Policing of road safety in Oman: Perceptions and beliefs of traffic police officers

With increasing motorisation, road safety has become a major concern within Oman. Internationally, traffic policing plays a major role in improving road safety. Within Oman, the Royal Oman Police's (ROP) Directorate General of Traffic is responsible for policing traffic laws. Many common enforcement approaches originate from culturally different jurisdictions. The ROP is a relatively young policing force and may have different operational practices. Prior to applying practices from other jurisdictions it is important to understand the beliefs and expectations within the Directorate General of Traffic. Further, there is a need for individuals to understand their role and what is expected of them. Therefore, it is important to explore the agreement between levels of the ROP to determine how strategies and expectations transfer within the organisation. Interviews were conducted with 19 police officers from various levels of the ROP. A number of themes and findings emerged. Individuals at the upper level of the traffic police had a clear knowledge of the role of the ROP, believed that traffic police know what is expected of them, are well trained in their role and can have a very positive influence on road safety. These beliefs were less certain lower within the organisations with traffic officers having little knowledge of the role of the ROP or what was expected of them, felt undertrained, and believed their peers have little positive impact on road safety. There is a need to address barriers within the ROP in order to positively impact road safety.

A decade of supply chain collaboration and directions for future research

Purpose This paper aims to conduct a systematic review of the literature on supply chain collaboration published over a 10-year period from 2005 to 2014. It explores the nature and extent of research undertaken to identify key themes emerging in the field and gaps that need to be addressed. Design/methodology/approach The authors review a sample of 207 articles from 69 journals, after using an iterative cycle of defining appropriate search keywords, searching the literature and conducting the analysis. Findings Key themes include the meaning of collaboration; considerations for supply chain collaboration theory; emerging areas in collaboration for sustainability, technology-enabled supply chains and humanitarian supply chains; and the need for a more holistic approach, multi-tier perspectives and research into B2C collaborations. Research limitations/implications The paper provides discussion and scope for future research into the area which would contribute to the field tremendously. Originality/value There have been very few reviews in the past on supply chain collaboration, and this is one of the first extensive reviews conducted to address how well the body of knowledge on supply chain collaboration corresponds with our contemporary society.

Identity, image, and sexuality in young adults with cancer

The impact of disease and treatment on a young adult's self-image and sexuality has been largely overlooked. This is surprising given that establishing social and romantic relationships is a normal occurrence in young adulthood. This article describes three female patients' cancer journeys and demonstrates how their experiences have impacted their psychosocial function and self-regard. The themes of body image, self-esteem, and identity formation are explored, in relation to implications for relationship-building and moving beyond a cancer diagnosis. This article has been written by young cancer survivors, Danielle Tindle, Kelly Denver, and Faye Lilley, in an effort to elucidate the ongoing struggle to reconcile cancer into a normal young adult's life.

Pacific Journalism Review : Twenty years on the front line of regional identity and freedom

Pacific Journalism Review has consistently, at a good standard, honoured its 1994 founding goal: to be a credible peer-reviewed journal in the Asia-Pacific region, probing developments in journalism and media, and supporting journalism education. Global, it considers new media and social movements; ‘regional’, it promotes vernacular media, human freedoms and sustainable development. Asking how it developed, the method for this article was to research the archive, noting authors, subject matter, themes. The article concludes that one answer is the journal’s collegiate approach; hundreds of academics, journalists and others, have been invited to contribute. Second has been the dedication of its one principal editor, Professor David Robie, always somehow providing resources—at Port Moresby, Suva, and now Auckland—with a consistent editorial stance. Eclectic, not partisan, it has nevertheless been vigilant over rights, such as monitoring the Fiji coups d’etat. Watching through a media lens, it follows a ‘Pacific way’, handling hard information through understanding and consensus. It has 237 subscriptions indexed to seven databases. Open source, it receives more than 1000 site visits weekly. With ‘clientele’ mostly in Australia, New Zealand and ‘Oceania’, it extends much further afield. From 1994 to 2014, 701 articles and reviews were published, now more than 24 scholarly articles each year.

