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In this article, we applied a 'sex critical' lens to discursively analyse online sex advice available to Australian readers in the first 3 months of 'lockdown' during the COVID-19 pandemic (March–June 2020). We explored how sex and intimacy were being talked about within the pandemic context, examining if and how this was different to pre-pandemic sex advice. We found both the perpetuation of dominant discourses that limit understandings of sex and sexual practices, and challenges to these which open exciting possibilities for new sexual intimacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an acknowledged professional practice gap regarding sexuality and sexual health related needs within mental health settings in Australia and internationally. Yet little is known about how clinicians can be best supported or enabled to improve sexuality‐related practice, from their own perspective. This is important, given the sensitive and complex nature of sexuality and sexual health within the context of mental distress and service provision. This article reports a follow‐up study, where mental health clinicians who participated in an initial study were invited to reflect on and discuss the (finalized) results and recommendations generated. The aim was to generate insights into the tools, strategies, and approaches participants felt would best equip and support clinicians to better incorporate sexuality and sexual health into their work. Six clinicians from three disciplines (mental health nursing, psychology, and psychiatry) participated in in‐depth interviews to reflect on a plain language summary of the initial study. Three interconnected themes were generated via reflexive thematic analysis: (1) access to knowledge and information; (2) support from peers, senior colleagues, and workplaces; and (3) enacting a focus on sexuality‐related care. These findings provide valuable insights into how clinicians may want to be supported in relation to (improving) their sexuality‐related practice. The analysis also demonstrates the importance of a multifaceted approach to improving sexuality‐related care in mental health and other health settings. This knowledge will contribute to directing future research and development of interventions, tools, strategies, or other approaches to this end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Professional caregiving relationships are central to quality healthcare but are not always developed to a consistently high standard in clinical practice. Existing literature on what constitutes high‐quality relationships and how they should be developed is plagued by dyadic conceptualisations; discipline, context and condition‐specific research; and the absence of healthcare recipient and informal carer voices. This study aimed to address these issues by exploring how healthcare recipients and carers conceptualise good professional caregiving relationships regardless of discipline, care setting and clinical condition. Design: A qualitative story completion approach was used. Participants completed a story in response to a hypothetical stem that described a healthcare recipient (and, in some instances, carer) developing a good relationship with a new healthcare provider. Stories were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Participants: Participants were 35 healthcare recipients and 37 carers (n = 72 total). Results: Participants' stories were shaped by an overarching discourse that seeking help from new providers can elicit a range of unwanted emotions for both recipients and carers (e.g., anxiety, fear, dread). These unwanted emotions were experienced in relation to recipients' presenting health problems as well as their anticipated interactions with providers. Specifically, recipient and carer characters were fearful that providers would dismiss their concerns and judge them for deciding to seek help. Good relationships were seen to develop when healthcare providers worked to relieve or minimise these unwanted emotions, ensuring healthcare recipients and carers felt comfortable and at ease with the provider and the encounter. Participants positioned healthcare providers as primarily responsible for relieving recipients' and carers' unwanted emotions, which was achieved via four approaches: (1) easing into the encounter, (2) demonstrating interest in and understanding of recipients' presenting problems, (3) validating recipients' presenting problems and (4) enabling and respecting recipient choice. Participants' stories also routinely oriented to temporality, positioning relationships within recipients' and carers' wider care networks and biographical and temporal contexts. Conclusion: The findings expand our understanding of professional caregiving relationships beyond dyadic, static conceptualisations. Specifically, the findings suggest that high‐quality relationships might be achieved via a set of core healthcare provider behaviours that can be employed across disciplinary, context and condition‐specific boundaries. In turn, this provides a basis to support interprofessional education and multidisciplinary healthcare delivery, enabling different healthcare disciplines, specialties, and teams to work from the same understanding of what is required to develop high‐quality relationships. Patient or Public Contribution: The findings are based on stories from 72 healthcare recipient and carer participants, providing rich insight into their conceptualisations of high‐quality professional caregiving relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To investigate nursing and allied health professional perceptions of the interrelationship between avoidable hospital readmissions and fundamental care delivery. Design: A qualitative, exploratory study using a critical realist approach. Method: One‐to‐one semi‐structured interviews with 14 nursing and allied health professionals conducted between May and September 2019. Results: Several tensions and contradictions were identified in the data, which demonstrated clinicians' perceptions about the priority of both fundamental care and two avoidable readmission conditions (aspiration pneumonia and constipation). These tensions are illustrated in two major themes: Avoidable versus inevitable; and everyone versus no one. The first theme demonstrates clinicians' perceptions that readmissions for aspiration pneumonia and constipation are not common, despite acknowledging that they generally lacked knowledge on readmission rates; and that these conditions may not be preventable in acute settings. The second theme demonstrates clinicians' perception that preventing readmissions is everyone's responsibility, however, this was coupled with a lack of articulation around how this multidisciplinary approach could be achieved, leading to a distinct lack of agency for care delivery. Conclusion: Articulating the tensions described in the results provides vital knowledge for understanding how clinicians may respond to initiatives designed to reduce avoidable readmissions. Avoidable hospital readmissions may be usefully understood as a wicked problem: one that is complex and requires adaptive, not linear, solutions. Wicked problems pose a challenge for leaders and managers in healthcare because top‐down, hierarchical strategies are unlikely to be successful. Effective prevention of avoidable readmissions requires leaders to enable facilitator‐led change through relational leadership strategies. Impact Avoidable hospital readmissions are a global problem increasingly addressed via funding changes and the introduction of penalties to hospitals. This study provides insights on clinicians' perspectives of avoidable hospital readmissions and their prevention, demonstrating the complexity of this challenge and the need for healthcare leaders to enable individual and organizational readiness for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research seeking to understand and improve sexuality-related practice in mental health settings has paid little attention to the institutional context in which clinicians' practice is embedded. Through a social constructionist lens, we used thematic analysis to examine how 22 Australian mental health clinicians implicated the wider institutional context when discussing and making sense of sexuality-related silence within their work. Interviews were part of a study exploring participants' perceptions of sexuality and sexual health in their work more generally. Broader silences that shaped and reinforced participants' perceptions and practice choices were situated in professional education; workplace cultures; and the tools, procedures and policies that directed clinical practice. We argue that sexuality-related silence in mental health settings is located in the institutional context in which clinicians learn and work, and discuss how orienting to this broader context will benefit research and interventions to improve sexuality-related practice across health settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexuality is a central aspect of human experience but there is evidence that this is largely constrained, pathologised or ignored in mental health settings. We conducted in-depth interviews with 22 psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health nurses working across a variety of settings in four Australian cities. Sexuality was most often perceived as relevant in the mental health setting when it was simultaneously constructed as dangerous. Participants located this danger in sexual expression itself or within individuals who, because of mental illness, lacked the autonomy required to successfully engage in 'safe' sex. We discuss these findings and their implications for research and professional practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]