Acute sinusitis is common in general practice. Although typically self-limiting, antibiotics are frequently prescribed despite guideline recommendations to restrict use. It remains unclear whether antibiotic treatment reduces subsequent health care use or work absence. To assess how initial treatment with or without antibiotics for acute sinusitis is associated with subsequent health care use and work absence, and to compare phenoxymethylpenicillin (PcV) versus other antibiotics. Nationwide registry-based observational cohort study of adults with acute sinusitis (ICPC-2: R75) diagnosed in Norwegian general practice 2012-2019. We compared GP visits, Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) specialist visits, repeat antibiotic prescriptions, and sick leave days in antibiotic-treated and untreated episodes. We estimated adjusted differences in outcomes between groups using linear regression (daily outcomes) and negative binomial regression (weekly counts). We included 627 211 episodes from 413 449 patients. Antibiotics were prescribed in 59% of episodes; 53% received PcV. During the index week, antibiotic use was associated with 1.7 fewer GP visits, 0.1 fewer ENT visits, and 25.1 more sick leave days per 100 episodes. Corresponding figures for the following 4 weeks were: 0.9 fewer GP contacts, 10.7 fewer sick leave days, and 0.6 more antibiotic prescriptions. PcV was associated with slightly more GP visits and re-prescribing than other antibiotics. Acute sinusitis is followed by a short-term increase in health care use and work absence. Initial antibiotic use was associated with modest short-term differences, but no meaningful reduction in overall follow-up. Findings are consistent with recommendations for restrictive prescribing and narrow-spectrum use when appropriate.

Immigrants' employment is linked with health care access in the US, but we lack a thorough understanding of how immigrants' experiences of employment exclusions influence their health care access in the context of immigrant racialization. We aimed to assess employment exclusions (i.e., exclusions from jobs and violations at work) across Asian and Latine foreign-born adults, the two largest immigrant racial groups, and their associations with health care access. We also sought to understand variations by race, and current or past legal status. We used 2018-2020 Research on Immigrant Health and State Policy survey data from 2,010 Latine and Asian foreign-born adults in California. We measured seven indicators of employment exclusions and used weighted logistic regression to estimate associations between employment exclusions and health care access: usual source of care and delaying care in the past 12 months. We tested race, current legal status and past legal status as moderators. Nearly one-quarter (23.8%) of respondents reported ≥1 employment exclusion. Latine racial identity, current status as a non-citizen without permanent residency, and being previously undocumented was associated with greater employment exclusions. Employment exclusions were associated with 1.47 times (95% CI: 1.27, 1.69) greater odds of delaying care. Previous undocumented status, but not race or current legal status, moderated associations between violations at work and delay in care. Latine immigrants face a greater number of barriers to employment opportunities and protections of worker rights compared to Asians, while employment exclusions and past legal status drives poorer health care utilization.

ABSTRACT Over the past two decades, agricultural restructuring in Vietnam — driven by land consolidation, crop diversification and modernization — has shifted farming from labour‐intensive to capital‐intensive production. This article argues that agrarian change in Vietnam has not simply resulted in the marginalization of women, a finding that challenges dominant narratives of rural transformation. In the Red River Delta, male in‐migration and policy‐driven agricultural restructuring have not led to the withdrawal of women from agriculture. Instead, they have generated new and uneven configurations of gendered labour, power and well‐being. Drawing on a feminist political ecology framework and fieldwork in six communities across three provinces, the article reconceptualizes ‘defeminization’ not as loss or exclusion, but as a complex reorganization of work, identities and relations of care. It analyses three interlinked dynamics: (1) shifts in gendered labour amid male migration; (2) renegotiation of gender norms and household/agricultural decision making; and (3) emerging forms of confidence, self‐recognition and participation among rural women. The article thus offers a more nuanced account of rural change — one that foregrounds women's differentiated experiences and the ambivalent nature of agency within agrarian transitions.

