Information needs in community aged care

This paper focuses on the information needs and behaviours of senior citizens and their carers in the community. Two case studies concerning elderly stroke patients and their carers are described and discussed. Analysis of the case study data reveals a number of themes including the actual information needs and information behaviours of the senior citizens, the importance of proxy information seekers and advocates and the need for usable, accessible and useful tool to support the needs of care recipients. A preliminary framework is developed that highlights important aspects of supporting the information needs of care recipients and carers in community aged care. Finally we suggest opportunities for technology interventions that address various information needs of senior citizens in the community.

Principals and legal risk : complacency or concern?

There has been an increasing awareness across many jurisdictions of potential legal issues that might arise in schools. These issues range from bullying to sexual misconduct, from injury to negligence. In a recent study in Singapore, despite the increased attention to such issues, school principals displayed a range of attitudes toward legal risk and a diverse range of strategies to minimise it. The findings were compared to those from a small scale study of senior educators in Queensland in order to ascertain commonalities and differences of view. This paper summarises those views and suggests some basic principles to help those in positions of leadership to avert unwanted legal attention.

Sharing the moment : on the Olympic Games as spectacle

Article examining the 'sale' of Olympics drawing on Kant's aesthetics of beauty in the Critique of Judgment.

Issues and challenges associated with nurse-administered procedural sedation and analgesia in the cardiac catheterisation laboratory: a qualitative study

Aims and objectives
To explore issues and challenges associated with nurse-administered procedural sedation and analgesia in the cardiac catheterisation laboratory from the perspectives of senior nurses.

Background
Nurses play an important part in managing sedation because the prescription is usually given verbally directly from the cardiologist who is performing the procedure and typically, an anaesthetist is not present.

Design
A qualitative exploratory design was employed.

Methods
Semi-structured interviews with 23 nurses from 16 cardiac catheterisation laboratories across four states in Australia and also New Zealand were conducted. Data analysis followed the guide developed by Braun and Clark to identify the main themes.

Results
Major themes emerged from analysis regarding the lack of access to anaesthetists, the limitations of sedative medications, the barriers to effective patient monitoring and the impact that the increasing complexity of procedures has on patients' sedation requirements.

Conclusions
The most critical issue identified in this study is that current guidelines, which are meant to apply regardless of the clinical setting, are not practical for the cardiac catheterisation laboratory due to a lack of access to anaesthetists. Furthermore, this study has demonstrated that nurses hold concerns about the legitimacy of their practice in situations when they are required to perform tasks outside of clinical practice guidelines. To address nurses' concerns, it is proposed that new guidelines could be developed, which address the unique circumstances in which sedation is used in the cardiac catheterisation laboratory.

Relevance to clinical practice
Nurses need to possess advanced knowledge and skills in monitoring for the adverse effects of sedation. Several challenges impact on nurses' ability to monitor patients during procedural sedation and analgesia. Preprocedural patient education about what to expect from sedation is essential.

Aligning students and staff perspectives in an engineering design curriculum

This paper focuses on the alignment of students and staff perspectives in an engineering design curriculum. Deakin University recognised the importance of student learning with engagement in design-centred education. Staff across the university are committed to ensure that students are engaged at a fairly deep learning level. Engaging students is an important aspect of learning and teaching process because it enhances the student to be self directed active learners. To measure the student engagement and staff experiences in learning and teaching process, Deakin engineering has used design based learning as one of its engineering learning principle. This study examines students perceptions of DBL in their curriculum through a paper based survey given to a cohort of senior year undergraduate engineering students. The research also illustrates the staff perceptions of DBL in engineering curriculum by conducting face-to-face interviews with them. From the analysed results, this research shows that the students and staff have an adequate experience of learning and teaching engineering through design based learning approach in an engineering design curriculum.

Investigating fitness to drive in older drivers with cognitive impairment

This thesis investigated driving behaviour of senior drivers with cognitive impairment in order to gain an understanding of how cognition impacts on driver behaviour and fitness to drive.

