The ACORN Standards : our aide memoire to professional practice

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a standard as “a required or agreed level of quality or attainment” or “principles of conduct informed by notions of honour and decency”. What does this mean for perioperative nurses? Standards provide minimum requirements for best practice and are regarded as generally accepted principles of patient care and perioperative management. In health care, standards provide a common language and set of expectations that enable health care professionals, systems and organisations to work together for best patient outcomes...

Standards that we can 'own' : Threshold Learning Outcomes for Journalism, Public Relations, and Media & Communication Studies

This paper outlines the progress by the JoMeC (Journalism, Media & Communication) Network in developing TLO (Threshold Learning Outcome) statements for Bachelor-level university programs in the disciplines of Journalism, Public Relations and Media & Communications Studies. The paper presents the finalised TLO statement for Journalism, and outlines moves to engage discipline-based groups to further develop preliminary TLOs for Public Relations and Media & Communication Studies. The JoMeC Network was formed in 2011, in response to requirements that from 2014 all degrees and qualifications at Australian universities would be able to demonstrate that they comply with the threshold learning standards set by the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF). The AQF’s threshold standards define the minimum types and levels of knowledge, skills and capabilities that a student must demonstrate in order to graduate. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) will use the AQF’s threshold standards as a key tool in recording and assessing the performance of higher educational institutions, and determining whether they should be registered as Australian Higher Education Providers under the Higher Education Standards Framework. The Office of Learning & Teaching (OLT) places the onus on discipline communities to collaborate in order to develop and ‘own’ the threshold learning standards that can be considered the minimum learning outcomes of university-level programs in that field. With the support of an OLT Grant, the JoMeC Network’s prime goal has been to develop three sets of discipline-specific TLOs – one each for the Journalism, Public Relations, and Media & Communications Studies disciplines. This paper describes the processes of research, consultation, drafting and ongoing revision of the TLO for Journalism. It outlines the processes that the JoMeC Network has taken in developing a preliminary TLO draft to initiate discussion of Public Relations and Media & Communication Studies. The JoMeC Network plans to hand management of further development of these TLOs to scholars within the discipline who will engage with academics and other stakeholders to develop statements that the respective disciplines can embrace and ‘own’.

Regulating supply-chains to address the occupational health and safety problems associated with precarious employment: The case of home-based clothing workers in Australia

Over the past 20 years the labour market, workforce and work organisation of most if not all industrialised countries have been significantly refashioned by the increased use of more flexible work arrangements, variously labelled as precarious employment or contingent work. There is now a substantial and growing body of international evidence that many of these arrangements are associated with a significant deterioration in occupational health and safety (OHS), using a range of measures such as injury rates, disease, hazard exposures and work-related stress. Moreover, there is an emerging body of evidence that these arrangements pose particular problems for conventional regulatory regimes. Recognition of these problems has aroused the concern of policy makers - especially in Europe, North America and Australia - and a number of responses have been adopted in terms of modifying legislation, producing new guidance material and codes of practice and revised enforcement practices. This article describes one such in itiative in Australia with regard to home-based clothing workers. The regulatory strategy developed in one Australian jurisdiction (and now being ‘exported’ into others) seeks to counter this process via contractual tracking mechanisms to follow the work, tie in liability and shift overarching legal responsibility to the top of the supply chain. The process also entails the integration of minimum standards relating to wages, hours and working conditions; OHS and access to workers’ compensation. While home-based clothing manufacture represents a very old type of ‘flexible’ work arrangement, it is one that regulators have found especially difficult to address. Further, the elaborate multi-tiered subcont racting and diffuse work locations found in this industry are also characteristic of newer forms of contingent work in other industries (such as some telework) and the regulatory challenges they pose (such as the tendency of elaborate supply chains to attenuate and fracture statutory responsibilities, at least in terms of the attitudes and behaviour of those involved).

Infection control standards and credentialing

Infection control professionals (ICPs) play an integral part of developing, implementing, and evaluating infection control programs. In Australia, there is no minimum or standardized education to practice as an ICP. The Australasian College of Infection Prevention and Control, the professional body for ICPs in Australasia, sought to address the issue by developing a credentialing process.1, 2 and 3 This decision was made in recognition that self-regulation is one of the hallmarks of professionalism.4 The process of becoming credentialed as an ICP in Australia involves the submission of evidence against a range of criteria with a subsequent peer-review process...

