (UK). Given the ever-evolving situation, little is known about the repercussions of coronavirus and the subsequent lockdowns for children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Therefore, this study explores the social-communicative impact of the first lockdown (March 2020 – July 2020) in the UK and the return to school period (September 2020 – October 2020), following prolonged disruption to routine, in children diagnosed with ASD. Methods: Parents of autistic children completed 2 separate online surveys following the first lockdown in the UK (n = 176) and also when children returned to school following the summer break (n = 54). Results: The results suggested that self-regulation skills (p <.05) and co-operation skills (p <.05) were most affected over the course of the lockdown. Children's physical activity levels were perceived to significantly increase during the return to school (p <.0001), which was associated with better social-communication outcomes (p <.05). Conclusion: Future work is needed to confirm and explore the findings. Such work could be implemented to protect and improve the social-communicative outcomes of autistic children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stockpiling behaviors during the COVID‐19 pandemic emerged as an example for situations where cooperation is inhibited by lack of trust, media exposure, and increased anxiety. In this paper, I test the hypothesis that stockpiling results from social psychological factors that prevent psychological groupness and cooperation (e.g., low trust in governments and other citizens, high frequency of news exposure, high pandemic anxiety), rather than being an inherently selfish and uncontrollable panic behavior. Specifically, I hypothesized that lower levels of satisfaction with the governments' COVID‐19 policies, lower trust in people in following physical distancing rules, and more frequent media exposure would predict higher stockpiling behaviors through increased pandemic‐related anxiety. In a cross‐sectional survey study conducted in Turkey and the UK during the first‐wave of the pandemic (N = 5137), I tested a conceptual model via SEM. Findings showed that lower trust in people, lower satisfaction with governments' COVID‐19 policies, and high exposure to news predicted higher pandemic related anxiety which predicted higher stockpiling in both countries. I discussed that governments policies and media in both countries may be the reason for mass stockpiling behaviors by decreasing predictability and trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's participation remains controversial in United Kingdom schools where children and their communities rarely have opportunity to change what happens. This paper considers an original approach that developed cooperative intergenerational inquiry with a class of 10–11‐year‐olds in the north of England as part of complexity‐informed participatory action research to consider children's participation in schools. Children and adults considered together, what schools are for, at the same time enabling children to shape spaces for participation in lesson time. The importance of recognising these spaces as dynamic intra‐subjective meeting points and of intergenerational relationships for change in schools is revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute management of a severely burned patient is an infrequent and stressful situation that requires medical knowledge as well as immediate coordinated action. Many adverse events in health care result from issues related to the application of 'non-technical' skills such as communication, teamwork, leadership and decision making rather than lack of medical knowledge. Training in these skills is known as Crisis Resource Management (CRM) training. In order to create well-prepared burn teams, it is critical to teach CRM principles through high-fidelity simulation (HFS). While CRM teaches foundational non-technical skills, HFS incorporates lifelike, whole-body, fully-responsive mannequins in order to provide a realistic emergency situation. The aim of the study is to describe the development of a novel high-fidelity simulation course called "SIMBurns: High Fidelity Simulation Program for Emergency Burn Management" that uses CRM as its foundation and is focused on management of burn injuries. The course was designed by a panel of simulation and burns experts from Meyer Children's Hospital in Italy and Birmingham Children's Hospital in the U.K. Simulation Program experts were certified by Boston Children's Hospital's Simulation Program. In this paper, we describe the course's design, development, structure, and participant's assessment of the course. Since the creation of the SIMBurns course in 2013, 9 courses have been conducted and 101 participants have attended the course. The course was well-received and its "Overall Satisfaction" was rated at 4.8/5. The primary objective in the SIMBurns course - to teach teamwork and CRM skills to medical staff involved in emergency burn care - was also met at 4.8/5. Participants felt that the course developed their ability to interact with other team members, further improved their understanding of how to appropriately use resources, emphasized the importance of role clarity and developed their communication skills. Additional quantitative and qualitative analyses obtained from participants were also reviewed after each course. The SIMBurns course aims to contribute to the education of those in healthcare in order to improve patient safety and to continue advancing the education of our emergency burn care teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: On the 26th of May 2016, the UK Government introduced the Psychoactive Substances Act, 2016. The aim of this short report is to explore online shops selling New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) stated motivations for closing and the changes that arose preceding the ban. Methods: The search for online shops selling NPS was made throughout October 2015. From March to June 2016, data were collected on the status of the online shops, and whether they mentioned the ban, the delay, or their closure. Results: From the original 113 online shops, only 52% remained open. Those that remained were either based overseas (65%), removed NPS and became a headshop (19%), or were inactive (16%). Only 24% of UK-registered websites remained open after the ban. Conclusions: UK-registered websites closed down or moved domain locations and no longer sold to UK customers. UK-registered websites communicated with customers at each stage of the legislation. It