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Background: Sodium‐glucose cotransporter‐2 inhibitors (SGLT2is) are novel agents for heart failure (HF) and are now recommended in guidelines. Understanding general physicians' perspectives can help to optimise utilisation of this new medication. Aim: To understand the clinical concerns and barriers from general physicians about prescribing SGLT2is in a general medicine cohort. Methods: A questionnaire exploring clinicians' experience, comfort level and barriers to prescribing SGLT2is in patients with HF, incorporating two clinical scenarios, was disseminated to Internal Medicine Society of Australia and New Zealand members over a 2‐month period. Results: Ninety‐eight participants responded to the questionnaire (10.8% response rate). Most respondents (66.3%) were senior medical staff. Most participants worked in metropolitan settings (64.3%) and in public hospital settings (83.7%). For HF with reduced ejection fraction, 23.5% of participants reported prescribing SGLT2is frequently (defined as prescribing SGLT2is frequently over 75% of occasions). For HF with preserved ejection fraction, 57.1% of participants reported prescribing SGLT2is less than 25% of the time. Almost half of the participants (44%) expressed a high level of familiarity with therapeutic knowledge of SGLT2is, while 47% indicated high familiarity with potential side effects. Patient complexity, cost of medications and discontinuity of care were identified as important barriers. Euglycemic diabetic ketoacidosis was the side effect that caused the most hesitancy to prescribe SGLT2is in 48% of the respondents. Conclusion: General physicians in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand are familiar with the therapeutic knowledge and side effects of SGLT2is. Patient complexity, medication cost and discontinuity of care were significant barriers to the use of SGLT2is for HF among general physicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we set out proposals that constitute a democratic Marxist manifesto for teacher education for economic, environmental and social justice. In doing so, we of course recognise structural limitations on progressive action but also that teacher agency is shaped and not erased by these. We therefore sketch the strategic shape a transformative UK teacher education might take in resistance to attacks on workers from longstanding neoliberal hegemony and, more recently, from so-called 'austerity'.

Aim: Partnered Pharmacist Medication Charting (PPMC) in patients admitted under general medical units has been shown to reduce medication errors. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of the PPMC model on medication errors in patients admitted under cancer units in Victorian hospitals. Methods: A prospective cohort study comparing cohorts before and after the introduction of PPMC was conducted. This included a 2-month pre-intervention phase and 3-month intervention phase. PPMC was implemented during the intervention phase as new model of care that enabled credentialed pharmacists to chart all admission medications, including pre-admission or new medications and cancer therapies, in collaboration with the admitting medical officer. The proportion of medication charts with at least one error was the primary outcome measure. Results: Seven health services across Victoria were included in the study. The majority of health services were using paper-based prescribing systems for oncology. Of the 547 patients who received standard medical medication charting, 331 (60.5%) had at least one medication error identified compared to 18 out of 416 patients (4.3%) using the PPMC model (p < 0.001). The median (interquartile range) inpatient length of stay was 5 (2.9–10.6) days in pre-intervention and 4.9 (2.9–11) days in intervention (p = 0.88). In the intervention arm, 42 patients had cancer therapy charted by a pharmacist with no errors. Conclusions: PPMC was successfully scaled into cancer units as a collaborative medication safety strategy. The model was associated with significantly lower rates of medication errors, including cancer therapies. PPMC should be adopted more widely in cancer units in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Clinical practice after hours and attendance at medical emergency team (MET) calls are two novel and emerging areas of pharmacy practice. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our institution’s pharmacy services expanded from 8 am–5 pm to 24 h daily, including MET call attendance. Aim: This study aimed to describe pharmacist roles, including medications charted by the general medicine and intensive care unit pharmacists during the period of extended-hours pharmacy practice and the characteristics of MET calls attended. Method: This descriptive, cross-sectional study included patients admitted to the Alfred Hospital, Victoria, Australia between 3 April 2020–28 February 2021, when a MET was called between 5 pm–8 am, a pharmacist attended, and medication changes occurred. Data collected included whether the MET call was medication related and a description of medication changes. Ethics approval was granted by the Alfred Hospital Human Research Ethics Committee (Reference no: 297/21). Results: One thousand six hundred and forty-four MET calls (average 5.4 calls per night) were attended by pharmacists during extended hours. Medication changes were made in response to clinical deterioration at 627 (38%) calls. The most frequent change was the initiation of cardiovascular medications (n = 206). Partnered pharmacist medication charting, including commencing, ceasing, or changing medications, occurred at 39% of MET calls with therapy changes. Conclusion: Pharmacists can play a key role in managing deteriorating patients as part of a MET team. Medications may be implicated in clinical deterioration of patients and are frequently administered at MET calls. The expansion of pharmacy services provided the opportunity for pharmacists to contribute to MET calls across the 24-h period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we evaluate, and highlight the tensions between, radical, critical and Marxist education as they have played out in British education since the Enlightenment. Our argument has several parts. First, like other Marxists, we believe that consciousness is shifted as much through engagement with class struggle as through ideas. We therefore outline the differences and continuities of these three perspectives in order to unite resistance to the extreme neoliberalism now reshaping education alongside other sectors of public and private life, in Britain and more widely. This reshaping increasingly and primarily serves the interests of the ruling elite--here and elsewhere. We further suggest that Marxist, critical and radical educators in Britain need to work together as part of an international united front to analyse class relations, mobilize workers, forge alliances and articulate a vision in and outside formal and informal educational spaces, to help build another education and world.

