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Health and social care services should demonstrate the quality of their interventions for commissioners, patients and carers, plus it is a requirement for occupational therapists to measure and record outcomes. Use of the “Therapy Outcome Measure” (TOMs) standardised tool was implemented by an occupational therapy adult social care service to demonstrate outcomes from April 2020, following integration to a community NHS Trust.

The aim was to demonstrate occupational therapy outcomes in adult social care through a local audit of the TOMs. The objective was to determine if clients improved following occupational therapy intervention in the four domains of impairment, activity, participation and wellbeing/carer wellbeing. 70 cases were purposively sampled over a 2-month timeframe, extracting data from the local electronic recording system.

Occupational therapy in adult social care clearly makes an impact with their client group and carers. Evidence from the dataset demonstrates clinically significant change, as 93% of clients seen by adult social care occupational therapy staff showed an improvement in at least one TOMs domain during their whole episode of care. 79% of activity scores, 20% of participation scores and 50% of wellbeing scores improved following intervention. 79% of carer wellbeing scores improved following occupational therapy.

The audit did not collect data on uptake from the separate teams (equipment, housing, STAR and adult social care work) in occupational therapy adult social care. Potential sampling bias occurred as cases with completed scores only were purposively sampled. Sampling was not random which prevented data gathering on uptake of TOMs across the separate teams. Additionally, the audit results can only be applied to the setting from which the data was collected, so has limited external validity.

These novel findings illustrate the valuable and unique impact of occupational therapy in this adult social care setting. The integration of adult social care into an NHS Community Trust has supported the service to measure outcomes, by utilising the same standardised tool in use by allied health professions across the Trust.

This study aims to explore which outcome measures are used by occupational therapy staff in adult social care settings in the UK, and the factors affecting use of outcome measures.

A quantitative descriptive research design was used, using a cross-sectional study to explore occupational therapy staff views on the use of outcome measures. A 38-question survey was developed on Microsoft Forms. Recruitment occurred online over a three-week period in 2021 via the social media platform “Twitter”. Results were analysed using Excel using descriptive statistics and qualitative results used thematic analysis.

Participants (n = 20) used a range of outcome measures (13) in adult social care settings in the previous 12 months. Standardised measures were used by half the sample in the previous 12 months. The Therapy Outcome Measure and Barthel Index were in most use. The breadth of adult social care practice and practical factors such as caseload and lack of a meaningful tool were found to be barriers to outcome measure use. Facilitators included service improvement, accountability, use of audit and professional occupational therapy leadership.

The overall use of outcome measures can be considered low in this setting, with manager support seen to be key to the use of outcome measures. Further research is needed to investigate nationwide use.

Training, time and manager support are key to use of standardised tests and outcome measures in the adult social care settings. The use of occupational performance measures should be considered to demonstrate unique professional impact.

This contemporary study reveals use of outcome measures within occupational therapy adult social care services in the UK, which is an under researched and under published area.

It is conceivable that cannabis cultivators who grow for medical purposes aim to improve the therapeutic index of their cannabis by attempting to produce particular concentrations of CBD and/or THC. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether small-scale medical cannabis growers differ from those growing for recreational reasons in terms of self-assessed concentrations of THC and CBD in the cannabis they grow.

Data collection was conducted online from a convenience sample of 268 cannabis growers visiting a popular Israeli cannabis internet forum. χ² and Kruskal–Wallis H were used to test bivariate associations between medical and recreational cannabis cultivators in terms of self-assessed cannabinoid concentrations.

In total, 40 percent of cannabis growers reported that they grow for medical purposes. Medical cannabis growers were more likely to report that they thought they knew the cannabinoid concentrations of the cannabis they grew and they reported higher self-assessed concentrations of THC, but not CBD.

Compared to recreational growers, medical cannabis growers are more likely to strive to be informed in terms of the content of their cannabis. Medical growers may also be attempting to grow more potent THC but not CBD cannabis.

This research examines how knowledge and information are managed within two care networks. We develop a conceptual framework drawing on the notion of brokering and the 3T framework, which is used to describe the relative complexity of boundaries (referred to in the framework as syntactic, semantic and pragmatic) as well as capabilities and processes required to exchange information within the network. Previous research on brokering has focused on healthcare managers and professionals, but this research extends to patients and caregivers. Understanding knowledge exchange and brokering practices in healthcare is critical to the delivery of effective services.

For this case research, non-participant observation and experienced-based interviews were undertaken with healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers within two care networks.

The findings reveal brokering roles occupied by healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers support the transfer, translation and transformation of knowledge and information across functional and organisational boundaries. Enablers and disablers to brokering and the exchange of knowledge and information are also identified.

The study is limited to two care networks for long-term conditions within the UK. Further research opportunities exist to examine similar care networks that extend across professional and organisational boundaries.