is unknown whether the UK retailers have ceased selling NPS or have been displaced to underground markets (street level dealing or the hidden web). The majority of shops in this study were located in Europe or North America, showing that there is still high demand in both continents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Over a 10-year period from 2003, around 1.7 million arrests in England and Wales resulted in the suspect being exposed to mandatory drug testing and assessment processes. These provisions formed part of a wider drug interventions programme costing £1.3 billion. This study sought to assess the impact of compliance with these measures on treatment uptake and reoffending. Recidivism risk factors were also investigated.Methods: The use of linked administrative data relating to matched samples of recent heroin and/or cocaine (H/C) users identified in one English police force area over a 12-month period (N = 1630).Findings: There was no association between compliance with a compulsory model of drug diversion and subsequent engagement with structured treatment services, rates of treatment retention and successful discharge. Compliance was also not found to be associated with reductions in the rate and volume of reoffending after 12 months. The factor with the largest effect on risk of recidivism was poly use of H/C. Main offence, engagement with structured treatment, number of prior convictions and (younger) age were also identified as recidivism risk factors.Conclusions: These results are discussed in the context of subsequent legislation and policy which further expands the reach of mandatory testing and assessment measures as a form of constraints-based drug diversion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• A three year ethnography of seasonal magic mushroom pickers in rural Kent. • Naturally occurring magic mushroom production sites can be described as liminal or reluctant. • Magic mushroom picking was found to be a seasonal role, with participants often acting in a sociable, cooperative manner. • Findings thus present a challenge to existing drug market archetypes. This article presents an exploration of naturally occurring Class-A magic mushroom markets in the UK. It aims to challenge some of the mainstream narratives about drug markets and to identify features of this specific market, which will extend our understanding of how illegal drug markets operate and are structured more generally. The research presented comprises a three year ethnography of sites of magic mushroom production in rural Kent. Observations were conducted at 5 research sites over three consecutive magic mushroom seasons and interviews were conducted with 10 (8 male; 2 female) key informants. It finds that naturally occurring magic mushroom sites are reluctant and liminal sites of drug production, distinct from other Class-A drug production sites due to their: open and accessible nature; lack of invested ownership or evidence of purposeful cultivation; and lack of law enforcement disruption efforts, violence or organised crime involvement. Seasonal magic mushroom picker participants were found to be a sociable group, often acting in a cooperative nature, and without evidence of territoriality or violent dispute resolution. These findings have wider application in challenging the dominant narrative that the most harmful (Class-A) drug markets are homogenous in their violent, profit driven, hierarchical nature, and most Class-A drug producers/suppliers are morally corrupt, financially motivated and organised. A greater understanding of the variety of Class-A drug markets in operation can challenge archetypes and discrimination in understanding drug market involvement, will allow the development of more nuanced policing and policy strategies, and contributes to the presentation of a fluidity of drug market structure that permeates beyond bottom level street markets or social supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift from social democratic to a neoliberal consensus in modern welfare capitalist states is characterised by an emphasis on individual responsibility, consumer choice, market rationality and growing social inequalities. There has been little exploration of how neoliberalism has shaped the environment within which chronic illness is experienced and managed. This article explores the different articulations of neoliberalism manifest in the arena of personal illness management in Bulgaria and the UK. People with type 2 diabetes discussed their experiences in terms of struggling with diet, diabetes as a personal failure, integrating illness management and valued activities, and the trustworthiness of the healthcare system. The UK narratives were framed within an individual responsibility discourse while in Bulgaria lack of resources dominated discussions, which were framed as structurally generated and unrelated to individual capabilities and choices. Respondents faced personal management challenges related to consumer and healthcare market failures in both countries. Differences in market regulation and emerging stakeholder and interest coalitions influenced users' expectations and their navigation and adaption to market failures in managing their everyday illnesses. The UK and Bulgarian articulations of neoliberalism can be described differently: the first as a logic of managed choice and the second as a logic of unmanaged consumerism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the outcomes of two workshops which explored historical and recent issues on patient safety that directly relate to leaders in the interprofessional field. The article considers the impact of flattened team-based structures where collaborative working constantly considers safe patient-centred high-quality care. These issues are mainly rooted in changes within a UK context, but the historical case studies present situations which could enlighten and enliven discussions of patient safety in an international context. The article was sparked by discussion of recurrent themes in healthcare that have undermined the abilities of medical practitioners to adequately manage hazard in clinical care settings throughout modern history. Examining the issues that confront healthcare practitioners and care workers in their dealings with patients and clients, such as the aged or the severely disabled, can reveal commonalities across global healthcare settings, in the past and present, that provide a useful tool in facilitating the goals of interprofessional education (IPE). The potential of IPE has links to both how professionals