This paper reports on an ongoing research programme designed to investigate the opportunities for, and barriers to, pre-service teachers' growth as practitioners of developmentally appropriate practice for children aged 5-11. The analysis is framed by a Vygotskian cultural-historical perspective and points to personal, cultural and structural factors as potential constraints immanent in the various configurations produced by the pre-service teacher-environment interface. The paper concludes by confirming Vygotsky's contention that development possibilities lie immanent in the contradictions produced by these specific configurations of constraints and affordances. Potential implications for teacher education programmes are also discussed, including the possibilities for facilitating the growth of critical teacher-researcher identities in what is currently a contested education landscape.

This paper evaluates the contribution of "social realism" in resolving questions of knowledge and curriculum in the sociology of education. Social realists argue that, in the interests of educational equality, all pupils should have access to "powerful" knowledge produced by specialist intellectual communities. Social realism relies upon a critique of standpoint theory, taking it to be irrealist, relativist and ignorant of the post-empiricist revolution in the philosophy of science. This paper argues however, that social realists fail to appreciate the critical realist response to the post-empiricist revolution and thereby end up critiquing a caricatured version of standpoint theory. The paper concludes that if we are concerned with restoring objectivity, in a manner that avoids both relativism and cultural elitism in school curricula, a turn away from standpoint theory in the sociology of education is not warranted and may be obstructive.

Popular television drama is an important discursive site engaging the public with debates about schooling and professional identity. Between 1999 and 2011, external discourses of "crisis" (of academic achievement or students' mental and emotional health) were mediated as alternative discourses of "crisis, failure, and salvation" in which a Standards agenda predominated, or that of the school as a "caring community." "Genre" analysis reveals how "school" dramas exploited distinctive narrative types to privilege a particular discourse. Adapting Schatz's (1981) scheme of Hollywood "genre" types, these dramas are characterised by a narrative strategy of "restoration" of the "failing" secondary (high) school to its public function of raising achievement, or after 2007 of "integration" more concerned with assimilating "troubled" students into the school community. This shift in representation is consistent with, and contributes towards, the "rise of therapeutic education" where the Head Teacher and teacher are portrayed more as counsellor than educator.

Despite decades of research exposing its limitations, transmission-based pedagogy is notably resistant to change. This paper argues that reform efforts will continue to be limited without a concomitant historical, dialectical analysis of the origin of such pedagogy. The paper locates the origin of transmission-based pedagogy in the economic and social transitions of seventeenth century Europe. It concludes by suggesting that only a dialectical understanding of this emergence can sensitise the education community to the possibilities for genuine transformation immanent in the current educational landscape.

Almost ubiquitous in discourses about the development of teachers, reflective practice describes the process that occurs when persons are apprenticed to any meaningful activity. But reflective practice is a descriptive term for that process: it does not imply that the process is itself open to dissection and instruction. We contend that mistaken accounts of teachers' thinking have led to misdirected interventions which continue to hinder teachers' development. We conclude by suggesting that the question to be addressed by teacher educators is not the technicist one: how do we teach reflective practice?, but rather the values-based one: into which practices do we wish to initiate our teachers and pupils?

In this paper we suggest that the pursuit of ahistorical, universal truths in education is antithetical to creativity, learning and motivation in preservice teachers. We argue that learning to teach is a dynamic process embedded in networks of power in which educational truths are politically "accomplished" rather than innocently discovered. We identify regulatory discourses in education which we believe encourage conservatism through claims to ground practice in apolitical notions such as "best practice," scientific evidence or ahistorical reason. We claim that these are merely attempts to privilege or naturalise existing configurations of power and knowledge. Furthermore, we claim that such disciplining encourages a dependency and inflexibility in new teachers since it claims to absolve them of their responsibility for judgements made in the teaching moment. We draw upon examples from our own research to illustrate how such discursive mechanisms serve to foreclose students' creativity and argue that inventiveness cannot occur through rational inquiry alone. We suggest instead that "competing" discourses of teacher identity and practice are required for change and that this calls for a culture in teacher education wherein students' courage to act on conviction and undertake creative inquiry is valued. (Contains 11 notes.)

