Search results

The anticipation of organizational change and the transition process often creates uncertainty for employees and can lead to stress and anxiety. It is therefore essential for all organizations, especially those that operate in high-demand working environments, to support the well-being of staff throughout the change process.

Research on how employees respond to the organizational change of relocating to a new work space is limited. To fill this gap in the research, we present a case study examining the well-being of clinical and health care employees before and after a disruptive change: relocation in workplace facilities. In addition, factors that enabled successful change in this high-stress, high-demand working environment were investigated. Interviews were conducted with 20 participants before the relocation and 11 participants after relocation. Following an inductive approach, data were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify key themes.

Our findings suggest that a supportive team, inclusive leadership and a psychologically safe environment, may buffer negative employee well-being outcomes during disruptive organizational change.

This research contributes to the literature on successful organizational change in health care by highlighting the resources which support well-being throughout the change process and enabling the successful transition to a new facility.

In recent years the movement of refugees has led to increasing negative media and political discourse about migration in the United Kingdom, particularly as the number of refugees crossing the English Channel has increased. Despite this hostility, little is known about how the UK public perceive the journeys made by refugees or the refugees themselves.

In this study the authors used a story completion method to analyse perceptions and understandings of refugees. Participants were given the opening of a story about refugees crossing the English Channel and were asked to complete the remainder of the story. In total, 84 participants completed stories that ranged in length from two to 423 words. The stories were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Each of the completed stories was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis and three themes were generated: Conflicting emotions: Uncertainty and the relief of reaching safety after a traumatic journey; The spectre of illegality: Borders and the uncertainty of what happens next; and Welcome or unwelcome?: Cultural values of welcome and hospitality.

The authors argue that this original use of the story completion method highlights how participants draw on cultural narratives of hospitality and welcome and that their stories are constructed using emotional categories that are in contrast to the more binary constructions of refugees that are present in media and government discourse about refugees and the English Channel crossings.

The purpose of this study is to understand the meaning of the term well-being as conceptualised by parents, grandparents, principals and teachers in the Irish primary education system.

A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was adopted to understand the nature and meaning of the phenomenon of well-being. Interviews were carried out with 54 principals, teachers, parents and grandparents from a representative sample of primary schools in Ireland. Each participant was asked the same, open, question: “What does well-being mean to you?” Responses were transcribed verbatim and analysed using a combination of the principles of the hermeneutic circle and Braun and Clarke’s framework for thematic analysis.

Three conceptualisations of well-being were identified (1) well-being is about being happy, (2) well-being is about being healthy and safe and (3) well-being is something you “do”.

To the best of our knowledge this paper is the first of its kind to describe how well-being is conceptualised by adults in Irish primary school contexts. In particular it highlights how neoliberal conceptualisations of well-being as a “thing”, a commodity exchanged on assumptions of individualism, moralism and bio-economism, have crept into the education of our youngest citizens.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the process and implications of usability testing a prototype version of the Letters of 1916 Digital Edition.

The paper presents the testing, the lessons learned and how those lessons informed the subsequent redesign of the site.

Results imply that a majority of users, even digital humanists, were not looking for a unique and specialised interface, but assumed – and preferred – a user experience that reflects common search systems. Although the audience for digital humanities sites is becoming increasingly diverse, the needs of the different user groups may be more similar than had previously been assumed.

The usability test employed 11 participants, five of whom were coded as “general public”. Four of these five had previously volunteered to transcribe and upload letters. This meant that they were already familiar with the project and with the Letters of 1916 Transcription Desk. However, their prior involvement was a result of their genuine interest in the site, thus ensuring that their interactions during testing were more realistic.

The lesson learned may be useful for the Digital Editions of future crowdsourced humanities projects.

Letters of 1916 is the first crowdsourced humanities project in Ireland. The theme of the project is topical, emotive and socially important in Ireland and among Irish diaspora today. The project’s content has been created by the “ordinary citizens of Ireland” and they are likely to be the major users of the Digital Edition. The study explores how the Digital Edition can support these users, while also facilitating the range of traditional scholars and digital humanities researchers.

The benefits of including a psychosocial group programme alongside a medical inpatient detoxification and stabilisation regime has been recognised within addiction research; however, a “gold standard” psychosocial intervention has not been established. This small-scale study aimed to evaluate the psychosocial group (“Straight Ahead”) currently running at a substance use inpatient unit based in the UK.

A mixed-methods questionnaire design aimed to capture service user perspectives of the group programme via a questionnaire and assess whether an individual’s recovery capital and emotion regulation scores improved during their stay.

Thirty-four service users participated in the evaluation. Results indicate the group significantly increased individuals’ recovery capital scores; however, it did not significantly improve emotion regulation. The three themes from the qualitative results focused on the importance of shared experiences, learning of new skills and the group as a positive experience. Service users provided suggestions for improvements, and these informed the provision of service-specific recommendations for the team and project commissioner.

The evaluation provides tentative support for the use of the Straight Ahead programme and provides an insight into what service users find helpful when attending a psychosocial group during an inpatient detoxification admission.