respond together to care situations and involve the general public in shared health understandings. The outcomes focus on how to ensure ministrations where optimal team-based collaborative care is recognised and constantly sought. We conclude that IPE has much to offer in this arena and more evidence of impact here is well worth pursuing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How do individuals deal with group disadvantage when their fellow in-group members conceive it as legitimate? Integrating research on the normative conflict model (Packer, 2008, Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev., 12, 50) and collective action, we expect high identifiers to reject the in-group norm of legitimacy that justifies the inequality, and to assert that the group is actually able and willing to contest the disadvantage by collective means. In Study 1 and Study 2, we tested this hypothesis in different intergroup contexts. The results confirmed our predictions and also showed one boundary condition for high identifiers, namely that the content of the social identity supports resistance. In Study 3, we found support for our hypothesis using artificial groups and manipulating identification experimentally. These results show that even when a disadvantaged group appears to accept its situation, high identified in-group members will still contest this and, moreover, expect other in-group members to support them in this endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human Factors concerns exist with vehicle navigation systems, particularly relating to the effects of current Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) on driver disengagement from the environment. A road study was conducted aiming to provide initial input for the development of intelligent HMIs for in-vehicle systems, using the traditional collaborative navigation relationship between the driver and passenger to inform future design. Sixteen drivers navigated a predefined route in the city of Coventry, UK with the assistance of an existing vehicle navigation system (SatNav), whereas a further 16 followed the navigational prompts of a passenger who had been trained along the same route. Results found that there were no significant differences in the number of navigational errors made on route for the two different methods. However, drivers utilising a collaborative navigation approach had significantly better landmark and route knowledge than their SatNav counterparts. Analysis of individual collaborative transcripts revealed the large individual differences in descriptor use by passengers and reference to environmental landmarks, illustrating the potential for the replacement of distance descriptors in vehicle navigation systems. Results are discussed in the context of future HMIs modelled on a collaborative navigation relationship. Practitioner Summary:Current navigation systems have been associated with driver environmental disengagement, this study uses an on-road approach to look at how the driver–passenger collaborative relationship and dialogue can inform future navigation HMI design. Drivers navigating with passenger assistance demonstrated enhanced landmark and route knowledge over drivers navigating with a SatNav. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Young people suspected of being sexually exploited are unlikely to have made prior disclosures before being approached by authorities, and this can make them especially uncomfortable when involved in investigations. Semistructured interviews were conducted with frontline social workers and law enforcement practitioners about their experiences interacting with youth during child sexual exploitation investigations. The findings provided some tentative insights into the processes by which practitioners sought to establish rapport with young people who have been exploited and establish themselves as trustworthy abuse disclosure recipients. Practitioners reported that rapport building in child sexual exploitation cases not only occurred over lengthy periods of time (e.g., months or years) but also required repeated contacts between the practitioners and young people, during which practitioners minimized their roles as authorities and maximized their authenticity as caring people. Practitioners mentioned the importance of dependability, lightheartedness, and having a casual demeanor. Findings have implications for managing reluctance and understanding rapport building when working with possible victims. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Hospital discharge is a vulnerable transitional stage in patient care. This qualitative study investigated the views of healthcare professionals and patients about the threats to safe hospital discharge with aim of identifying contributory and latent factors. The study was undertaken in two regional health and social care systems in the English National Health Service, each comprising three acute hospitals, community and primary care providers and municipal social care services. The study focused on the threats to safe discharge for hip fracture and stroke patients as exemplars of complex care transitions.Methods: A qualitative study involving narrative interviews with 213 representative stakeholders and professionals involved in discharge planning and care transition activities. Narratives were analysed in line with 'systems' thinking to identify proximal (active) and distal (latent) factors, and the relationships between them.Results: Three linked categories of commonly and consistently identified threat to safe discharge were identified: (1) 'direct' patient harms comprising falls, infection, sores and ulceration, medicines-related issues, and relapse; (2) proximal 'contributing' factors including completion of tests, assessment of patient, management of equipment and medicines, care plan, follow-up care and patient education; and distal 'latent' factors including discharge planning, referral processes, discharge timing, resources constraints, and organisational demands.Conclusion: From the perspective of stakeholders, the study elaborates the relationship between patient harms and systemic factors in the context of hospital discharge. It supports the importance of communication and collaboration across occupational and organisational boundaries, but also the challenges to supporting such communication with the inherent complexity of the care system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HIV care in the UK is led by hospital-based specialists with limited general practitioner (GP) involvement. As GPs have expertise