D.A. Pennebaker: Interviews

This wide-ranging and insightful collection of interviews with D. A. Pennebaker (b. 1925) spans the prolific career of this pioneer of observational cinema. From the 1950s to the present day, D. A. Pennebaker has made documentary films that have revealed the world of politics, celebrity culture, and the music industry. Following his early collaborations with Robert Drew on a number of works for television, his feature-length portrait of Bob Dylan on tour in England in 1965 (the landmark film Dont Look Back) established so-called direct cinema as a form capable of achieving broad theatrical release. With Monterey Pop, Pennebaker inaugurated the popular mode of rock concert film (or "rockumentary"), a style of filmmaking he has expanded on through a number of films, including Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Depeche Mode: 101. Pennebaker has always regarded collaboration as an integral part of his filmmaking methods. His long-running collaboration with Richard Leacock and subsequently his work with Chris Hegedus have enriched his approach and, in the process, have instituted collaboration as a working practice integral to American direct cinema. His other collaborations, in particular, with Jean-Luc Godard and Norman Mailer, resulted in innovative combinations of observational techniques and fictional aesthetics. Such films as The War Room, which was about the 1992 Democratic primaries and was nominated for an Academy Award, and the 2009 Kings of Pastry continue to explore the capacities of observational documentary. In 2012 Pennebaker was the first documentary filmmaker to be awarded an Academy Honorary Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Principals and legal risks: contrasting perspectives

There has been an increasing awareness across many jurisdictions of potential legal issues that might arise in schools. These issues range from bullying to sexual misconduct, from injury to negligence. In a recent study in Singapore, despite the increased attention to such issues, school principals displayed a range of attitudes toward legal risk and a diverse range of strategies to minimise it. The findings were compared to those from a small scale study of senior educators in Australia in order to ascertain commonalities and differences of view. This paper summarises those views and suggests some basic principles to help those in positions of leadership to avert unwanted legal attention.

A stakeholder approach to corporate social responsibility, reputation and business performance

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate business managers' assessment of stakeholders' influence on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. The key stakeholders included "employees" and "unions" as internal and "public", the "media" and the "government" as external stakeholders. The purpose was to estimate the influence of stakeholders that managers perceive as important. Moreover, the study sought to identify association between the CSR construct and corporate reputation and in turn whether this influences business performance. Design/methodology/approach - This study uses a mail survey with a random sampling of senior managers sourced from Dun & Bradstreet's Australian business database, focusing on large organizations (i.e. minimum $10 million p.a. reported sales and minimum 100 employees) as the selection criteria. A conceptual model was developed and tested using structural equation modeling. Findings - The results identified that "employees" and the "public" are perceived to be the influential stakeholder groups in CSR decision-making. There was evidence of a positive relationship between the CSR construct and reputation, which in turn influenced market share, but not profitability. Research limitations/implications - This study examined a cross-section of organizations using Dun & Bradstreet's database of Australian businesses and may not fully represent the Australian business mix. The effective response rate of 7.2 per cent appears to be low, even though it is comparable with other research in the CSR area. There may have been some self-selection by the respondents, although there were no statistically significant differences identified in the corporate characteristics of those invited to participate and those responding with usable questionnaires. Practical implications - Managers can adopt a stakeholder-influenced CSR strategy to generate strong corporate reputation to improve business performance. It is important to ensure that the interests of "employees" and "public" stakeholders are addressed within organizational strategy. Respondents were less concerned about government stakeholders and thus government involvement in organizational CSR may need to be revisited. Social implications - The major concern that emerges from these findings is the absence of the perceived importance of regulatory stakeholders on firms' CSR activities. Regulatory controls of CSR messages could reduce or eliminate inaccurate and misleading information to the public. Originality/value - The analysis explains the perceived relative influence of stakeholders on CSR decisions. It also provides an understanding of the link between organizational CSR reputation and organization's performance.

Nordic policy lessons for Australia

This report considers public debate on Scandinavian and Finnish policy ideas of possible relevance to Australia since the publication in November 2014 by an Australian university press of Andrew Scott’s book Northern Lights: The Positive Policy Example of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. Two years on from the book’s publication, the report considers the varying reception in Australia of propositions advanced in Northern Lights for: expansion of public early childhood education and care and extension of paid parental leave, as well as properly enshrining children’s rights and other actions to reduce child poverty and improve children’s wellbeing (learning from Sweden); more equitable schools funding, better valuing of a quality teaching profession and more effective provision of vocational education in schools (learning from Finland); enhancement of support and skills retraining for mature-age workers displaced by job losses (learning from Denmark); and increasing revenue including through greater taxation and regulation of natural resource wealth (learning from Norway). The report then considers the main priority areas of Nordic achievement nominated by policy actors for additional consideration for Australia to now learn from. These are: better, healthier and more natural urban design, together with more balanced regional development; better workplace design – specifically the importance of taking into account aesthetics, ergonomics and nature in people’s workplace environments; and greater emphasis on both the prevention of crime and the rehabilitation of persons convicted of crimes. Sweden and Norway’s continuing leadership in the provision of quality foreign aid and other foreign policy initiatives such as Sweden's current “feminist foreign policy” are also discussed. Objections raised to the book’s premises, including to the possibility of policy transfer to Australia from nations presumed to be less multicultural, are evaluated.