Early Career Community Research Articles

Peer support as a potential tool to promote pharmacists’ wellbeing

Discussion regarding burnout in health professionals, including community pharmacists, has grown substantially since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rapid legislative and societal behavioural changes led to significant global disruption of physical and emotional wellbeing during the pandemic as pharmacists continued to provide care while under unprecedented levels of stress. Community pharmacists have had an essential role in maintaining face-to-face care as the number of COVID-19 diagnoses and deaths rose. Communications emerged from the World Health Organization which implored long-term changes to healthcare workplaces, including increased access to psychosocial support for employees. Peer support is a unique initiative, and it is low-cost and accessible across many platforms. Its main purpose is to bring people together with shared experiences and can often include people in the same career field or workplace. The feasibility and efficacy of peer support programs have been studied in other professional groups such as nurses and physicians, and also in undergraduate medical students. The conclusions drawn from these studies suggest that involvement in peer support reduced the risk of burnout and increased workplace engagement. In contrast to many other healthcare professionals, community pharmacists often work in relative isolation. Research has shown that younger pharmacists, and those in the earlier stages of their careers, reported feeling stressed, undervalued, and supported. They also mentioned a desire for access to a mentoring or coaching program. Following the success of peer support in other cohorts, research is needed to verify if this intervention will similarly benefit early career community pharmacists.

Muon Collider Forum report

A multi-TeV muon collider offers a spectacular opportunity in the direct exploration of the energy frontier. Offering a combination of unprecedented energy collisions in a comparatively clean leptonic environment, a high energy muon collider has the unique potential to provide both precision measurements and the highest energy reach in one machine that cannot be paralleled by any currently available technology. The topic generated a lot of excitement in Snowmass meetings and continues to attract a large number of supporters, including many from the early career community. In light of this very strong interest within the US particle physics community, Snowmass Energy, Theory and Accelerator Frontiers created a cross-frontier Muon Collider Forum in November of 2020. The Forum has been meeting on a monthly basis and organized several topical workshops dedicated to physics, accelerator technology, and detector R&D. Findings of the Forum are summarized in this report.

Spotlight on the Youth and Early Career Special Interest Group

Spotlight on the Youth and Early Career Special Interest Group

The barriers and opportunities to support the early career academics and professionals in human factors/ergonomics - revisiting reflections from IEA2015, IEA2018 & IEA2021.

The Early-Career Community (ECC) comprises researchers, practitioners, and professionals in their "early-career" stages in the Human Factors/Ergonomics (HFE) profession. Early-career HFE professionals are essential to both current industry decision making and future growth of our profession. This paper provides detailed insights into the barriers and suggestions to support engagement with ECC within the International Ergonomics Association (IEA) and its Federated Societies. This report integrates key findings from the formal and informal discussions that occurred with diverse groups of stakeholders (n > 100) at IEA2015, IEA2018 and IEA2021 guided by the participatory inquiry paradigm, cooperative action-inquiry and participatory ergonomics approaches. Barriers to support ECC include: a lack of employment opportunities, poor general awareness and integration of HFE in existing university-courses, financial constraints, inclusivity challenges and a lack of Influence in decision-making. While some of the more systemic challenges are context-specific and cannot be overcome, ECCs suggested that: the IEA and its Federated Societies include ECC members as part of their boards; a Standing Committee for the ECCs be established as part of the IEA; make use of social-media more effectively to engage the ECC. More mentorship, networking, knowledge sharing, training and education, combined with financial-support will ensure that the ECC can participate. ECC members experience complex and dynamic challenges that affect their development and involvement in the broader HFE profession. It is therefore critical that appropriate, global, national and local strategies are developed to continue to support and develop the ECC to ensure the continued growth of and demand for HFE.

Preface

The 5th Scientific Conference for Engineering and Postgraduate Research (PEC2020) Baghdad, Iraq, December 23-24th, 2020 Organizers:Middle Technical UniversityElectrical Engineering Technical CollegeSupported by Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research, Iraq Professor Dr. Abdulmohsin Naji Mohaisen The Middle Technical University Chancellor Editorial PrefaceThe Middle Technical University holds an academic conference every year, where students submit their research articles on their doctorate or master’s degrees. The attendees consisted of students, lecturers and professors who offered a friendly environment platform to exchange ideas, findings and their implementations into different fields of Mechanical and materials, Civil, Architectural, environmental; Electrical; Electronic, Biomedical and Information Technologies engineering techniques.The PEC2020 is the 5th Conference for Engineering and Postgraduate Research took place in Baghdad, on Dec 23-24th, 2020 at the Mddle Technical University, Institute of Technology-Baghdad and Electrical Engineering Technical College (Iraq Republic). The PEC program also includes a developmental on publishing that will offer practical advice that we hope will benefit our postgraduate and early career community. The conference program covered presentations, oral, and video conference presentations with more than 300 active contributors.The Scientific Committee worked hard to ensure that all submissions were checked and reviewed before the deadline. A strict peer review by two to three referees, chosen according to their scientific specialization. The participant accepted papers of one hundred and seventy-one selected according to the paper quality on the conference topic. All accepted papers published in this edition of PEC revised and approved by the scientific committee.Finally, a sincere thanks to the Mnistry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (Iraq), we would also like to extend our thanks to all authors for their precious research papers and presentations. All reviewers are also thanked for their professional assistance in reviewing. Thanks are finally given to IOP Publication as well for producing this volume. Asst. Prof. Dr. Baydaa Maula Middle Technical University On behalf of PEC 2020 Organizing& Scientific Committee Conference Photograph are available in this Pdf.

How to Write, or Respond to, a Manuscript Review: Answers to Questions from the ASLO Early Career Community

How to Write, or Respond to, a Manuscript Review: Answers to Questions from the ASLO Early Career Community

Work challenges negatively affecting the job satisfaction of early career community mental health professionals working in rural Australia: findings from a qualitative study

PurposeSome of Australia’s most severe and protracted workforce shortages are in public sector community mental health (CMH) services. Research identifying the factors affecting staff turnover of this workforce has been limited. The purpose of this paper is to identify work factors negatively affecting the job satisfaction of early career health professionals working in rural Australia’s public sector CMH services.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 25 health professionals working in rural and remote CMH services in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, for NSW Health participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews.FindingsThe study identified five work-related challenges negatively affecting job satisfaction: developing a profession-specific identity; providing quality multidisciplinary care; working in a resource-constrained service environment; working with a demanding client group; and managing personal and professional boundaries.Practical implicationsThese findings highlight the need to provide time-critical supports to address the challenges facing rural-based CMH professionals in their early career years in order to maximise job satisfaction and reduce avoidable turnover.Originality/valueOverall, the study found that the factors negatively affecting the job satisfaction of early career rural-based CMH professionals affects all professionals working in rural CMH, and these negative effects increase with service remoteness. For those in early career, having to simultaneously deal with significant rural health and sector-specific constraints and professional challenges has a negative multiplier effect on their job satisfaction. It is this phenomenon that likely explains the high levels of job dissatisfaction and turnover found among Australia’s rural-based early career CMH professionals. By understanding these multiple and simultaneous pressures on rural-based early career CMH professionals, public health services and governments involved in addressing rural mental health workforce issues will be better able to identify and implement time-critical supports for this cohort of workers. These findings and proposed strategies potentially have relevance beyond Australia’s rural CMH workforce to Australia’s broader early career nursing and allied health rural workforce as well as internationally for other countries that have a similar physical geography and health system.

Taking care of the public health student and early career community in Australia: their views

Taking care of the public health student and early career community in Australia: their views