ABSTRACT Background Professional Identity (PI) significantly influences how Healthcare Science (HCS) professionals perceive their roles and contributions within the NHS. Strong PI is closely linked to improved collaboration, resilience and patient care, yet research on PI among HCS professionals has been limited. Objectives This study aimed to investigate how HCS professionals in NHS Wales perceive their PI and identify factors that shape and support PI. Methods A mixed-methods approach was employed. 263 participants answered an initial survey and a further 42 participants attended focus groups to discuss attitudes and experiences in greater depth. Results Key findings highlight the essential role of professional recognition, the impact of professional bodies, the importance of language and the influence of mentorship and team culture in shaping PI. Conclusions The findings support recommendations for enhanced involvement of professional bodies, strategic changes in language and terminology, promotion of professional diversity and the development of robust mentorship and local leadership networks. KEY MESSAGES What is Already Known on This Topic? Healthcare science (HCS) professionals account for approximately 7% of the NHS Wales workforce. These professionals are essential to diagnostic services, patient care, quality management and leadership within the NHS. Previous research has found that professional identity (PI) is closely associated with enhanced job satisfaction, effective interprofessional collaboration, professional resilience and successful career progression. The literature also identifies the positive influence of professional recognition, regulatory structures, mentorship and research activities on PI. However, identity research with HCS professionals is limited, with HCS professionals continuing to experience limited visibility and challenges related to professional status and belonging. What this Study Adds This study fills a crucial gap in the research on PI among HCS professionals. While previous literature established the general importance of PI for job satisfaction, collaboration, and career progression, identity research specific to HCS professionals has been limited, with many facing challenges around visibility, status and belonging. By addressing the specific experiences and needs of HCS professionals, this research advances understanding of PI beyond broader healthcare contexts and acknowledges the challenges faced by smaller workforce groups who often feel underrepresented and overlooked. How this Study Might Affect Research, Practice or Policy The findings of this research offer practical directions for enhancing PI among HCS professionals. Strengthening links with professional bodies, revising language to better reflect the diversity and expertise of HCS roles, and building robust mentorship and leadership structures are likely to improve job satisfaction, multidisciplinary work and patient outcomes. Resulting actions have already been incorporated into the workplan for the national HCS workforce transformation programme (the ‘HCS Programme’) in NHS Wales.
This article discusses the relationship between the demands on nurses’ professional performance and adherence to the use of medicines and supplements for their management. This approach allows us to analyze the transformations of nursing work and how nurses use various natural and pharmaceutical resources to cope with the pressures they face in their professional activities. To understand the interconnection between the transformations in nursing work and what we refer to here as the process of pharmaceuticalisation of work contexts, we use the results of a sociological mixed methods study on the use of medicines and food supplements for managing professional performance. The results show some of the main pressure factors in nursing work and how the increase in professional pressure substantially affects performance-related medicine use, as these become more frequent when nurses perceive their work as more intense, demanding, and exposed to risks.
The literature on school counseling as a profession has emphasized the classic boundaries approach, which perceives the profession's jurisdiction as a product of a power struggle for a distinct uniqueness. This paper aims to provide an alternative approach, in line with current approaches to professions. The author establishes a core-characteristics approach, highlighting the profession's core character as its source of legitimacy, encouraging continuous education and adapting to dynamic contexts. This mixed-methods study investigated the perceptions of school counselors and teachers regarding the status and sources of the counselor's legitimacy. The findings show that school counselors were recognized as influential professionals, and their main source of legitimacy was deemed to be character attributes, more than knowledge and education. Differences in perceptions were found vis-à-vis the profession's multi-specialist contexts. Further examining the core characteristics of the profession may enhance its legitimacy and help it thrive.
This article scrutinizes the professional support provided to teachers by supervisors to improve the teaching-learning process within the dimensions of learning behaviours and learning assessment in Ethiopian primary schools. The study employs a mixed-methods research design. The questionnaires were responded to by 382 in-service postgraduate diploma primary school principals and supervisors in the Educational Leadership and Management Department at Hawassa University. A semi-structured interview was conducted with 12 senior principals and supervisors. The results illustrate critical gaps in the supervision support to teachers for the improvement of learning behaviours and learning assessment. The study suggests that support-oriented supervision could play a significant role in assisting and improving the teaching and learning process. Hence, regional and federal governments should work together with development partners to enhance the competency of supervisory staff to provide enabling support to teachers and thus improve the quality of the teaching and learning processes in Ethiopian schools.
