Lone Working Research Articles

The Khrushchev Kitchen: Domesticating the Scientific-Technological Revolution

In the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, the Khrushchev regime launched an intensive campaign to build mass housing. This period, known as The Thaw, is generally regarded as one of liberalization in comparison to the preceding Stalin era. Moreover, the proposed new housing, promising separate, one-family flats to replace the communal apartments and barracks in which most urban dwellers lived, seemed to offer the possibility of a ‘private’ home life. The Khrushchev flat, in particular its small kitchen, subsequently became mythologized as the heart of an ideology-free zone of sincerity where one could shut the door on the public realm and its values. This article proposes that, far from falling outside the domain of public discourse, the new flat — and, above all, the kitchen, along with the labour it accommodated and the lone female worker it presupposed — was a central site for the linked projects of modernization and the construction of communism. However, with its complex mixture of functions, the kitchen was also the site where the contradictions of Khrushchev-era design and centrally-planned production became most evident. Far from a paragon of rational socialist planning, the kitchen could become a microcosm of its dysfunction.

Are You Looking Out For the Lone Worker?

ow safe are your staff who work alone in the community? If someone were in a dangerous situation would they have any way of calling for help? And if they did not return from an appointment, how long would it be before anyone noticed they were missing? This is something that might one day come to your attention in a way you would rather it did not. A survey carried out by the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI, 2004) found that almost one in six NHS staff had experienced physical violence at work in the last year, mostly from patients. Staff most at risk are those who work alone in the community and mental health staff are the most at risk of all. It is surprising, then, that many health managers appear to take a head-in-the-sand approach to lone-work security, preferring not to think about it than face the fact that their staff who work in the community may be under-protected. Many incidents go unreported, so many may be falsely reassuring themselves that the worst is not going to happen. Cost, the complications of putting a system in place and no one seeing it as their particular responsibility are all barriers to something being done to protect lone workers. But which cashstrapped NHS trust wants a lawsuit on their hands? And trusts do have a duty of care to their staff to have a loneworker policy in place. There is also pressure from the top, with the government’s NHS zero tolerance campaign urging NHS management to put violence against staff at the top of their agenda. Often it is not that a trust doesn’t have a lone worker policy, but that staff are not aware of it. I have attended meetings with trusts when a group of senior managers have been uncertain as to whether they have a loneworker policy or not. And even if they do have a policy, a document is not going to do much to help a worker facing an armed and angry patient. When questioned on the issue, most trusts, particularly mental health trusts, know this is an issue they need to address but unfortunately it is often very far down the list of priorities. If anything is going to encourage trusts to look at a H solution for protecting lone workers it has got to be something they can set in motion with the minimum of fuss for both management and users. That was our thinking behind the development of LookOut call, which aims to be the practical side of the lone-worker policy. We have developed it to be: ■ simple to use ■ easy to install ■ flexible enough to meet the needs of any NHS trust ■ fully computerised, so there is no possibility of human error.

Reducing the risks of lone working

In PracticeVolume 26, Issue 3 p. 168-168 Practice Management Reducing the risks of lone working First published: 01 March 2004 https://doi.org/10.1136/inpract.26.3.168-aAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare...

Ethics: an essential dimension of clinical obstetric anesthesia.

Ethics: an essential dimension of clinical obstetric anesthesia.

Accident and Emergency in a shipping line

Working as a nurse on a ship is an interesting and challenging way of life. It is lonely work, and you really have to use all your skills. The nurse has to know how to treat an acutely sick passenger, as well as what to do for a crew member with personal problems or eczema. The nurse must also be a good First Aid teacher and in addition attend a variety of meetings, on subjects such as safety at work and rehabilitation. The nurse's physical condition is tested while on call for 10 days and nights. On the other hand, the seamen are good friends as well as colleagues, she uses her own initiative at all times, there are opportunities for further education and there are long periods of free time. There are not many nurses working on cruise ferries, but the numbers are increasing in proportion with the number of ferries. However, the limit of this development has almost been reached, as there is a limit to the number of vessels the archipelago can take.

‘A Very Lone Worker’: Woman-Centred Thoughts on Helen Creighton’s Career as a Folklorist

This paper considers the relationship of gender to Helen Creighton’s work and to her place within Canadian folkloristics. Her conception of folklore techniques — that translated into what and how she collected and how she disseminated those materials — as well as her reception by public and academie audiences, are linked in part to societal and self definitions of appropriate female behavior. As her work is now being evaluated in new ways and admired for its eclecticism, for example, it is clear that those on the margins see things from a different perspective.