Swimming against the tide? Australian labour regulation and the fissured workplace

In The Fissured Workplace, David Weil dissects the ways in which ostensibly ‘large’ American businesses have come to shed direct employees and instead source their labour needs through a ‘complicated network of smaller business units’. As he notes, this has increased the profitability of these ‘lead’ businesses, at the expense of those who (ultimately) work for them: Wage setting and supervision shift from core businesses to a myriad of organizations, each operating under the rigorous standards of lead businesses but facing fierce competitive pressures. Although lead businesses set demanding goals and standards, and often detailed work practice requirements for subsidiary companies, the actual liability, oversight, and supervision of the workforce become the problem of one or more other organizations. And by replacing a direct employment relationship with a fissured workplace, employment itself becomes more precarious, with risk shifted onto smaller employers and individual workers, who are often cast in the role of independent businesses in their own right.

A mixed-methods research approach to the review of competency standards for orthotist/prosthetists in Australia

Aim: The requirement for an allied health workforce is expanding as the global burden of disease increases internationally. To safely meet the demand for an expanded workforce of orthotist/prosthetists in Australia, competency based standards, which are up-to-date and evidence-based, are required. The aims of this study were to determine the minimum level for entry into the orthotic/prosthetic profession; to develop entry level competency standards for the profession; and to validate the developed entry-level competency standards within the profession nationally, using an evidence-based approach. Methods: A mixed-methods research design was applied, using a three-step sequential exploratory design, where step 1 involved collecting and analyzing qualitative data from two focus groups; step 2 involved exploratory instrument development and testing, developing the draft competency standards; and step 3 involved quantitative data collection and analysis – a Delphi survey. In stage 1 (steps 1 and 2), the two focus groups – an expert and a recent graduate group of Australian orthotist/prosthetists – were led by an experienced facilitator, to identify gaps in the current competency standards and then to outline a key purpose, and work roles and tasks for the profession. The resulting domains and activities of the first draft of the competency standards were synthesized using thematic analysis. In stage 2 (step 3), the draft-competency standards were circulated to a purposive sample of the membership of the Australian Orthotic Prosthetic Association, using three rounds of Delphi survey. A project reference group of orthotist/prosthetists reviewed the results of both stages. Results: In stage 1, the expert (n = 10) and the new graduate (n = 8) groups separately identified work roles and tasks, which formed the initial draft of the competency standards. Further drafts were refined and performance criteria added by the project reference group, resulting in the final draft-competency standards. In stage 2, the final draft-competency standards were circulated to 56 members (n = 44 final round) of the Association, who agreed on the key purpose, 6 domains, 18 activities, and 68 performance criteria of the final competency standards. Conclusion: This study outlines a rigorous and evidence-based mixed-methods approach for developing and endorsing professional competency standards, which is representative of the views of the profession of orthotist/prosthetists.

Domestic labour relations in India : Vulnerability and gendered life courses in Jaipur

This study explores labour relations between domestic workers and employers in India. It is based on interviews with both employers and workers, and ethnographically oriented field work in Jaipur, carried out in 2004-2007. Combining development studies with gender studies, labour studies, and childhood studies, it asks how labour relations between domestic workers and employers are formed in Jaipur, and how female domestic workers trajectories are created. Focusing on female part-time maids and live-in work arrangements, the study analyses children s work in the context of overall work force, not in isolation from it. Drawing on feminist Marxism, domestic labour relations are seen as an arena of struggle. The study takes an empirical approach, showing class through empiria and shows how paid domestic work is structured and stratified through intersecting hierarchies of class, caste, gender, age, ethnicity and religion. The importance of class in domestic labour relations is reiterated, but that of caste, so often downplayed by employers, is also emphasized. Domestic workers are crucial to the functioning of middle and upper middle class households, but their function is not just utilitarian. Through them working women and housewives are able to maintain purity and reproduce class disctinctions, both between poor and middle classes and lower and upper middle classes. Despite commodification of work relations, traditional elements of service relationships have been retained, particularly through maternalist practices such as gift giving, creating a peculiar blend of traditional and market practices. Whilst employers of part-time workers purchase services in a segmented market from a range of workers for specific, traditional live-in workers are also hired to serve employers round the clock. Employers and workers grudgingly acknowledged their dependence on one another, employers seeking various strategies to manage fear of servant crime, such as the hiring of children or not employing live-in workers in dual-earning households. Paid domestic work carries a heavy stigma and provide no entry to other jobs. It is transmitted from mothers to daughters and working girls were often the main income providers in their families. The diversity of working conditions is analysed through a continuum of vulnerability, generic live-in workers, particularly children and unmarried young women with no close family in Jaipur, being the most vulnerable and experienced part-time workers the least vulnerable. Whilst terms of employment are negotiated informally and individually, some informal standards regarding salary and days off existed for maids. However, employers maintain that workings conditions are a matter of individual, moral choice. Their reluctance to view their role as that of employers and the workers as their employees is one of the main stumbling blocks in the way of improved working conditions. Key words: paid domestic work, India, children s work, class, caste, gender, life course

