Search results

Audit and feedback (A&F) often underlie implementation projects, described as a circular process; i.e. an A&F cycle. They are widely used, but effect varies with no apparent explanation. We need to understand how A&F work in real-life situations. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to describe and explore mental healthcare full A&F cycle experiences.

This is a naturalistic qualitative study that uses four focus groups and qualitative content analysis.

Staff accepted the initial A&F stages, perceiving it to enhance awareness and reassure them about good practice. They were willing to participate in the full cycle and implement changes, but experienced poor follow-up and prioritization, not giving them a chance to own to the process. An important finding is the need for an A&F cycle facilitator.

Research teams cannot be expected to be involved in implementing clinical care. Guidelines will keep being produced to improve service quality and will be expected to be practiced. This study gives insights into planning and tailoring A&F cycles.

Tools to ease implementation are not enough, and the key seems to lie with facilitating a process using A&F. This study underscores leadership, designated responsibility and facilitation throughout a full audit cycle.

In North America, delegated practice “medical direction” models are often used as a proxy for clinical quality and safety in paramedic services. Other developed countries favor a combination of professional regulatory boards and clinical governance frameworks that feature paramedics taking lead clinician roles. The purpose of this paper is to bring together the evidence for medical direction and clinical governance in paramedic services through the prism of paramedic self-regulation.

This narrative synthesis critically examines the long-established North American Emergency Medical Services medical direction model and makes some comparisons with the UK inspired clinical governance approaches that are used to monitor and manage the quality and safety in several other Anglo-American paramedic services. The databases searched were CINAHL and Medline, with Google Scholar used to capture further publications.

Synthesis of the peer-reviewed literature found little high quality evidence supporting the effectiveness of medical direction. The literature on clinical governance within paramedic services described a systems approach with shared responsibility for quality and safety. Contemporary paramedic clinical leadership papers in developed countries focus on paramedic professionalization and the self-regulation of paramedics.

The lack of strong evidence supporting medical direction of the paramedic profession in developed countries challenges the North American model of paramedics practicing as a companion profession to medicine under delegated practice model. This model is inconsistent with the international vision of paramedicine as an autonomous, self-regulated health profession.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss three potential contributions from implementation science that can help clinicians and researchers to design and evaluate more effective integrated care programmes for older people with frailty.

This viewpoint paper focuses on three contributions: stakeholder engagement, using implementation science frameworks, and assessment of implementation strategies and outcomes.

Stakeholder engagement enhances the acceptability of interventions to recipients and providers and improves reach and sustainability. Implementation science frameworks assess provider, recipient and wider context factors enabling and hindering implementation, and guide selection and tailoring of appropriate implementation strategies. The assessment of implementation strategies and outcomes enables the evaluation of the effectiveness and implementation of integrated care programmes for this population.

Implementation science provides a systematic way to think about why integrated care programmes for older people with frailty are not implemented successfully. The field has an evidence base, including how to tailor implementation science strategies to the local setting, and assess implementation outcomes to provide clinicians and researchers with an understanding of how their programme is working. The authors draw out implications for policy, practice and future research.

Different models to deliver integrated care to support older people with frailty exist, but it is not known which is most effective, for which individuals and in which clinical or psychosocial circumstances. Implementation science can play a valuable role in designing and evaluating more effective integrated care programmes for this population.

Environmental social work (ESW) is an approach and a perspective in social work focusing on ecological and environmental sustainability and justice within the context of sustainable development (SD). This study aims to analyse students’ reflective tasks on challenges for ESW education and practice from a critical theory perspective. The purpose of this study is to discuss the implications of the findings for accelerating the implementation of SD in social work curricula.

The research participants comprised 49 master level students from four different cohorts studying the course “Social Work and Sustainable Development” at the University of Gävle, Sweden. The sample comprised only those students who had completed at least one of the three non-mandatory reflective tasks that were set within the course. The reflective tasks of the research participants were gathered as data for this study. A qualitative methodological approach with the help of ATLAS-ti V8.4 was used to analyse the gathered data.

