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This study aims to examine the way in which elderly people, men and women, with a terminal illness use language to construct a narrative about their “living-with-dying” experience.

This investigation is a secondary analysis based on a corpus of health and illness narratives collected by the Health Experiences Research Group at the University of Oxford and published by the DIPEx charity (available at: http://healthtalk.org/home).

This study shows that there are qualitative differences in the way in which not only elderly people but also men and women report their experience with terminal illness and their relation to death.

Understanding the different perspectives from which elderly people narrate their experiences of how they live while dying from terminal illness can help health professionals to develop more effective all-inclusive health policies and practices in end-of-life care.

This study aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of adolescent’s experiences of individual school social work counselling in Swedish elementary schools.

The study encompasses interviews with 16 adolescents about their experiences of individual counselling with school social workers (SSWs). The data was analysed using conventional content analysis.

The main result was the adolescents’ desire “to navigate to shore” to speak freely about their whole lives with a professional SSW and find a “ safe haven,” […] where a trusting professional cared for and comforted them in counselling. The counselling contact contributed to increased knowledge about oneself. The results reveal the importance of the SSWs paying attention and listening to the adolescents’ narratives. The creation of a coherent life narrative enables to finally end counselling and “Cast off.”

The results highlight the importance of Swedish SSWs focusing on individual counselling sessions with adolescents to provide a setting for growth.

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.

Stories of employability are told in employment and educational settings, notably the selection interviews. A popular training approach guiding higher education students to construct employability stories has been the past-behaviour storytelling method. However, insufficient research exists regarding the method's effectiveness and optimisation. This study examines whether the method (1) increases the quantity and quality of interview narratives in story forms and (2) can be enhanced by image stimuli.

In a double-blind randomised control trial with repeated measures, participants submitted four weekly interview narratives. After receiving past-behaviour serious storytelling training in Week 3, they were randomly allocated to an exposure group using images and a control group using keywords as a placebo to continue producing interview narratives. The interview narratives were assessed based on the number of stories and quality ratings of narrative conformity, relevance and conciseness. Results before and after the training, and with and without the image stimuli, were analysed.

Training increased the number of stories. Training and repeated practice also increased narrative quality ratings. However, the image-based intervention was the strongest predictor of improved quality ratings (effect size 2.47 points on the observed scale of 0–10, p < 0.01, 95% CI [1.46, 3.47]).

A pre-existing ability to tell employability stories cannot be assumed. Training is necessary, and intervention is required for enhancement. Multi-sensory narrative interventions may be considered.

This study is the first known double-blind randomised control trial with repeated measures evaluating if storytelling training and image stimuli improve interview narratives.

This chapter examines how established media – that is, print, TV and radio sources which pre-existed the popularisation of social media – use social media to disseminate content. Specifically it examines the manner in which three UK media sources – BBC News, The Guardian and the Daily Mail – used Twitter during the 2014–2015 Ebola crisis. It asks five key questions concerning: the balance between factual reporting and opinion or comment; the degree to which it shifted attention to specific events within the context of the outbreak; whether the dialogical potential of social media was exploited; the degree to which social media acted as a signpost to more detailed information elsewhere, or existed as independent content; and the degree of media reflexivity. It concludes that established media used this new technology within their existing paradigms for reporting rather than exploiting some of its more innovative characteristics.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) goal to end the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic as a public health threat by 2030 emphasises the importance of leaving no one behind. To determine progress towards the elimination goal in Ghana, an in-depth understanding of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) care from the perspective of vulnerable populations such as persons living with HIV in incarceration is necessary. This study aims to explore the experiences of incarcerated individuals living with HIV (ILHIV) and on antiretroviral therapy (ART) in selected Ghanaian prisons to help inform policy.

The study adopted a qualitative approach involving in-depth interviews with 16 purposively selected ILHIV on ART from purposively selected prisons. Interviews were conducted between October and December 2022. Thematic analysis was performed using the ATLAS.Ti software.

Three themes were generated from the analysis: waking up to a positive HIV status; living with HIV a day at a time; and being my brother’s keeper: preventing HIV transmission. All participants underwent HIV screening at the various prisons. ILHIV also had access to ART although those on remand had challenges with refills. Stigma perpetuated by incarcerated individuals against those with HIV existed, and experiences of inadequate nutrition among incarcerated individuals on ART were reported. Opportunities to improve the experiences of the ILHIV are required to improve care and reduce morbidity and mortality.

Through first-hand experiences from ILHIV in prisons, this study provides the perception of incarcerated individuals on HIV care in prisons. The insights gained from this study can contribute to the development of targeted interventions and strategies to improve HIV care and support for incarcerated individuals.

Considering the central role of narratives in the articulation of the self, processing experiences and conveying meaning, many scholars in marketing and consumer behaviours have tried to study the subject. This pool of multi-disciplinary studies has yielded fragmented literature resulting in ambiguity. Therefore there is a need for an article, which studies the extant literature comprehensively. Hence, this paper aims to pursue two objectives, to summarize prominent research studies in consumption narratives and to suggest directions for future research.

The paper reviews 25 key studies on consumption narratives and highlights their most important contributions, methods and findings.

