Profession In England Research Articles

Assistant practitioners (APs) perceptions of their developing role and practice in radiography: Results from a national survey

Introduction In 2000, the NHS Plan set out the government’s plans for investment and reform across the NHS. Through the introduction of a new workforce at assistant practitioner (AP) level the Department of Health intended to implement new ways in which to deliver a more efficient service. At the time, little published information existed on the integration of these assistants into the contemporary radiography workforce. Publications were limited to experiences gained by various individual departments ranging in their perception of the role and education of APs. Further research was suggested to track the continuing implementation of the 4-tier structure, establish the precise nature and scope of the roles across Trusts and determine their impact on workload and patient care. Aim To establish the number and employment locality of APs in radiography professions in England, and to explore their scope of applied practice. Method and materials The study was conducted over three phases and employed a mixed methods design to address the aims and objectives. Phase I was a scoping exercise performed prior to data collection in which n = 226 radiography sites were identified for contact across England. Phase II utilized a questionnaire as data collection tool to investigate the role of APs in radiography and explore how their roles were integrated into the radiography workforce in England. Results from phase III of the study which utilized semi-structured qualitative interviews are not included in this paper. Conclusion and discussion Key findings depict the nature and variety of roles and responsibilities undertaken by APs in radiography. This study was the first of its kind to identify the integration of APs in radiography across a sizable geographical region. There were mixed responses to the question asking APs if they were required to perform duties outside their scope of practice. Questionnaire data revealed that a high numbers of APs were working in areas under indirect supervision. Results from this study showed that APs, in some areas at least, were performing the roles of practitioners. Therefore further investigation is needed for new roles to develop criteria to determine which new roles should be the subject of statutory regulation.

Women's Career Success and Work-life Adaptations in the Accountancy and Medical Professions in Britain

This article examines gendered career paths in two feminizing and highly qualified professions. Quantitative data show that in medicine the profession is internally segregated by sex, as women tend to opt for the family friendly but clinically inferior specialty of general practice. In accountancy internal segregation by sex is considerably less evident but women fail to rise through organizational hierarchies. Qualitative interviews with qualified doctors and accountants suggest that sex discrimination is to some extent still an issue but that the major factor underlying these different gendered career trajectories is that women still retain the major responsibility for domestic work and caring. They also suggest that doctors have been able to exercise more control over their working hours than accountants and that even when accountants work part-time, they work longer hours than contracted. Part-time work is also seen as seriously career-limiting. In our conclusions, we briefly examine the gender equality implications of these contrasting self-regulated and market-driven adaptations to occupational feminization.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes y las enfermedades infecciosas

Besides a pleasant author of best sellers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a medical doctor, writing excellent short stories about the exercise of his profession in England. However, even he mentions The British Medical Journal and The Lancet in the Sherlock Holmes's stories, when in the plot introduces infectious diseases, Conan Doyle ignores important discoveries in the field of tetanus. Anyway, the appearing of infectious diseases in the adventures of the detective are rare: one mention of tetanus, another of leprosy and- the most analyzed in medical literature a case of murder by inoculation of bacteria, probably the agent of melioidosis. Also he makes his hero discovers the toxic actions of a medusa and a transplant of solid organ. Little for a physician and less for an author who also wrote science fiction: it seems that the history of the great medical discoveries at the end of nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth has passed by his side.., and he just couldn't see it.

Making History: The Changing Face of the Profession in Britain

Making History: The Changing Face of the Profession in Britain

Prime minister's commission findings get mixed response.

WHEN PRIME minister Gordon Brown launched a commission to examine the future of nursing and midwifery last year, there was an expectation that it would rejuvenate the profession in England.