This article draws on an action research project in primary and secondary schools which was funded through the Campaign for Learning, and supported by Newcastle University with a focus on "Learning to Learn". This is a potentially useful concept for teachers and academics as attempts are made to move beyond curriculum-driven and assessment-dominated education towards inclusive and lifelong learning. At the end of the academic years 2003-2004 and 2004-2005, a total of 43 teachers from schools involved in researching Learning to Learn completed questionnaires and were interviewed about the progress of their individual research projects in the context of the wider programme. They were asked to discuss issues of autonomy and control, expectations and motivation and how change was manifesting itself in their contexts. Clear messages about the need for teacher ownership of the research balanced with the need for scaffolding emerged from the analysis. (Contains 2 tables and 8 figures.)

Relatively few studies have attempted to understand the beliefs young pupils have about the mind and learning. This collaborative action research study set out to explore the impact of a thinking skills pedagogy upon a sample of primary school children's learning and beliefs about learning over a period of 18 months. It was found that young children were capable of substantiating beliefs with evidence and reasonable argument - one indicator of intellectual autonomy. Furthermore, over time, children were able to articulate an increasingly constructivist model of mind and learning. However, the findings also suggest that, for some children, intellectual autonomy may have been hindered by current United Kingdom curriculum and assessment policy; a technical-rationalist, competitive, transmission model of education still persisted in the perceptions of some children with regard to perceived classroom expectations. Throughout the discussion, the author grounds the action research project in philosophical theory to explore the extent to which a philosophical schism is creating this tension and impeding revision in education. As a means of resolving this tension, the potential of constructivist and sociocultural views of learning is also discussed.

Background: Increasing life expectancy has seen a continual rise in older patients who present to hospital with acute decompensation. Pharmacists are well equipped to make medication recommendations in these settings to meet patient care needs, promote harm minimisation, and improve workflow efficiency. The Partnered Pharmacist Medication Charting (PPMC) model enables pharmacists to chart regular medications for patients admitted to the General Medicine Unit (GMU) in collaboration with treating clinicians. The model was expanded to assess the safety of pharmacists additionally charting newly initiated medications. Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the safety of the expanded PPMC model through the number of medication errors. Method: This prospective observational study was conducted at a tertiary hospital. Patients admitted to the GMU and received PPMC were included. Pharmacists were able to chart any new medications as well as the patients' pre‐admission medications. The primary outcome was the number of medication errors charted on admission. Medication errors were defined as medications charted outside of the specific recommendations documented in the medication management plan written by the PPMC pharmacist and co‐signed by the admitting medical officer. Results: A total of 8093 medications were charted by a credentialed pharmacist, with 10% (n = 816) planned newly initiated medications. Eight (0.98%) medication charting errors were identified in the PPMC model, which included five planned medications omitted. Of the 811 newly charted medications, 87 (10.7%) were amended within 24 h, with the majority being due to change in diagnosis or driven by changes in clinical status or investigative results becoming available. Conclusion: The expansion of the PPMC model of care to enable pharmacist charting of new medications was found to be safe. The adoption of the model may aid in reducing medication errors, thereby improving patient care and safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Errors in hospital medication charts are commonly encountered and have been associated with morbidity and mortality. This study evaluates the impact of the Partnered Pharmacist Medication Charting (PPMC) model on medication errors in general medical patients admitted to rural and regional hospitals. Design/Method: A prospective cohort study, comparing before and after the introduction of PPMC was conducted in 13 rural and regional health services. This included a 1‐month pre‐intervention phase and 3‐month intervention phase. In the intervention phase, PPMC was implemented as a new model of care in general medical units. Setting: Victoria, Australia. Participants: Patients admitted to General Medical Units. Outcome Measure: The proportion of medication charts with at least one error was the primary outcome measure. Secondary outcome measures included inpatient length of stay (LOS), risk stratification of medication errors, Medical Emergency Team (MET) calls, transfers to ICU and hospital readmission. Results: Of the 669 patients who received standard medical charting during the pre‐intervention period, 446 (66.7%) had at least one medication error identified compared to 64 patients (9.5%) using PPMC model (p < 0.001). There were 1361 medication charting errors identified during pre‐intervention and 80 in the post‐intervention. The median (interquartile range) inpatient length of stay was 4.8 (2.7–10.8) in the pre‐intervention and 3.7 days (2.0–7.0) among patients that received PPMC (p < 0.001). Conclusion: The PPMC model was successfully scaled across rural and regional Victoria as a medication safety strategy. The model was associated with significantly lower rates of medication errors, lower severity of errors and shorter inpatient length of stay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a series of four Aboriginal stories published in the late 1960s and early 1970s by Oxford University Press Canada, William Toye, the influential editor at the Press, and Elizabeth [...]