Training doctors in how to work with interpreters

The medical interpreter's performance can be enhanced if the physician is trained to work effectively with the interpreter. This paper reports on the training of first year medical interns at Southernhealth, a regional network of hospitals in Victoria, Australia. This Commonwealth funded programme was compulsory for all first year doctors. Workshops occurred in the simulator training unit using accident and emergency scenarios. Core teaching material comprised the video and book, Medical Interpreting. Participants were medical interns, qualified telephone medical interpreters, the chief hospital interpreter and the main instructor. Each intern engaged in a simulated role play; observational notes and feedback were recorded. The teaching methodology has demonstrated it to be a programme that skills the physician to work effectively with the medical interpreter. The material and the methodology can be used by interpreters and medical communication specialists to train medical practitioners.

Preparing leaders to work with emotions in culturally diverse educational communities

Purpose – This paper argues that because leadership is a relational practice and leaders are gendered and racialised, in socially diverse schools and societies, leader preparation around difference is potentially emotionally confronting to leaders' professional and personal identities.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on critical race and feminist theoretical perspectives to undertake a review and analysis of current approaches to professional development.

Findings – The paper concludes that because there is significant agreement now that leadership is considered to be emotional management work, then leadership learning, if it seeks to change practice, is also emotionally laden. The paper concludes that to develop more reflexive leaders, professional learning should begin with scrutiny of the self as gendered and racialised to consider what that means for “the Other” in terms of leadership in culturally diverse communities and schools.

Research limitations/implications – The paper is context specific, largely drawing on Australian data with reference to indigeneity. This is consistent with its theoretical position that leadership is relational and situated.

Practical implications – The paper identifies possible strategies that could be undertaken in professional learning forums that address issues of difference.

Originality/value – While there are significant issues around professional learning to develop pedagogical practices that address student diversity, there is less theorising around leadership diversity and what that might mean in terms of professional development of leaders.

How welfare-to-work requirements impact on single parents' volunteer activities

This paper seeks to describe the volunteering experiences of female single parents engaged in Australia's welfare-to-work program. Interviews were conducted with 26 single parents who had been required to increase their hours of work as a condition of the Centrelink policy introduced in 2006. To analyse the data, the technique of rich point analysis was employed which identified three key concepts central to the women's experiences.  These concepts included the nature of a decent job, notions of reciprocity, and a seeming hierarchy of suitable jobs promoted within the welfareto- work policy. How volunteer activities fit within these constructs was the focus of the investigation. The analysis revealed that the types of paid jobs women obtained were less fulfilling and flexible than their volunteer activities. and gave them less sense of contributing to society, Further, in most cases prior to welfare reform, these single mothers were volunteering in their children's school and as such, both the school's capacity and intergenerational role modelling of volunteering were depleted.

Supervisors are central to work characteristics affecting nurse outcomes

Purpose: To examine the predictive capability of the demand-control-support (DCS) model, augmented by organizational justice variables, on attitudinal- and health-related outcomes for nurses caring for elderly patients.

Design: The study is based on a cross-sectional survey design and involved 168 nurses working with elderly patients in facilities of a medium to large Australian organization.

Method: Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire consisting of scales designed for measuring independent (e.g., demand, control, support, organizational justice) and dependent (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, wellbeing and psychological distress) variables. Multiple regression analyses were undertaken to identify significant predictors of the outcome variables.

Findings: The DCS model explains the largest amount of variance across both the attitudinal and health outcomes with 27% of job satisfaction and 49% of organizational commitment, and 33% of psychological distress and 35% of wellbeing, respectively. Additional variance was explained by the justice variables for job satisfaction (5%), organizational commitment (4%), and psychological distress (23%).

Conclusions: Using organizational justice variables to augment the DCS model was valuable in better understanding the work conditions experienced by nurses caring for elderly patients. Inclusion of curvilinear effects added clarity to the potentially artifactual nature of certain interaction variables.

Clinical Relevance: The results indicated practical implications for managers of nurses caring for elderly patients in terms of developing and maintaining levels of job control, support, and fairness, as well as monitoring levels of job demands. The results particularly show the importance of nurses' immediate supervisors.

Mothers' transition back to work and infants' transition to child care : does work-based child care make a difference?