Destinations: 3 Large Cast Plays for Young People

This book is a collection of three large-cast plays written in response to a very specific problem. My work as a teacher of drama often required me to locate a script that would somehow miraculously work for a cast of unknown number and gender, and most likely uneven skills and enthusiasm, who I hadn’t even met yet. It’s a familiar dilemma for teachers and students of drama in education contexts, at whatever level you’re teaching. I’d first addressed this creative problem with scripts such as Gate 38 (2010). I had tried using scripts that already existed, but found they required such extensive editing to suit the parameters of cast and performance duration that I may as well have been writing them myself. Even in the setting of a closed studio, in altering these plays I felt I was bending the vision of the playwright, and certainly their narrative structure, out of shape. Everyone who’s attempted to stage a performance with a large cast of students in an educational setting knows it takes time to truly connect with a play, its social contexts, themes and characters. It also takes a lot of time to get on top of the practicalities of learning, rehearsing, directing and running a performance with young people. Often the curtain goes up on something unfinished and unstable. I was looking for ways to reduce the complexity of staging a script, while maintaining the potential of this process as a site of rich, enjoyable learning. Two of the plays (Duty Free and Please Be Seated) are comprised of multiple monologues, combined with music-driven ensemble sequences. The monologues enable individuals to develop and polish their own performances, work in small groups, and cut down on the laborious detail of directing naturalistic scenes based in character interaction. The third (Australian Drama) involves a lot of duologues, meaning that its rehearsal process can happily employ that mainstay of the drama classroom: small group work. There’s plenty of room to move in terms of gender-blind casting as well. Please be Seated is mainly young women. The scripts also contain ensemble-based interludes which are non-verbal, music driven, with a choreographic element. They have also springboarded further explorations in form. The ethical and aesthetic complexities of verbatim works; the interaction between music and theatre; and meta-concerns related to the performing of performance: ‘how can the act of acting ‘acted’. The narratives of all three of these plays are deliberately open, enabling the flexible casting and on-the hop editing that large-group, time-poor processes sometimes necessitate. Duty Free is about the overseas ‘adventures’ of young people. Please Be Seated is based in verbatim text about young people falling in and out of love. Australian Drama is about young people in a drama classroom trying to connect with each other and put their own shine on dull fragments of the theatrical canon. The plays were published as a collection in hardcopy and digital editions by Playlab Press in 2015. Please be Seated is a co-write with a large group. These co-author’s names are listed in the publication, and below in ‘additional information’.

Drink driving among Indigenous people in Far North Queensland and northern New South Wales: A summary of the qualitative findings

Purpose In response to the threat that drink drivers pose to themselves and others, drink driving programs form an important part of a suite of countermeasures used in Australia and internationally. Unlike New Zealand/Aotearoa, United States and Canada that have programs catering for their First Peoples, all Australian programs are designed for the general driver population. The aim of this study was to identify the factors that contribute to Indigenous drink driving in order to inform appropriate recommendations related to developing a community-based program for Indigenous communities. Broader drivers licensing policy recommendations are also discussed. Methods A sample of 73 Indigenous people from Queensland and in New South Wales with one or more drink driving convictions completed a semi-structured interview in respect of the to their drink driving behaviour. Participants were asked to disclose information regarding their drink driving history, and alcohol and drug use. If participants self-reported no longer drink driving, they were probed about what factors had assisted them to avoid further offending. Results Key themes which emerged to maintain drink driving include motivations to drink and drive, and belief in the ability to manage the associated risks. Factors that appeared to support others from avoiding further offending include re-connecting with culture and family support. Conclusions and Implications A range of recommendations regarding delivery and content of a program for regional and remote communities as well as other policy implications are discussed.

