English-speaking Developed Countries Research Articles

Exploring the structure and characteristics of the Anglo-American paramedic system in developed countries: a scoping review

PurposeThis study aims to map and examine the existing evidence to provide an overview of what is known about the structure and characteristics of the Anglo-American paramedic system in developed countries.Design/methodology/approachThe review includes results examining the structure and characteristics of the Anglo-American paramedic system in English-speaking developed countries. Databases, including Embase, MEDLINE, Web of Science, EBSCOhost, CINAHL, Google Scholar and Epistemonikos, were searched from the inception of the databases. A grey literature search strategy was conducted to identify non-indexed relevant literature along with forward and backward searching of citations and references of included studies. Two reviewers undertook title and abstract screening, followed by full-text screening. Finally, data extraction was performed using a customised instrument. Included studies were summarised using narrative synthesis structured around broad themes exploring the structure and characteristics of the Anglo-American paramedic system.FindingsThe synthesis of information shows that varying models (or subsystems) exist within the Anglo-American paramedic system. The use of metaphorical models based on philosophical underpinnings are used to describe two novel subsystems within the Anglo-American paramedic system. These are the professionally autonomous and directive paramedic systems, with the directive model being further categorised into the rescue and hospital-managed submodels.Originality/valueThis study is the first of its kind to explore the modern subcategorisation of the Anglo-American paramedic system using a realist lens as the basis for its approach.

IT Career aspirations in Bangladesh: a Trigger for development?

ABSTRACT Saxenian’s concept of ‘brain circulation’ explains how a developing country can benefit when its diaspora community returns home to accelerate economic growth, but it says little about who leaves a country in the first place, and why they leave. We consider this issue in the context of Bangladesh’s IT sector and focus on university students’ aspirations for careers abroad. Based on a survey of 591 undergraduate IT students, we find that students’ aspirations bifurcate into those hoping to work in English-speaking developed countries and those expecting to remain in Bangladesh, and that the difference correlates with parental income, attendance at elite universities, gender, and the presence of role models. We also find that parental income is predictive of what factors students value in a job. Findings are discussed in relation to socio-cognitive career theory, with implications for interventions that could improve IT brain circulation in Bangladesh and beyond.

The Structure and Characteristics of Anglo-American Paramedic Systems in Developed Countries: A Scoping Review Protocol

Introduction Paramedicine has undergone significant change in the past two decades. While the Anglo-American paramedic system continues to grow there appears to be a dearth of published literature regarding modern categorisation of this evolving paramedic system. The objective of this scoping review is to examine and map the existing evidence to provide an overview of the characteristics and structural similarities and differences of Anglo-American paramedic systems in English-speaking developed countries. Methods Databases, including Embase, MEDLINE, Web of Science, EBSCOhost, CINAHL, Google Scholar and Epistemonikos, will be searched from inception. A grey literature search strategy has also been developed to identify non-indexed relevant literature. Citations and references of included studies will also be searched. Two reviewers will undertake title and abstract screening, followed by full text screening. Data extraction will be conducted using a customised instrument. Inclusion criteria: results examining management, leadership or governance in paramedicine related to the Anglo-American paramedic model in English-speaking developed countries will be included in the review. Included studies will be summarised using narrative synthesis structured around themes of management, leadership and governance in paramedicine.

An Exploration of the Readiness, Challenges and Expected Support for Their Overseas Study of Chinese Business and Management Programme Students

Chinese students are the largest international student cohort in the higher education institutions of English-speaking developed countries. The paper explores strategies to enhance the Chinese students’ learning efficacy in overseas institutions. This research differs from other research focusing on international students already in English-speaking institutions; it explores the readiness of potential Chinese international students before departure from China, their anticipated challenges for study abroad and expected support from host institutions and staff. Besides the insights of anticipated challenges and expected support, the key findings include: the majority of the sample students are financially ready for overseas study, however they are not fully ready on English language; students from the public institute in the study have a higher level of readiness for subject knowledge than their private institute’s peers. The findings offer a guide, to both the English-speaking institutions and their Chinese partners, on facilitating, teaching and preparing the Chinese students for a fruitful learning experience abroad and enhanced academic performance.

“We Can’t Go Back a Hundred Million Years”

Low-carbohydrate diets such as the Atkins Diet were especially popular in English-speaking developed countries in the 1990s and 2000s. The popular low-carbohydrate literature displays a strong discourse of “nutritional primitivism”: that is, pursuit of supposedly simpler, more natural and authentic ways of eating, as part of a quest for health. Nutritional primitivism includes evolutionary explanations for obesity and type 2 diabetes and arguments based on nutritional anthropology. This paper explores low-carbohydrate dieters’ responses to nutritional primitivism, based on an interview study late in the low-carbohydrate trend. Although some interviewees accepted nutritional primitivism unproblematically, most approached such ideas critically and skeptically—cause for cautious celebration given the problems of logic, evidence and (on occasion) racism in the primitivist discourse of the low-carbohydrate literature.

