Invisible labour: A qualitative exploration of the professional identity of interpreters working in UK maternity care settings.

This study explores the impact of English language proficiency on professional identity, operational skills, and gender dynamics among cadets at the Hellenic Police Officers School in Greece. It addresses three main research questions: 1) How does English proficiency influence cadets' professional identity? 2) What is the relationship between English proficiency and operational skills in international policing? 3) How does gender intersect with language proficiency in handling gender-sensitive cases, particularly femicide? Employing a mixed-methods approach, data were gathered from 102 cadets across various proficiency levels, complemented by qualitative insights from questionnaires, interviews, and reflective essays. The study identifies a strong correlation between advanced English proficiency and both professional confidence and operational effectiveness, underscoring the importance of language skills in international collaborations and gender-sensitive policing. Two case studies illustrate these findings: one highlights the role of language proficiency in international counter-terrorism collaboration, and the other emphasizes its significance in the gender-sensitive handling of femicide cases. These examples demonstrate the practical application of advanced English skills in critical law enforcement scenarios, reinforcing the need for tailored English as a Second Language (ESL) programs. Such programs, designed with attention to gender-specific learning styles and operational contexts, are crucial for preparing officers for effective cross-border collaboration and sensitive crime management. This research advocates for a learner-centered ESL curriculum development, aligning with societal needs and policy implications, and calls for further investigation in diverse settings. By emphasizing the intersection of language proficiency with professional and operational efficiency, this study contributes valuable insights to ESL education, sociolinguistics theory, and law enforcement training practices, highlighting the transformative potential of specialized language training in global law enforcement.

The angels and heroes of health care: Justified and appropriate, or harmful and destructive?

This study examines the Canadian Code of Ethics for Registered Nurses as a discursive mechanism for shaping nurses' professional identity using a Foucauldian lens. Nurses are considered essential in healthcare, yet the nursing profession has struggled to be recognized for its discipline-specific knowledge and expertise and, as such, has remained the subject of and subject to the dominant discourses within healthcare and society generally. Developing a professional identity in nursing begins after the necessary education and training are achieved and embodies the profession's history, values, code of ethics, and expectations of the profession that distinguish it from other professions. Since nurses' professional identity is shaped through discourse, it raises the question of whether there are spaces to reconceptualize nurses' subject position within health care. Since professional identity is considered the embodiment of knowledge and practice, the code of ethics bears examination both for its effect on nurses' professional identity and as a potential site from which to challenge hegemonic assumptions. This article discusses the concept of professional identity in nursing and its development through the discursive formations in the code of ethics. The sources of power/knowledge are examined as both mechanisms of control and as spaces for change.

The beneficial potential for music in hospital contexts is well established, with research showing that music can promote patient well-being and support recovery. However, less attention has been paid to the ways in which musicians’ practices and professional identities are informed by working in hospital settings. As arts-and-health approaches continue to proliferate, it is essential to recognize the values, emotional labor, and skills associated with these approaches through understanding the experiences of practitioners. As part of an international collaboration led by Hanze University in the Netherlands, the ProMiMiC project explores the professional development of musicians and nurses through person-centered music-making in hospital settings. The current study focused on five conservatoire-trained musicians’ delivery of personalized music-making via Zoom in a hospital maternity setting in London during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their experiences of adapting to the new context, and the impacts on their personal and professional development, were explored using reflective journals, group discussions, and semi-structured interviews. The data were interpreted using the theoretical lens of vocational habitus to examine the skills and dispositions required to be the right musician for this job. Qualitative synthesis revealed the musicians’ developing musical values as they adapted to the online maternity setting, highlighting the centrality of communicative and musical versatility as well as the ability to connect and empathize through music. The findings offer insights into possible ways of supporting emerging music practitioners in healthcare settings and emphasize the imperative for higher music education to prepare and train musicians for this type of work.

