Professional Understanding Research Articles

Punk ideals, school leaders and fashioning an “authentic” self

The field of education is in dire need of different ways of thinking about attracting, supporting, and retaining school leaders. We see the idea of punk as a space that may offer some leeway for thinking differently about professionalism for school leaders. In this paper, we draw on thinking about punk subcultures to recognise the ways in which leaders hold self-expression and identity as important, while also thinking about how leaders as a collective might push back against some of the narrow ideas of who or what a school leader can be and do. We present findings from a mixed-methods study of women school leaders from around the world. Drawing on an anonymous survey and interviews, and literatures from sociology, fashion studies, and cultural studies, we explore women’s experiences and identities as school leaders. The paper contributes to our understanding of professionalism and identity and also how we can better attract, support, and retain school leaders.

Healthcare Workers' Knowledge and Attitude Toward Telemedicine During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Global Survey.

Introduction Telemedicine is the utilization of communication technologiesto provide healthcare services remotely. It has an increasingly pivotal role in enabling medical professionals to extend the provision of care to patients facing geographical barriers. The benefits of telemedicine have become more apparent during the coronavirus pandemic. To maximize its application, it is crucial to ascertain the understanding and attitudes of healthcare professionals toward its use. The aim of this study is to collect data and evaluate the current knowledge and perceptions of medical staff toward the use of telemedicine. Methods In this cross-sectional study, we conducted a global survey of 1091 healthcare workers. Data were collected through a questionnaire after an extensive literature review. Frequency, percentages, and cumulative percentages were calculated to portray the profile of the participants. Results Of the respondents, the majority had heard about (90.9%), witnessed(65.3%), or were familiar with (74.6%)how telemedicine is used in practice. Seventy-two point two percent (72.2%) were familiar with the tools that may be used in this technology. The familiarity with telemedicine was noted to be consistently higher in those with a medical degree and experience of less than five years. Furthermore, attitudes towardproviding healthcare remotely were generally positive with 80% thinking that telemedicine reduced staff workload, 80.6% reporting that it reduces the unnecessary transportation cost, and 83% believing that it saves clinicians' time. However, 20% of respondents said that telemedicine increases staff workload and 40.5% of healthcare workersbelieved telemedicine threatens information confidentiality and patient privacy. Conclusion Although telemedicine is a novel and emerging practice in many countries, it appears to have a promising contribution to healthcare services. This is particularly important during a pandemic, as it ensures effective healthcare with the maintenance of social distancing measures. Moreover, the respondents of this study showed good knowledge and positivity in their attitude towardtelemedicine.

Construction of bioethical understanding through cinematographic work

The study aim at to analyze the bioethical understanding of teachers, students and health professionals through cinematographic work. A descriptive-interpretative study with a qualitative approach, carried out in an online environment, through an interview guided by a semi-structured script. Data analysis was based on Bardin's referential. The process allowed the identification of two thematic categories: Building bioethical understanding through continuing education; Cinematographic work as a tool for bioethical analysis: perceptions and reflections. The results revealed that dilemmas with ethical implications were experienced by the participants, but with an incipient criticality. The methodological strategy of continuing education, using cinematographic work, allowed reflections and construction of knowledge about bioethics.

Professionalism among academic educational leaders: A concept analysis.

Introduction: The concept of professional ethics of academic educational leaders is an abstract concept for which several highly context-dependent definitions have been provided in the literature. The analysis of this concept is critical to reaching a shared understanding, developing behavioral standards, and designing evaluation measures at universities of medical sciences.Methods:To explain the concept of professionalism among academic educational leaders, Walker and Avant’s eight-stage concept analysis method was adopted. After an extensive review of resources, 37 articles were included and the antecedents, attributes, and consequences of the concept were extracted. Results:An examination of the resources and concept analysis revealed that professionalism in academic educational leaders has three main attributes of care ethics, justice-oriented ethics, and ethics of criticism, and its formation depends on personal characteristics, professional capabilities, and having a systemic view. Conclusions:The identification of components and professional characteristics of professionalism among academic educational leaders provides a shared understanding of professionalism and is a basic step towards designing measures to evaluate this concept.