Peer support, such as mentorship and befriending, has been found to have a valuable impact on a range of outcomes. There are multiple formats, including face-to-face (individually and group), and in online forums. Advancement in technology has enabled online peer support to increase in popularity; however, little is known about mechanisms underpinning individual one to one online peer interactions. The purpose of this paper is to qualitatively explore the mechanisms underpinning email exchanges in an eating disorder peer support service.

Email transcripts from dyads in a moderated peer-to-peer email support service were analysed using inductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

The thematic analysis generated five themes as mechanisms of peer support. Relating and reflecting experience was the central superordinate theme. Subthemes included Positive Encouragement, Checking in and Prompting, Being a Confidante and Defining Recovery.

The current findings align with previous research and add new developments. The theme of Defining Recovery added the awareness of the personal perception of recovery, which had not been considered as a mechanism in previous literature and may be specific to this digital platform. This study could assist in the development of training for the provision of further peer support within eating disorder services.

This study aims to explore the experiences of living through the COVID-19 pandemic for people who faced homelessness and dealt with mental health and/or substance use challenges.

This qualitative study was comprised of 26 1:1 interviews (16 men and 10 women), conducted between February and May 2021 with people who experienced homelessness in North East England during the COVID-19 pandemic. An inductive reflexive thematic analysis was undertaken, with input from individuals with lived experience who were involved throughout the study.

Four themes were developed. The first theme, lack of support and exacerbation of mental health and substance use difficulties, highlighted how the lack of in-person support and increased isolation and loneliness led to relapses or new challenges for many people’s mental health and substance use. The second theme, uncertainty and fear during the pandemic, explored how the “surreal” experience of the pandemic led to many people feeling uncertain about the future and when things would return to normal. The third theme, isolation and impacts on social networks, discussed how isolation and changes to relationships also played a role in mental health and substance use. Finally, opportunity for reflection and self-improvement for mental health and substance use, explored how some people used the isolated time to re-evaluate their recovery journey and focus on self-improvement.

The experiences shared within this study have important implications for planning the future delivery and commissioning of health and social care services for people facing homelessness, such as sharing information accessibly through clear, consistent and simple language.

As one of the few papers to involve people with lived experience as part of the research, the findings reflect the unique narratives of this population with a focus on improving services.

Reflecting, reliving and reforming experiences enhance longer-term effects of travel and tourism, and have been highlighted as an important aspect in determining loyalty, re-visitation and post-consumption satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to develop new methodological approaches to investigate emotion, memory creation and the resulting psychosocial effects.

The paper proposes a unique combination of physiological measures and photoelicitation-based discussions within a longitudinal design. A physiological measuring instrument (electrodermal activity [EDA] tracking technology through Empatica E4 wristbands) is utilised to capture the “unadulterated” emotional response both during the experience and in reliving or remembering it. This is combined with post-experience narrative discussion groups using photos and other artefacts to give further understanding of the process of collective memory creation.

EDA tracking can enhance qualitative research methodologies in three ways: through use as an “artefact” to prompt reflection on feelings, through identifying peaks of emotional response and through highlighting changes in emotional response over time. Empirical evidence from studies into participatory arts events and the potential well-being effects upon women over the age of 70 is presented to illustrate the method.

The artificial environment created using experimental approaches to measure emotions and memory (common in many fields of psychology) has serious limitations. This paper proposes new and more “natural” methods for use in tourism, hospitality and events research, which have the potential to better capture participants’ feelings, behaviours and the meanings they place upon them.

The assessment and management of risk towards others is an integral part of clinical practice, particularly in forensic and other psychiatric settings. Version 3 of the HCR-20 is the latest version of a comprehensive set of professional guidelines based on the Structured Professional Judgement model. It is the most widely used and best validated tool available to assess risk of violence; however, clinicians perceive it as an additional task with limited clinical usefulness, which requires undergoing expensive training and takes considerable time to implement. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Training was delivered to 148 clinicians to improve perceptions with regard to risk formulation and the HCR-20v3 as an effective and clinically useful tool in generating individual and robust care plans to minimise risk of violence.

Results indicated significant score increase post-training, indicating higher regard for the HCR-20 in terms of its usefulness, anticipated impact upon working, anticipated impact upon managing risk, ease of completion and perceived relevance to clinical practice. This was also consistent with qualitative feedback indicating improved risk management and care planning with reference to how learning would support respective roles. Feedback also highlighted the added value of certain aspects of the training provided, which may be useful to consider when designing HCR-20 training packages.

This study demonstrates the importance of engaging clinicians in bespoke training on the practicalities of HCR-20 completion and the fundamentals of risk formulation.

This study highlights the importance of incorporating a training package for staff of all disciplines in changing perceptions of risk management tools and thus their use in the practical management of violence. The useful aspects of training may assist changing perceptions of the role that risk formulation and the HCR-20v3 play in the assessment and management of violence.

This research suggests that if this can be done successfully, it may lead to a change in the perception of the role that the HCR-20v3 can play in assessing risk of violence and generating meaningful management plans to reduce the future likelihood of violence.