Professional Identity in Nursing: Adopting a Systems Approach Regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

This study investigated the effects of school climate and students' aesthetic experience on their professional identity and innovative behavior. A survey was conducted with 385 students from hospitality-related departments of colleges and universities in Hainan, China, and the data were analyzed using a hierarchical linear model (HLM). Using the criteria constituting the students' aesthetic experience scale proposed by Chang, it was found that teacher support can improve students' professional identity; school climate and students' understanding of beauty and full experience contribute to the development of students' innovative behavior; students' understanding of beauty and full experience have mediating effects between teacher support and professional cognition; students' understanding of beauty and full experience have mediating effects between student support and innovative behavior; student support positively moderates the relationships between full experience with professional cognition and students' appraisal of the hospitality industry; and teacher support positively moderates the relationship between students' full experience and professional emotion. Therefore, teacher support under school climate and students' understanding of beauty and full experience under aesthetic experience were the most important factors in enhancing hospitality department students' professional identity and innovative behavior.

This chapter discusses the main features of women's work at the middling and upper levels of society. At these higher levels, taxes and rates were paid, life was less desperate, and women's work involved less drudgery. The greater affluence of their families provided them with better education, giving them better training or more economic options. Although such women were more likely to develop a professional occupational identity than poorer women, the work of married women was often taken for granted as a component of their husband's employment. After looking at women's roles in running a household, the discussion considers women's professional and skilled work, female occupations in crafts and manufacture, and the work of aristocratic women.

The COVID‐19 pandemic affected all roles within healthcare but had a unique impact on the professional identity (PI) of nurses. This study assessed the PI of practicing nurses in a Midwestern US healthcare setting using a standardized tool and focus groups exploring the lived experience of practicing nurses’ PI formation and enactment during COVID‐19. The survey included 312 responses, and the focus groups included 36 participants. Overall, all domains of nurses’ PI were impacted by the COVID‐19 pandemic, regardless of role or years of experience. Phenomenological qualitative analysis revealed four themes: polarities in identity, wartime identity, relationships and identity, and flexibility and experience as resilience factors to identity. PI is linked to high quality care, wellness, and retention in the nursing profession, which benefits the individual nurse, patients and families, organizations, and communities. Leaders are urged to identify strategies to help practicing nurses reclaim and strengthen their PI moving forward from the pandemic. These strategies include reclaiming evidence‐based practice, engaging nurses in shared governance and practice improvement work, recognizing nurses for their contributions to patient care, and creating opportunities for human connections with other nursing professionals.

This case-based qualitative study explored the professional identity as experienced by health professionals working in an integrated maternal-neonatal ward when their practice changed from a “paternalistic” model, in which physicians and nurses were in charge, to a shared or “consumerist” model, to increase parent autonomy. We analyzed transcripts of focus group discussions and interviews with 60 health professionals on their experiences with empowering parents and described factors associated with themes of professional identity. The changes most affecting professional identity were the constant proximity of parents to their newborns and the single-family room design. These changes influenced three themes of professional identity: (1) connectedness and relationships (2) communication, and (3) competencies. A fourth theme, values, beliefs, and ethics, affected how the health professionals coped with the changes in the first three themes. When empowering parents of newborns in a hospital setting, health professionals experience beneficial as well as threatening shifts in their professional identities. Values, beliefs, and ethics associated with family integrated care helped health professionals to embrace their new roles, but other values, beliefs and ethics could create barriers. Continuous professional identity development in a patient-inclusive team is a topic for future research.

