Modelling elderly patients’ perception of the community pharmacist image when providing professional services*

Professional pharmaceutical services may impact on patient’s health behaviour as well as influence on patients’ perceptions of the pharmacist image. The Health Belief Model predicts health-related behaviours using patients’ beliefs. However, health beliefs (HBs) could transcend beyond predicting health behaviour and may have an impact on the patients’ perceptions of the pharmacist image. This study objective was to develop and test a model that relates patients’ HBs to patient’s perception of the image of the pharmacist, and to assess if the provision of pharmacy services (Intervention group-IG) influences this perception compared to usual care (Control group). A qualitative study was undertaken and a questionnaire was created for the development of the model. The content, dimensions, validity and reliability of the questionnaire were pre-tested qualitatively and in a pilot mail survey. The reliability and validity of the proposed model were tested using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to explain relationships between dimensions of the final model and to analyse differences between groups. As a result, a final model was developed. CFA concluded that the model was valid and reliable (Goodness of Fit indices: x²(80) = 125.726, p = .001, RMSEA = .04, SRMR = .04, GFI = .997, NFI = .93, CFI = .974). SEM indicated that ‘Perceived benefits’ were significantly associated with ‘Perceived Pharmacist Image’ in the whole sample. Differences were found in the IG with also ‘Self-efficacy’ significantly influencing ‘Perceived pharmacist image’. A model of patients’ HBs related to their image of the pharmacist was developed and tested. When pharmacists deliver professional services, these services modify some patients’ HBs that in turn influence public perception of the pharmacist.     

“Sport is community:” An exploration of urban Aboriginal peoples' meanings of community within the context of sport

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to better understand the meanings of community, particularly as it is understood within the context of sport, for urban Aboriginal youth and adults in Edmonton, Alberta.DesignA community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach was used to guide this research.MethodOne-on-one interviews were conducted with 18 Aboriginal youth and adults. Data was analyzed using Elo and Kyngäs' (2008) process of content analysis. The integrated indigenous-ecological model was used as a framework for data analysis and the interpretation of findings.ResultsFindings are represented by five themes that are supported by direct quotes from participants. Participants described community as: (1) belonging, (2) family and friends, (3) supportive interactions, (4) sport, and (5) where you live and come from.ConclusionsFindings from this research suggest that urban Aboriginal youth identify with a number of different communities, and their complex meanings of communities are comprised of various interpersonal level factors. The knowledge shared by participants provides necessary insights into meanings of community, which are necessary for ensuring that community-driven and community-based sport programs are relevant to Aboriginal youth.     

A grounded theory exploration of therapists’ experiences of somatic phenomena in the countertransference

Somatic phenomena in the countertransference have historically received minimal attention despite evidence of their occurrence in the therapeutic encounter. In the field of Counselling Psychology, there seems to be an apparent gap in the academic coverage and clinical utilisation of therapists’ somatic states. The purpose of this study was to explore therapists’ somatic experiences in the countertransference using a grounded theory methodology, based on a sample of 12 participants that was composed of psychotherapists, counselling and clinical psychologists. The results indicated that therapists made sense of their somatic experiences through a developmental process of ‘relating to the body’ that combined stages of defensive operations, intellectual reflections, attributions of somatic ownership and recognitions of various working patterns in the management of somatic experiences. This study addresses the factors that constituted therapists’ processing of the experience, and the findings suggest that therapeutic work may be affected when psychosomatic phenomena as such become undermined and ignored.     

An integrative review of South Africa’s approach to victim support

This integrative review seeks to consider the evidence on how crime victims’ rights are served within South Africa’s criminal justice system. Victims view criminal proceeding as the means through which justice for the harms they suffered can be obtained. Such aspirations are often misplaced since criminal proceedings are a legal process between the state and accused with the sole purpose of determining guilt or innocence. As such, the concerns of victims are secondary. Victim’s rights in South Africa was only truly acknowledged during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1995. South Africa’s victim empowerment policy is underpinned by restorative justice principles. Contradictory to legal procedures, restorative justice is not offender-driven, but aims to elevate the role of crime victims in the criminal justice system.     