Women farmers in South Asia face distinct gender-based challenges, exacerbated by climate change. Their adaptive capacity is limited due to their limited access to resources and services, due to deeply embedded discriminating social norms. Access to climate smart agriculture is critical for them to strengthen their resilience. However, technology development and dissemination commonly disregard gender considerations, perpetuating a ‘gender blind’ approach. Mere technological advancement is therefore insufficient without the support of inclusive policies and institutions. While there is a growing emphasis on the importance of engaging multiple stakeholders and bundling various technical and social innovations, systematic and documented methodologies enabling such integrations are lacking. There is limited literature providing clear guidance on leveraging climate-smart agricultural (CSA) technologies to empower women and enhance their resilience. This paper aims to partially fill these gaps through an analysis of four case studies conducted in India as a part of the CGIAR’s Gender Equality Initiative. These cases focus on projects and programs that have bundled social, technical, and technological innovations to strengthen women’s empowerment and resilience. The interventions described in these case studies were designed to facilitate a shift in agricultural practices aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change, while also elevating women’s economic conditions. Although not originally planned as innovation bundles, the interventions implemented across these cases exhibited an organic interconnection. Social innovations, which are often overlooked, emerged as an integral component of the bundling process, fostering an enabling environment for women. However, ad-hoc bundling revealed certain gaps including limited involvement of male stakeholders, insufficient recognition of women’s unpaid care work, and a lack of gender responsiveness in designing climate-smart technologies. The study underscores the need for intentional bundling tailored to contextual requirements to ensure sustainable impact, empowerment, and resilience.

Primary care physicians face increasing workload pressures. Some are delivering fewer patient visits, potentially in response to these pressures. However, the relationship between reduced visit volume and overall workload is unclear. Using national Epic electronic health record (EHR) metadata from the period 2019-22, we examined changes in EHR usage and patient characteristics among 772 primary care physicians who reduced monthly visits by 10percent or more, compared with 16,477 primary care physicians who did not. One year postreduction, reducers' monthly visits fell by 32.6percent relative to those of nonreducers, but EHR time declined by just 21.2percent, which increased EHR minutes per visit by 21.3percent. Electronic inbox messaging and EHR time outside of scheduled hours per visit also rose, and reducers' patient panels became more complex. When primary care physicians reduced visit volume, they reduced EHR use by less than the reduction in visit volume. Our findings highlight the persistence of asynchronous EHR work in primary care even when fewer visits occur. Innovative approaches are needed to enable the efficient delivery of asynchronous primary care.

This article examines how sociological research on food practices and emotions is ‘co-invented’ within experimental settings, treating cooking and eating as central to social organization. Drawing on two studies conducted at an experimental restaurant – a modular, camera-equipped space replicating cooking and dining environments – we analyze specific moments from our research through the lens of feminist reflections on the work of care in scholarly practice. Using methodographic analysis, we conceptualize eating in an experimental restaurant as a form of embodied collaborative invention emerging from interactions among humans, food, technical setups, and spatial arrangements. We identify three analytical knots: care for what bodies do and represent; care for playing with the field; and care for ephemeral commensality in collaborative cook–eat–think encounters. We argue that attention to small, often mundane moments of collaborative inventiveness nourishes an ongoing, situated quest for care in qualitative food research.

This study explores how the apron, which early childhood teachers wear in their daily practice, is socially and symbolically constructed in relation to professional identity and the enactment of professionalism. While previous studies have primarily approached teacher attire through parental perceptions or abstract representations of teacher images, this study foregrounds teachers’ own voices by examining their lived experiences with wearing aprons in educational settings. In-depth interviews were conducted with four early childhood teachers who had more than ten years of experience working in kindergartens and childcare centers, and the interview transcripts were analyzed qualitatively. The findings reveal that teachers experience the apron not merely as protective clothing but as a symbolic device through which social expectations and institutional practices intersect to define their professional position and role. On the one hand, the apron was perceived as reinforcing images of domestic labor and care work, thereby weakening teachers’ professional authority; on the other hand, it was also recognized as a practical tool that facilitates daily tasks. However, teachers encountered persistent tensions between the apron’s practical usefulness and the structural limitations related to hygiene and safety management, which were often beyond individual teachers’ control. Furthermore, some teachers described acts of removing the apron as an intentional practice aimed at reclaiming their identity as educators, suggesting that decisions surrounding attire function as strategic means of negotiating professionalism. These findings highlight the apron as a significant symbolic element in the ongoing construction and reconstruction of early childhood teachers’ professional identities, revealing how teachers’ bodies, emotions, relationships, and institutional contexts are intricately entangled in everyday practices of dress. By positioning attire as a key site of professional meaning-making, this study extends discussions of teacher professionalism and identity and provides a foundation for further inquiry into teacher dress and professional recognition in early childhood education.