The study aimed at determining the current status of utilization of maternal care services among Barangay Health Stations in Impasugong, Bukidnon. The study utilized the random sampling technique in the selection of the respondents in this study. The multiple regression analysis revealed that there is a significant association between some of independent variables (preferred delivery attendant, complications experienced during childbirth and preferred place of delivery) and maternal health care services used in Impasugong. Further, the simple relationship between maternal health care utilization and its factors (social, economic and demographic) showed significant relationship of the use of prenatal care, place of delivery and assistance during delivery. Although delivery is mostly normal and some experienced complications during pregnancy, yet some suffered complications during childbirth. Most of the respondents utilized the barangay health facilities for prenatal but low in the utilization of Barangay Health Facilities during the stage of labor. The variables with significant relations are total family income, occupation, place of residence and civil status. That education was found to have an important impact on the use of maternal health services suggests that improving educational opportunity for women may have a large impact on improving utilization of such services. Women at higher parity levels were found to be less likely to have deliveries assisted by modern professionals implies that parity should be one of the criteria for targeting education campaigns in the benefits of safe motherhood programs. Highly recommended measures to improve services are: quality of health workers, development of basic health care facilities and building intervention programs such as better maternal health care, delivery by skilled birth attendant identification of high risk pregnancies and complications, and provision of a good referral system. Keywords - Maternal Care Services, Barangay Health Station, Skilled Birth Attendant, Place of Delivery, Assistance during Delivery

Interpretation use for consent to hip fracture surgery in patients with limited English proficiency.

Objectives: About 5% of the world’s population suffer from bipolar disorder. These people, in general, and teachers in particular, have many personal, social, and working problems. Different approaches, such as positive thinking, have been suggested to cope with such issues. Moreover, professional identity, similar to general identity, has been applied in various ways in teacher and instructor training. Using a basic interpretive design, we explored perceptions of English foreign language (EFL) teachers with bipolar disorder and the effectiveness of a training course on positive thinking on their professional identity. Methods: The participants consisted of 25 (16 males and 9 females) bipolar EFL teachers who were purposefully selected from EFL teachers teaching in private language institutes in Kerman City, Iran. A bipolar spectrum diagnostic scale and a semi-structured interview were used to collect the study data. Also, a positive thinking training course was developed to be administered in ten 60-minute sessions. Results: Regarding the effectiveness of the positive thinking training course on professional identity, the output of a thematic analysis of the interviews conducted with bipolar EFL teachers were as follows: Improvement in communicative and motivational skills, enhancement of willingness to reach professional development and classroom management skills, working on English language proficiency, seeking the best teaching methods, attention to students’ needs, enhancement of verbal skills, and reducing teaching fear. Discussion: The research results help people participate in bipolar tests and psychological studies and strive for their mental health. It will also create a spirit of hope in patients. The findings have some implications for EFL teacher education administrators and bipolar EFL teachers. Training on positive thinking skills can contribute to positive changes and orientations in EFL bipolar teachers, reconstructing their professional identity.