As in consumer narrative research, the concept almost always has been borrowed from different domains, the findings suggest a concise definition to fill this gap. Also, to enrich the findings, three-level of consumption narratives are discussed.

This paper serves as a basis to comprehend the essence of consumption narratives in the consumption context, to understand the research gaps and provides directions for future research.

Considerando el papel central de las narrativas en la formulación de uno mismo, el procesamiento de las experiencias y la transmisión de significados, muchos académicos en marketing y comportamiento del consumidor han tratado de estudiar este tópico. Este conjunto de estudios de carácter multidisciplinar ha dado lugar a una literatura muy fragmentada y ambigua. Por tanto, se hace necesario un trabajo de investigación que estudie de menara exhaustiva la extensa literatura existente. En definitiva, este artículo persigue dos objetivos, resumir las investigaciones más destacadas sobre narrativas de consumo existentes en la literatura y sugerir orientaciones para futuras investigaciones.

Este artículo revisa 25 estudios clave sobre narrativas de consumo y resalta sus contribuciones, métodos y hallazgos más relevantes.

Teniendo en cuenta que en la investigación sobre narrativas de consumo el concepto ha sido casi siempre tomado de diferentes ámbitos, los hallazgos sugieren una delimitación conceptual más concisa para cubrir este vacío. Asimismo, para enriquecer los resultados se analizan tres niveles de narrativas de consumo.

Este artículo sirve de base para comprender la esencia de las narrativas de consumo en el contexto del consumo, entender las brechas de investigación que aún existen en este ámbito y proporcionar guías para futuras investigaciones.

考虑到叙事在自我表达、处理体验感受和传达意义方面的中心作用, 许多营销学者和消费者行为学者都试图对这一主题进行研究。由于研究成果横跨多个学科, 而导致文献支离破碎, 造成了歧义。因此, 有必要对现存文献进行综合研究。因此, 本文的研究目标有二, 一是总结当前消费叙事研究的主要成果, 二是为今后的研究指明方向。

本文回顾了关于消费叙事的25个主要研究, 并强调了它们最重要的贡献、方法和发现。

由于之前的消费者叙事研究中, 消费者叙事的概念几乎总是从不同的领域借用, 研究结果提出了一个简明的定义来填补这一空白。此外, 为了丰富研究结果, 本文还讨论了三个层次的消费叙事。

本文作为理解消费语境中消费叙事本质的基础, 来理解研究的差距, 为今后的研究指明方向。

Mental well-being is associated with positive outcomes throughout the life course. This study aims to examine interventions delivered by allied health professionals (AHPs) to alleviate community stressors adversely impacting public mental health and well-being.

Review inclusion criteria comprised experimental and qualitative process evaluations of public mental health interventions delivered by AHPs. Electronic searches in Cinahl, Embase, Medline, PsycINFO and the Cochrane Library, were combined with grey literature searches of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence public health guidance. A narrative synthesis and the Effective Public Health Practice Project appraisal tool were used to evaluate the evidence.

A total of 45-articles were included in the review describing AHP-delivered interventions addressing social disadvantage, trauma, bullying, loneliness, work-related stress, transitional stress, intersectionality, pain and bereavement. No articles were identified evaluating interventions delivered by operating department practitioners or orthoptists. A conceptual map was developed summarising the stressors, and a typology of public mental health interventions defined including: place-based interventions, discrete/one-off interventions, multi-component lifestyle and social connector interventions and interventions targeting groups at risk of mental health conditions.

Many mental health conditions begin in childhood, and a strength of the review is the life course perspective. A further strength is compiling a compendium of public mental health outcome measures used by AHPs to inform future research. The authors excluded many articles focussed on clinical interventions/populations, which did not meet review inclusion criteria. While playing a key role in delivering public mental health interventions, clinical psychologists are not defined as AHPs and were excluded from the review, and this may be construed a limitation. Given heterogeneity of study designs and interventions evaluated numerical analyses of pooled findings was not appropriate.

The review highlights the breadth of community stressors on which AHPs can intervene and contribute in public mental health contexts, stressors which correspond to those identified in UK Government guidance as currently important and relevant to address. The findings can inform developing community public mental health pathways that align with the UK National Health Service (NHS) Long Term Plan, on prevention and early intervention to protect community mental health and well-being. Further can inform the NHS strategic direction for AHPs including informing ways of increasing utilisation of core AHP skills to optimise contributions in public mental health agendas.

It is surprising there were not more AHP delivered evaluations of interventions for other stressors important to address in public mental health settings, for example gambling, domestic violence or that used digital technology, and these are areas for future research. Future research should identify the most active/effective dimensions of multi-component interventions which could be informed by frameworks to guide complex intervention development. The relative paucity of research identified, highlights the predominant focus of research to date on interventions for clinical mental health conditions and populations. The lack of preventative approaches is evident, and an important area for future research to align with UK health and social care priorities.

The review highlights AHP-delivered interventions impacting diverse community stressors across the life course. The findings can inform developing public mental health pathways aligned with government health service priorities to protect mental health and well-being, prioritise prevention and early intervention and increase utilisation of AHP skills across public mental health settings.