This study discusses three primary results, which are categorised as “Being Boxed”, “Safe and Saviour Sweden” and “Politics and Power”. Based on the results, this study argues for a transformative and emancipatory pedagogy (TEP) in the teaching and learning of ESW to accelerate the implementation of holistic SD within the social work curriculum.

This study is mainly based on the analysis of “problematic” discourses of some of the students. The majority of the students and their respective discourses are not considered. Moreover, it would have been interesting, and probably enlightening to explore the background of the students (such as gender, ethnicity and religion) and any concomitant beliefs or prejudices (whether consciously held or otherwise) that would need to be addressed for an effective social work outcome. For ethical reasons, the background of the students was not recorded and analysed in this study.

Based on the results, this study argues for TEP in catalysing environmentalism within the social work curricula.

Social workers have a political mandate from their professional ethics to work for the protection of the planet and for the well-being of all – including non-humans. This study therefore argues for ESW education within social work curricula in promoting SD through social work practice.

Within the context of SD, there is a global call for social work education to shift from an anthropocentric to an eco-centric paradigm. However, ESW education is still in its infancy stage and very few universities are focusing in this particular area. This study therefore brings an important and well-needed layer of empirical evidence in considering the implications for catalysing environmentalism within the social work curricula.

The lack of critical thinking in new graduates has been a concern to the nursing profession. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an innovative, evidence-based skills fair intervention on nursing students' achievements and perceptions of critical thinking skills development.

The explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was employed for this study.

The findings indicated participants perceived the intervention as a strategy for developing critical thinking.

The study provides educators helpful information in planning their own teaching practice in educating students.

As one ages, the risk of experiencing a fall increases and poses a number of serious consequences; 30 per cent of individuals over 65 years of age fall each year. Evidence-based falls prevention programmes demonstrate efficacy in reducing the rate and risk of falls among older adults, but their use in Irish occupational therapy practice is unknown. This study aims to investigate the implementation of falls prevention programmes by occupational therapists working with older adults in Ireland.

A cross-sectional survey was used to gather data on the use of falls prevention programmes among occupational therapists working with older adults in any clinical setting across Ireland. Purposeful, convenience and snowball sampling methods were used. The Association of Occupational Therapists of Ireland acted as a gatekeeper. Descriptive statistics and summative content analysis were used to analyse quantitative and qualitative data, respectively.

In all, 85 survey responses were analysed. Over 85 per cent of respondents reported “Never” using any of the evidence-based falls prevention programmes. The “OTAGO” Exercise Programme was the most “Frequently” used programme (9.5 per cent, n = 7); 29 respondents reported using “in-department” developed falls prevention programmes and 14 provided additional comments regarding current falls prevention practices in Ireland.

In the absence of Irish data on the subject, this study provides a benchmark to describe the use of evidence-based falls programmes by Irish occupational therapists with older adults.

Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and stakeholder theory, the model proposes that responsible leadership (RL) is mediated by affective commitment (AC) on both outcome variables (organizational citizenship behavior [OCB] and patient satisfaction [PS]) while distributive justice (DJ) moderates the relationship among RL, OCB and PS through the mediator of AC.

Overall, data collected from 275 employees and patients in India’s healthcare sector support this model both in online and offline mode. SPSS 25, AMOS 22 and PROCESS macro were used to analyze the data.

The influence of RL, OCB and PS was seen insignificant in the Indian healthcare sector. This study examines the role of AC as a mediator which does not affect extra-role behavior and PS. The findings also show that the moderation-mediation effect of DJ through AC strengthened the link between RL and OCB, but not PS. Commitment does not affect extra-role behavior and PS.

Until now, there has been no research in the Indian context that has tested the effect of RL on extra-role behaviors and PS, as mediated by AC, according to researchers’ knowledge. Since RL and outcome variables are related through AC, the current study aims to understand how DJ acts as a moderator to that relationship.