Examining communication and team performance during clinical handover in a complex environment : the private sector post-anaesthetic care unit

* Threats to patient safety during clinical handover have been identified as an ongoing problem in health care delivery.

* In complex handover situations, organisational, cultural, behavioural and environmental factors associated with team performance can affect patient safety by undermining the stability of team functioning and the effectiveness of interprofessional communication.

* We present a practical framework for promoting systematic, comprehensive measurement of the factors involved in clinical handover.

* The framework can be used to develop viable solutions to the problems of clinical handover.

* The framework was devised and used in a recent project examining interprofessional communication and team performance during clinical handover in post-anaesthetic care units.

* The framework combines five key concepts: clinical governance, clinician engagement, ecological validity, safety culture and team climate, and sustainability.

* We believe that use of this framework will help overcome the limitations of previous research that has not taken into account the complex and multifaceted influences on clinical handover and interprofessional communication.

Communication and meaning : the first year experience of off-campus study

The substantive field of the thesis is the sociology of distance education. The issues investigated centre on the relationship between off-campus students and the institutions of higher education with which they enrol, in which the first year experience is construed as an encounter between the students’ personal contexts and institutional cultures. A theoretical framework is constructed which synthcsises elements of phenomenology, hermeneutics and feminist theory. The author reports research into the way a small sample of people experienced off-campus study. The students selected resided in Victoria, Australia, and were enrolled with one of two Victorian tertiary institutions: the (then) Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education and Deakin University. Using a case study approach, the subjective experiences of the students were studied by means of a series of interviews which took place at their homes or places of employment in the period January 1988 to November 1989. Methodological issues relating to the application of hermeneutic principles to the use of interviews in educational research are explored. The results of the interpretation of the interview material are presented in terms of an integrationist model of socialisation. The thesis argued is that certain theoretical and practical issues in distance education are best understood as social and cultural phenomena rather than as technical problems. The implications of the findings about the effects of gender and culture on student experience are discussed in relation to the issues of access and equity, student support, and models of teaching and learning.

The interaction of discipline and culture in academic writing

Work in contrastive rhetoric has often sought to examine the impact of culturally-based writing conventions on text production and has outlined cultural differences in texts in different languages. At the same time. the study of specialised languages has often claimed a degree of uniformity in text construction both at the level of culture and at the level of the discipline. It appears however that approaches which consider just culture or just discipline miss part of the picture. This paper argues that considerations of discipline and culture are. complex and interrelated and that this complexity and interrelationship can be seen at several different levels in specialised academic texts.

Immaterial land and indigenous ideology: refiguring Australian art and culture

Through an examination and critique of western notions of ideology my research aims to propose an alternative way of thinking about ideology and ontology. My argument relates specifically to art and culture and demonstrated through theoretical argument and artistic practice, how Indigenous art and culture allow us to conceive of an alternative understanding of ideology.

Contemporary publics: shifting boundaries in new media, technology and culture

If the twentieth century has been dominated by discussions of the public, public life, and the public sphere, Contemporary Publics argues that, in the twenty-first century, we must complicate the singularity of that paradigm and start thinking of our world in terms of multiple, overlapping, and competing publics. In three distinct streams—art, media and technology, and the intimate life—this volume offers up the intellectual and political significance of thinking through the plurality of our publics. “Countering Neoliberal Publics: Screen and Space,” explores how different artistic practices articulate the challenges and desires of multiple publics. “Making and Shaping Publics: Discourse and Technology” showcases how media shape publics, and how new and emerging publics use these technologies to construct identities. “Commodifying Public Intimacies” examines what happens to the notion of the private when intimacies structure publics, move into public spaces, and develop value that can be exchanged and circulated.

Finding voices: authentic learning online in the field of public communication and citizenship

A creative re-acculturation of teachers and students is occurring in virtual classrooms as traditional learning resources, pedagogy, and technology intersect in unexpected ways. This paper reports on a case of authentic, experiential, and constructivist learning developed for tertiary public relations  students. A subject titled ‘Public Communication and Citizenship’ (PCC) at  Deakin University in Australia asked students to examine the problematic and contentious areas of self interest, persuasion, power, and ethics in  contemporary contexts of mass media and globalisation. Feedback from  those students suggests that, in this case, online teaching strategies  successfully integrated with the total learning environment to achieve  higher-order learning. PCC is one example of PR pedagogy combining  theory and technology to move beyond ‘skilling for jobs’.

Travelling drum with different beats: experiencing African music and culture in Australian teacher education

This article reports on a study that examined the effectiveness of introducing African music and culture to Australian non-specialist primary teacher education students at Deakin University in Melbourne (Australia). The study demonstrates that African music enhanced the generic musical experiences, learning, motivation, interest, confidence and competence of students in their fourth year of teacher education. The research also addressed the significance and contribution of African music and culture as a cross-cultural experience for these beginning teachers who in turn could provide similar experiences for their own students. This study highlighted the author's role and cultural identity as a South African music educator in transmitting the music and culture represented in 'the travelling drum' to a cohort of students with a predominantly Eurocentric orientation. By extension, this curriculum initiative broadened students' understanding and application of indigenous methods of teaching and learning as part of a global experience. Such a curriculum represents a pathway to many other forms of non-Western indigenous knowledge of music, culture and pedagogy that can be mapped out as a journey along a multicultural route towards 'internationalising the curriculum'.

Browsing the modern kitchen - a feast of gender, place and culture (part 1)

Assembling 10 essays from around the globe which engage variously with the space in which food preparation occurs—the kitchen—revealed stunning diversity but also commonalities. In this first of two sets of theme papers on this vital but often unexamined domestic space, the discourse of modernity unites the look and use of twentieth-century kitchens in Australia, Britain and Finland. Imbued with notions of scientific management, the modern kitchen had some common designs which prescribed women's place within it—first as the main occupant and then as the family overseer. The construction of this semi-private space also involved particular domestic technologies which, as the new century dawns, now literally connect the kitchen to the world beyond via the internet fridge. This Introduction begins the two-part feast of gender, place and culture—with an overview of Australia and sketch of subsequent essays—Supski on mid-century migrant Australia, Saarikangas on Finland, Bennett on rural Britain and Watkins on the fridge.

Agency theory and culture : implications for research in management control systems

The objective of this paper is to encourage further research into the applicability of agency theory for the study of management control issues of organisations in Asian societies.

Using language and culture to construct group work in higher education

Second language students’ experiences of group work is not often transparent in evaluation studies although the multicultural nature of the student population in Australasia would suggest that culture and language should be on the research agenda. Culture and language is used in the higher education literature to mark out the Asian learner as different and problematic although such cultural models and stereotypes have been the subject of some criticism in recent years. Through semi-structured qualitative interviewing in focus group interviews with 19 South East Asian students I explore the ways language and culture intervene to structure these students’ experiences.

Jogging all the way to choir: changes in Australian leisure and culture

This paper presents definitions of leisure in Australian society, discusses various forms of leisure and its importance to the individual, community and nation. Recent observed changes to the nature of leisure are presented. It appears as though a shift from individual consumption to collective production of leisure is occurring; for example, "jogging all the way to choir".