Chronicling the patient journey: Co-creating value with digital health ecosystems

With the introduction of the PCEHR (Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record), the Australian public is being asked to accept greater responsibility for the management of their health information. However, the implementation of the PCEHR has occasioned poor adoption rates underscored by criticism from stakeholders with concerns about transparency, accountability, privacy, confidentiality, governance, and limited capabilities. This study adopts an ethnographic lens to observe how information is created and used during the patient journey and the social factors impacting on the adoption of the PCEHR at the micro-level in order to develop a conceptual model that will encourage the sharing of patient information within the cycle of care. Objective: This study aims to firstly, establish a basic understanding of healthcare professional attitudes toward a national platform for sharing patient summary information in the form of a PCEHR. Secondly, the studies aims to map the flow of patient related information as it traverses a patient’s personal cycle of care. Thus, an ethnographic approach was used to bring a “real world” lens to information flow in a series of case studies in the Australian healthcare system to discover themes and issues that are important from the patient’s perspective. Design: Qualitative study utilising ethnographic case studies. Setting: Case studies were conducted at primary and allied healthcare professionals located in Brisbane Queensland between October 2013 and July 2014. Results: In the first dimension, it was identified that healthcare professionals’ concerns about trust and medico-legal issues related to patient control and information quality, and the lack of clinical value available with the PCEHR emerged as significant barriers to use. The second dimension of the study which attempted to map patient information flow identified information quality issues, clinical workflow inefficiencies and interoperability misconceptions resulting in duplication of effort, unnecessary manual processes, data quality and integrity issues and an over reliance on the understanding and communication skills of the patient. Conclusion: Opportunities for process efficiencies, improved data quality and increased patient safety emerge with the adoption of an appropriate information sharing platform. More importantly, large scale eHealth initiatives must be aligned with the value proposition of individual stakeholders in order to achieve widespread adoption. Leveraging an Australian national eHealth infrastructure and the PCEHR we offer a practical example of a service driven digital ecosystem suitable for co-creating value in healthcare.

Telling tales and painting pictures: A narrative inquiry into the professional learning of Northern Territory primary teachers

This thesis narrates the professional learning experiences of seven Northern Territory teachers. It outlines the evolution from traditional professional development in schools to an active, responsive professional learning agenda. With increasing demands on teachers, standardisation and the quest for improved student outcomes, key themes in the re-storied narrative emerge about the definition and role of professional learning in complex conditions, effective teaching, quality programmes, and teacher agency. This thesis contributes to knowledge about the characteristics that teachers value in their professional learning experiences. An Ongoing Professional Enhancement Model (OPE) is proposed, highlighting directions in this field for key stakeholders.

Corporate governance and law reform in Japan: From the lost decade to the end of history?

Japan is in the midst of massive law reform. Mired in ongoing recession since the early 1990s, Japan has been implementing a new regulatory blueprint to kickstart a sluggish economy through structural change. A key element to this reform process is a rethink of corporate governance and its stakeholder relations. With a patchwork of legislative initiatives in areas as diverse as corporate law, finance, labour relations, consumer protection, public administration and civil justice, this new model is beginning to take shape. But to what extent does this model represent a break from the past? Some commentators are breathlessly predicting the "Americanisation" of Japanese law. They see the triumph of Western-style capitalism - the "End of History", to borrow the words of Francis Fukuyama - with its emphasis on market-based, arms-length transactions. Others are more cautious, advancing the view that there new reforms are merely "creative twists" on what is a uniquely (although slowly evolving) strand of Japanese capitalism. This paper takes issue with both interpretations. It argues that the new reforms merely follow Japan's long tradition of 'adopting and adapting' foreign models to suit domestic purposes. They are neither the wholesale importation of "Anglo-Saxon" regulatory principles nor a thin veneer over a 'uniquely unique' form of Confucian cultural capitalism. Rather, they represent a specific and largely political solution (conservative reformism) to a current economic problem (recession). The larger themes of this paper are 'change' and 'continuity'. 'Change' suggests evolution to something identifiable; 'continuity' suggests adhering to an existing state of affairs. Although notionally opposites, 'change' and 'continuity' have something in common - they both suggest some form of predictability and coherence in regulatory reform. Our paper, by contrast, submits that Japanese corporate governance reform or, indeed, law reform more generally in Japan, is context-specific, multi-layered (with different dimensions not necessarily pulling all in the same direction for example, in relations with key outside suppliers), and therefore more random or 'chaotic'.