There is currently a great deal of attention paid to the primary school as an institution that not only has to educate, but also supports the formation of the students and therefore has a dual purpose. The research and discussions in this area most often take place on a theoretical and overall level, which can create a barren distance from the specific pedagogical practice in the schools. The article bridges this gap by presenting analyzes of how teachers in primary and lower secondary school experience the field of tension between education and formation in their own teaching. The analyzes indicate that teachers experience their practice as a constant shift between two basic elements. On the one hand, they must plan, manage, frame, communicate and thus objectify the students and on the other hand, they must withdraw, suspend their control and provide space for the student to occupy a subject position in the teaching. And here this act of withdrawal in particular is highlighted as a very important, but also fragile moment that is easily overlooked. On the basis of the analyzes, the concept of The pedagogical double movement is developed. It is defined as the constant interaction between the teacher's objectifying and subjectivating actions in order to support that the student both learns what the teacher has intended, and at the same time develops his subjectivity and self determination. Thus, the concept makes an empirical contribution to research on how to understand and ‘do’ pedagogical practice that both educates and supports formation.
In recent years, significant attention has been paid to the relationship between different knowledge domains in professional education, based on the assumption that achieving coherence between domains is important for student learning and educational quality. In particular, much research has addressed questions of knowledge integration across different sites of learning. However, less attention has been paid to the epistemic diversity of the campus-based programme context and to how relationships between knowledge domains are constructed within epistemically diverse professional programmes. This article addresses this gap by examining how program leaders discursively position disciplinary knowledge in relation to the mandate of teacher education. The data consist of interviews and logs from 20 program leaders at four higher education institutions. The analysis identifies four accounts of the role of disciplinary knowledge in teacher education. The article concludes by discussing implications for efforts to achieve coherence and knowledge integration in professional education.
This paper presents a discussion of what research in professions and professional work means, both generally, and in a Danish context. Initially we present a summary of the origins of the term profession, and the oldest occupations understood to be professions. Central questions when defining this origin is what constitutes the base of professional knowledge and whether such a base is specific to each profession. However, what such knowledge may be has proven hard to agree on, since such knowledge is what research in professions and professional work strive to produce. The paper instead proposes a different way to describe and categorize research in professions, which does not presume any one definition of neither profession nor knowledge. Instead, we suggest summarizing the different research practices found in the field, by way of three axes of difference: 1. Research in professions for – describing the different institutions and agents for whom the research is being produced. 2. Research in professions through – describing the different theoretical perspectives and assumptions upon which the research is based. Finally 3. Research in professions withdescribing the empirical methods and methodologies, which the research employs. On each axis, we exemplify a number of positions found in the field of research in professions. In conclusion, the paper points out correlations between positions on the three axes, which are indicative of the debates and struggles taking place in the field of research today.
Sociologists have paid little attention to the shifting significance of gender to professional work. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the meanings attached to gender, and the gendering of work, have shifted over time, such that the experiences of newer cohorts of professionals differ from those of professionals in previous generations. In this paper, we show how combining intersectionality theory and life course approaches facilitates the exploration of inequalities by gender, class, and race/ethnicity across generations and age cohorts. We present empirical research findings to demonstrate how this approach illuminates the convergence of gender and age in the professions to confer privilege and produce disadvantage in professional workplaces. Subsequently, we introduce the concept of meta-work—hidden, invisible and laborious work performed by non-traditional and disadvantaged professionals—through which they endeavor to cope with structural inequalities embedded in the professions. As professions and professional workplaces are still designed primarily for middle-class, dominant-ethnicity men, professionals who do not fit these categories need to invest extra time and energy to develop individual strategies and tactics to cope with professional pressures in and around their work. Meta-work is intrinsically linked to the traditional and normative ideals surrounding professional roles and identities, and therefore is intimately connected with professionals’ sense of self and their feeling of belonging to professional communities. Meta-work, and the tactics and strategies that result from it, are important coping mechanisms for some professionals, enabling them to deal with rapidly changing work realities and a lack of collegial support. Finally, we highlight several areas for future research on the intersections of gender and age in the professions.
The article describes the background and need for developing and initiating practice research in social work – including the possibility of connecting research, learning processes and knowledge production in practice. Furthermore, the possibilities of utilizing the knowledge, developed, but seldom made explicit, in practice, and the possibility of producing societal impact are described. Practice research is diverse, because it is negotiated by different stakeholders when launched. The article suggests a scientific position, a definition and a description of different approaches within practice research, which may support negotiations and discussions of practice research – among researchers and within collaborations between research and practice.
Tot Bojana, Živančev Miodrag, Milovanović Dušan
et al.