Definition Problems of the Term “Lightness” in the History of its Development

The article is devoted to the research of changes in lighting terminology on the example of one of the main properties of colour – lightness. The article substantiates the importance of the qualitative definition of terms for the professional understanding of various aspects of colorimetry and possibility of usage colour appearance models (CAM). Examples and comparisons of the wording of theterms of the CIECAM02 system are given based on variants from International Lighting Vocabularies (ILV) different years of release. The next is an example of the history of the development of the terms associated with different conditions of perception and definition of brightness, in particular, such as “lightness” and “subjective brightness”. The importance of the clear agreement between the terms and their definitions for the understanding, use, and development of the modern models and systems of colour perception is substantiated. The English-language and the Russian-language scientific sources are considered. The analysis of which demonstrates the dynamics of changes in the understanding of the term “Lightness”. Special attention is paid to the fate of the term in the Russian-language lighting literature, discrepancies in the interpretation of the term in various sources are shown, which can lead to a misunderstanding of modern colour appearance models. The comparison of the interpretation of the term“Lightness” is reviewing based on the English-language and the Russian-language scientific sources. The comparison helps to identify the reasons that led to the problems of definitions and understanding of this term. In the conclusion, the authors invite experts to discuss lighting terminology and harmonize Russian-language lighting literature with English-language literature. Also substantiates the importance of the participation of lighting engineering scientists in translations of different scientific literary sources devoted to colour perception. It is proposed to continue work on improving, and possibly a special reprinting of translations for the better understanding in the Russian lighting engineering literature.

Peculiarities of economic psychology and its role in the study of consumer behavior

The aim of the article to determine the essence and features of economic psychology. Also display its influence on modern marketing theory. The results of the analyses. The author considers the position of economic psychology in the system of psychological science and comes to the conclusion that it is still very weakly reflected by the professional community, many issues of theoretical content remain unresolved, which usually accompany the formation of any new field of psychological knowledge and require quite long periods for their solution. The author notes that the most hotly debated issue is the relationship between economic psychology and social psychology. It is especially noted that there is some more general regularity in the emergence and formation of a number of modern branches of psychological science, because similar discussions revolve around the status of organizational, historical, political, cross-cultural psychology, etc. In the article, the author emphasizes that the current professional understanding of this issue is in such a state that it is still too early to affirm a single option as fundamentally correct or to completely deny any of them as incorrect. In fact, the scientific debate about the status of economic psychology is not over. A certain "fuzzy" understanding of the essence, features and differences of psychological economics from classical psychology requires detailed study and approval of the basic principles that identify the scientific field. Conclusions and perspectives for further research. The article examines economic psychology as a separate science, the emergence of which significantly influenced the methodology of studying consumer behavior, first of all, by expanding the methodological possibilities and aspects of research. The chronology of the development of economic psychology is analyzed, the main reasons and prerequisites for its separation into a separate science are given. Features of interdisciplinary connections, principles operating within economic psychology are highlighted. The main advantages of the existence of economic psychology and the peculiarities of research within the scope of science are grouped in detail in the article. As a further development, the author defines the development of detailed tools for practical application in the activities of marketing specialists.

Antibiotics: Boon or Bane in Dentistry?

Dentistry is a vast domain devoted to managing dental infections as well as bolstering and rehabilitating the dentition lost to bacterial invasion. Antibiotics are an essential part of dentistry and its relative specialties, and prescribing antibiotics is a privilege that should not be abused. Antibiotic prescriptions in dentistry are relatively small but nonetheless significant. With the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial species, there is a need to become more vigilant about their prescription, as well as an urgent need for both professional and public understanding of the appropriate use of this life-saving component of treatment. This review discusses the various principles and rationales underlying antibiotic therapy in various fields of dentistry, with an emphasis on rational antibiotic use in dentistry.