in some non-microbial HIV-associated co-morbidities (e.g. cardiovascular disease), and more people are disclosing their HIV status to their GPs, there could be benefits in sharing HIV care. We describe contemporary models of shared HIV care in relevant developed world settings to inform future shared HIV care in the UK. An interview survey of key informants was used to explore experiences and models of shared care, and identify promoting and inhibiting factors. We interviewed ten key informants from six shared care models. There were three broad categories of shared care, with varying degrees of GP involvement. Strong clinical leadership in primary care, good professional relationships and communication, and tailored GP training were facilitators. Barriers included stigma, confidentiality concerns, and low prevalence of HIV outside major conurbations. Contemporary shared HIV care models have emerged organically and seem to work when grounded in good collaboration between a small number of dedicated GPs and specialist units. We propose two models for further study which may only be feasible in high HIV caseload practices. User acceptability, clinical and cost effectiveness must be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Capacity building partnerships between healthcare institutions have the potential to benefit both partners particularly in staff development. Previous research suggests that volunteering can contribute to professional development but there is little evidence on how learning is acquired, the barriers and facilitators to learning in this context or the process of translation of learning to the home environment.Results: Volunteers from a healthcare partnership between the UK and Somaliland reported learning in communication, interdisciplinary working, teaching, management, leadership and service development. This learning came from observing familiar practices in unfamiliar environments; alternative solutions to familiar problems; learning about Somali culture; opportunities to assume higher levels of responsibility and new professional relationships. There was variability in the extent of translation to NHS practice. Time and support available for reflection and mentoring were important facilitators of this process.Conclusions: The professional development outcomes documented in this study came directly from the experience of volunteering. Experiential learning theory suggests that this requires a complex process of critical reflection and new knowledge generation, testing and translation for use in new contexts. This process benefits from identification of learning as an important element of volunteering and support for reflection and the translation translation of learning to UK contexts. We suggest that missed opportunities for volunteer learning will remain until the volunteering process is overtly framed as part of continuing professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on the use of consensus by the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (AAGBI) for producing its guidelines. Topics include suggestions from membership of the AAGBI for new working parties; online consultation with the AAGBI's membership on draft copy of the guideline; and packaging of guidelines in smart phone application for its members.

Background: Few evidence-based, on-line resources exist to support home-based care of childhood long-term conditions.Methods: In a feasibility study, children with stages 3, 4, or 5 chronic kidney disease, parents and professionals collaboratively developed a novel Online Parent Information and Support (OPIS) application. Parents were randomized to an intervention arm with access to OPIS or a control arm without access. OPIS usage was assessed using Google Analytics. Parents in the intervention arm completed the Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM) and User Interface Satisfaction (USE) questionnaires and participated in qualitative interviews.Results: Twenty parents accessed OPIS with a mean of 23.3 (SD 20.8, range 2-64) visits per user. Responses from the SAM and USE questionnaires were positive, most respondents rating OPIS highly and finding it easy to use. Qualitative suggestions include refinement of OPIS components, enabling personalization of OPIS functionalities and proactive endorsements of OPIS by professionals.Conclusions: Implementation of OPIS into standard practice is feasible in the centre where it was developed. Suggested developments will augment reported strengths to inform ongoing testing in the wider UK network of units. Our design and methods are transferrable to developing and evaluating web-applications to support home-based clinical care-giving for other long-term conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite the worthy intentions of international health partnerships between high-income countries and countries with developing economies, the tangible benefits are rarely evaluated, limiting the assessment of the achievements of such collaborations.Methods: The present study used longitudinal qualitative methods to examine the individual and organisational benefits of a partnership between a National Health Service (NHS) mental health Trust in the United Kingdom and a mental health referral hospital in Northern Uganda. Benefits to UK staff and organisational development were benchmarked against an existing framework of healthcare competencies.Results: Partnership involvement was beneficial to UK staff, by increasing awareness of diversity, and in enhancing ability to work flexibly and as a team. There were clear benefits expressed with regards to the partnership having the potential to enhance organisational reputation and staff morale.Conclusions: The findings from this study demonstrate that international partnerships are experienced as being of tangible value for healthcare staff from high-income countries, providing opportunities for the development of recognised healthcare competencies. In this study there was also some evidence that staff involvement might also provide wider organisational benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors reflect on the different roles of participants in the Stillbirth Priority Setting Partnership (PSP) in Great Britain (GB). The authors agree that some research questions are more patient-centered while others are highly related to the delivery of health services and the way mothers response to stillbirth-related symptoms. Also discussed are the processes of initiation, consultation and prioritization, the use of the James Lind Alliance (JAL) methodology and survey outcomes.