<p><b>This thesis investigates the community of practice (CoP) as a model for professional development for EFL teachers in Vietnam as well as its influences on their professional identities and practices. In the context of Vietnam, although EFL teachers, English language teaching, and professional development (PD) for EFL teachers have been the focus of the national education reforms, and funds and effort are put into PD activities aiming at improving EFL teachers’ language proficiency and updating their teaching methodologies, there has been little evidence of positive changes in teachers' teaching practices and students' learning outcomes. Several collaborative models for teacher professional development which have recently been introduced, despite being helpful, still raise some issues regarding voluntary participation, distributed leadership, trust and collegiality, and the balance between top-down (PD provided and required by an institution or regulatory body) and bottom-up (PD directed and determined by individual and groups of teachers) approaches. The international literature also reveals that effective collaborative communities for teachers are rare and while collaborative models are common in primary and secondary schools, they are limited in higher education. In this thesis, a community of practice (CoP), defined as a group of people “who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis” (Wenger et al., 2002, p. 4), was introduced as a form of professional development in the context of university EFL teaching in Vietnam. </b></p> <p>This thesis draws on social constructionism and social constructivism as theoretical frameworks for understanding teacher professional identity and the professional learning process within the CoP. A qualitative case study as the research method and action research as the research process were adopted to investigate the complex situations and meanings of the CoP process and teacher professional identity. Eight EFL teachers (including me as the participant) were recruited to participate in the CoP over six months. Multiple instruments including pre-interviews, post- interviews, CoP recordings, reflective writing journals, and artefacts were used to collect data, and discourse analysis was adopted to analyse and interpret the data. </p> <p>Evidence from the data highlights that multiple discourses relating to teaching experience, English language proficiency, Confucian and constructivist teaching approaches, and institutional factors influenced Vietnamese EFL teachers’ professional identities and practices. Conflicting discourses led to tensions in the teachers’ professional identities and negatively influenced their teaching practices. The structure of the CoP, which was characterised by being voluntary, having clear ground rules, a shared repertoire, and no leaders’ involvement offered a safe place for the teachers to collaborate and mutually engage with each other through a variety of activities. The thesis demonstrates that when teachers feel safe, experience agency as well as distributed power in their own professional development, they are able to share their teaching problems honestly. With appropriate scaffolding from More Knowledgeable Others (MKOs), they are able to challenge taken-for-granted knowledge and reconcile conflicts in discourses, thereby transforming their professional identities and practices in a positive way. The CoP elements of mutual engagement, shared repertoire, and joint enterprise were evident in this research, embedded within three key features - Connection, Collaboration, and Reflection. These features made the CoP model used here different from other collaborative models in Vietnam and eliminated some issues of such models, such as a lack of trust, a lack of voluntary participation, and the balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches. The thesis makes significant contributions to knowledge about collaborative PD models for EFL teachers and teacher professional identities in Vietnam. Recommendations are made, which aim to strengthen the basis for collaborative PD amongst Vietnamese teachers and suggest a CoP model appropriate to the Vietnamese context and other similar contexts.</p>

BackgroundBlack, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) women have significantly higher morbidity and mortality rates in the UK as well as poorer experiences of care. To date, a systematic literature review has not been undertaken in the UK to explore ethnicity based health inequalities.AimTo explore the maternal health inequalities encountered by BAME women in the UK in relation to their experiences and use of services.MethodA systematic literature search was conducted via five databases (PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL, MIDIRS and BNI). Inclusion-exclusion criterion and a keyword strategy were implemented to screen for literature published between 2013–2018.FindingsA total of eight studies with various ethnicities and geographical locations were included. Five themes emerged following thematic analysis: communication, midwife-woman relationship, healthcare services and systems, culture and social needs.ConclusionThe review identified consistency within and across the five themes. Maternity services and systems is a predominant theme that has a residual effect on the remaining four themes.

Maternal care services involves provision of health care to women during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum period at reproductive health care settings. The quality of maternal care services that women receive determine their reproductive health status in pregnancy, delivery and postpartum and impact on their overall wellbeing and that of the feotus. Maternal complications in pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum that usually result to death of women and their feotus due to poor maternal care services are still persistent in North-Eastern Nigeria, Nigeria. Therefore, the study examined the impacts of maternal care services on reproductive health of pregnant women attending primary health care centres in North-Eastern Nigeria. An ex-post facto research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study consisted of 2,487 registered pregnant women attending primary health care centres in North-Eastern Nigeria. A sample of 482 was selected through multistage sampling procedures. A researcher-developed questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection, the instrument was validated by three experts was used as instrument for the study. The reliability of the instrument was established with the use of split-half method and analyzed using Cronbach alpha statistics; a coefficient of 0.87 was obtained which shows the instrument is reliable. Inferential Statistics of Chi-square was used to analyze the data at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study show that maternal care services of medical check-up, physical test, health talk and immunization have significant impacts on reproductive health of pregnant women attending primary health care centres in North-Eastern Nigeria. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that regular seminars and training should be organized by reproductive health care professionals for pregnant women in order to enlighten them on the benefits of maternal care services in order to improve their reproductive health status. Also, government should provide high quality immunization equipment and medications available and accessible in maternal care services centres as one strategy of prevention maternal complication during postpartum period and to improve the reproductive health and wellbeing of the mother and newborn baby.