‘The voice of an oracle’: Little Nell and the art of ‘enacting the persona of the doctor’

Medical humanities have long been promoted as a means for trainees and doctors to gain deeper understanding of patients, illness and professionalism. In practice, teaching on medical humanities – while valuable –struggles to connect such learning to the realities of the clinical workplace and patient encounters. The solution to this shortcoming lies in recognising ‘soft’, but clinically relevant, concepts that operate within consultations. These concepts are, in fact, best revealed through literary and historic accounts of doctors, patients and illness. Such a vignette is Dickens’ parody of Victorian physicians in the shape of the doctor who visits Little Nell in his book the Old Curiosity Shop. By taking prescription and technology out of the encounter, Dicken’s parody lays bare ‘soft’ elements that constitute the art of ‘enacting the persona of the doctor’. Medical humanities in general (and literature in particular) constitute a valuable tool for teaching the place of performance and the power of human qualities in the consultation. This ‘old fashioned’ professionalism should be a foundation to every formation in clinical medicine.

MEMFASILITASI KEMAMPUAN REFLEKSI DIRI MAHASISWA KEDOKTERAN: APA DAN BAGAIMANA?

Background: Self-reflection skill is essential for doctors to develop professional attitudes, therapeutic relationships between doctor-patient, and lifelong learning. Self-reflection needs to be developed during medical study in a structured and systematic manner, either in a professionalism course or other learning opportunities. Gaps: Reflective learning in medical education often only focuses on improving the understanding of professionalism rather than developing students' self-reflection skills. In addition, the opportunity to conduct self-reflection in the curriculum is still limited, and assessment of reflection ability is challenging. There are doubts as to whether self-reflection needs to be assessed. Recommendation: The opportunity to conduct guided self-reflection needs to be allocated in a structured manner in the curriculum to develop learners’ reflection skills. The strategy to develop self-reflection skills involves a series of educational interventions, including providing guidance and feedback on reflection and ensuring that students' self-reflection is assessed. Reflections on feedback obtained within the learning process can help students to take advantage of the feedback provided, develop self-assessment skills, and improve their performance. In assessing reflection, educators need to consider the time, approach, and purpose of assessment and ensure that the focus is on learners’ ability to self-reflect. Self-reflection needs to be cultivated by creating a conducive environment. The process of mentoring and providing constructive feedback is essential in building reflective dialogue with students to increase students’ motivation to reflect.

The Mediating Role of Benefit Management for Sustaining the Performance of Infrastructure Projects

Benefit management is a valuable approach, promoted and supported by strategic management for maximizing organizational benefits. It has also been recognized as a means of improving project performance, though more research is needed to understand how it works. This research adds to the contemporary literature on public sector project management by studying the links between project governance, benefit management, and project performance from a developing country perspective. This study provides insights for project professionals who are working in government organizations for optimizing the benefits of investment. The study provides a reference to formulate strategies for managing and governing the performance of government-funded projects in developing countries like Pakistan. The research uses a positivist approach and quantitative design. The quantitative technique is employed to address all the aspects of the study. The structural equation modeling revealed that benefit management acted as a mediating factor in the relationship between project governance dimensions and public sector project performance. This study highlights the importance of incorporating a comprehensive benefit management approach to streamline the benefit management process by aligning projects with the organizational strategy for sustaining project performance. These findings stress the need for a comprehensive benefit management approach in improving the project performance of government-sponsored projects. The study attempts to improve the understanding of project professionals about the role and significance of benefit management, which will be helpful to get organizational support for the employees who are striving to improve the project performance in Pakistan.

"We're Lucky to Have Doctors at All"; A Qualitative Exploration of Australian Farmers' Barriers and Facilitators to Health-Related Help-Seeking.

This study aimed to explore barriers and facilitators that impact on farmers’ help-seeking behaviours for health and mental health concerns. Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with farmers (12 male; age 51.7 ± 12.6 years) from three rural regions in South Australia. Interviews explored demographic and farm-related characteristics, perceptions of individual (and where relevant family) health and mental health concerns and experiences, and perceived barriers of health support-seeking. Thematic analysis was used to identify key themes. Four key themes were identified relating to help-seeking; personal attitudes and beliefs, farm-related barriers, health system barriers and the provision of support from family and friends. Dominant personal attitudes included valuing independence, strength and privacy. Farm related barriers included the ‘farm comes first’ and the fact that ‘farm work is never done’. Health system barriers included issues relating to availability of choice and access, professionals (lack of) understanding of farm life, and time and financial costs of accessing care. Provision of support from family and friends involved informal help and advice, including facilitating access to professional support. Multiple attitudinal, structural, and farm-related issues affect farmers’ help-seeking. Professionals who understand farm work practices and routines are valued by farmers and this is likely to facilitate access to care. Workforce development programs and community programs that involve farmers’ perspectives as consumers and co-designers, using evidence-based strategies, may assist in strengthening these relationships.

