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This preliminary investigation aims to examine the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients and staff within a high secure service.

To discern the connection between COVID-19-related distress and multiple factors, the study involved 31 patients and 34 staff who completed assessments evaluating coping strategies, resilience, emotional reactivity, ward atmosphere and work-related aspects.

Results demonstrated that around a third of staff (31.2%) experienced COVID-19-related distress levels that met the clinical cut-off for possible post-traumatic stress disorder. Emotional reactivity, staff shortages, secondary traumatic stress and coping strategies were all positively correlated with COVID-19-related-distress. Resilience was negatively associated with distress, thus acting as a potential mitigating factor. In comparison, the prevalence of distress among patients was low (3.2%).

The authors postulate that increased staff burdens during the pandemic may have led to long-term distress, while their efforts to maintain minimal service disruption potentially shielded patients from psychological impacts, possibly lead to staff “problem-focused coping burnout”. This highlights the need for in-depth research on the enduring impacts of pandemics, focusing on mechanisms that intensify or alleviate distress. Future studies should focus on identifying effective coping strategies for crisis situations, such as staff shortages, and strategies for post-crisis staff support.

The authors postulate that the added burdens on staff during the pandemic might have contributed to their distress. Nonetheless, staff might have inadvertently safeguarded patients from the pandemic’s psychological ramifications by providing a “service of little disruption”, potentially leading to “problem-focused coping burnout”. These findings underscore the imperative for further research capturing the enduring impacts of pandemics, particularly scrutinising factors that illuminate the mechanisms through which distress is either intensified or alleviated across different groups. An avenue worth exploring is identifying effective coping styles for pandemics.

The purpose of this study is to examine the potential of integrating material from the arts into postgraduate curricula to deepen students’ engagement with marketing phenomena. The authors assess the use of arts-based activities, within a broader critical pedagogy, for encouraging imaginative and analytical thinking.

The authors devised two learning activities and an interpretive method for studying their value. The activities were an individual essay connecting themes in song lyrics to marketing, and a group photography project. These were applied, within a broader, critical approach, in postgraduate modules on sustainability, ethics and critical marketing. Data collection comprised diaries kept by the teachers, open-ended feedback from students and students’ assignments.

Students showed high levels of engagement, reflexivity and depth of thought, in felt experiences of learning. Their ability to make connections not explicitly in the materials, and requiring imaginative jumps, was notable. Several reported lasting changes to their behaviour. Some found the tasks initially intimidating or, once they were more engaged, stressful or saddening.

This adds to scholarship on management education by showing the usefulness of an arts-based approach towards a transformative agenda.

It offers a template of how to draw from the arts to strengthen critical engagement upon which marketing teachers can build. It also contains practical advice on the challenges and benefits of doing so.

The authors provide evidence that this approach can enhance sensitivity and reflexivity in students, potentially producing more ethical and sustainable decisions in future.

The pedagogical interventions are novel and of value to lecturers seeking to enhance critical engagement with theory. An empirical study of an attempt to integrate arts into teaching marketing represents a promising direction, given the discipline’s creative nature.