Living in the mo(ve)ment: An ethnographic exploration of hospice patients’ experiences of participating in Tai Chi

PurposeTai Chi is increasingly being used as a complimentary therapy in hospice care to help patients self-manage multiple and complex health needs. However, currently there is limited understanding of Tai Chi from patients’ perspective, including what participation in this mindfulness based movement (MBM) exercise means to their experiences of living with an advanced, incurable disease. The purpose of this study was to explore outpatients’ lived experiences of hospice-based Tai Chi in relation to mindfulness.Methods19 participants (15 females; 4 males, aged between 50 and 91 years old) with a range of advanced, incurable diseases (cancer, COPD, pulmonary fibrosis, pulmonary arterial hypertension) who attended day therapy at a local hospice took part in Tai Chi sessions. Using a focused ethnographic approach, multi-methods including 17 semi-structured interviews (averaging 40 min), participant observations (equating to 200 h spent in the day therapy unit), and informal conversations were used to collect data over a 6 month period. Data was analysed using a thematic framework approach.ResultsFour main themes were constructed that demonstrated participants’ lived experiences of mindfulness during participation in hospice-based Tai Chi sessions. Main themes included: (1) mind-body respite; (2) being present with others; (3) tranquil and therapeutic atmosphere and; (4) physical limitations.ConclusionTai Chi may be an important therapeutic strategy for helping patients with advanced, incurable disease experience mindfulness. The findings of this study support the use of MBM exercises such as Tai Chi as a non-pharmacological adjunct to conventional treatments within palliative care settings.     

Feeling accepted: A phenomenological exploration of adolescent patients’ experiences of the relational qualities that enable them to express themselves freely

Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore adolescent psychotherapy patients’ experiences of the relational qualities that make it possible for them to express themselves freely and to continue their self-consolidation.Design: An interview-based study using thematic analysis based on hermeneutical–phenomenological epistemology.Methods: Semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviews with 14 adolescents.Results: The adolescents’ experiences were clustered around five themes: (1) receiving full and genuine attention; (2) not having to take care of and responsibility for the therapist; (3) being accepted and valued; (4) the therapist staying with them through emotionally painful moments; and (5) the therapist facilitating openness by sharing.Conclusions: The results from the current study suggest that there are particular ways that therapists can relate to adolescent patients which would make them feel more able to express themselves freely and that create an atmosphere which facilitates the consolidation of the adolescents’ sense of self.     

Look up to the body: An eye-tracking investigation of 7-months-old infants’ visual exploration of emotional body expressions

The human body is an important source of information to infer a person’s emotional state. Research with adult observers indicate that the posture of the torso, arms and hands provide important perceptual cues for recognising anger, fear and happy expressions. Much less is known about whether infants process body regions differently for different body expressions. To address this issue, we used eye tracking to investigate whether infants’ visual exploration patterns differed when viewing body expressions. Forty-eight 7-months-old infants were randomly presented with static images of adult female bodies expressing anger, fear and happiness, as well as an emotionally-neutral posture. Facial cues to emotional state were removed by masking the faces. We measured the proportion of looking time, proportion and number of fixations, and duration of fixations on the head, upper body and lower body regions for the different expressions. We showed that infants explored the upper body more than the lower body. Importantly, infants at this age fixated differently on different body regions depending on the expression of the body posture. In particular, infants spent a larger proportion of their looking times and had longer fixation durations on the upper body for fear relative to the other expressions. These results extend and replicate the information about infant processing of emotional expressions displayed by human bodies, and they support the hypothesis that infants’ visual exploration of human bodies is driven by the upper body.     