Shaw, <i>The Bell,</i> and Irish Censorship in 1945

Shaw, The Bell, and Irish Censorship in 1945 Brad Kent (bio) Shaw left Ireland at the age of twenty and only sporadically returned for visits over the course of his long life. But he kept himself constantly apprised of the latest news and often ventured into debates on pressing issues confronting his native land. There were several occasions when Ireland and censorship—another particular concern to Shaw throughout his career—converged in such a way as to implicate him either as an involved participant or an interested commentator. One such moment arose in 1945, when the editors of The Bell, an influential Irish journal of the period, instigated a debate on the perceived merits of censorship. Always ready to jump head-long into a controversial fray, Shaw was one of several writers to submit an article in response to the provocative subject. The debate itself fizzled out after only three months and its impact on reforming the Irish institution of literary censorship is questionable. However, the opinions offered over the course of the debate afford critics the occasion to place Shaw’s late-life views on a pressing professional matter in relation to those of the generations of Irish authors who succeeded him and, often, looked toward him as a beacon of wisdom and inspiration. For Shaw, Ireland represented a relatively free society for the performance of plays. Owing to a loophole in legislation, the Lord Chamberlain’s authority did not extend across the Irish Sea.1 As a result, plays that were banned from British theaters could be staged without fear of both the censor’s prohibition and, as a general rule, prosecution by officialdom. At the same time, Irish shows established performance rights, meaning that the author would own the copyright of his or her own play. Thus, after unsuccessful attempts to mount a copyrighted performance of Mrs Warren’s Profession in Britain, Shaw turned to his childhood friend Edward McNulty in 1897 to produce the play in Ireland, although the enterprise eventually came to naught.2 In 1914, the play was staged by the Dublin Repertory Theatre, which appeared more interested in using the event to [End Page 161] thumb a collective Irish nose at the authorities of Dublin Castle, seat of the ruling British authorities of the day, than in the play itself. Despite warnings of legal and financial sanctions, the production came off without a hitch. In fact, by all accounts it had quite a boring run.3 But the Dublin Repertory Theatre’s staging of Mrs Warren’s Profession was not the first time a Shaw play was used by nationalists to ridicule the British authorities and their system of censorship. In 1909, the year Shaw had both The Shewing- up of Blanco Posnet and Press Cuttings banned by the Lord Chamberlain, the Abbey Theatre, under the direction of Lady Augusta Gregory, produced Blanco Posnet. Gregory’s gamble paid off as the play did not encounter any resistance beyond threats.4 But it was a rather specious victory. As James Joyce testified upon attending the opening night: “Nothing imaginable is more innocuous than [the play] and the audience wonders in amazement why on earth the work was intercepted by the censor.”5 The episode was arguably more of a defeat for British censorship than it was a triumph for nationalists over Dublin Castle. This is not to suggest that Ireland was always a safe-haven for Shaw. He had experienced the difficulty of informal censorship in 1904 when he submitted John Bull’s Other Island, his only full-length Irish play, to the Abbey Theatre. W. B. Yeats, as Abbey director, told Shaw that he refused the play because it was too long and the theater’s small stage was not able to adequately support the large cast and scenery.6 Shaw, though, felt that his play was rejected because his social vision was counter to the spirit of the Gaelic movement, that nationalist political aesthetics were utilitarian and utopian while he portrayed Ireland as it really was.7 But his play went on to be a resounding success at the Court Theatre in London later that November and was revived several times at...

Professional regulation and the integration of children's services in the UK: maintaining standards while promoting disability equality

The representation of ‘the child’ within children's services and the representations of ‘risk’ and its management have implications for disabled people hoping to qualify for and work within certain professions. This article assesses the relevance for children's services of findings from the Disability Rights Commission's Formal Investigation into the impact of professional regulation on disabled people studying and working within three public sector professions in Britain ‐ nursing, social work and teaching. Many professional regulations include varied and vague requirements for ‘fitness’. These are interpreted and implemented differently, often informed by unexamined negative assumptions around disability. Disabled people, particularly those with ‘hidden disabilities’, can be discouraged from disclosing their conditions. This deprives them of the support and adjustments necessary for them to practise safely and effectively. Professional regulation can thus paradoxically induce a false sense of security. The various professions are urged to review and update their regulations, guidance and policies in order to ensure concordance with recent developments in disability and wider antidiscrimination legislation.

Looking Through the Glass Ceiling: Projecting Women’s Future Participation in the Solicitor’s Profession in England and Wales

It is 90 years since legislation introduced a right for women to practice as solicitors in England and Wales, yet women still comprise just 24 per cent of partners in private practice. In this paper we employ data derived from Law Society reports from the past 22 years to model past and future growth of women’s participation in the solicitors’ profession in England and Wales. Our findings indicate that a clear majority of assistant/associate solicitors will see women making up a majority of private practitioners in the future. However, our findings also suggest that that parity between women and men will never be reached at partnership level in private practice, unless there is a change in the current growth pattern of female representation. One possible change may stem from the lagged influence of a second phase of growth in female representation among assistant/associate solicitors that commenced in the 1990s and is peaking today.

Access to legal work experience and its role in the (re)production of legal professional identity

The occupational closure experienced by solicitors drawn from ‘outsider’ groups (especially women) has been extensively documented. The growing importance of work experience as a gateway to the profession suggests that it may be playing an increasingly significant role in the processes of exclusion and the reproduction of professional identity. The lack of research into this ‘hidden’ moment in professional reproduction therefore represents a significant lacuna in our understanding of the (changing) solicitors’ profession in England and Wales. This paper reports on a preliminary exploration of legal work experience. It analyses data generated through collaboration with the Law Society in a survey of law firms. This is complemented by qualitative analysis of material obtained from firms’ websites and discussion boards. Throughout the paper we highlight the broader research questions suggested by this initial analysis.