Do minimum wages raise employment? Evidence from the US retail-trade sector

This paper examines the impact of minimum wages on earnings and employment in selected branches of the retail-trade sector, 1990-2005, using county-level data on employment and a panel regression framework that allows for county-specific trends in sectoral outcomes. We focus on specific subsectors within retail trade that are identified as particularly low-wage. We find little evidence of disemployment effects once we allow for geographic-specific trends. Indeed, in many sectors the evidence points to modest (but robust) positive employment effects. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

St. Catharines and District Labour Council fonds, 1957-1986

The St. Catharines and District Labour Council was founded in May 1957 by unionized workers from St. Catharines, Thorold, Merritton, Port Dalhousie and Grimsby. They sought to improve the social and economic welfare of workers; promote the organization of workers into unions for their mutual benefit, regardless of race, creed, colour, or national origin; encourage the sale of union-made goods and services; promote worker education; provide workers with a voice in politics; and safeguard the democratic nature of the labour movement. The Council, affiliated with both the Canadian Labour Congress and the Ontario Federation of Labour, was instrumental in assisting local workers with their labour disputes, including Canadian Pulp and Paper workers at Abitibi Provincial Paper in Thorold [1975-76], and Gallaher Paper [1999], workers at the St. Catharines Eaton’s store [1985], as well as smaller disputes such as that between the part-time secretarial staff and the Welland County Roman Catholic Separate School Board [1972] and workers of the Skyway Lumber Company [1972]. The Council also assisted the community at large by offering a Community Counseling Service [1971-1976] to help citizens with issues concerning various government agencies, social services and Acts, such as the Vacation Pay Act, Landlord and Tenant Act, Employment Standards Act, unemployment insurance claims and workman’s compensation claims. Other projects that the Council organized included an annual Education Institute [1958-1965] and the annual publication of Labour Review, a summary of the Council’s past year. The Labour Council continued to operate until 2010, when several local Labour Councils merged to form the Niagara Regional Labour Council.

Child labour in India

This thesis entitled “Child labour in india”Children are "supremely important assets" of the nation, India proudly asserts in the National Policy for Children (1974) gracefully acknowledging that they are future citizens on whose shoulders the destiny of our nation rests.Childhood is a time of discovery as the world and all it contains are new to children. It is a time of excitement and anticipation. lt is a time of dreams and fantasies. And it is a time of receiving love and appreciation. Paradoxically, a picture of contrast is a common experience in India as a vast majority of children who are starved of basic needs of nutrition, health and education are made to work at an early age in exploitative conditions. The specter of child labour is a glaring anomaly in a country graciously adorning human right. In an exposition of the problem involving human rights abuse, Chapters from Two to Five of this study have shot into focus the human rights jurisprudence with special reference to the rights of children. Children have a particular identity as children and they also have a universal identity as human beings.The concern for mankind expressed unequivocally and transcending the globe will be real and moving and not mere rhetoric and ritual if and only when it begins with children, as, to quote the words of Nehru, the human being counts much more as a child than as a grown up.The first three of these rights namely right to health, right to nutritive food and right to education are dealt with in Chapter Four. Finally, the positive effects of education have been sketched in that chapter to impress upon its significance in the development of human capitals.legitimization. The theme of legitimacy was rationalised on the ground of poverty as a strategy for achieving eradication of child labour ultimately by enforcing minimum wages, shorter working hours, leave compensation, non-formal education etc., as the employer would soon discover that child labour is not cheap and would be obliged to substitute adult labour. However, humanising the work life is only a promise to the detriment of children as the Act of 1986 enacted as a part of the new strategy is nearingcompletion of a decade of existence but nowhere near the fulfilment of the mission.As similar urge is more necessary and overdue, it has been suggested that a special body be established with all powers for cognisance of human rights abuse of children.It is proposed to conclude this study with a brief summary of the inferences drawn from the foregoing chapters along with a few suggestions emerging out of those inferences