Assessment of patient’s perception and knowledge towards anesthesia services at Dilla University Referral Hospital, South Ethiopia, 2021: a cross-sectional study

Background: The poor community understanding of anesthesia professionals and their discipline has been a long-standing and obvious problem. Many studies have been done in the developed countries investigating public awareness of anesthetists but there are few publications from the developing countries including Ethiopia. Patients’ knowledge of anesthetists and their roles inside and outside the operation theatre is poor worldwide. Objective: This study is aimed to assess patients’ perception and knowledge of anesthesia service among patients admitted for surgery at Dilla University Referral Hospital (DURH), Southern Ethiopia, 2021. Methods: An institutional-based cross-sectional questionnaire survey was carried out on consecutive adult patients aged 18 years and above that had undergone surgery at DURH, conducted over four months. Data were presented using tables, and graphs and summarized by using dummy tables. After carefully analyzing the collected data, a conclusion was made with constructive recommendations. Result: A total of 396 patients were initially included in the study while 27 patients declined to participate with a 93% response rate. The mean age of participants was 39.5±14.9 years, and more than half of the respondents 225 (61%) were male. Regarding the type of surgery done 238 (64.6%) respondents were emergency the rest of 35.4% were elective surgery. Of 369 respondents, only 42% knew that anesthetist is the one who gives anesthesia and 38% knew that a doctor does. Conclusion: The perception of most patients is that anesthesia is all about “putting patients to sleep and waking them up.” There was poor knowledge of patients regarding the role of anesthetists beyond the confines of the operating theater. Therefore, there is a need for intensified public education on the importance of anesthesia and the diverse roles anesthetists play in ensuring holistic health care delivery.

On Reflection: Learning, Meaning and Identity in the Design Studio

Successfully transitioning to a more sustainable building sector will require schools of architecture to explore new methods, approaches and formats for learning. Challenging some of the outdated values and assumptions at the core of the architecture profession starts in the design studio, where early professional identities, relationships and understandings of collaboration are forged. While there is an increasing focus on inter- and transdisciplinary learning in today’s higher education landscape, investigations into the pedagogy of the design studio are both relatively limited and disproportionately dominated by theory based on Donald Schön’s ideas on the “reflective practitioner”. In reality, the lack of any kind of coherent training for teaching staff means that most often approaches tend to reproduce that which the teachers themselves experienced during their own studies. The paper uses a series of autoethnographic vignettes to describe design studio teaching at Natural Building Lab from the perspective of a university educator based on the example of a masters design studio in winter 2021-22. Etienne Wenger’s Communities of Practice model, and specifically the four dimensions of design for learning, are used to unpack and discuss some of the dialogies at work in studio learning. The study should be seen as a form of practice-based research, using teaching formats as a way to actively gain new insights into new forms of practice with a focus on sustainability and student-empowerment. The paper provides an intimate and personal insight into some of the questions and challenges facing educators, students and project partners as participants in emergent and collective learning processes.

Learners' Perspectives of Professionalism: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Systematic Review.

BackgroundProfessionalism has come to be associated with competence in medical education, with the habitual and judicious use of communication, knowledge, technical skills, clinical reasoning, emotions, values, and reflection in daily practice for the benefit of the individual and community being served. Recent studies indicate students should have the opportunity to observe the application of knowledge and skills by their mentors to improve patient health and safety. A noticeable detail that needs implementation into the curriculum is the inclusion of student perspectives. This review will explore students’ understanding and experience of professionalism in undergraduate medical education (UME).ObjectiveThis paper presents the protocol for a review that aims to develop an integrated synthesis of qualitative and quantitative studies resulting in recommendations for medical school curricula to incorporate the learners’ perspectives in teaching professionalism in UME.MethodsWe will take an integrated approach to synthesis. Data will be extracted from the included studies, and quantitative data will be “qualitized.” PubMed (Medline), Embase, PsycInfo, and ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) will be searched for studies published in English from 2010 to 2021. Studies will be screened and critically appraised for methodological quality using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool by 2 researchers, with disagreements resolved by a third researcher. Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies will be considered. Our population of interest is undergraduate medical students; hence, studies on medical residents and graduate medical students will be excluded. We will consider studies that explore how concepts of professionalism are understood, experienced, and taught in undergraduate medicine and on how medical students understand and develop the identified constructs of professionalism.ResultsThis study is in the screening phase; therefore, no results are available at this time. However, we had initiated the searches, screening, and are currently in the critical appraisal stage. We will commence preparation to clean and convert the data for coding in July 2022, and analysis will be ongoing from the end of July 2022 until submission for publication in November 2022.ConclusionsThis research will contribute to the student perspectives on professionalism in medical education literature. The findings will aid in the creation of a checklist to guide the development of a curriculum on professionalism in UME.International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)PRR1-10.2196/37473

