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The introduction of clinical audit systems is likely to provoke considerable debate in health services, located as they are at the crucial interface between clinicians and managers. The development phase of a long‐term regional project to introduce audit systems is described. The factors that facilitated the project are identified, as are the problems, some of which remain unresolved.

The way quality assurance has developed in the UK over the past three years is described. The lack of a national programme has meant that the onus has been on health districts. They have, however, been aided in their work in five ways: commitment from national and regional bodies, national quality assurance programmes with specific remits, training support for personnel, practical advice and the results of research projects. Not surprisingly, there has been considerable diversity in the approaches districts have adopted and the progress they have made.

Proposed changes in medical staffing levels and pressure for reduced hours of work by junior doctors have focused attention on out‐of‐hours work by junior doctors in the United Kingdom. Junior doctors are on average on duty for over 90 hours per week, and preregistration house officers typically spend almost 70 hours per week actually working. There has been a decline in contracted hours for junior doctors during the 1980s, but an increase in the number of hours on duty and, in the cases of paediatrics and general surgery, an increase in the number of hours worked. Current policy is for expansion in consultant numbers and reduction in junior staff. Critics argue that the planned expansion of consultant posts is inadequate and the absence of registrars in some specialties is dangerous. Previous attempts to reduce the number of hours on duty had little success: suggested solutions have not been implemented widely. One possible solution may be reducing and reallocating out‐of‐hours work. It has been suggested that many of the current tasks undertaken by junior hospital doctors could be performed by non‐medical staff. A thorough examination of the tasks actually undertaken by junior hospital doctors outside normal working hours is required.

Continuing his theme that the analytical approach should be the basis of teaching craft science, our correspondent illustrates its application to teaching a simple practical task, then to teaching the use of a tool. In both cases the contrast with teaching by rote is brought out

As every day work is central to people's lives and events serve as significant contextual factors, examining what impact the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic restrictions had on knowledge workers warrants further investigation. The author's research question investigated how employees in the London Insurance Market had made sense of their work identities during a period of mandated remote work and isolation from co-workers, leaders and others, amidst a turbulent environment. To address this enquiry, this research drew on Goffman's institutional, dramaturgical and stigma theories.

Data used in this research are from an ongoing PhD study of how individuals conceive, construct and conduct their careers in this field. As individuals and their social worlds are interwoven, a qualitative methodological approach was employed in this research.

Participants were thrusted into a position where they had no prior knowledge what identity they should adopt in a situation which had totalising characteristics. The loss of clear boundaries between work and home setting caused a deterioration of participants' work identities whilst physical separation from their institutions and co-workers posed a risk of disconnecting their past work identities from the present. Moreover, participants' experiences of deterioration and disconnection were intertwined with their demographic and occupational identities.

This study aligns with existing research on identity work, emphasising the crucial role of social interaction in the formation of work identities. However, it also highlights that the establishment and sustenance of work identities is also reliant on individuals having separate frontstage and backstage settings to understand and interpret their conduct and those of their significant others.

Reports exploratory research into the reasons why many junior doctors are critical of medical audit; the extent to which consultants are aware of juniors′ views; and what might be done to make audit more acceptable to juniors – using structured interviews amongst staff (28 consultants and 34 juniors) in four district general hospitals in South‐East England. Junior doctors were critical of audit for five main reasons: the additional work involved; the audit cycle being longer than their job contracts; the topics reflecting their consultants′ interests and not theirs; doubt about the effectiveness of audit; and audit meetings being boring, intimidating and even incriminatory. Some consultants were well aware of these problems, but others were not. To increase the support of juniors, audit needs to: involve them more and be more participatory; be organized better; be less of a trial and more supportive; recognize the extra demands on juniors′ time. Offers suggestions for the successful implementation of medical audit.

A growing stream of consumer research has examined the intersection of family dynamics, consumption practices and the marketplace. The purpose of this paper is to make sense of the complex nature of family for senior families (adult children and their elderly parents) who employ the use of elder care services and facilities.

This research analyses data gathered from in-depth interviews with adult siblings and their elderly parents through the lens of assemblage theory.

This paper advances a conceptulisation of the family as an evolving assemblage of components, including individual members; material possessions and home(s); shared values, goals, memories and practices; prominent familial attributes of love and care; and marketplace resources. Three features of the assemblage come to the fore in senior families: the fluid meaning of independence for the elderly parent, the evolution of shared family practices and the trajectory of the assemblage that is a function of its history and future.

This research focuses on a stage of family life that has been under-theorised; applies assemblage theory to the family collective, demonstrating that a family can be conceptualised as an ever-evolving assemblage of human and non-human components, and this is a useful lens for understanding how senior families “do” family; and argues for a broader notion of family – one that is not household-centric or focused on families with young children, that encompasses members and materiality and that foregrounds the dynamic, evolving nature of family life.

Legislators continue to label Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other race-based concepts as divisive. Nevertheless, CRT, at its core, is committed to radical transformation and addressing issues of race and racism to understand how People of Color are oppressed. Through rhetoric and legislative bans, this current anti-CRT movement uses race-neutral policies and practices to limit and eliminate CRT scholars, especially faculty members, from teaching and researching critical pedagogies and other race-based topics.

Through semi-structured interviews using Critical Race Methodology (CRM), the authors sought to understand how 40 faculty members challenged the dominant narratives presented by administrators through their responses to CRT bans. Additionally, this work aimed to examine how administrators’ responses complicate how faculty make sense of CRT bans.

Findings describe three major themes: (1) how administrators failed to respond to CRT bans, which to faculty indicated their desire to present a neutral stance as the middle ground between faculty and legislators; (2) the type of rhetoric administrators engaged in exemplified authoritarian approaches that upheld status quo narratives about diversity, exposing their inability to stand against oppressive dominant narratives; and (3) institutional leaders’ refusal to address the true threats that faculty members faced reinforced the racialized harm that individuals engaging in CRT work must navigate individually.

This study is one of the few that provide empirical data on this current anti-CRT movement, including problematizing the CRT bans, and how it affects campus constituents such as faculty members.