Planning the software for a personal research contract

AbstractAn account is given of the strategic planning and development of the software needed by one scientist to support a 3‐year research investigation involving judicious use of an electronic computer. An attempt is made to establish principles on which software development should proceed if the lone worker is to be able to produce something near the largest possible output of useful work in the three years.

John Dalton, F. R. S. (1766-1844) and the Atomic Theory—A lecture to commemorate his bicentenary

We have met today to honour the memory of John Dalton who was born two centuries ago. He was elected into the Royal Society in 1822 and was awarded the first Royal Medal in 1826. Dalton’s name is always associated with Lavoisier’s in my mind as the two men who made nineteenth century chemistry possible. There could be no greater contrast than their circumstances: Lavoisier with all the advantages of education and opportunity that wealth could give; Dalton, the son of a weaver, earned his living by teaching from the age of twelve. Meteorology was the first scientific interest of both, an interest that they maintained throughout their lives. Neither had the superb qualitative perception of Priestley or Scheele, both relied on measurement, both were striving after fundamental causes. Lavoisier worked in a great laboratory with fine instruments, Dalton with home-made apparatus, in early days in his own room, like Davy and Berzelius. The approach of both was from the physical rather than the chemical side. Lavoisier in a moment of elation at the start of his study of gases, following on his first experiments on combustion, set down his conviction that his work was destined to accomplish a revolution in chemistry and physics. Dalton gave his book the proud title—A New System of Chemical Philosophy. Both their claims were amply justified by subsequent events. Lavoisier made the balance the arbiter of the chemical balance sheet, thereby destroying the myth of phlogiston and giving chemistry a rational basis for quantitive investigation. In the first decade of the nineteenth century there were many able chemists exploring the field that Lavoiser had thus laid open: in Britain, Wollaston, Davy and Thomson, in France, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac and Proust, in Germany, Klaproth, Bucholz and Rose, and in Sweden, Berzelius. How was it that it fell not to one of these but to Dalton, a self-taught lone worker with little experience of chemistry, to give the atomic theory the quantitative significance that made it the vehicle of chemical thought throughout the nineteenth century? This is one of the most fascinating questions that has engaged the attention of historians of chemistry for more than a century and there have been several rival answers. Now at last I think it can be answered with some certainty in spite of the destruction of Dalton’s notebooks in the bombing of Manchester.

The Life and Times of Peter Griess

Until he was 28 years old Peter Griess betrayed no sign of his latent genius for chemical research. As a student at Marburg University, he at first showed little interest in science and preferred the society of irresponsible and pleasure‐seeking companions. His discovery of diazo compounds in 1858 attracted the attention of others and led him to write the first of more than 140 contributions to chemical literature. Almost the whole of his work on diazo compounds and their reactions, and on azo dyes, was carried out in England, first at the Royal College of Chemistry and thereafter during his 25 years as chemist to Samuel Allsopp & Sons at Burton‐on‐Trent. Griess's work is sketched against the background of the times. He is seen as a nostalgic, lone worker, watching the growth of a great industry in which he had no part but which developed by organised research based on his own pioneering offorts. Honoured in this country and abroad during his lifetime, Griess died suddenly in 1888.

‘In the opinion of this house, the lone worker can no longer make a major contribution to radio development’. Radio Section debate, 25th February, 1952

‘In the opinion of this house, the lone worker can no longer make a major contribution to radio development’. Radio Section debate, 25th February, 1952

This Is Your Program of Research in Nursing Functions

expressions of need included many questions about what part of the total care of patients is nursing and what part is not nursing. What are the functions of professional and practical nurses? Of auxiliary workers and others? What is an acceptable ratio of practical nurses to professional nurses? There are also questions about functions, ratios, and the like in the nursing care of medical, surgical, and other types of patients. And what about the nursing care needs of children and of adults during a 24-hour period? There is always an interest in finding the answers to these questions. Nurses, physicians, and hospital administrators all seek the answers. Small groups, sometimes associated with universities, have been working on these problems. Sometimes a lone worker has had a hunch, an hypothesis if you like, and has sought ways to test it in the work situation. "Have we identified all the problems?" she asks. Can we go further than just to assume that less skilled workers could