Common practice in Southeast Europe (SEE) countries is that mostly low skilled workers work in waste management sector. In SEE countries there are no institutions specialized for educational training concerning safety of the employees who work in solid waste management system. It should be emphasized, that this specific type of profession, which is dealing with the high occupational health risks, needs legal basis for proper education and training, like it is defined for numerous professions in public sectors. Evidently, companies that provide the education and training for their employees will have direct benefits. The main focus of professional education is on workers on landfill, as this is the working place with the highest risk, but at the same time very important for operational practice and sustainability of a landfill. For these workers, there are following focus points: Professional training; Health and Safety protection; Fire protection; Landfill gas management; Leachate management. Well defined educational programmes for H&S, emphasizing safety precautions in handling with hazardous materials and fire protection, are good way to reduce injuries and to improve efficiency of employees as well.
En undersøgelse offentliggjort i 2016 skønner, at danske skoler venter at skulle modtage 9000 flygtningebørn i skolealderen i 2016. Mange af disse børn befinder sig i en midlertidig position som asylsøgende, men har som alle andre børn i Danmark også krav på at modtage et undervisningstilbud. Formålet med denne artikel er at undersøge det pædagogiske arbejde med asylsøgende børn i en kommunal modtageklasse. Produktion af det empiriske materiale er informeret af en pædagogisk antropologisk tilgang, og ved at fokusere på interaktioner mellem lærere og elever skal analysen svare på, hvilke sociale identiteter asylsøgende børn tildeles i den institutionelle praksis i forhold til kulturelt indlejrede selvfølgeligheder. Konklusionen er, at det pædagogiske arbejde med asylsøgende børn er præget af en permanent midlertidighed – indlejret i flygtningeregimet – mellem at behandle asylsøgende børn som enten almindelige børn eller som børn med særlige – mentale, sociale og følelsesmæssige – behov.
Eva Bejerot, Maria Gustavsson, Hans Hasselbladh
et al.
In Swedish emergency departments, various initiatives have been introduced in order to reduce long waiting times for patients: lean methods, targets for waiting times related to revenues, interprofessional teams, and different forms of triage systems. This study focuses on the physicians’ views on dilemmas related to these interventions. The study is based on the interviews with 14 physicians in four emergency departments. The interviews have been analysed thematically and presented in the form of brief narratives. The study follows changes from clinical practice to national policy level. The changes appear to be ineffective or counterproductive—waiting times are rather getting longer, but the measures have a number of other effects. Decisions are taken at a central level and are carried out by means of rules, incentives, and projects and end in the medical profession being displaced from the central position they have held in the working processes of health care.
Zalika Klemenc-Ketis,1–3 Ellen Tveter Deilkås,4 Dag Hofoss,5 Gunnar Tschudi Bondevik6,7 1Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Maribor, Maribor, 2Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, 3Community Health Centre Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia; 4Health Services Research Unit, Akershus University Hospital, Lørenskog, 5Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo, Oslo, 6Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, University of Bergen, Bergen, 7National Centre for Emergency Primary Health Care, Uni Research Health, Bergen, Norway Purpose: To get an overview of health care workers perceptions of patient safety climates and the quality of collaboration in Slovenian out-of-hours health care (OOHC) between professional groups.Materials and methods: This was a cross-sectional study carried out in all (60) Slovenian OOHC clinics; 37 (61.7%) agreed to participate with 438 employees. The questionnaire consisted of the Slovenian version of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire – Ambulatory Version (SAQ-AV). Results: The study sample consisted of 175 (70.0%) physicians, nurse practitioners, and practice nurses. Practice nurses reported the highest patient safety climate scores in all dimensions. Total mean (standard deviation) SAQ-AV score was 60.9±15.2. Scores for quality of collaboration between different professional groups were high. The highest mean scores were reported by nurse practitioners on collaboration with practice nurses (4.4±0.6). The lowest mean scores were reported by practice nurses on collaboration with nurse practitioners (3.8±0.9).Conclusion: Due to large variations in Slovenian OOHC clinics with regard to how health care workers from different professional backgrounds perceive safety culture, more attention should be devoted to improving the team collaboration in OOHC. A clearer description of professional team roles should be provided. Keywords: patient care management, out-of-hours medical care, primary health care, patient safety
The regulation of professional groups has often been justified as being in the public interest. In recent decades, policymakers in Anglo-American countries have questioned whether self-regulating professions have truly served the public interest, or whether they have merely acted in their own interests. This paper draws on legislative records and policy reports to explore meanings attached to professional self-regulation and the public interest in Canada by state actors over the past 150 years. The findings point to a shift in the definition of the public interest away from service quality and professional interests, towards efficiency, human rights, consumer choice, and in some contexts business interests. Changing views of the public interest contribute to regulatory change.