The allometry of non-employment. What can compositional data analysis tell us about labour market performance across the UK's regions?

The low levels of unemployment recorded in the UK in recent years are widely cited as evidence of the country’s improved economic performance, and the apparent convergence of unemployment rates across the country’s regions used to suggest that the longstanding divide in living standards between the relatively prosperous ‘south’ and the more depressed ‘north’ has been substantially narrowed. Dissenters from these conclusions have drawn attention to the greatly increased extent of non-employment (around a quarter of the UK’s working age population are not in employment) and the marked regional dimension in its distribution across the country. Amongst these dissenters it is generally agreed that non-employment is concentrated amongst older males previously employed in the now very much smaller ‘heavy’ industries (e.g. coal, steel, shipbuilding). This paper uses the tools of compositiona l data analysis to provide a much richer picture of non-employment and one which challenges the conventional analysis wisdom about UK labour market performance as well as the dissenters view of the nature of the problem. It is shown that, associated with the striking ‘north/south’ divide in nonemployment rates, there is a statistically significant relationship between the size of the non-employment rate and the composition of non-employment. Specifically, it is shown that the share of unemployment in non-employment is negatively correlated with the overall non-employment rate: in regions where the non-employment rate is high the share of unemployment is relatively low. So the unemployment rate is not a very reliable indicator of regional disparities in labour market performance. Even more importantly from a policy viewpoint, a significant positive relationship is found between the size of the non-employment rate and the share of those not employed through reason of sickness or disability and it seems (contrary to the dissenters) that this connection is just as strong for women as it is for men

Labour market, international trade, and unemployment in a less developed country

This paper constructs a trade general equilibrium model for a less developed country with three sectors. One is the informal and un-tradable sector characterized by áexible wages, while the other two sectors are tradable, export and import sectors. The model imposes a binding minimum wage over the unskilled labour and e¢ cient wage distortions on the skilled labour. Comparative statics is driven to analyze the e§ects on the labour market as consequence of opening the economy, raising the minimum wage and the introduction of an augmenting productivity in the export sector.

CPD records for revalidation: assessing fitness-to-practise using ‘revalidation standards’ and an Outcomes Framework

