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For any improvement tool to be successfully integrated into an organizations’ quality improvement or risk management programme, it needs to be relatively easy-to-use and proven to provide benefits to the customer and organization. Many healthcare organizations are facing fiscal constraints and increasing complexity of tests, putting strains on resources, particularly for those on “the shop floor” who are “hands on” in the design, delivery and improvement of products or services. Within a laboratory setting, there is often limited time for formal extensive process reviews; with the pressure to meet “turn-around times” for often “clinically urgent” results. Preventative and corrective actions are often identified through audits or root-cause analysis in some cases after an event has occurred. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Failure modes effect analysis (FMEA) is a risk management tool, used to identify prospective failures within processes or products, before they occur. Within laboratory healthcare, risk management for prevention of failure (particularly an inaccurate result) is imperative, and underpins the design of all steps of sample handling. FMEA was used to review a laboratory process for a “gene mutation test” initially considered to have few opportunities for improvement. Despite this perception, a previous review of the process, and the time restrictions for review, new improvements were identified with implications to patient management.

This study shows that FMEA can yield benefits, for prospective risk management and general process improvement, within a laboratory setting where time and team input is restricted, and within a process that was considered to have few “problems”.

The study was undertaken in a large metropolitan public health system laboratory – one of the largest in the country. This laboratory is a significant contributor to the health outcomes of patients in the local region, and through its contribution to national laboratory testing and reporting. This was the first use of FMEA in this laboratory setting.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to present data regarding the effects of unrealistic expectations and external constraints – such as work structure and socialization – on parents’ construction of work and family roles during their early years of parenting.

Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on Bowen's family systems theory and involves a two-stage panel study. Thirty-six expectant parents were surveyed and interviewed. Five years later, 28 of these parents were studied a second time.

Findings – This study reveals poignant areas where parents have unrealistic expectations that require reconstruction of their roles. These areas include work changes, domestic responsibilities, leisure time, and parental conflict. Parents who worked as a team, rather than in opposition, were most successful in rebalancing their separateness/belonging needs.

Research limitations/implications – The small, nonrandom sample suggests caution in generalizing the findings. The value of the sample lies in that the study reveals viewpoints that can go undetected and unreported in large, randomized samples.

Practical implications – Study results should help family members, and professionals who work with families, to better deal with the often competing challenges of employment and family demands and, in turn, improve well-being for children, parents, and families.

Social implications – This study's findings provide a basis for assessing, improving, and developing policies for parents.

Originality/value – Both data sets are original. The results from this study inform our understandings about expectations in the transition to parenthood.

To explore the value in reminiscing about past festivals as a potential way of improving wellbeing in socially isolated times.

The paper uses previous research on reminiscence, nostalgia and wellbeing to underpin the analysis of self-recorded memory narratives. These were gathered from 13 pairs of festivalgoers during Covid-19 restrictions and included gathering their individual memories and their reminiscences together. The participant pairs were a mix of friends, family and couples who had visited festivals in the UK, Finland and Denmark.

Four key areas that emerged through the analysis were the emotions of nostalgia and anticipation, and the processes of reliving emotions and bonding through memories.

Future studies could take a longitudinal approach to see how memory sharing evolves and the impact of this on wellbeing. The authors also recommend undertaking similar studies in other cultural settings.

This study findings have implications for both post-festival marketing and for the further development of reminiscence therapy interventions.

The method provides a window into memory sharing that has been little used in previous studies. The narratives confirm the value in sharing memories and the positive impact this has on wellbeing. They also illustrate that this happens through positive forms of nostalgia that centre on gratitude and lead to hope and optimism. Anticipation, not emphasised in other studies, was also found to be important in wellbeing and was triggered through looking back at happier times.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how to examine the effectiveness of a pilot summer bridge program for elementary algebra using propensity scores. Typically, selection into treatment programs, such as summer bridge programs, is based on self-selection. Self-selection makes it very difficult to estimate the true treatment effect because the selection process itself often introduces a source of bias.

By using propensity scores, the authors can match students who participated in the summer bridge program with equivalent students who did not participate in the summer bridge program. By matching students in the treatment group to equivalent students who do not participate in the treatment, the authors can obtain an unbiased estimate of the treatment effect. The authors also describe a method to conduct a sensitivity analysis to estimate the amount of hidden bias generated from unobserved factors that would be needed to alter the inferences made from a propensity score matching analysis.

Findings suggest there is no significant difference in the pass rates of the subsequent intermediate algebra course for students who participated in the summer bridge program when compared to matched students who did not participate in the summer bridge program. Thus, students who participate in the summer bridge program fared no better or worse when compared to similar students who do not participate in the program. These findings also appear to be robust to hidden bias.

This study describes a unique way to estimate the causal effect of participating in a treatment program when there is self-selection into the treatment program.