Job uncertainty and personal control during downsizing: A comparison of survivors and victims

This study developed and tested a model of job uncertainty for survivors and victims of downsizing. Data were collected from three samples of employees in a public hospital, each representing three phases of the downsizing process: immediately before the announcement of the redeployment of staff, during the implementation of the downsizing, and towards the end of the official change programme. As predicted, levels of job uncertainty and personal control had a direct relationship with emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction, In addition, there was evidence to suggest that personal control mediated the relationship between job uncertainty and employee adjustment, a pattern of results that varied across each of the three phases of the change event. From the perspective of the organization's overall climate, it was found that levels of job uncertainty, personal control and job satisfaction improved and/or stabilized over the downsizing process. During the implementation phase, survivors experienced higher levels of personal control than victims, but both groups of employees reported similar levels of job uncertainty. We discuss the implications of our results for strategically managing uncertainty during and after organizational change.

Correlates of victimisation amongst people with psychosis

Background While much attention has been given to the prediction of violent offending behaviour amongst people with psychotic disorders, less attention has been given to the fact that these same individuals are often the victims of violence. In this paper, we examine victimisation amongst participants in a prevalence study of psychosis, and describe demographic and clinical correlates of victimisation. Method The study was based on the Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing - Low Prevalence (Psychotic) Disorders. The participants were asked if they had been a victim of violence in the previous year. The association between selected demographic and clinical variables and being a victim of violence was examined using logistic regression. Results Of the 962 individuals with psychosis, 172 reported being a victim of violence in the past 12 months (17.9 %). The odds of being a victim were increased in those who: (a) were female, (b) were homeless, (c) had a lifetime history of substance abuse, (d) had been arrested in the previous 12 months, (e) had poorer social and occupational function, and (f) had higher scores on the disorganisation summary score. Conclusions Clinicians should remain mindful that one out of every six individuals with a psychotic disorder reports being a victim of violence in the previous year. Models of care that address issues related to symptom relief, accommodation, and exposure to high-crime areas may reduce the rates of victimisation amongst those with psychotic disorders.

Surgical Theatre, Gifted Performances: The Changing Moral Economy of Surgical Training

Fred Hollows and his work to reduce blindness in Indigenous communities is an obvious example of benevolence of doctors and nurses towards patients while the role of the staff of burns units around Australia in treating the victims of the Bali bombing is another. Some different stories about benevolence in medicine, concerning the benevolence of patients towards trainee clinical staff are suggested.

Shaping the boys' agenda: The backlash blockbusters

The boys’ debate internationally is being fuelled by a range of texts on boys and masculinity. Many of the most popular texts are situated firmly within a backlash politics. These politics suggest that boys are the new ‘victims’ of schooling and that the girls’ agenda in schooling is a completed one. This paper will challenge the arguments contained within a number of the most recent of these ‘backlash blockbusters’. The paper will argue that, rather than boys being placed on the educational agenda in the status of victims, the ways in which dominant forms of masculinities and the harms they cause many girls and some boys need to be addressed.

Children and war

Children bear disproportionate consequences of armed conflict. The 21st century continues to see patterns of children enmeshed in international violence between opposing combatant forces, as victims of terrorist warfare, and, perhaps most tragically of all, as victims of civil wars. Innocent children so often are the victims of high-energy wounding from military ordinance. They sustain high-energy tissue damage and massive burns - injuries that are not commonly seen in civilian populations. Children have also been deliberately targeted victims in genocidal civil wars in Africa in the past decade, and hundreds of thousands have been killed and maimed in the context of close-quarter, hand-to-hand assaults of great ferocity. Paediatricians serve as uniformed military surgeons and as civilian doctors in both international and civil wars, and have a significant strategic role to play as advocates for the rights and welfare of children in the context of the evolving 'Laws of War'. One chronic legacy of contemporary warfare is blast injury to children from landmines. Such blasts leave children without feet or lower limbs, with genital injuries, blindness and deafness. This pattern of injury has become one of the post-civil war syndromes encountered by all intensivists and surgeons serving in four of the world's continents. The continued advocacy for the international ban on the manufacture, commerce and military use of antipersonnel landmines is a part of all paediatricians' obligation to promote the ethos of the Laws of War. Post-traumatic stress disorder remains an undertreated legacy of children who have been trapped in the shot and shell of battle as well as those displaced as refugees. An urgent, unfocused and unmet challenge has been the increase in, and plight of, child soldiers themselves. A new class of combatant comprises these children, who also become enmeshed in the triad of anarchic civil war, light-weight weaponry and drug or alcohol addiction. The International Criminal Court has outlawed as a War Crime, the conscription of children under 15 years of age. Nevertheless, there remain more than 300 000 child soldiers active and enmeshed in psychopathic violence as part of both civil and international warfare. The typical profile of a child soldier is of a boy between the ages of 8 and 18 years, bonded into a group of armed peers, almost always an orphan, drug or alcohol addicted, amoral, merciless, illiterate and dangerous. Paediatricians have much to do to protect such war-enmeshed children, irrespective of the accident of their place of birth. Only by such vigorous and maintained advocacy can the world's children be better protected from the scourge of future wars.

Family violence: Walking the tight rope between maternal alienation and child safety

Mothers are often alienated from their children when child abuse is suspected or confirmed, whether she is the primary abuser of the child or not. An abusive or violent partner often initiates the process of maternal alienation from children as a control mechanism. When the co-occurrence of maternal and child abuse is not recognised, nurses and health professionals risk further alienating a mother from her children, which can have detrimental effects in both the short and long term. Evidence shows that when mothers are supported and have the necessary resources there is a reduction in the violence and abuse she and her children experience; this occurs even in situations where the mother is the primary abuser of her children. The family-centred care philosophy, which is widely accepted as the best approach to nursing care for children and their families, creates tension for nurses caring for children who are the victims of abuse as this care generally occurs away from the context of the family. This fragmented approach to caring for abused children can inadvertently undermine the mother-child relationship and further contribute to maternal alienation. This paper discusses the complexity of family violence for nurses negotiating the 'tight rope' between the prime concern for the safety of children and further contributing to maternal alienation, within a New Zealand context. The premise that restoration of the mother-child relationship is paramount for the long-term wellbeing of both the children and the mother provides the basis for discussing implications for nursing practice.