In 2007, the first trainee-led surgical research network was founded in the United Kingdom (UK). The West Midlands Research Collaborative was started by a group of enthusiastic adult surgical trainees who saw the benefits of altruistic collaboration to generate high quality, multicenter research. Seeing the success of their research projects, including randomized controlled trials, trainees in other regions and specialties were spurred on to founding their own research collaboratives. The Pediatric Surgical Trainee Research Network was started in 2011 by a group of UK trainees with the aim to promote, facilitate, and encourage trainee-led research in pediatric surgery. This article summarizes the history and evolution of the trainee collaborative surgical research. It examines the challenges which multicenter research entails and the steps the collaboratives have taken to overcome them. We describe some of the projects which have been successfully completed and the benefits that the trainee networks have for patients and surgeons alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on findings of a study related to childhood survival in Great Britain, as of October 2010. It states that the Millennium Development Goal of United Nations have significantly helped improve childhood survival in the country by reducing mortality among children under the age of five, and cites the trends in child mortality in Great Britain and Europe. It mentions possible reasons for higher child and adolescent mortality like poverty and socioeconomic inequalities.

Background: The UK Department of Health Enhanced Recovery Partnership Programme collected data on 24 513 surgical patients in the UK from 2009-2012. Enhanced Recovery is an approach to major elective surgery aimed at minimizing perioperative stress for the patient. Previous studies have shown Enhanced Recovery to be associated with reduced hospital length of stay and perioperative morbidity.Methods: In this national clinical audit, National Health Service hospitals in the UK were invited to submit patient-level data. The data regarding length of stay and compliance with each element of Enhanced Recovery protocols for colorectal, orthopaedic, urological and gynaecological surgery patients were analysed. The relationship between Enhanced Recovery protocol compliance and length of stay was measured.Results: From 16 267 patients from 61 hospital trusts, three out of four surgical specialties showed Enhanced Recovery, compliance being weakly associated with shorter length of stay (correlation coefficients -0.18, -0.14, -0.25 in colorectal, orthopaedics and gynaecology respectively). At a cut-off of 80% compliance, good compliance was associated with two, one and three day reductions in median length of stay respectively in colorectal, orthopaedic and urological surgeries, with no saving in gynaecology.Conclusions: This study is the largest assessment of the relationship between Enhanced Recovery protocol compliance and outcome in four surgical specialties. The data suggest that higher compliance with an Enhanced Recovery protocol has a weak association with shorter length of stay. This suggests that changes in process, resulting from highly protocolised pathways, may be as important in reducing perioperative length of stay as any individual element of Enhanced Recovery protocols in isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) allows complex, sociotechnical systems to be explored in terms of their potential configurations. However, CWA does not explicitly analyse the manner in which person-to-person communication is performed in these configurations. Consequently, the combination of CWA with Social Network Analysis provides a means by which CWA output can be analysed to consider communication structure. The approach is illustrated through a case study of a military planning team. The case study shows how actor-to-actor and actor-to-function mapping can be analysed, in terms of centrality, to produce metrics of system structure under different operating conditions. Practitioner Summary: In this paper, a technique for building social network diagrams from CWA is demonstrated. The approach allows analysts to appreciate the potential impact of organisational structure on a command system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The willingness of male-male dyads to use couples voluntary HIV counseling and testing (CVCT) has not been previously investigated globally among men who have sex with men (MSM). Using online advertisements, data were collected from 3245 MSM in seven countries who were ≥18 years of age and had ≥1 male sex partner in the previous 12 months. The analysis examined associations between individual characteristics and willingness to utilize CVCT. The willingness to utilize CVCT was compellingly high, ranging from 79% in Australia and UK to 90% in Brazil. Older MSM and those who reported not knowing their sero-status reported lower odds of willingness to use CVCT. The relationship between being in a relationship and willingness to use CVCT varied across countries, perhaps reflecting varied local understandings of the nature and content of CVCT. Further work is required to examine willingness to use CVCT among a more heterogeneous population of MSM, and to examine how CVCT services are locally perceived in order to provide information vital for the development of locally appropriate messages to promote CVCT for MSM. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Britain's oldest birth cohort study, the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD) provides data to explore life time influences on ageing. The latest data collection was undertaken between 2006 and 2011 when study members were aged 60-64 and consisted of postal and pre-assessment questionnaires to eligible study members, followed by invitation to attend one of six clinical research facilities (CRFs) across the UK for clinical assessments, and dietary diaries and activity monitors in the days following the CRF visit. The option of a home visit for clinical assessments was provided if the study member refused or was unable to attend the CRF. We examined response and attrition, here describing rates overall and for postal and clinical assessment modes of data collection, identifying socioeconomic and health-related predictors of response, and assessing the continued representativeness of the sample. In total, 2,661 (84 % of the target sample) responded. Lower educational attainment, lower childhood cognition and lifelong smoking independently predicted lower likelihood of both overall response and CRF cooperation. At 53 years, not owning one's home and not being married predicted lower likelihood of overall response whereas manual social class and obesity predicted lower likelihood of CRF cooperation. Providing for collection of biomedical data in the home and use of assessment instruments and modes to retain study members with lower education attainment, lower cognition and poorer health behaviours should be priorities for helping reduce attrition amongst vulnerable ageing study members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess the effect of a research prioritization partnership that aimed to influence the research agenda relating to urinary incontinence (UI).Study Design and Setting: Research often neglects important gaps in existing evidence so that decisions must be made about treatments without reliable evidence of their effectiveness. In 2007-2009, a United Kingdom partnership of eight patient and 13 clinician organizations identified and prioritized gaps in the evidence that affect everyday decisions about treatment of UI. The top 10 prioritized research questions were published and reported to research funders in 2009. A year later, new research or funding applications relating to the prioritized topics were identified through reviews of research databases and consultation with funding organizations, elements of the research community, and organizations that participated in the partnership.Results: Since dissemination of the prioritized topics, five studies are known to have been funded, three in development; five new systematic reviews are under way, one is being updated; five questions are under consideration by a national research commissioning body.Conclusion: The partnership successfully developed and used a methodology for identification and prioritization of research needs through patient-clinician consensus. Prioritization through consensus can be effective in informing the development of clinically useful research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper aims to highlight the benefits of the 360 SF diagnostic audit for assessing person centeredness of a domiciliary agency and to highlight the challenges they face with some suggested actions. These are exemplars of what is raised in policy and recent reports relating to personalisation, dignity and integration of health and social care and have wider implications for all agencies as they strive to resolve issues for the client. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is a case study describing results of the audit in relation to challenges that include practice development needs, inter agency co-ordination, collaboration and co-operation for the achievement of relationship based person centered outcomes in quality improvement work. The pilot study involved data gathered from the clients, relatives and staff, which were analyzed resulting in findings, conclusions and suggestions for ongoing improvement from which action plans were devised and implemented. Findings – The audit results provide examples of the primary interface relationship and co-ordination challenges, highlighting leaning needs for staff delivering person centred care in domiciliary settings. Practical implications – This paper raises important practice development issues both inside and outside the agency's responsibility. Use of the tool would support cultural and interface relationship issues affecting the client experience and highlight ways to assist the achievement of collaborative ways of working needed for the integration of health and social care. Social implications – The 360 SF (DS) can help organisations provide evidence to CQC and the public for their performance and identify the close interface relationships and their effectiveness in delivering co-ordinated and integrated health and social care. Originality/value – The 360 SF DOM has highlighted with evidence the challenges of the systemic culture at the interface, in particular the nature and quality of collaboration, communication and practice development needs across the organisational divide to deliver person centred care and support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to set out the Law Commission's final recommendations for the reform of adult social care, with a particular emphasis on the recommendations for a new legal framework for adult safeguarding in England and Wales.Design/methodology/approach - The paper discusses each of the Law Commission's recommendations for adult safeguarding and contrasts them with the proposals put forward at the consultation phase of the review.Findings - The paper argues that a single legal framework for adult social care, including adult safeguarding, with have substantial benefits in terms of legal clarity, consistency and efficiency.Social implications - A clear and single legal framework is important for older and disabled people, and their carers, in order to understand fully their entitlements, and for local authorities and partnership agencies (such as the NHS and the police) in order to understand fully their responsibilities.Originality/value - The paper provides a clear summary of the Law Commission's final report - in particular the recommendations for adult safeguarding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislative and practice guidance in the United Kingdom suggests foster carers are central to effective contact for children in foster care. This article explores the involvement of foster carers in contact between children in their care and their birth parents, drawing on the findings of an in-depth qualitative study of the views and experiences of social workers and