Work stress, smoking status, and smoking intensity: an observational study of 46 190 employees

Study objective: To examine the relation between work stress, as indicated by the job strain model, and the effort-reward imbalance model, and smoking.

The level playing field: the impact of assessment practice on professional development

Context: The effects of assessment practice on students’ learning are unclear, particularly regarding professional development. Corralling in objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) is designed to reduce illicit passing of examination information. Candidates completing an examination are kept secluded until the next cohort of examinees has begun. We used the introduction of corralling as a context in which to explore social influences on examination misconduct, with the aims of improving understanding of the hidden effects of assessment, and evaluating the acceptability of corralling from the student perspective.

Methods: A questionnaire was administered to students corralled post-OSCE for the first time. Eleven semi-structured interviews were subsequently conducted. Questionnaire data were analysed for descriptive statistics and thematic analysis of interview transcripts was carried out.

Results: The questionnaire response rate was 95.4% (251/263). Before corralling, 80.9% (203/251) of students were aware of the sharing of information among peers and 78.5% (197/251) agreed that such misconduct was unprofessional. The majority were in favour of corralling (90.8%, 228/251). Four themes emerged from the semi-structured interviews: the student network versus the individual; assessment-driven culture; the deferring of professionalism, and the ‘level playing field’. Students saw interaction within the student network, on a background of assessment-driven culture, as the key driver in examination misconduct. Conforming to the rules of the social network was prioritised over individual agency, although the mismatch between the rules of the network and the dominant professional discourse caused some conflict for individuals. Deferred professionalism (described as the practice of taking on the norms of professional behaviour only when qualified) was a rationalisation used to minimise this conflict. Corralling provided a ‘level playing field’ in which the influences of the network were minimised.

Conclusions: Examination misconduct is thus a complex social construction with implications for individual learners in terms of professional development. Corralling is one mechanism for addressing misconduct that is acceptable to students, but assessment processes have important hidden effects which educators should acknowledge.

Implementation of workplace-based smoking cessation support activities and smoking cessation among employees:the Finnish Public Sector Study

We investigated the relationship between implementation of workplace smoking cessation support activities and employee smoking cessation.

Workplace social capital and all-cause mortality:a prospective cohort study of 28,043 public-sector employees in Finland

We examined the association between workplace social capital and all-cause mortality in a large occupational cohort from Finland.

Analgesics:a comparison of therapeutic knowledge and inter-professional liaison between general practitioners and community pharmacists

The aim of this study was to ascertain general practitioners' (GPs') and pharmacists' knowledge of analgesics, to establish professional opinion on their use, and to assess the extent of pharmacist input into the prescribing of analgesics. Pharmacists displayed a better knowledge of analgesics than their colleagues in general practice, but had little input into the prescribing decisions made by GPs. Pharmacists' knowledge is not being put to best use in contributing to the preparation of practice formularies, and links between these two health professional groups need to be developed further.