Empirical impact evaluation of the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel in Australia, Canada, UK and USA

BackgroundThe active recruitment of health workers from developing countries to developed countries has become a major threat to global health. In an effort to manage this migration, the 63rd World Health Assembly adopted the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel in May 2010. While the Code has been lauded as the first globally-applicable regulatory framework for health worker recruitment, its impact has yet to be evaluated. We offer the first empirical evaluation of the Code’s impact on national and sub-national actors in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and United States of America, which are the English-speaking developed countries with the greatest number of migrant health workers.Methods42 key informants from across government, civil society and private sectors were surveyed to measure their awareness of the Code, knowledge of specific changes resulting from it, overall opinion on the effectiveness of non-binding codes, and suggestions to improve this Code’s implementation.Results60% of respondents believed their colleagues were not aware of the Code, and 93% reported that no specific changes had been observed in their work as a result of the Code. 86% reported that the Code has not had any meaningful impact on policies, practices or regulations in their countries.ConclusionsThis suggests a gap between awareness of the Code among stakeholders at global forums and the awareness and behaviour of national and sub-national actors. Advocacy and technical guidance for implementing the Code are needed to improve its impact on national decision-makers.

Implementation of National Qualification Framework for Higher Education in Republic of Macedonia

Abstract The development of Qualifications Frameworks has been a major international trend in reforming national education and training systems since the late 1990 s. The initiative first started among English-speaking developed countries. Since the late 1990 s such frameworks have also been adopted by non-English-speaking and developing countries. In March 2005, following work undertaken by the European Commission, the Europe Union Heads of Government requested the development of a European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning. It is planned that the countries within the European Union, and other states, align their national frameworks of qualifications with the European Qualifications Framework by 2012. Republic of Macedonia joined the process and from May 2009 started with designing and implementation of National Qualifications Framework.

The skill transferability of high-skilled US immigrants

Using the 2000 US Census data, we explored the effect of international transferability of skills on the earnings of high-skilled US immigrants. We confirmed that education and labour market experience received by immigrants from Japan and English-speaking developed countries before migrating have the greatest transferability; immigrants from non-English-speaking and Less Developed Countries (LDCs) make a greater investment in US-specific skills after arrival and earn a salary commensurate with the acquired skill level. Nevertheless, high-skilled workers from English-speaking developed countries still receive higher earnings, other things equal. We explore factors that influence this earnings differential.

The “Negative” Assimilation of Immigrants: A Special Case

The authors address whether “negative” assimilation among immigrants living in the United States occurs if skills are highly transferable internationally. They outline the conditions for negative assimilation in the context of the traditional immigration assimilation model, in which negative assimilation arises not from a deterioration of skills but from a decline in the wages afforded by skills coincident with the duration of residence. The authors use U.S. Census data from 1980, 1990, and 2000 to test the hypothesis on immigrants to the United States from English-speaking developed countries. They present comparisons with native-born workers to determine whether the findings are sensitive to immigrant cohort quality effects and find that even after controlling for these effects, negative assimilation still occurs for immigrants in the sample. They also find that negative assimilation occurs for immigrants from English-speaking developed countries living in Australia and for immigrants from Nordic countries living in Sweden.

Negative and Positive Assimilation, Skill Transferability, and Linguistic Distance

This paper synthesizes two models of immigrant assimilation: “positive assimilation” if earnings rise with duration as destination-relevant skills are acquired and “negative assimilation” if immigrants with highly transferable skills experience declining earnings as their economic rent diminishes. Hypotheses are developed and tested with earnings of adult male immigrants in the 2000 U.S. Census. “Linguistic distance” from English of an immigrant’s mother tongue is the index of skill transferability. Only immigrants from English-speaking developed countries experience negative assimilation. Immigrants from other countries experience positive assimilation, the degree of assimilation increasing with linguistic distance.

Negative and Positive Assimilation, Skill Transferability, and Linguistic Distance

There are two complementary models of immigrants' economic and social adjustment - the positive assimilation model of Chiswick (1978, 1979), and the negative assimilation model of Chiswick and Miller (2011). The negative assimilation model is applicable for immigrants from countries that are very similar in terms of the transferability of skills, culture, and labor market institutions to the host country, and has been tested previously primarily using migration among the English-speaking developed countries. This paper generalizes the negative/positive assimilation models through analyzing the post-arrival earnings profiles of immigrants in the US from non-English-speaking countries according to the linguistic distance of their mother tongue from English. Using data on adult male immigrants from the 2000 US Census, it is shown that all groups of immigrants from non-English-speaking countries are characterized by positive assimilation. Earnings in the immediate post-arrival period are lowest for the language groups furthest from English, and the increase in earnings with duration is steeper the further the immigrant's mother tongue is from English. The linguistic distance of the immigrants' mother tongue from the destination language appears, therefore, to play a crucial role in generating the inverse relationship between post-arrival earnings growth and the initial earnings disadvantage documented in most studies of immigrant earnings.