This research informs healthcare professionals of the brokering capabilities that occur within networks and the enabling and disabling factors to managing knowledge across boundaries.

This paper provides a conceptual framework that categorises how increased levels of knowledge and information exchange and brokering practices are managed within care networks.

In light of the dramatic social transformations occurring in the nature of family and worker demands, nearly all employees today need to make decisions on how to manage work and family roles. Drawing on role theory, we provide a summary framework for understanding individual, family, and organizational influences on the self‐management of work and family roles. Work‐family role synthesis is defined as the strategies an individual uses to manage the enactment of work and caregiving roles. It involves decision‐making choices governing boundary management and role embracement of multiple roles. We present hypotheses and a research agenda for examining antecedents and consequences of employee strategies for managing work and family roles.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Development of high efficiency nanofibrous air filter membrane by electrospinning process, to address the air pollution (both the particulate matter and the gaseous components) problem, which has become a major environmental concern.

By exploiting the advantage of active sites on soy protein isolate (SPI), the very high surface area of micro-pore rich activated carbon (AC) and the biocompatibility and biodegradable nature of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). The authors have developed a SPI/AC/PVA hybrid membrane. Spun-bond nonwoven substrate was used as the support material to enhance the mechanical properties and also the filter handling properties. The properties of nanofibrous membrane including morphology, air permeability, filtration efficiency and formaldehyde absorption test were carried out as per standard test methods.

SPI-based membrane offers a great potential in air filtration/purification applications. Its potential to capture glancing pollutants at the molecular level is because of the presence of numerous functional groups on the soy protein surface, which enhances the adsorption of particulate matter and toxic gases, even bacteria and viruses to its surface.

The results are anticipated to provide a potential method to promote the development of a nanofibrous membrane, which can act as a high performance, dual function and eco-friendly air filter/purifier.

In this chapter, I examine how religion can serve as an ideology that has the capacity to bridge people of the same faith who hold divergent political stances. Building on Williams’ work (1996), I propose that religion operates as an ideology when it diagnoses the source of social conflicts, proposes solutions, and justifies action. Yet religious ideological appeals are not always effective at bridging political divides. Thus the key question of this study is: under what social conditions are religiously-based ideological appeals effective at winning people’s support for social and political movements? To address this, I examine the relationship of religious leaders to Latin American movements that aimed to nonviolently overthrow authoritarian states. In particular, I analyze the conditions that led some religious elites to become pro-revolution while others sided with the incumbent regime. Using comparative historical methods, I analyze the different political stances of the Catholic Church hierarchy in the 1970s–1980s in Chile (where the church opposed the dictatorship), Argentina (where the church was largely supportive of the regime), and El Salvador (where the church hierarchy was divided). I argue that ideological appeals for religious leaders’ support are most effective when the religious institution receives no financial or political benefits from the regime and when leaders have relational ties to the aggrieved. Two factors had mixed effects on the decision to remain loyal to the state or not; these include the presence of an armed radical flank, and the state’s use of indiscriminate repression.

This article, the first empirical study of its kind, presents findings from a larger qualitative study of principal mistreatment of teachers. A grounded theory method was used to study a sample of 50 US teachers who were subjected to long‐term mistreatment from school principals. The authors discuss descriptive, conceptual, and theoretical findings about principals’ actions that teachers define as mistreatment. In addition, the inductively derived model briefly looks at the harmful effects of principal mistreatment and abuse on teachers, psychologically/emotionally and physically/physiologically. Implications of study findings are discussed for administrator and teacher preparation, for school district offices, and for further research.

Employees often improve at work by learning from others who have been successful. They learn by hearing their stories. However, the number of stories, task type and context all affect learning. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the number of stories they hear, the type of task they are learning to perform and their performance in the task to date all affect performance improvement.

The authors examine how task complexity and recent performance relative to others influence the relationship between the number of success stories a person reads and their subsequent performance. The authors used a sample of order processing employees from a label manufacturing company to test our hypotheses.

The authors find that in complex tasks, subsequent performance is highest when people read a small number of stories, and lowest when people read no stories or too many stories. In simple tasks, the authors find that when people have average recent performance, more stories leads to lower performance, but when recent performance is high or low, more stories increases subsequent performance.

The authors move beyond research that shows that people do not learn as much from success as they could and that success primarily promotes reinforcement to examine contingencies that enhance or detract from learning from success stories. This adds nuance to existing theory.

This study suggests access to others’ success stories is an alternative that can provide employees with ideas for how to improve their own performance. But care and consideration must be taken to limit the number of success stories based on the complexity of the task.

There is little research on either the vicarious learning of simple tasks in organizations or on how employees learn from others’ success stories. This matters because vicarious learning can enable employees to avoid missteps and create opportunities that would likely not happen if they only learn from their own experiences.