Regulating a reluctant profession: Holding solicitors to account

Solicitors are often placed in a position of trust where they hold money on behalf of their clients. Instances of the misuse of clients’ money have been a recurring feature in the history of the legal profession in England and Wales. Yet the legal establishment was slow to impose the same standards of accountability on its members which had long been expected of other members of society and continued to prevaricate many years after the need for financial regulations had been demonstrated through a series of scandals. This paper provides a detailed review of the evolution of basic accounting regulations governing the legal profession.

Incidence of alcohol-related deaths in the veterinary profession in England and Wales, 1993–2005

It has recently been shown that the proportional mortality ratio for suicide by veterinarians is one of the highest of all occupational groups. The reasons for this alarming statistic are unclear although it has been postulated that alcohol or drug misuse may be significant risk factors which contribute towards the high incidence of suicide within the profession. However, there have been few studies on alcohol misuse by veterinarians and so the aim of this study was to investigate the incidence of alcohol-related deaths in the veterinary profession in England and Wales between 1993 and 2005. The proportional mortality ratio for alcohol-related deaths for veterinarians was not significantly higher than the general population during this time period. Future studies should focus on establishing the incidence of sub-lethal alcohol misuse within the veterinary profession.

The Legal Services Act - a perspective from the Legal Services Ombudsman for England and wales and the Legal Services Complaints Commissioner

The author gives some of her views on the future for the legal profession in England and Wales following the introduction of the Legal Services Act, which gained Royal Assent on October 30, 2007. Appended to this paper is a summary of the questions posed to the Ombudsman and Commissioner following her speech, together with an overview of her answers. Article by Zahida Manzoor (Legal Services Ombudsman for England and Wales and the Legal Services Complaints Commissioner) - published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London.

Why this unholy trinity?

In this week's letters pages, Oliver Dearlove takes Roger Jones to task for his recent editorial on the future of the medical profession in Britain (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39303.684236.3A). According to Jones, “The Shipman, Bristol, and Alder Hey enquiries, and a litany of errors, shook the foundations of public trust and professional confidence.” But where is the evidence for this, asks Dearlove? The foundations of public trust remain apparently unshaken: in poll after poll, doctors still top the league tables of public esteem while politicians languish at the bottom. So how has Jones's unholy trinity emerged as a shorthand description of the problems afflicting the British medical profession in the late 20th …

Women Solicitors as a Barometer for Problems within the Legal Profession – Time to Put Values before Profits?

This article will consider the theoretical explanations for why women are not remaining within and progressing through the ranks of the solicitors' profession in England and Wales. It sets out the findings from a Law Society commissioned project to examine the reasons why women have had a break from practice or chosen to leave the profession. Finally, it considers whether one of the purported strategies used to empower women solicitors – the business case for equality of opportunity in the solicitors' profession – is actively working against women and the profession (more broadly), and that only a return to a wider values‐based approach to professional identity will meet the criticisms raised by many of the women who participated in this research.

Social Change in the History of Education: Perspectives on the Emergence of Learned Professions in England, c.1500–1800*

The English educational revolution c.1560–1640 excited much interest in the 1960s and '70s. This paper seeks to show the relationship between the emergence of learned professions of church, law and medicine and that more general expansion in education. It shows how scholars have established the comparability of the ethos of these professions with that of the gentleman. It proceeds to detail, through a review of the literature, the consequences of this relationship for one of the professions—the clergy. The law of unintended consequences operated: state intervention and the introduction of formal educational requirements sometimes undermined the raison d’être of the clergy and the control they had over their own affairs. It suggests a way forward for consideration of the development of all learned professions that requires close attention to both the external and the internal influences on them and, above all, to conflicts of interest among segments of each profession. * Such a broad‐sweeping paper inevitably owes a great debt to the work of other scholars. Because historians of the professions draw on so many branches of history, it has been possible to acknowledge by name only a few of the most important works in the field to give a flavour of the debates. I particularly thank Kenneth Charlton and Patrick Collinson for their encouragement past and present.

Social Theory, Performativity and Professional Power—A Critical Analysis of Helping Professions in England

Social Theory, Performativity and Professional Power—A Critical Analysis of Helping Professions in England Drawing from interviews and ethnographic research, evidence is provided to suggest a sense of "anxiety" and "regret" amongst state social workers and case managers working on the "front-line" within local authority social service departments. There have been a number of theoretical approaches that have attempted to ground the concept of "power" to understand organizational practice though Foucauldian insights have been most captivating in illuminating power relations and subject positioning. In order to theoretically interrogate the relationship between social theory and professional power, we draw from the neo-Foucauldian work of American Social Philosopher Judith Butler—especially regarding Butler's (1990, 1993 and 1998) powerful work on "performativity" and its relationship to social work. We also attempt to examine the "distances" between the social work role and social workers narratives through an examination of notions of "anxiety" and "regret" in the face of the professionalisation of state social work.