This Is Your Program of Research in Nursing Functions

expressions of need included many questions about what part of the total care of patients is nursing and what part is not nursing. What are the functions of professional and practical nurses? Of auxiliary workers and others? What is an acceptable ratio of practical nurses to professional nurses? There are also questions about functions, ratios, and the like in the nursing care of medical, surgical, and other types of patients. And what about the nursing care needs of children and of adults during a 24-hour period? There is always an interest in finding the answers to these questions. Nurses, physicians, and hospital administrators all seek the answers. Small groups, sometimes associated with universities, have been working on these problems. Sometimes a lone worker has had a hunch, an hypothesis if you like, and has sought ways to test it in the work situation. Have we identified all the problems? she asks. Can we go further than just to assume that less skilled workers could

The Early Days of the Rural Electrification Idea: 1914–1936

The genealogy of the rural electrification idea and the story of its gradual development through the years 1914–36 may have important implications in the study of governmental and social institutions. Up to a comparatively recent date, there have been no generally recognized laws influencing progress, whether as to science, government, or society. Progress has been recognized in the main as a matter of chance, or perhaps as something like a 100-to-1 shot in poker or horse-racing. With science, however, there is noticeable the small beginnings of a workable technique for making progress along predetermined lines. This might have been expected, since in science the items under study are relatively stable as compared with actions in government and society, and are more likely to be uniform when encountered.In recent years, many scientific inquiries have been quite adequately financed, and coöperation on a national and international basis between thousands of researchers operating in the same or related fields, with full and free publication, has become a rule of the game. Note the strategy developed for the attack first on tuberculosis, and now in formation on the much more complex cancer problem. Yet these campaigns must be considered child's play compared with what is happening in the field of atomic fission. While it is true that in science team-play has become more and more the practice, notably in the medical field, the lone worker still persists in the academic world, where it is held that organization, especially in times of peace, means regimentation.

Microscopic Objects: How to Mount Them

THIS small book evidently incorporates the results of practical experience, and is eminently one for the amateur and lone worker. A summary is given of methods for the preparation and mounting of a number of objects for microscopy—insects and their parts, diatoms, Foraminifera and Radiolaria, crystals, rock and metal sections, blood and bacteria, and animal and vegetable tissues, together with a full account of section cutting. A few pages on ciliates, flagellates and rotifers would have been a useful addition. Microscopic Objects: How to Mount Them By Jean C. Johnson. Pp. viii + 144 + 9 plates. (London: The English Universities Press, Ltd., 1935.) 3s. 6d.

Special Problems of Rural Social Work

C ASE work in rural counties and small towns is comparatively new and we have not been able to tell just what difference there is in doing case work in a rural section and in an urban community. Can the same case work methods be employed in one as in the other? Could a case worker who has always been on duty in a city come to a rural neighborhood and work without making very definite changes in her methods? The object of family case work is the same everywhere, we will grant; i.e., to help people out of trouble. The general philosophy will probably be applicable in both sections; but methods may be different. The application of case work methods may be different, too. A rural case worker must have a knowledge of certain things which would not be expected of a city worker. It is not always necessary that a county worker be reared in the county if she has the ability to adapt herself and see these differences that probably exist. The general practitioner. A worker in a large city goes about her work more as a small part of a large social service machine. A county worker is usually the whole machine herself. The city worker does not have to worry so much about finances of the organization for which she works, for example; she has less contact with the officials of the city government, she may bother her mind little about the relationship of the city government and her organization or her case load. These things are done for her. Her chief makes most of these contacts and there is a special person or organization to attend to the financial problems. There are special agencies doing preventive work. The citY worker_ in other words. is more of a specialist, while the county worker is a general practitioner. She comes pretty near having to do everything. She must take her clients through all stages of their treatment. She must give attention to finances and preventive work. She must have daily conferences with the Mayor and the Chief of Police and the County Commissioners and the school people and doctors and lawyers and civic organizations and churches. The lone worker. The average rural social worker is usually the only such person in her county. She may go for weeks without seeing another worker. This isolation makes it necessary that the worker be alert to keep from falling into a rut, to keep from lagging behind the general development of social work. She does not have the advantages of frequent conferences with social workers, she has no supervisor with more training and experience than herself to go to for help and counsel. She cannot compare notes with anyone easily. In order to overcome these obstacles the worker should at least take the Family and the Survey and buy or borrow a couple of books a month and read, read, read. She should constantly read and refer to Social Diagnosis and other reliable books on case work. She should visit neighboring workers as much as possible. She should certainly attend the State Conference on Social Work every year, and any other conferences when possible and take an active part in the discussions. As often as possible she should invite or take advantage of the visits of State or National workers and have her records and work reviewed. She has free use of the mails to write other workers on any problem bothering her and ask for advice and suggestions. A lone worker is liable to fall into the