Sharing social space with strangers: Setting, signalling and policing informal rules of driving etiquette

Recent research suggests that aggressive driving may be influenced by driver perceptions of their interactions with other drivers in terms of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ behaviour. Drivers appear to take a moral standpoint on ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ driving behaviour. However, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the context of road use is not defined solely by legislation, but includes informal rules that are sometimes termed ‘driving etiquette’. Driving etiquette has implications for road safety and public safety since breaches of both formal and informal rules may result in moral judgement of others and subsequent behaviours designed to punish the ‘offender’ or ‘teach them a lesson’. This paper outlines qualitative research that was undertaken with drivers to explore their understanding of driving etiquette and how they reacted to other drivers’ observance or violation of their understanding. The aim was to develop an explanatory framework within which the relationships between driving etiquette and aggressive driving could be understood, specifically moral judgement of other drivers and punishment of their transgression of driving etiquette. Thematic analysis of focus groups (n=10) generated three main themes: (1) courtesy and reciprocity, and the notion of two-way responsibility, with examples of how expectations of courteous behaviour vary according to the traffic interaction; (2) acknowledgement and shared social experience: ‘giving the wave’; and (3) responses to breaches of the expectations/informal rules. The themes are discussed in terms of their roles in an explanatory framework of the informal rules of etiquette and how interactions between drivers can reinforce or weaken a driver’s understanding of driver etiquette and potentially lead to driving aggression.

Haemodialysis work environment contributors to job satisfaction and stress: A sequential mixed methods study

Background: Haemodialysis nurses form long term relationships with patients in a technologically complex work environment. Previous studies have highlighted that haemodialysis nurses face stressors related to the nature of their work and also their work environments leading to reported high levels of burnout. Using Kanters (1997) Structural Empowerment Theory as a guiding framework, the aim of this study was to explore the factors contributing to satisfaction with the work environment, job satisfaction, job stress and burnout in haemodialysis nurses. Methods: Using a sequential mixed-methods design, the first phase involved an on-line survey comprising demographic and work characteristics, Brisbane Practice Environment Measure (B-PEM), Index of Work Satisfaction(IWS), Nursing Stress Scale (NSS) and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). The second phase involved conducting eight semi-structured interviews with data thematically analyzed. Results: From the 417 nurses surveyed the majority were female (90.9 %), aged over 41 years of age (74.3 %), and 47.4 % had worked in haemodialysis for more than 10 years. Overall the work environment was perceived positively and there was a moderate level of job satisfaction. However levels of stress and emotional exhaustion (burnout) were high. Two themes, ability to care and feeling successful as a nurse, provided clarity to the level of job satisfaction found in phase 1. While two further themes, patients as quasi-family and intense working teams, explained why working as a haemodialysis nurse was both satisfying and stressful. Conclusions: Nurse managers can use these results to identify issues being experienced by haemodialysis nurses working in the unit they are supervising.

Health Assessment and Physical Examination, 2nd Edition

Health Assessment and Physical Examination is designed to teach students to assess a patient’s physical, psychological, cultural and emotional dimensions of health as a foundation of nursing care. The skills of interviewing, inspection, percussion, palpation, auscultation, and documentation are refined to help students to make clinical judgements and promote healthy patient outcomes. A strong emphasis on science encompasses all the technical aspects of anatomy, physiology, and assessment, while highlighting clinically relevant information. Emphasis on caring is displayed through themes of assessment of the whole person, which also encourages nurses to think about care for themselves as well as patients.