“It's a white thing”: An exploration of beliefs about suicide in the African‐American community

Although there has been an increase in black suicides in the past decades the white suicide rate is still nearly double the black suicide rate for men and women. The question asked is, Why is there relatively little black suicide? One persuasive answer proposed in the literature is that major social institutions, particularly religion and family, in the African‐American community provide amelioration or buffering of social forces that would otherwise promote suicide. We report on a qualitative investigation designed to identify the content of beliefs and perceptions of suicide that may act as a buffer against suicide in the African‐American community. From interviews with black pastors in a southern community we identify an intermingling of religious condemnatory beliefs and secular attitudes about suicide that view suicide as unthinkable sin and define it as a “white thing” alien to the black culture.     

The ‘Renaissance of the University’ in the European knowledge society: An exploration of principled and governmental approaches

A ‘renaissance of the university’ in the European knowledge society is regarded today as a necessity. However, there is an ongoing debate about what that renaissance should look like. The aim of this article is to take a closer look at these debates, and in particular, the disputes related to the public role of the (future) university in the European knowledge society. The aim however is not to assess the validity of the arguments of each of the protagonists but to place the discussion within a broader socio-historical context. From a genealogical point of view, and drawing upon the work of Foucault and Hunter, it is possible to distinguish two kinds of milieu, each embodying their own “intellectual technology” and each leading to a specific conception of the public role of the university: firstly the principled milieu (with the persona of the academic as critical intellectual), and secondly the governmental milieu (with the persona of the state official or governmental expert). From this genealogical point of view, I will argue that the modern (research) university was from the very beginning a hybrid institution due to the claims and scopes of both milieus. Furthermore, I will argue that the current discussions reveal the ongoing influence of both milieus and their respective gazes and approaches.

Caregivers’ perspective of the child support grant in South Africa: An exploratory study

This study explored caregivers’ perceptions of the South African Child Support Grant as a poverty alleviation instrument. Informants consisted of 72 caregivers who were purposively selected through the snowball method (female = 99%; single parent = 71%, blacks = 100%). They completed a survey based on their perceptions of the Child Support Grant. Thematic analysis applying the happiness or wellbeing approach to poverty revealed that caregivers find the Child Support Grant to be a family stress reliever by providing basic essentials for living. In addition, caregivers indicated the presence of inefficiencies in the administration of the grant. Findings suggest that the Child Support Grant has a buffering effect on poverty-stricken households in South Africa.     

Applying Deutsch’s concept of good explanations to artificial intelligence and neuroscience – An initial exploration

Artificial intelligence has made great strides since the deep learning revolution, but AI systems remain incapable of learning principles and rules which allow them to extrapolate outside of their training data to new situations. For inspiration we look to the domain of science, where scientists have been able to develop theories which show remarkable ability to extrapolate and sometimes even predict the existence of phenomena which have never been observed before. According to David Deutsch, this type of extrapolation, which he calls “reach”, is due to scientific theories being hard to vary. In this work we investigate Deutsch’s hard-to-vary principle and how it relates to more formalized principles in deep learning such as the bias-variance trade-off and Occam’s razor. We distinguish internal variability, how much a model/theory can be varied internally while still yielding the same predictions, with external variability, which is how much a model must be varied to predict new, out-of-distribution data. We discuss how to measure internal variability using the notion of the Rashomon set and how to measure external variability using Kolmogorov complexity. We explore what role hard-to-vary explanations play in intelligence by looking at the human brain, the only example of highly general purpose intelligence known. We distinguish two learning systems in the brain – the first operates similar to deep learning and likely underlies most of perception while the second is a more creative system capable of generating hard-to-vary models and explanations of the world. We make contact with Popperian epistemology which suggests that the generation of scientific theories is a not an inductive process but rather an evolutionary process which proceeds through conjecture and refutation. We argue that figuring out how replicate this second system, which is capable of generating hard-to-vary explanations, is a key challenge which needs to be solved in order to realize artificial general intelligence.     