The overall aim in this study was twofold: to compare the use of work-based (WB) and non-work-based (NWB) child care on the transition back to the workplace for women after a period of maternity leave, and on the transition into child care for the infants of these women. Thirty-five mothers with infants in WB centres and 44 mothers with infants in NWB centres completed a battery of questionnaires, retrospectively, in relation to their first four weeks of resuming work and their infant’s transition into child care. We first explored whether the mothers of infants in WB centres were less stressed and anxious
about separating from their infant, were more satisfied with their child care, and whether they felt more productive and supported at work than mothers of infants in NWB child
care centres. Our findings revealed no differences between mothers using WB centres and NWB centres in their transition to work. In exploring whether infants placed in WB centres settled faster and more easily than infants placed in NWB centres, the findings, once again, revealed no differences in the infant’s affective states at child care and maintenance of their routines, such that all infants were equally settled and happy irrespective of the type of care used. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

The quality of life of single mothers making the transition from welfare to work

This study examined the quality of life of single mothers making the mandatory transition from welfare to work. The Australian government purported that the benefits of making this transition would include higher incomes, better social participation, and improved wellbeing. It is currently unknown, however, how single mothers currently engaged in welfare to work programs evaluate their quality of life. Quality of life scores for 334 single mothers engaged in welfare to work in Australia were compared with normative data. Participants reported significantly lower quality of life scores than the general population for all quality of life domains, highlighting the need to carefully examine welfare to work policies to ensure they promote participants' quality of life.

From learning to earning : the school-to-work transition of Australian graduates

Aims to investigate the transition of graduates from school-to-work through the triagulation of three data sets. A 3-stage model based on what graduates "want", "do" and "get" in their first job was designed. Findings revealed causality between the three stages.

Return to the mother : male surrealists - female bodies

The exegesis examines Surrealist writing and visual art, arguing that the Surrealists assumed the patriarchal role of the mythological hero whose subjective quest was to return to, and conquer, the Mother. The other part of the thesis is an exhibition which parodies and plays alongside Surrealist ideologies.

Teaching journalism students and regional reporters how to work with cultural diversity

This paper examines the effectiveness of a set of curriculum materials developed for a Reporting Diversity and Integration Project tailored for Australian journalists and journalism students. The materials take a problem-based learning (PBL) approach to a hypothetical case study that involves Muslim netballers being banned from competition because they want to wear headscarves during play. Deferring to ideas developed by Russian psychologist, Leo Vygotsky, we proposed a few ‘scaffolding’ strategies to support student learning. The material was trialed with 30 first-year Deakin University journalism students and 30 regional journalists. The responses showed that both groups felt the materials we added to the curriculum resources, which provided information on Muslim women and the headscarf, affected how they would write the story. They also thought it was important to provide this kind of information for readers. This paper argues that providing cultural information in an accessible format for students and journalists in newsrooms should be integral to education and training materials designed to improve media coverage of cultural diversity issues.

The use of public transport in coastal Australia : modes of travel to work and greenhouse emissions

Commuting to work is one of the most important and regular routines of transportation in towns and cities. From a geographic perspective, the length of people’s commute is influenced, to some degree, by the spatial separation of their home and workplace and the transport infrastructure. The rise of car ownership in Australia from the 1950s to the present was accompanied by a considerable decrease of public transport use. Currently there is an average of 1.4 persons per car in Australia, and private cars are involved in approximately 90% of the trips, and public transportation in only 10%. Increased personal mobility has fuelled the trend of decentralised housing development, mostly without a clear planning for local employment, or alternative means of transportation. Transport sector accounts for 14% of Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions. Without further policy action, Australia’s emissions are projected to continue to increase. The Australian Federal Government and the new Department of Climate Change have recently published a set of maps showing that rising seas would submerge large parts of Victoria coastal region. Such event would lead to major disruption in planned urban growth areas in the next 50 years with broad scale inundation of dwellings, facilities and road networks. The Greater Geelong Region has well established infrastructure as a major urban centre and tourist destination and hence attracted the attention of federal and state governments in their quest for further development and population growth. As a result of its natural beauty and ecological sensitivity, scenarios for growth in the region are currently under scrutiny from local government as well as development agencies, scientists, and planners. This paper is part of a broad research in the relationship between transportation system, urban form, trip demand, and emissions, as a paramount in addressing the challenges presented by urban growth. Progressing from previous work focused on private cars, this present paper investigates the use of public transport as a mode for commuting in the Greater Geelong Region. Using a GIS based interaction model, it characterises the current use of the existing public transportation system, and also builds a scenario of increased use of the existing public transportation system, estimating potencial reductions in CO2 emissions. This study provides an improved understanding of the extent to which choices of transport mode and travel activity patterns, affect emissions in the context of regional networks. The results indicate that emissions from commuting by public transportation are significantly lower than those from commuting by private car, and emphasise that there are opportunities for large abatment in the greenhouse emissions from the transportation sector related to efforts in increasing the use of existing public transportation system.