Purpose This study contributes to the growing body of research on co-creation in primary healthcare by highlighting the complex and evolving relationship between municipalities and welfare technology providers. Drawing on the framework of “co-creation,” the study aims to illuminate the dynamic interplay between technologists and other stakeholders in shaping healthcare services. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative approach utilising reflexive thematic analysis was employed. The study consisted of 17 semi-structured interviews with healthcare managers from three municipalities and technologists from four private welfare technology companies. Findings In this study, three overarching themes were developed: (1) Welfare technologists enter the public sector arena from below, (2) Bridging sectors: The growing complexity of municipality–technologist collaboration, and (3) Skill expansion – an impact of emerging technologies. Our findings indicate that co-creation fosters balanced partnerships, with processes characterised by consensus and shared goals. Rather than passive recipients, municipal actors actively shape healthcare services. While welfare technologists are seen both as partners and vendors, municipalities maintain a strategic role in procurement and in aligning technological solutions with public service values. Research limitations/implications One notable limitation is the exclusive focus on the provider side of healthcare services, omitting the perspective of patients and their relatives. This focus is justified by the underexplored role of technologists in health services research, despite their crucial influence on the valuation and implementation of technology. The participant selection process, which involved managers recommending additional participants, ensured relevance but may have introduced bias based on managerial attitudes. However, the data does not indicate significant bias, as participants expressed both positive and negative perspectives. A key strength of this study lies in its dual perspective, incorporating insights from both private-sector technologists and public healthcare managers and professionals. The analysis highlights the complexity of integrating welfare technology into primary healthcare systems. By employing a co-creation framework, the study sheds light on the distinct roles of co-creators and offers valuable insights into how these actors navigate the intersection of care work and technological development. Social implications The increasing role of welfare technologists in healthcare raises important questions about control, autonomy, and the future governance of welfare technologies. It may reflect a broader shift in healthcare governance, where healthcare services are co-constructed through cooperation, mutual learning, and the balancing of technical possibilities with care values. Originality/value A key strength of this study lies in its dual perspectives, incorporating insights from both private-sector technologists and public healthcare managers and professionals. It explores how technologists have positioned themselves as key actors in the primary healthcare sector and reveals that technologists strategically present themselves as well-informed about the sector’s challenges. This enables them to gain acceptance within municipalities, where they are recognised as important partners in shaping healthcare services.

ABSTRACT During the Great Depression, New Deal legislation enshrined what Cheryl Harris termed “whiteness as property” through ostensibly “colorblind” regulations like excluding domestic and agricultural workers from Social Security. While white workers were subject to exploitation, their whiteness protected them from modes of expropriation affecting Black workers. One such mode was the informal economy that arose at New York City street corners, where Black women sought underpaid domestic work in white households, often facing abuse. In her reports on “The Bronx Slave Market,” the activist-journalist Marvel Cooke exposed how the expropriation and violence that structured Black women's care work had deep historical roots, turning to slavery as an analytic, rather than a metaphor. This paper theorizes Cooke's writing as a form of abolitionist critique that illuminates both how the afterlife of slavery structurally affects Black women's labor and the radical care practices countering “stolen care” and the property regime as such.

This review analyzes how care labor has become embedded in teachers’ work and professional identity, including significant racial, gender, and labor-related complications of care. Results indicate five key findings: 1) While embraced as a pathway toward responsive schools, care theory results in complications for teachers’ work; 2) care literature suggests teachers provide academic, social-emotional, and physical care that extends beyond the school setting; 3) care is described through a student lens, with less insight into teachers’ conceptions of or experiences with care labor; 4) care work in schools is gendered and racially constructed in ways that lead to oppressive double binds; and 5) theorizing around ethical care includes little discussion of ethical limitations or professional boundaries for teachers’ work. This review asks readers to consider whether the heavy burdens care imposes on teachers’ labor require reforms to ensure teachers can provide the care students need, without reproducing oppressions in the field.