Exploring nurse and nursing student experience of using an artist-produced photobook to learn about dementia

BackgroundImproving understanding about dementia in nursing is a priority area for educators and policymakers. This is due to poor professional understanding about dementia and suboptimal healthcare practice. While many educational interventions exist, there has been a paucity of research which has considered the use of artist-produced photobooks to improve knowledge and understanding about dementia. The aim of this study is to understand the impact of an artist-produced photobook on nurses’ attitudes and beliefs about dementia.ResultsFollowing a thematic analysis of four focus group interviews with 22 nurses and nursing students from Northern Ireland, three themes emerged. Theme one was about how the artist-produced photobook helped participants to humanise the person living with dementia. Theme two related to how the artist-produced photobook supported participants to actively construct their own meanings about dementia based on their previous professional and personal experiences. Theme three explored how an artist-produced photobook could be successfully used to complement existing dementia education in the future.ConclusionsUsing an artist-produced photobook was an innovative way to learn about dementia for nurses and nursing students. The photobook functioned as a tool underpinned by arts-based pedagogy (ABP), supporting nurses to understand the person behind the dementia disease. As such, an artist-produced photobook has the potential to be a useful complementary resource for supporting professional education about dementia.

‘Integrating’ immigrant children? School professionals’ reflections on the boundaries between educational ideals and society’s problematization of immigrants

In Danish policy and public debates, the concept of integration is often related to a problematization of immigrants, which paradoxically makes their successful integration into Danish society unobtainable. In recent years, Denmark has become known for its increasingly restrictive policies regarding immigration and integration, although an internal ‘exceptionalist’ understanding of the country as a place without discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity still prevails. Drawing on interviews with principals and teachers from 15 Danish schools, the paper analyses these professionals’ reflections on their work of educating immigrant children in a societal context of restrictive immigration and integration policies, focusing specifically on how they construct, cross, and work at the boundaries between school and society. The article contributes to our understanding of professionals’ processes of navigating and demarcating themselves from a highly politicized context of immigration and integration policies, while at the same time illuminating more general societal processes regarding race, integration, and nationalism.

Novice EAP teacher identity construction: A qualitative study from Iran

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers' job description involves contextual particularities that have roots in sociocultural and disciplinary dimensions. Such complexities may profoundly influence the identities novice teachers construct as they need to handle different dimensions of their career. However, there is little documented research on novice EAP teachers' identity construction. The present study reports on the identity construction of a novice Iranian EAP teacher (Alborz). Data were collected from semi-structured interviews, reflective journals, and classroom observations and the associated stimulated recall sessions. Our analysis of the data revealed three major themes in relation to Alborz's identity construction: (1) tensions between claimed and constructed EAP identities, (2) content-related emotional conflicts, and (3) EAP teacher as an undervalued professional. Alborz experienced various conceptual, emotional, and agency-related conflicts that had roots in contextual parameters of EAP teaching in Iran, yet at each stage of his development, these conflicts intensified, diminished, and took different shapes. In particular, managing the connection between language and content was a site of struggle for Alborz as he had to adopt identities that clashed with his professional understandings and idiosyncratic descriptions of EAP instruction.

