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This paper aims to evaluate service user (SU) and clinician acceptability of video care, including future preferences to inform mental health practice during COVID-19, and beyond.

Structured questionnaires were co-developed with SUs and clinicians. The SU online experience questionnaire was built into video consultations (VCs) via the Attend Anywhere platform, completed between July 2020 and March 2021. A Trust-wide clinician experience survey was conducted between July and October 2020. Chi-squared test was performed for any differences in clinician VC rating by mental health difficulties, with the content analysis used for free-text data.

Of 1,275 SUs completing the questionnaire following VC, most felt supported (93.4%), and their needs were met (90%). For future appointments, 51.8% of SUs preferred video, followed by face-to-face (33%), with COVID-related and practical reasons given. Of 249 clinicians, 161 (64.7%) had used VCs. Most felt the therapeutic relationship (76.4%) and privacy (78.7%) were maintained. Clinicians felt confident about clinical assessment and management using video. However, they were less confident in assessing psychotic symptoms and initiating psychotropic medications. There were no significant differences in clinician VC rating by mental health difficulties. For future, more SUs preferred using video, with a quarter providing practical reasons.

The study provides a real-world example of video care implementation. In addition to highlighting clinician needs, support at the wider system/policy level, with a focus on addressing inequalities, can inform mental health care beyond COVID-19.

This paper aims to propose a multi-level integrative research framework anchored in an institutional theory that can successfully capture the multitude of factors affecting the expression of female entrepreneurship in context. Although female entrepreneurship is known to contribute to economic growth and vitality, and to enhance the diversity of employment in any economic system, there is very little research pertaining to female entrepreneurship in the Middle East. The authors use this framework to provide insights into multi-level factors enabling and constraining the experience of female entrepreneurship in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and advance knowledge of female entrepreneurship in a particular Middle Eastern context as well as cross-nationally.

Analytical framework and qualitative research methodology consisting of focus group meetings and interviews with 15 female entrepreneurs and five male partners in the UAE.

Our findings aptly highlight the salience of a complex set of entangled factors lying at multiple levels of analysis in shaping female entrepreneurship in the UAE. Our findings also accentuate the importance of the institutional and social contexts in shaping the situational opportunities and constraints that affect female entrepreneurship and its complex expressions in a particular society. Although our findings document a positive tide of change in favor of female entrepreneurship, they also reveal the persistence of various traces of stereotypes and patriarchy that continue to constrain the free expressions of female entrepreneurship in the UAE.

This study contributes empirically by conveying the lived experiences of a sample of women entrepreneurs in the UAE, but the results cannot be generalized given the limited size of the sample investigated. Conceptually, the analytical framework proposed in this paper represents a simplified heuristic tool rather than an explanatory model of the complex dynamics and interplays between different levels of analysis and institutional pressures when examining female entrepreneurship.

The value added of this research is to present original insights into female entrepreneurship from a vibrant Middle Eastern context, namely, the UAE, a country that has attracted and witnessed increasing attention in recent years in the context of globalization. In view of the Western-centric nature of academic publication on the topic, there is a real need for fresh theoretical and empirical insights stemming from an Arab-Middle Eastern context to advance knowledge and scholarship in this area.