Over the last 20 years, bamboo has been promoted and marketed as an innovative and eco-friendly material, often evoking a sense of responsibility and care for nature. This article broadens understandings of care in forest-human relations, by examining the ecological care work done by peasants and emerging local civil society organizations in the Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR). Drawing on feminist political ecology and qualitative research conducted in Houaphanh province, we take the Bamboo Program as a case at the intersection of sustainable forest management and development interventions in the Lao PDR. We critically question: 1) the allocation of care for nature to green consumption; 2) the narratives that still represent upland peasants as “unproductive”, “destructive”, and “indifferent” towards forests; and 3) the disregard of care work and reproductive labor in research on forest-based commodities and value chains. Our analysis demonstrates how ecological care work is embedded in everyday material and affective practices that peasants and civil society organizations carry out with(in) the bamboo forests, and how livelihoods and bamboo value chains are dependent on such work. We conclude that recognizing ecological care work is a matter of ecological justice, as it challenges dominant environmental narratives of caring for nature and highlights the everyday practices of maintaining bamboo forests and livelihoods in peri-capitalist spaces.

This study explores how Japanese care workers in New Zealand rationalized and accepted exploitative labor conditions in the care industry. Drawing on 10 in-depth interviews and analyzed through Bourdieu’s symbolic violence, the paper highlights several interpretative strategies participants employed to make sense of and rationalize their social suffering. These included relying on a dual frame of reference that compared their experiences in New Zealand favorably with their home country, valuing the gendered emotional rewards of caregiving, and emphasizing compensating amenities. Participants also framed their experiences as constrained forms of rational choices under conditions of limited English proficiency, unrecognized qualifications and visa precarity, while, at the same time, valorizing migrant cultural capital such as resilience and professionalism. Findings also reveal how participants internalized neoliberal values and structural inequalities and reframed precarious work as opportunities for empowerment or a personal growth. These rationalizations not only sustain symbolic violence but also shape distinct migrant/caregiver habitus. This study contributes to scholarship on migration, labor and care by exploring how both reflexive and non-reflexive processes of rationalization (re)produce precarious labor systems. It argues for structural changes that move beyond narratives of individual resilience to address systemic inequalities within the care industry and wider labor market.

Background Healthy psychology is a crucial factor in determining nurses’ ability to provide high-quality nursing care to patients. Therefore, it is essential to detect the risk of nurses’ psychological disturbance and provide early intervention. This study aimed to investigate the psychological status of nurses and develop a nomogram model to predict the incidence of psychological disturbance in Chinese nurses. Methods This study was part of the Chinese Nurse Cohort Study, and the data of 3,808 nurses were obtained from multiple tertiary hospitals in China. Data related to psychological disturbance were collected using the Symptom Checklist 90. Predictor selection was guided by the Job Demands-Resources model, encompassing 26 variables across three domains: living conditions, working situation and psychosocial indicators. Predictors were selected via stepwise regression, and a logistic regression model was developed to construct a predictive nomogram. Model performance was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, decision curve analysis, bootstrap approach and 10-fold cross-validation. Results Independent protective indicators for nurses’ psychological disturbance included perceived social support, organizational career management, weekly leisure time, regular meals and published articles, while risk indicators included negative acts, working years, raising children, patients in day shift care and night shift work hours. All these variables were used to establish the nomogram. In the nomogram, the area under the ROC curves was 0.803 (95% CI : 0.786–0.819). The average AUC of bootstrap approach was 0.810 (95% CI : 0.785–0.817), and the average AUC of 10 fold cross-validation was 0.794 (ranging from 0.749 to 0.841), indicating that the model was stable. The DCA suggested good clinical application. Conclusion This study developed a prediction model to evaluate the risk of psychological disturbance among nurses for the first time. Nursing managers can use this visualized prediction model to predict the risk of nurses’ psychological disturbance, identify individualized risk factors, and implement preventive measures to reduce the occurrence of psychological disturbances among nurses.