Enabling civic initiatives: frontline workers as democratic professionals in Amsterdam

ABSTRACT For more than fifteen years, frontline workers in the Netherlands have facilitated civic initiatives by practicing a ‘modest approach’ that can be seen as an example of democratic professionalism as developed by Albert Dzur. In this paper we empirically explore the understudied topic of how the implementation of this modest approach affects frontline workers. Based on a case study in Amsterdam, we find that frontline workers’ face a tension between sharing authority while retaining professional responsibility, which manifests itself as active support versus stepping back to leave the initiative to citizens, and as being present versus other daily work or private life. If frontline workers do not succeed in dealing with these tensions, democratic professionalism ceases to exist. Reflecting on this tension between sharing authority while retaining professional responsibility may help to develop a richer understanding of democratic professionalism.

Defining Potentially Unprofessional Behavior on Social Media for Health Care Professionals: Mixed Methods Study.

BackgroundSocial media presence among health care professionals is ubiquitous and largely beneficial for their personal and professional lives. New standards are forming in the context of e-professionalism, which are loosening the predefined older and offline terms. With these benefits also come dangers, with exposure to evaluation on all levels from peers, superiors, and the public, as witnessed in the #medbikini movement.ObjectiveThe objectives of this study were to develop an improved coding scheme (SMePROF coding scheme) for the assessment of unprofessional behavior on Facebook of medical or dental students and faculty, compare reliability between coding schemes used in previous research and SMePROF coding scheme, compare gender-based differences for the assessment of the professional content on Facebook, validate the SMePROF coding scheme, and assess the level of and to characterize web-based professionalism on publicly available Facebook profiles of medical or dental students and faculty.MethodsA search was performed via a new Facebook account using a systematic probabilistic sample of students and faculty in the University of Zagreb School of Medicine and School of Dental Medicine. Each profile was subsequently assessed with regard to professionalism based on previously published criteria and compared using the SMePROF coding scheme developed for this study.ResultsIntercoder reliability increased when the SMePROF coding scheme was used for the comparison of gender-based coding results. Results showed an increase in the gender-based agreement of the final codes for the category professionalism, from 85% in the first phase to 96.2% in the second phase. Final results of the second phase showed that there was almost no difference between female and male coders for coding potentially unprofessional content for students (7/240, 2.9% vs 5/203, 2.5%) or for coding unprofessional content for students (11/240, 4.6% vs 11/203, 5.4%). Comparison of definitive results between the first and second phases indicated an understanding of web-based professionalism, with unprofessional content being very low, both for students (9/222, 4.1% vs 12/206, 5.8%) and faculty (1/25, 4% vs 0/23, 0%). For assessment of the potentially unprofessional content, we observed a 4-fold decrease, using the SMePROF rubric, for students (26/222, 11.7% to 6/206, 2.9%) and a 5-fold decrease for faculty (6/25, 24% to 1/23, 4%).ConclusionsSMePROF coding scheme for assessing professionalism of health-care professionals on Facebook is a validated and more objective instrument. This research emphasizes the role that context plays in the perception of unprofessional and potentially unprofessional content and provides insight into the existence of different sets of rules for web-based and offline interaction that marks behavior as unprofessional. The level of e-professionalism on Facebook profiles of medical or dental students and faculty available for public viewing has shown a high level of understanding of e-professionalism.

It Takes a Village: An Ecosystem Perspective on Caring for Patients with High Need

Providing high-value care for patients with high need requires effective organization of collaboration and integration across care sectors. To better organize care, recent work suggests a need to move away from individual organizations that deliver parts of care to encompass care as being delivered by an entire ecosystem including all actors involved in care delivery. However, empirical evidence of processes through which value is created within ecosystems and the governance mechanisms that support value creation is limited. In a qualitative study of eight primary care practices in the United States, we explore with which actors primary care practices interact to deliver high-value care for patients with high need. And, which governing mechanisms help primary care practices interact with actors in the service ecosystem to deliver high-value care for these patient. In adopting a service ecosystem perspective, we categorize the broad group of actors with whom primary care practices interact. We discover that governance mechanisms are more intentional and formalized between actors between which professional understanding is more closely aligned and task interdependence is higher, while more governance voids existed between actors from more divergent sectors such as primary care practices and community resource providers. Key words: Ecosystems, governance voids, governance mechanisms, high cost high need patients