A qualitative study of the spouse's experience following coronary artery bypass surgery: Implications for Nursing Practice

Findings from numerous quantitative studies suggest that spouses of patients undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass (CAB) surgery experience both physical and emotional stress before and after their partner's surgery. Such studies have contributed to our understanding of the spouses' experiences, however they have largely failed to capture the qualitative experience of what it is like to be a spouse of a partner who has undergone CAB surgery. The objective of this study was to describe the experience of spouses of patients who had recently undergone CAB surgery. This study was guided by Husserl's phenomenological approach to qualitative research. In accordance with the nature of phenomenological research the number of participants necessarily needs to be small because phenomenology values the unique experience of individuals. Therefore this study gathered data from four participants utilising open ended indepth interviews. The method of analysis was adapted from Amedeo Giorgi's five step empirical phenomenological process which brackets preconceived notions, reducing participants' accounts to the essential essence or meanings. Numerous themes common to each of the spouses emerged. These included: seeking information; the necessity for rapid decision making; playing guardian; a desire to debrief with their partner and lastly, uncertainty of their future role. This study has attempted to understand the phenomena of the spouse's experience and in doing so, believe that we now have a better understanding and insight into the needs of spouses of CAB surgery patients. This has added another dimension to our existing body of knowledge and further facilitates holistic patient care.

Twitter hashtags from ad hoc to calculated publics

As the use of Twitter has become more commonplace throughout many nations, its role in political discussion has also increased. This has been evident in contexts ranging from general political discussion through local, state, and national elections (such as in the 2010 Australian elections) to protests and other activist mobilisation (for example in the current uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, as well as in the controversy around Wikileaks). Research into the use of Twitter in such political contexts has also developed rapidly, aided by substantial advancements in quantitative and qualitative methodologies for capturing, processing, analysing, and visualising Twitter updates by large groups of users. Recent work has especially highlighted the role of the Twitter hashtag – a short keyword, prefixed with the hash symbol ‘#’ – as a means of coordinating a distributed discussion between more or less large groups of users, who do not need to be connected through existing ‘follower’ networks. Twitter hashtags – such as ‘#ausvotes’ for the 2010 Australian elections, ‘#londonriots’ for the coordination of information and political debates around the recent unrest in London, or ‘#wikileaks’ for the controversy around Wikileaks thus aid the formation of ad hoc publics around specific themes and topics. They emerge from within the Twitter community – sometimes as a result of pre-planning or quickly reached consensus, sometimes through protracted debate about what the appropriate hashtag for an event or topic should be (which may also lead to the formation of competing publics using different hashtags). Drawing on innovative methodologies for the study of Twitter content, this paper examines the use of hashtags in political debate in the context of a number of major case studies.

Disabled Revolutionary War Veterans and the Construction of Disability in the Early United States, c. 1776-1840

This thesis addresses the following broad research question: what did it mean to be a disabled Revolutionary War veteran in the early United States during the period from 1776 to roughly 1840? The study approaches the question from two angles: a state-centred one and an experiential one. In both cases, the theoretical framework employed comes from disability studies. Consequently, disability is regarded as a sociocultural phenomenon rather than a medical condition. The state-centred dimension of the study explores the meaning of disability and disabled veterans to the early American state through an examination of the major military pension laws of the period. An analysis of this legislation, particularly the invalid pension acts of 1793 and 1806, indicates that the early United States represents a key period in the development of the modern disability category. The experiential approach, in contrast, shifts the focus of attention away from the state towards the lived experiences of disabled veterans. It seeks to address the issue of whether or not the disabilities of disabled veterans had any significant material impact on their everyday lives. It does this through a comparison of the situation of 153 disabled veterans with that of an equivalent number of nondisabled veterans. The former group received invalid pensions while the latter did not. In comparing the material conditions of disabled and nondisabled veterans, a wide range of primary sources from military records to memoirs and letters are used. The most important sources in this regard are the pension application papers submitted by veterans in the early nineteenth century. These provide us with a unique insight into the everyday lives of veterans. Looking at the issue of experience through the window of the pension files reveals that there was not much difference in the broad contours of disabled and nondisabled veteran life. This finding has implications for the theorisation of disability that are highlighted and discussed in the thesis. The main themes covered in this study are: the wartime experiences of injured American soldiers, the military pension establishment of the early United States and the legal construction of disability, and the post-war working and family lives of disabled veterans. Keywords: disability, early America, veterans, military pensions, disabled people, Revolutionary War, United States, disability theory.