Building A Health Informatics Workforce In Developing Countries

Information and communication technology can be used to improve the quality and safety of health care and to lower costs. But in both developed and developing countries, there is an inadequate supply of skilled individuals who have the technical skills to use this technology to improve health care. Some studies project workforce needs of tens of thousands in English-speaking developed countries, but it is not known what size workforce will be required in the developing world. It is important to identify and develop the skills, training, and competencies-consistent with local cultures, languages, and health systems-that will be needed to realize the full benefits of these technologies. We present a framework for answering these questions and for developing estimates of the size and scope of the workforce that may be needed.

International Recruitment of Nurses: Policy and Practice in the United Kingdom

To synthesize information about nurse migration into and out of the United Kingdom in the period to 2005, and to assess policy implications. There has been rapid growth in inflow of nurses to the United Kingdom from other countries. In recent years, 40-50 percent of new nurse registrants in the United Kingdom have come from other countries, principally the Philippines, Australia, India, and South Africa. Outflow has been at a lower level, mainly to other English-speaking developed countries--Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Ireland, and Canada. The United Kingdom is a net importer of nurses. The principal policy instrument in the United Kingdom, the Code of Practice on International Recruitment, has not ended the inflow of nurses to the United Kingdom from sub-Saharan Africa. Given the increasing globalization of labor markets, it is likely that the historically high levels of inflow of internationally recruited nurses to the United Kingdom will continue over the next few years; however the "peak" number reached in 2002/2003 may not be repeated, particularly as large-scale active international recruitment has now been ended, for the short term at least. New English language tests and other revised requirements for international applicants being introduced by the Nurses and Midwives Council from September 2005 may restrict successful applications from some countries and will also probably add to the "bottleneck" of international nurse applicants. Demographic-driven demand for health care, combined with a potential reduction in supply of U.K. nurses as many more reach potential retirement age means that international recruitment is likely to remain on the policy agenda in the longer term, even with further growth in the number of home-based nurses being trained.

Why is the Payoff to Schooling Smaller for Immigrants?

This paper is concerned with why immigrants appear to have consistently lower partial effects of schooling on earnings than the native born, both across destinations and in different time periods within countries. It uses the Over-Under-Required education approach to occupations, a new decomposition technique developed especially for this approach, and data from the 2000 Census of the United States. Based on the average (mean or mode) level of schooling in their occupation, the schooling of the native and foreign born adult men is divided into the required (average) level, and years of under- or overeducation. Immigrants have a wider variance in schooling, with an especially large proportion undereducated given the average schooling level in their occupation. Immigrants are shown to receive approximately the same rate of return to the required (occupational norm) level of education, but experience a smaller negative effect of years of undereducation, and to a lesser extent a small positive effect of overeducation. About two-thirds of the smaller effect of schooling on earnings for immigrants is due to their different payoffs to undereducation and overeducation. The remainder is largely due to their different distribution of years of schooling. The country-of-origin differences in the returns to under- and overeducation are consistent with country differences in the international transferability of skills to the US and the favorable selectivity of economic migrants, especially those from countries other than the English-speaking developed countries.

Lições de reformas da gestão educacional: Brasil, EUA e Grã-Bretanha

O artigo discute a recente onda de reformas da gestão educacional no Brasil e nos países desenvolvidos de língua inglesa que visam ampliar a participação comunitária na administração da escola. A partir de várias análises, argumenta-se que tais reformas têm sido pouco eficazes na promoção do empowerment de pais e alunos.

Nonviolent Youth in a Violent Society: Resilience and Vulnerability in the Country of Colombia

Despite the ample literature on crime and violence, little research has been done outside English-speaking developed countries. Colombia has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. In order to identify individual factors related to resilience and vulnerability for violence and offending behavior in Colombia, we explored the life histories of 46 young men from high-risk families and compared those who had committed an offense to those who did not (resilient). The findings show that resilient men (compared to offenders) in Colombia have been less exposed to serious life stress, perceive stronger support from their families, narrate their past histories with greater detail and affect, and perceive greater degrees of control and coherence in their lives. The results are consistent with the existing literature and are interpreted within the framework of attachment theory.