Coping strategies, psychological resilience, and professional commitment among nurse-aide students in Taiwan: A cross-sectional study.

This study aimed to construct and validate a mobile application to guide children and adolescents in oncological care in self-reported pain. This is a descriptive study, based on a systematic instructional design that was conducted from 2022 to 2023 on working in pediatric care at two hospitals in Brazil. The content was validated by healthcare professionals, using the content validity index and cutoff score of 0.80. Face validity was assessed by children and adolescents, and a 90% agreement rate was used. The application, named "CuidaDor Web App," comprises four sections: user identification, presence of pain through numerical and facial scales and a body map, history of records, and informative materials. In the content evaluation, the judges assessed seven items: Language, Content, Illustrations, Layout, Motivation, Relevance, and Usability Assessment. The overall content validation index was 0.95. A face validation involved 24 children and adolescents, achieving over 90% concordance rate. However, usability requires parents' assistance for children using the tool. The CuidaDor Web App was developed and validated by healthcare professionals, children, and the target audience. The app may contribute to the management of pain in children and adolescents with cancer during hospitalization and at home. Future studies are needed to evaluate the age group that benefits most from technology and the use of the application as a tool for nurses and healthcare professionals.

This article examines the concept of socialist care as depicted in Soviet agricultural brochures, manuals, and guides from the 1920s to the 1930s, with a particular focus on how care practices extended from the human to nonhuman workers. Care and care work are approached through feminist social reproduction theory, particularly through a rereading of Alexandra Kollontai’s ideas from an animal-centered optic. In this perspective, the socialization of all spheres of life was expected to generate new forms of care, including for nonhuman proletarians, with Kollontai emphasizing the production of life itself rather than its mere reproduction for capital. This article traces a trajectory from the revolutionary vision of animal liberation from suffering, imagined as following women’s emancipation and their contribution to class struggle, to the rejection of this ideology during Soviet collectivization and industrialization, when it was dismissed as utopian and misleading. As a result, labor itself became naturalized, and women’s reproductive functions were redistributed during collectivization across all participants in production relations, irrespective of gender or species. This shift gave way to a discussion of conceiving production as labor conjugations (Alexander Bogdanov’s term) that extend beyond the human body to include animals, machines, and plants. The article also problematizes the concept of care, tracing its Heideggerian origins and linking it to contemporary theories of interspecies and feminist care. As a concluding conceptual element, the works of Soviet writer Andrey Platonov are employed as a critical source for reimagining care as care for yet-to-come communism, deferred for future use.

Proper basic life support (BLS) skills are crucial for laypeople and health care professionals to increase the survival of cardiac arrest patients. A practical examination at the end of a BLS course may be beneficial for prolonging skill retention. We aimed to investigate the efficacy of our BLS training and the effect of BLS practical examinations on skill retention among fifth-year medical students compared with the effect of additional practice and continuous assessment. In this randomized, assessor-blinded, parallel group study, fifth-year medical students took a practical BLS examination ("practical examination" group) or participated in an additional 30-minute practice with continuous assessment ("additional practice" group) two weeks after a 90-minute intrahospital COVID-19 BLS training. BLS skill retention was assessed two weeks, two months and one year later, and the results of the two groups were compared. Fourteen elements of BLS were evaluated during the skill retention assessments. Descriptive statistics and Mann‒Whitney and Fisher's exact tests were used for statistical analysis. Thirty-two voluntary students were included (practical examination: n = 17, additional practice: n = 15), with no significant differences in basic characteristics (age: p = 0.891; gender: p = 0.999; previous BLS education: p = 0.469; previous participation in BLS: p = 0.678; planning to work in emergency medicine or critical care: p = 0.471). BLS skills were satisfactory during all skill retention assessments, except for the application of protective equipment and depth of chest compressions. More students placed surgical masks on patients' faces in the additional practice group during the first skill retention assessment (p = 0.005). However, this difference disappeared over time, and both groups performed poorly in the application of protective equipment. The activation of the chain of survival and high-quality chest compressions were acceptable during all the skill retention assessments. There was no significant difference in overall BLS skill retention between the two groups (total score after two weeks: p = 0.764; after two months: p = 0.542; after one year: p = 0.791). The BLS course provided by our department was effective; however, the BLS practical examination did not offer a significant advantage in terms of skill retention compared to additional practice and continuous assessment in our student population. Not applicable.