Background: Currently, all pharmacists and technicians registered with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain must complete a minimum of nine Continuing Professional Development (CPD) record (entries) each year. From September 2010 a new regulatory body, the General Pharmaceutical Council, will oversee the regulation (including revalidation) of all pharmacy registrants in Great Britain. CPD may provide part of the supporting evidence that a practitioner submits to the regulator as part of the revalidation process. Gaps in knowledge necessitated further research to examine the usefulness of CPD in a pharmacy revalidation Project aims: The overall aims of this project were to summarise pharmacy professionals’ past involvement in CPD, examine the usability of current CPD entries for the purpose of revalidation, and to examine the impact of ‘revalidation standards’ and a bespoke Outcomes Framework on the conduct and construction of CPD entries for future revalidation of pharmacy professionals. We completed a comprehensive review of the literature, devised, validated and tested the impact of a new CPD Outcomes Framework and related training material in an empirical investigation involving volunteer pharmacy professionals and also spoke with our participants to bring meaning and understanding to the process of CPD conduct and recording and to gain feedback on the study itself. Key findings: The comprehensive literature review identified perceived barriers to CPD and resulted in recommendations that could potentially rectify pharmacy professionals’ perceptions and facilitate participation in CPD. The CPD Outcomes Framework can be used to score CPD entries Compared to a control (CPD and ‘revalidation standards’ only), we found that training participants to apply the CPD Outcomes Framework resulted in entries that scored significantly higher in the context of a quantitative method of CPD assessment. Feedback from participants who had received the CPD Outcomes Framework was positive and a number of useful suggestions were made about improvements to the Framework and related training. Entries scored higher because participants had consciously applied concepts linked to the CPD Outcomes Framework whereas entries scored low where participants had been unable to apply the concepts of the Framework for a variety of reasons including limitations posed by the ‘Plan & Record’ template. Feedback about the nature of the ‘revalidation standards’ and their application to CPD was not positive and participants had not in the main sought to apply the standards to their CPD entries – but those in the intervention group were more likely to have referred to the revalidation standards for their CPD. As assessors, we too found the process of selecting and assigning ‘revalidation standards’ to individual CPD entries burdensome and somewhat unspecific. We believe that addressing the perceived barriers and drawing on the facilitators will help deal with the apparent lack of engagement with the revalidation standards and have been able to make a set of relevant recommendations. We devised a model to explain and tell the story of CPD behaviour. Based on the concepts of purpose, action and results, the model centres on explaining two types of CPD behaviour, one following the traditional CE pathway and the other a more genuine CPD pathway. Entries which scored higher when we applied the CPD Outcomes Framework were more likely to follow the CPD pathway in the model above. Significant to our finding is that while participants following both models of practice took part in this study, the CPD Outcomes Framework was able to change people’s CPD behaviour to make it more inline with the CPD pathway. The CPD Outcomes Framework in defining the CPD criteria, the training pack in teaching the basis and use of the Framework and the process of assessment in using the CPD Outcomes Framework, would have interacted to improve participants’ CPD through a collective process. Participants were keen to receive a curriculum against which certainly CE-type activities could be conducted and another important observation relates to whether CE has any role to play in pharmacy professionals’ revalidation. We would recommend that the CPD Outcomes Framework is used in the revalidation of pharmacy professionals in the future provided the requirement to submit 9 CPD entries per annum is re-examined and expressed more clearly in relation to what specifically participants are being asked to submit – i.e. the ratio of CE to CPD entries. We can foresee a benefit in setting more regular intervals which would act as deadlines for CPD submission in the future. On the whole, there is value in using CPD for the purpose of pharmacy professionals’ revalidation in the future.

Good practice in reviewing and publishing studies on herbal medicine, with special emphasis on traditional Chinese medicine and Chinese materia medica

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Studies on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), like those of other systems of traditional medicine (TM), are very variable in their quality, content and focus, resulting in issues around their acceptability to the global scientific community. In an attempt to address these issues, an European Union funded FP7 consortium, composed of both Chinese and European scientists and named “Good practice in traditional Chinese medicine” (GP-TCM), has devised a series of guidelines and technical notes to facilitate good practice in collecting, assessing and publishing TCM literature as well as highlighting the scope of information that should be in future publications on TMs. This paper summarises these guidelines, together with what has been learned through GP-TCM collaborations, focusing on some common problems and proposing solutions. The recommendations also provide a template for the evaluation of other types of traditional medicine such as Ayurveda, Kampo and Unani. Materials and methods: GP-TCM provided a means by which experts in different areas relating to TCM were able to collaborate in forming a literature review good practice panel which operated through e-mail exchanges, teleconferences and focused discussions at annual meetings. The panel involved coordinators and representatives of each GP-TCM work package (WP) with the latter managing the testing and refining of such guidelines within the context of their respective WPs and providing feedback. Results: A Good Practice Handbook for Scientific Publications on TCM was drafted during the three years of the consortium, showing the value of such networks. A “deliverable – central questions – labour division” model had been established to guide the literature evaluation studies of each WP. The model investigated various scoring systems and their ability to provide consistent and reliable semi-quantitative assessments of the literature, notably in respect of the botanical ingredients involved and the scientific quality of the work described. This resulted in the compilation of (i) a robust scoring system and (ii) a set of minimum standards for publishing in the herbal medicines field, based on an analysis of the main problems identified in published TCM literature.

Standards of university teaching

A set of standards is proposed for university teaching. Embedding these within the Higher Education Academy UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) would allow a more robust assessment of whether a university teacher has met a minimum acceptable threshold.