Reporters to the Children's Hearing system in one Scottish local authority. While the study was geographically localised and its findings cannot be generalised, it does provide valuable insight into the residual involvement of foster carers in contact arrangements in the authority in question. Exploring the available literature, the authors go on to consider possible explanations of this residual involvement and what type of social work practice is required to enable foster carers to be more centrally involved in contact arrangements within contemporary constructions of a professional foster care service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of counterterrorism policing tactics on public cooperation among Muslim communities in London, U.K. The study reports results of a random-sample survey of 300 closed and fixed response telephone interviews conducted in Greater London's Muslim community in February and March 2010. It tests predictors of cooperation with police acting against terrorism. Specifically, the study provides a quantitative analysis of how perceptions of police efficacy, greater terrorism threat, and the perceived fairness of policing tactics ('procedural justice') predict the willingness to cooperate voluntarily in law enforcement efforts against terrorism. Cooperation is defined to have two elements: a willingness to work with the police in anti-terror efforts, and the willingness to alert police upon becoming aware of a terror-related risk in a community. We find that among British Muslims, both measures of cooperation are better predicted by procedural justice concerns than by perceptions of police efficacy or judgments about the severity of the terrorism threat. Unlike previous studies of policing in the United States, however, we find no correlation between cooperation and judgments about the legitimacy of police; rather, procedural justice judgments influence cooperation directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research highlighting the role sexual selection may play in the evolution of human cooperation has yet to distinguish what qualities such behaviours actually signal. The aim here was to examine whether female preferences for male cooperative behaviours are because they signal genetic or indirect phenotypic quality. This was possible by taking into account female participants' stage of menstrual cycle, as much research has shown that females at the most fertile stage show greater preferences specifically for signals of genetic quality than any other stage, particularly for short-term relationships. Therefore, different examples of cooperation (personality, costly signals, heroism) and the mate preferences for altruistic traits self-report scale were used across a series of four experiments to examine females' attitudes towards cooperation in potential mates for different relationship lengths at different stages of the menstrual cycle. The results here consistently show that female fertility had no effect on perceptions of cooperative behaviour, and that such traits were considered more important for long-term relationships. Therefore, this provides strong evidence that cooperative behaviour is important in mate choice as predominantly a signal of phenotypic rather than genetic quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We experimentally investigated the effect of superordinate (i.e. British) versus subordinate (i.e. English) identity salience on willingness to contribute to a resource shared at the superordinate level (the British coast). Contrary to what would be expected from straightforward application of self-categorization theory, two studies demonstrated that willingness to contribute to this shared resource was higher when subordinate (rather than superordinate) identity was activated. To explain this effect, we suggest that subordinate identities sometimes provide a more meaningful basis for self-definition and, when this is the case, activating subordinate level of identity might lay the foundation for enhanced cooperation within higher-order identities. Indeed, consistent with this argument, Study 2 showed that increased meaningfulness and coherence of the self-concept mediated the effect of subordinate identity salience on contributions to the shared (superordinate) resource. The results are discussed with respect to the role of meaning in determining categorization effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service user involvement in health and social care is a key policy driver in the UK. In cancer care it is central to developing services which are effective, responsive and accessible to patients. Cancer network partnership groups are set up to enable joint working between service users and health care professionals and to drive service improvements. The aim of this study was to explore the influence of the cancer network partnership groups' service user involvement activities on cancer care. This was a qualitative study involving documentary analysis and in-depth case studies of a sample of partnership groups. Five partnership groups were purposively selected as case studies from Macmillan regions across the UK; documents were collated from a further five groups. Forty people, including core group members and key stakeholders in cancer services, were interviewed. The evidence from this study suggests that cancer network partnership groups are at their most influential at 'grass roots' level - contributing to patient information resources, enhancing access to services, and improving care environments. While such improvements are undoubtedly important to patients, the groups' aim is to influence strategic changes, for example in cancer care commissioning or macro-level policy decision-making. The evolution of open, participatory relationships between service users and professionals, and recognition of the value of experiential knowledge are seen as key factors in influencing cancer care. The provision of dedicated resources to strengthen service user involvement activities is also vital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article examines the impact of organisational changes in UK elite sport on the professional relations among and between different healthcare providers. The article describes the processes by which demand for elite sport healthcare has increased in the UK. It further charts the subsequent response within medicine and physiotherapy and, in particular, the institutionalisation of sport-specific sub-disciplines through the introduction of specialist qualifications. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 14 doctors and 14 physiotherapists, the article argues that organisational changes have led to intra-professional tensions within both professional groups but in qualitatively different forms reflecting the organisational traditions and professional identities of the respective disciplines. Organisational changes promoting multi-disciplinary healthcare teams have also fostered an environment conducive to high levels of inter-professional cooperation though significant elements of inter-professional conflict remain. This study illustrates how intra-professional relations are affected by specialisation, how legitimation discourses are used by different professions, and how intra- and inter-professional conflict and cooperation should be seen as highly interdependent processes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article examines employer cooperation in the provision of training in the UK and Australia. These countries both have market-based training systems where it might be thought there is little cooperative behaviour. Cooperative interfirm arrangements are, however, shown to be important, especially for the supply of intermediate level skills. The article compares the development of one of the most signficant forms of cooperative training, group training. Some striking differences exist between the two countries, in terms of the actual employment and direct training of apprentices. In both countries, the arrangements are heavily dependent upon government funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose is to examine the bases of positive relations between suppliers and purchasers of healthcare services. In doing so, the paper examines the nature of cooperation between the providers of healthcare services (hospitals) and those who commission and purchase healthcare on behalf of patients (regional health authorities). Design/methodology/approach - The paper employs a qualitative interview approach for gathering and analysing major stakeholder (provider and purchaser) perceptions of their interorganisational relations and how these interactions impact on the quest of the healthcare provider to meet the needs of the community they serve. Findings - The paper identifies group relevant variables into four major themes or "core categories" that characterise purchaser-provider stakeholder cooperation. These themes represent provider and purchaser views on those factors characterising stakeholder relationships within the purchaser-provider dyad. Practical implications - The paper suggests that extending practitioners' understanding of the nature of these interrelated factors may lead to better insights of how interorganisational relations and partnerships might be managed more proactively throughout the healthcare value chain. Originality/value - In the extant literature, there is a paucity of research that has illustrated multi-stakeholder perspectives in the public sector. This paper explores the perceptions of two main stakeholders in public healthcare to map and assess management issues influencing purchaser-provider cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Perspective article, I consider ways in which the contemporary arts and sciences can interact with each other, and I outline the current opportunities for funding in the United Kingdom. I examine the view that, in an art-science collaboration, it is the artist who benefits most, and I cautiously suggest that this is an oversimplification. Evidence from interviews with scientists who have been involved in these collaborations shows that artistic experience and skills are of value in the scientific research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A field experiment was conducted in Australia (N = 80 female passersby); replicating a study previously carried out in the U.S.A. and also one carried out in Britain. The data indicated that compliance with a request to mail a bulky envelope was higher in Australia than in the U.S.A. although not at the level of that obtained in Britain. Compliance with a legitimate request was considerably higher in all three countries when the appeal for help emphasized the state of the victim than when it concentrated upon the duty of the target. The extent to which any request for help engages thought in the recipient of the request is considered as a factor to explain the pattern of results obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the cooperation of allies in the defense of trade and air power during the Battle of the Atlantic in 1941-1943. The Grand Alliance of the U.S. and Great Britain during World War II was far from experiencing potential disaster. The participation of the U.S. into the World War II seemed to announce the turning of the conflict where its industrial capacity will be tested to counter the forces of Germany and Japan. The U.S. is faced with the problem of how to transport supplies and materials across the Atlantic to Britain in the midst of U-boat opposition. The failure of the U.S. and Commonwealth forces to cooperate effectively was in part responsible. However, the increased in airpower drove the U-boats far that made the allies successful.

The article focuses on commissioning organisations that must be transparent and involved healthcare professionals in the decision-making process. Lord Victor Adebowale states that commissioning consortia should present how they have worked with health and wellbeing boards to arrive at a whole series of service designs. The independent National Health Service (NHS) Alliance established a nurse-led network to ensure the views and clinical commissioning involvement of nurses were well-represented.