Palliative care problem severity score: Reliability and acceptability in a national study

Background The Palliative Care Problem Severity Score is a clinician-rated tool to assess problem severity in four palliative care domains (pain, other symptoms, psychological/spiritual, family/carer problems) using a 4-point categorical scale (absent, mild, moderate, severe). Aim To test the reliability and acceptability of the Palliative Care Problem Severity Score. Design: Multi-centre, cross-sectional study involving pairs of clinicians independently rating problem severity using the tool. Setting/participants Clinicians from 10 Australian palliative care services: 9 inpatient units and 1 mixed inpatient/community-based service. Results A total of 102 clinicians participated, with almost 600 paired assessments completed for each domain, involving 420 patients. A total of 91% of paired assessments were undertaken within 2 h. Strength of agreement for three of the four domains was moderate: pain (Kappa = 0.42, 95% confidence interval = 0.36 to 0.49); psychological/spiritual (Kappa = 0.48, 95% confidence interval = 0.42 to 0.54); family/carer (Kappa = 0.45, 95% confidence interval = 0.40 to 0.52). Strength of agreement for the remaining domain (other symptoms) was fair (Kappa = 0.38, 95% confidence interval = 0.32 to 0.45). Conclusion The Palliative Care Problem Severity Score is an acceptable measure, with moderate reliability across three domains. Variability in inter-rater reliability across sites and participant feedback indicate that ongoing education is required to ensure that clinicians understand the purpose of the tool and each of its domains. Raters familiar with the patient they were assessing found it easier to assign problem severity, but this did not improve inter-rater reliability.

The buffering effect of selection, optimization, and compensation strategy use on the relationship between problem solving demands and occupational well-being: A daily diary study

This study investigated within-person relationships between daily problem solving demands, selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) strategy use, job satisfaction, and fatigue at work. Based on conservation of resources theory, it was hypothesized that high SOC strategy use boosts the positive relationship between problem solving demands and job satisfaction, and buffers the positive relationship between problem solving demands and fatigue. Using a daily diary study design, data were collected from 64 administrative employees who completed a general questionnaire and two daily online questionnaires over four work days. Multilevel analyses showed that problem solving demands were positively related to fatigue, but unrelated to job satisfaction. SOC strategy use was positively related to job satisfaction, but unrelated to fatigue. A buffering effect of high SOC strategy use on the demands-fatigue relationship was found, but no booster effect on the demands-satisfaction relationship. The results suggest that high SOC strategy use is a resource that protects employees from the negative effects of high problem solving demands.

Considering gambling involvement in the understanding of problem gambling: A large cross-sectional study of an Australian population

Instead of regarding a particular type of gambling activity (for example, electronic gambling machines, table games) as an isolated factor for problem gambling, recent research suggests that gambling involvement (for example, as measured by the number of different types of gambling activities played) should also be considered. Using a large sample of the Victorian adult population, this study found that the strength of association between problem gambling and the type of gambling reduced after adjusting for gambling involvement. This finding supports recent research that gambling involvement is an important factor in assessing the risk of problem gambling. The study also provides insights into the measurements of gambling involvement and provides alternative statistical modelling to analyse problem gambling.

Unbounding the interaction design problem: The contribution of HCI in three interventions for well-being

In this paper we consider HCI's role in technology interventions for health and well-being. Three projects carried out by the authors are analysed by appropriating the idea of a value chain to chart a causal history from proximal effects generated in early episodes of design through to distal health and well-being outcomes. Responding to recent arguments that favour bounding HCI's contribution to local patterns of use, we propose an unbounded view of HCI that addresses an extended value chain of influence. We discuss a view of HCI methods as mobilising this value chain perspective in multi-disciplinary collaborations through its emphasis on early prototyping and naturalistic studies of use.

Human trafficking heroes and villains: Representing the problem in anti-trafficking awareness campaigns

Since the declaration by the United Nations that awareness raising should be a key part of efforts to combat human trafficking, government and non-government organisations have produced numerous public awareness campaigns designed to capture the public’s attention and sympathy. These campaigns represent the ‘problem’ of trafficking in specific ways, creating heroes and villains by placing the blame for trafficking on some, while obscuring the responsibility of others. This paper adopts Carol Bacchi’s ‘What is the problem represented to be?’ framework for examining the politicisation of problem representation in 18 anti-trafficking awareness campaigns. It is argued that these campaigns construct a narrow understanding of the problem through the depiction of ‘ideal offenders’. In particular, a strong focus on the demand for commercial sex as causative of human trafficking serves to obscure the problematic role of consumerism in a wide range of industries, and perpetuates an understanding of trafficking that fails to draw a necessary distinction between the demand for labour, and the demand for ‘exploitable’ labour. This problem representation also obscures the role governments in destination countries may play in causing trafficking through imposing restrictive migration regimes that render migrants vulnerable to traffickers.

The problem of simplification: Think-tanks, recipes, equity and ‘Turning around low-performing schools’

Non-government actors such as think-tanks are playing an important role in Australian policy work. As governments increasingly outsource policy work previously done by education departments and academics to these new policy actors, more think-tanks have emerged that represent a wide range of political views and ideological positions. This paper looks at the emergence of the Grattan Institute as one significant player in Australian education policy with a particular emphasis on Grattan’s report ‘Turning around low-performing schools’. Grattan exemplifies many of the facets of Barber’s ‘deliverology’, as they produce reports designed to be easily digested, simply actioned and provide reassurance that there is an answer, often through focusing on ‘what works’ recipes. ‘Turning around low-performing schools’ is a perfect example of this deliverology. However, a close analysis of the Report suggests that it contains four major problems which seriously impact its usefulness for schools and policymakers: it ignores data that may be more important in explaining the turn-around of schools, the Report is overly reliant on NAPLAN data, there are reasons to be suspicious about the evidence assembled, and finally the Report falls into a classic trap of logic—the post hoc fallacy.