The National Programme for Information Technology – An Overview

The National Health Service (NHS) in England is in the middle of an Information and Communications (ICT) revolution. The NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has been described as one of the world’s biggest IT projects, costing £6.2bn. ‘Over the next ten years, state‐of‐the‐art computer systems will be installed across the NHS. Once the work is complete, those systems will, for the first time, connect more than 117,000 doctors, 397,000 nurses and 128,900 other healthcare professions in England.’ The improvement of services through the application of ICT surrounds our everyday life, whether at the bank, in supermarkets or in the entertainment industry. Whilst major technological advances have taken place in medical imaging, diagnosis, treatment and surgery, the same level of advancement in information and communication management, across the whole organization, has proved far more elusive.The concept of the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) in the NHS was first introduced to readers of this journal in 2000. The idea of using information management and technology to ease the burden on NHS staff had been developing for years, with some success in what Brennan described as ‘pockets of excellence’, but on the whole these initiatives had not achieved the revolutionary change sought and were regarded as a ‘frustrating failure’. The Department of Health (DH) therefore seconded Frank Burns from one of the successful EPR sites, Wirral NHS Trust, to develop a strategy to take the NHS towards the vision of an integrated, computer‐savvy health service.Three years later, Brennan was back in these pages with an update. The vision of Information for Health and its spin‐offs had led to disappointment, missed targets and, ultimately a major re‐think. Apart from the failings of Information for Health, the DH was also having to respond to a number of other influential publications; Building the Information Core: Implementing the NHS Plan, Jan 2001; Delivering the NHS Plan;6 and Securing Our Future Health: Taking a Long‐Term View, April 2002 (commonly known as the Wanless Report).

‘I’m Not One of Those Women’s Libber Type People but...’: Gender, Class and Professional Power within the Third Branch of the English Legal Profession

Legal executives are the third branch of the legal profession in England and Wales. While their professional body (ILEX) has made progress in recent years, they remain in a subordinate position to solicitors. Drawing on detailed interviews with legal executives in a range of settings, this article will argue that women legal executives experience a distinctive disadvantage in legal practice. Intersections of class, gender and professional power contribute to a highly unstable professional identity for legal executives, and one which is particularly acute for women. The dissonance between their ‘expected’ and ‘experienced’ professional identity reinforces their lack of engagement with ILEX. This article argues that the negative and gendered connotations of the professional identity of legal executives reinforce the hierarchies of legal practice.

Limits of professional secrecy: medical confidentiality in England and Germany in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Among patients as well as doctors it is commonly held that confidentiality has been the foundation of the therapeutic relationship since the introduction of the Hippocratic oath. Nevertheless, medical confidentiality is a controversial issue, for example in current debates on HIV/AIDS, especially with regard to the question whether sexual contacts of patients infected with HIV should be warned by doctors. Consequentialist arguments are used to justify a breach of confidence to protect other people's health, as well as to defend absolute secrecy to maintain mutual trust between patient and doctor. This article discusses the history of the debates on medical confidentiality from the nineteenth century onwards in England and Germany. Comparing the debates in these two countries shows that the issue was not confined to national borders. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the debates depended not merely on ethical arguments, but were strongly influenced by public health policies, in particular regarding venereal disease prevention, by legislation, politics and the status of the medical profession. Differences in legislation and in the social standing of the medical profession in England and Germany in particular distinguish the development of the debates in the two countries.

Partnership in English Initial Teacher Education: Changing Times, Changing Definitions – Evidence from the Teacher Training Agency National Partnership Project

This paper draws on findings from a national evaluation of the Teacher Training Agency’s National Partnership Programme (NPP) (2001–2005) to analyse the current practice of partnership in initial teacher education in England. The paper begins by drawing on the MOTE studies (Furlong, et al., 2000) undertaken in the 1990s to describe the practice of partnership during that decade. It goes on to describe the changing policy context of teacher education in England since new Labour came to power in 1997, including the Government’s concern substantially to increase the numbers of new teachers entering the profession; it was this commitment, the authors argue, that was in part behind the development of the NPP which was intended to increase both the quality and capacity of schools to take part in initial teacher education. The authors go on to describe the NPP as it was put into practice in nine Government regions across England and their evaluation of it, which included 127 interviews with a range of stakeholders within each of the government regions. They suggest that, although the programme did probably contribute to increasing the numbers of partnership places in schools during its lifetime, the NPP did not alter the underlying model of partnership; indeed, they suggest that in many cases the practice of partnership in England had changed little since the mid 1990s. However, they conclude that the NPP did have an important impact on provision in that it further undermined the pedagogical and epistemological dimensions of partnership that many teacher educators in the 1990s saw as central to collaborative work between schools and higher education institutions (HEIs). The NPP, they suggest, further encouraged the development of a ‘technical rationalist’ approach to teacher education, an approach that fits well with new Labour’s broader vision for the management of the teaching profession in England.