Background Deafblindness is a rare and complex condition that is often accompanied by additional intellectual and mental disabilities. Research on adolescents with deafblindness during the post-school transition remains limited, with existing studies primarily focusing on parental perspectives. Sibling voices, particularly in Indonesia, where services are scarce and family-based care is the dominant approach, are underexplored. Aim This study examined how siblings in rural and urban Indonesia manage caregiving and roles during the transition of adolescents with deaf-blindness from school to family. Methods Using a participatory Photovoice approach, eight siblings (aged 15–25) documented their daily realities through photographs, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions over a 12-week period. Data were thematically analyzed. Results Six themes emerged: invisible care work, emotional strain, rural–urban divides, social relationships and stigma, temporal transitions, and bridging advocacy. Urban siblings reported tension between education, employment, and caregiving, whereas rural siblings encountered stigma and limited services, but experienced stronger kinship support. Across various contexts, siblings often act as hidden caregivers and advocates, yet their contributions remain undervalued. Conclusions Supporting siblings requires addressing the intersecting dynamics of geographic area, culture, and disability care. Social work professionals must recognize both their challenges and their resilience, which helps them balance caregiving and personal development in the transition phase. Longitudinal research is needed to capture evolving sibling roles across the deafblind transition landscape.

This article examines economic and cultural injustices in a context of touristification. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s theory of justice, which conceives injustice as both redistributive and recognition-based, it explores how tourism-led urban restructuring generates intersecting forms of inequality and exclusion. It argues that redistributive injustices (e.g. housing insecurity, labour precarity) are dialectically reinforced by recognition-based ones (e.g. cultural erasure, territorial stigmatization), ultimately weakening political representation and residents’ capacity to shape urban futures. The article focuses on Málaga, a Southern European city that exemplifies the tensions of tourism-led urban restructuring. A sequential mixed-methods design was employed within a transformative paradigm, which seeks to connect structural analysis with lived experience through representative and justice-oriented research. First, spatial and statistical analyses identified five demographic and socioeconomic clusters, revealing patterns of inequality and demographic change. The most touristified areas, located in the historic centre, are marked by concentrations of foreign residents from economically advantaged countries, often linked to lifestyle migration and transnational gentrification. Conversely, adjacent working-class neighbourhoods face increasing displacement pressures and a growing presence of foreign residents from disadvantaged regions. Second, 42 semi-structured interviews with current and displaced residents were analysed using critical thematic analysis. Results show how market-driven narratives and urban policy displace traditional practices and erode local support networks, particularly affecting low-income groups, older adults, and service and care workers. Based on Fraser, lack of political representation is understood to result from intersecting economic and cultural injustices. By integrating Fraser’s relational theory of justice with Mertens’ transformative paradigm, this study achieves paradigmatic coherence, bridging political economy and cultural-symbolic perspectives through a unified relational framework. It proposes transformative policy approaches that address redistribution and recognition in tandem (e.g. the decommodification of housing and culture), the redistribution of tourism-generated wealth, and the dismantling of symbolic hierarchies that devalue historically marginalised residents.

ABSTRACT Despite their vital contributions, women in developing societies remain marginalised due to entrenched gender norms that confine them to unpaid domestic care work, limiting their participation in paid employment. This study examines how remunerated affective labour empowers women in Mae Kampong village, Thailand, in terms of financial independence and household decision-making. Using in-depth interviews, key informant interviews, and a focus group discussion, this qualitative study finds that financial compensation for care work – traditionally expected of mothers and housewives – enhances women’s socio-economic empowerment. Beyond economic stability, it enables them to exert greater influence in family decisions. However, while paid labour strengthens women’s roles within the household, it does not significantly improve their broader societal status, as they remain excluded from leadership roles like village headman. Thus, the study highlights the need to challenge traditional gender norms and structural barriers, emphasising that genuine empowerment requires both paid labour recognition and systemic change.