The problem with teamwork: A discursive investigation

- Background Teamwork sits comfortably within the vocabularies of most physical education teachers. It is used to both describe and prescribe student behaviour in a variety of physical and sport-related activities. Yet while supporters of sport and PE have readily employed the term, remarkably few pedagogues have taken the time to consider what teamwork refers to, let alone what it means to teach it. - Focus of study In this paper, we examine practitioners' constructions of teamwork. - Participants and setting Data were generated with seven physical education teachers (four male and three female) at a state-funded secondary school near Brisbane, Australia. The teachers ranged in experience from three months to more than 30 years. - Research design The investigation was a case study of one physical education department at a secondary school. - Data collection Three interviews were conducted with each of the teachers. The first was biographical in nature and covered themes such as education and sporting experiences. During the second interviews, teachers produced examples and statements on the topic of teamwork as it occurs within their lessons. The material from the second set of interviews was explored in the final set where the teachers were invited to elaborate on and explain comments from their previous interviews. - Analysis Data were considered from a discursive-constructionist perspective and attention was given to linguistic and grammatical features of the teachers' commentary as well as the cultural relevance of the utterances. The notion of ‘interpretive repertoires’ – essentially cultural explanations bounded by particular socio-linguistic features – provided the central unit of analysis. - Findings The teachers in the project made use of an array of discursive resources to make sense of teamwork. These constructions often bore little resemblance to one another or to existing theories of teamwork. In some cases, the teachers offered vague descriptions or drew on alternative concepts to make sense of teamwork. - Conclusions Without a certain level of agreement in their everyday usage, teachers' constructions of teamwork fail to be convincing or useful. We maintain that a more substantive conceptualisation of teamwork is needed in the field of sport pedagogy and offer suggestions on how this might be accomplished.

The transfer problem and the intertemporal terms of trade

In this paper the effects of a transfer on the intertemporal terms of trade are examined in the context of a simple two-country, two-period model. When intertemporal trade occurs because the two economies have different rates of time preference, a transfer improves the terms of trade of the paying country. Alternatively, when trade occurs owing to international differences in the endowments of goods over the two periods, the effect of a transfer depends on (a) the relationship between the interest rate and the rates of time preference of the two countries and (b) the relationship between their elasticities of intertemporal consumption substitution.

What the problem may be with family intervention . . . and with dissemination more generally: A commentary

While the two decades since the study by Kavanagh et al. (1993) has given additional insights into effective dissemination of family interventions, the accompanying papers show that progress remains limited. The effectiveness trial that triggered this series of papers offers a cautionary tale. Despite management support, 30–35 hr of workshop training and training of local supervisors who could act as champions, use of the full intervention was limited. In part, this seemed due to the demanding nature of the intervention and its incompatibility with practitioners’ roles, in part, to limitations in the training, among other factors. While the accompanying papers note these and other barriers to dissemination, they miss a more disturbing finding in the original paper: Practitioners said they were using several aspects in routine care, despite being unable to accurately describe what they were. This finding highlights the risks in taking practitioners’ reports of their practice in files or supervision sessions at face value and potentially has implications for reports of other clinical work. The fidelity of disseminated treatments can only be assured by audits of practice, accompanied by affirming but also corrective feedback.

Understanding who cares: Creating the evidence to address the long-standing policy problem of staff shortages in early childhood education and care

Evidence-based policy is a means of ensuring that policy is informed by more than ideology or expedience. However, what constitutes robust evidence is highly contested. In this paper, we argue policy must draw on quantitative and qualitative data. We do this in relation to a long entrenched problem in Australian early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce policy. A critical shortage of qualified staff threatens the attainment of broader child and family policy objectives linked to the provision of ECEC and has not been successfully addressed by initiatives to date. We establish some of the limitations of existing quantitative data sets and consider the potential of qualitative studies to inform ECEC workforce policy. The adoption of both quantitative and qualitative methods is needed to illuminate the complex nature of the work undertaken by early childhood educators, as well as the environmental factors that sustain job satisfaction in a demanding and poorly understood working environment.

Problem-based learning in an e-learning environment: A case study at Griffith University School of Medicine

Increasing numbers of medical schools in Australia and overseas have moved away from didactic teaching methodologies and embraced problem-based learning (PBL) to improve clinical reasoning skills and communication skills as well as to encourage self-directed lifelong learning. In January 2005, the first cohort of students entered the new MBBS program at the Griffith University School of Medicine, Gold Coast, to embark upon an exciting, fully integrated curriculum using PBL, combining electronic delivery, communication and evaluation systems incorporating cognitive principles that underpin the PBL process. This chapter examines the educational philosophies and design of the e-learning environment underpinning the processes developed to deliver, monitor and evaluate the curriculum. Key initiatives taken to promote student engagement and innovative and distinctive approaches to student learning at Griffith promoted within the conceptual model for the curriculum are (a) Student engagement, (b) Pastoral care, (c) Staff engagement, (d) Monitoring and (e) Curriculum/Program Review. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.