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Why do students choose to do an extended GP placement?

ABSTRACT The drivers for medical students’ decision making when considering which Student Selected Component (SSC) to undertake is poorly understood. Furthermore, it is unclear why students undertake a specific SSC allowing them to have an extended placement in GP in their final year. It is known that high quality GP placements encourage students to subsequently choose GP as their career, therefore if the decision-making process of students in this area can be better understood, then this may help inform medical school actions to encourage a greater uptake of these extended placements. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with final year medical students at a Scottish University. Students were selected to provide a mixture of those who had and had not chosen to undertake the extended placement. The data was transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis to generate themes which represented the data. This showed that career intention was a major factor driving SSC choice. Additionally, students sought peer feedback and tended to avoid specific SSCs if they felt a lack of internal motivation. Considering the choice for the extended placement, students tended, again, to choose based on career intentions, and they also based their decision on previous experiences of GP. Career intention and prior experience are key factors in student choice of SSC and whether to undertake an extended GP. In order to address the national shortage of GPs medical schools need to consider how they might influence these drivers.

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Museumising Bruce Lee in a Hong Kong public museum: (De)political imagination and the culture of disappearance

ABSTRACT Scholars have recognised the significance of museums for establishing and maintaining national legitimacy and shaping identity. Following the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, tensions emerged between Chinese national identity and local Hong Kong identity. Drawing inspiration from studies of the role of museums in nation-building, research on Hong Kong museums, and Ackbar Abbas’ notion of cultures of disappearance, we conducted a comparative analysis of two Bruce Lee exhibitions at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, the first of which was held between 2013 and 2020 and the second of which opened in November 2021. A comparison of these exhibitions demonstrates their distinct approaches to appropriating Lee’s legacy by drawing attention to changes in the associated narratives that reflect changes in the cultural and political climate. While both exhibitions engaged with the concept of disappearance, the earlier one did so by adhering to the conventional ‘East-meets-West’ framework, resulting in the effacement of Hong Kong culture. In contrast, the deployment of techniques of disappearance in the later exhibition challenged viewers’ perception of reality, prompting contemplation of the self and identity by embracing strategies of disappearance while resisting a culture of disappearance. However, this came at the cost of downplaying Lee’s significance as a symbol of resistance.

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Atmosphere, imminence and the Manchester Arena Inquiry: on the affective modalities of becoming situationally aware to urban terrorism

ABSTRACT Building situational awareness has become a central logic among contemporary security apparatuses for abating no-warning urban terrorism. Situational awareness, we contend, casts the sensory, perceptual and affective capacities of human bodies to decipher their immediate surroundings and attune to the non-representational and more-than-known of an enfolding situation, as essential to its execution. What modalities of sense-making and attunement, then, does this burgeoning security rationality demand? And what sensibilities, affectivities and subjectivities are (re)produced and legitimated across urban life? In this paper, we unpack these questions by examining the ways affective and atmospheric attunement(s) are infused within orthodox and emergent security approaches for developing and honing situational awareness. We argue that affective atmospheres in particular furnish the theoretical architecture for attending to the spatio-affective-material registers through which imminence becomes palpable. Empirically, by analysing the Public Inquiry following the 2017 Manchester Arena attack, we elucidate where the Inquiry advanced discussions on (the limits of) situational awareness and its sensorial, affective and atmospheric dimensions, thereby extending situational awareness into an atmospheric agenda within urban geopolitics. Finally, we reflect on how the impending UK Protect Duty might reconfigure the legal landscape of situational awareness, city resilience, and the affective economies of (in)attention.

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Motor Competence, Physical Fitness, Psychosocial, and Physical Activity Characteristics in 9- to 14-Year-Olds: Sex Differences and Age and Maturity Considerations

ABSTRACT Sex, chronological age, and maturity potentially impact multidimensional health-related characteristics (i.e. motor competence, physical fitness, psychosocial, physical activity), which adds to the challenges of reversing current youth health-related concerns. Previous research fails to optimally assess such characteristics and consider sex, age, and maturity among youth. Therefore, the aims were to 1) present the multidimensional health-related characteristics of 9–14-year-olds from the UK, 2) examine sex differences, and 3) account for the effect of age and maturity on such characteristics. Eighty-one girls (mean age = 12.8 ± 1.2 years) and 136 boys (mean age = 13.1 ± 1.2 years) were purposively sampled and assessed across each of the four health-related domains. Multiple ANCOVA analyses examined sex differences among characteristics while accounting for chronological age. Pearson’s correlations were used to evaluate the associations between maturity and multidimensional health-related characteristics. Multidimensional health-related characteristics were lower than similar populations and highly variable. Boys outperformed girls on most physical measures (ES = −0.76 to 0.76), elicited greater self-determined motivation (ES = 0.36), greater perceived competence (ES = 0.54), and engaged in more vigorous physical activity (ES = 0.78). Small age effects were present across some characteristics (e.g. isometric mid-thigh pull). Associations between maturity and multidimensional health-related characteristics were different for boys and girls (e.g. maturity offset positively associated with motor competence scores in girls only). Results suggest that multidimensional health-related characteristics of 9- to 14-year-olds are a concern, and are impacted by sex, age, and maturity. Identifying methods to improve multidimensional health-related characteristics which considers sex, age, and maturity are required. Assessing multidimensional health-related characteristics across youth is recommended to inform and measure interventions.

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Nursing Home Oversight Trends During COVID-19 and the Current Survey Backlog in the United States

ABSTRACT Since the Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987, regular oversight of United States nursing home activities has been a key strategy to ensure minimum levels of care quality for residents. Oversight activities have included “standard” survey visits – that is, annual unannounced visits by state survey agencies (SSAs) that directly observe resident care and interview nursing home residents and staff. This study provides an overview of these activities, focusing on oversight delays arising from policy changes brought on by the pandemic. Data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service’s (CMS) Quality, Certification and Oversight Reports, Survey Summary Files, and Provider Information Files were used to measure delays in survey completion across SSAs. Study findings reveal delays in inspection activities, which have resulted in a large backlog of uncompleted standard surveys far exceeding regulatory requirements. These delays exist across nursing homes with high and low levels of quality. As SSAs work through the backlog of surveys, they may prioritize the completion of surveys based on prior performance. This precedent may be expanded as CMS explores opportunities to produce processes that target the completion of surveys in the poorest performing nursing homes.

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