‘It’s about having exposure to this’: investigating the training needs of therapists in relation to the issue of anomalous experiences

Two focus groups, consisting of six participants each, were conducted to explore the training needs of therapists when working with clients reporting anomalous experiences (AEs). AEs are those that ‘depart from our own familiar personal experiences or from the more usual, ordinary, and expected experiences of a given culture and time’ [Braud, W. (2012). Health and well-being benefits of exceptional human experiences. In C. Murray (Ed.), Mental health and anomalous experience (pp. 107–124). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.]. A thematic analysis revealed four themes: ‘Quite often we get taken by surprise because it’s a subject we don’t talk about’, ‘It’s just having this in our vocabulary’, ‘Demystifying and valuing AEs as normal human experiences’ and ‘To ask or not to ask?’. Most of the participants felt that they were unequipped to work with clients reporting AEs and suggestions were made for overcoming this.     

What affects willingness to mentor in the future? An investigation of attachment styles and mentoring experiences

This study examined the influence of attachment styles and mentoring experiences on willingness to mentor in the future in a formal mentoring program in China. For both mentors and protégés, avoidance and anxiety dimensions of attachment styles and their interaction had a significant influence on willingness to mentor in the future. Mentoring experiences explained unique variance in willingness to mentor beyond attachment styles. Crossover analysis of matched mentor–protégé pairs showed that mentoring functions fully mediated the mentor avoidance – protégé willingness to mentor relationship. The interaction between protégé avoidance and anxiety was directly related to mentor willingness to mentor in the future. Directions for research and implications for managerial practice are provided.     

Teachers’ perceived time pressure,emotional exhaustion and the role of social support from the school principal

Social Psychology of Education - Many teachers experience high levels of work-related strain due to time pressure, which over time can lead to various health problems, such as emotional exhaustion....     

The effect of message framing and the nature of the targeted illness on individuals’ intention to participate in clinical trials

IntroductionClinical trials are considered as the most useful methods to evaluate the efficacy of new medical treatments, but the participation of healthy individuals is often too small, which limits the statistical power of the trial and hence its effectiveness.ObjectiveThe goal of the present research is to assess, for the first time, the effects of message framing (gain versus loss) and of the nature of the illness targeted by a clinical trial (highly- versus mildly-contagious) on individuals’ intention to enter it.MethodsThe experimental manipulation is carried out within a scenario promoting a clinical trial, in a 2 (framing: gain vs loss) × 2 (nature of the illness: highly- vs mildly-contagious) between-participants design. After reading the scenario, participants were asked to rate their intention to enter the trial and their perception of its utility.ResultsStatistical analyses validated a causal model explaining that a gain-framed message describing a highly-contagious illness increases the perception of the utility of the clinical trial, which in turn enhances the intention to participate.ConclusionThe discussion mainly focuses on the contributions of these findings at a theoretical level, considering the limits and potential of their possible application.     

‘I feel better when…’: An analysis of the memory-experience gap for peoples’ estimates of the relationship between health behaviours and experiences

Objective: People often overestimate how strongly behaviours and experiences are related. This memory-experience gap might have important implications for health care settings, which often require people to estimate associations, such as “my mood is better when I exercise”. This study examines how subjective correlation estimates between health behaviours and experiences relate to calculated correlations from online reports and whether subjective estimates are associated with engagement in actual health behaviour.

Design: Seven-month online study on physical activity, sleep, affect and stress, with 61 online assessments.

Main Outcome Measures: University students (N = 168) retrospectively estimated correlations between physical activity, sleep, positive affect and stress over the seven-month study period.

Results: Correlations between experiences and behaviours (online data) were small (r = ?.12–.14), estimated correlations moderate (r = ?.35–.24). Correspondence between calculated and estimated correlations was low. Importantly, estimated correlations of physical activity with stress, positive affect and sleep were associated with actual engagement in physical activity.

Conclusion: Estimation accuracy of relations between health behaviours and experiences is low. However, association estimates could be an important predictor of actual health behaviours. This study identifies and quantifies estimation inaccuracies in health behaviours and points towards potential systematic biases in health settings, which might seriously impair intervention efficacy.