A qualitative exploration of women's resilience in the face of homelessness

Author(s):  
Monique Phipps ◽  
Lisa Dalton ◽  
Hazel Maxwell ◽  
Michelle Cleary
BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. e043949
Author(s):  
Paul Bennett ◽  
S Noble ◽  
Stephen Johnston ◽  
David Jones ◽  
Rachael Hunter

ObjectivesTo gain insight into the experiences and concerns of front-line National Health Service (NHS) workers while caring for patients with COVID-19.DesignQualitative analysis of data collected through an anonymous website (www.covidconfidential) provided a repository of uncensored COVID-19 experiences of front-line NHS workers, accessed via a link advertised on the Twitter feed of two high profile medical tweeters and their retweets.SettingCommunity of NHS workers who accessed this social media.Participants54 healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses and physiotherapists, accessed the website and left a ‘story’.ResultsStories ranged from 1 word to 10 min in length. Thematic analysis identified common themes, with a central aspect being the experience and psychological consequence of trauma. Specific themes were: (1) the shock of the virus, (2) staff sacrifice and dedication, (3) collateral damage ranging from personal health concerns to the long-term impact on, and care of, discharged patients and (4) a hierarchy of power and inequality within the healthcare system.ConclusionsCOVID-19 confidential gave an outlet for unprompted and uncensored stories of healthcare workers in the context of COVID-19. In addition to personal experiences of trauma, there were perceptions that many operational difficulties stemmed from inequalities of power between management and front-line workers. Learning from these experiences will reduce staff distress and improve patient care in the face of further waves of the pandemic.


Author(s):  
Paula Byrne ◽  
Órla O’Donovan ◽  
Susan M Smith ◽  
John Cullinan

There has been a notable increase in the use of statins in people without cardiovascular disease but who may be at risk in the future. The majority of statin users now fall into this category but little research has focused exclusively on this group. Debate has ensued regarding medicating asymptomatic people, and processes described variously as medicalisation, biomedicalisation and pharmaceuticalisation are used to explain how this happens. These overlapping and interrelated processes require issues to be ‘problemised’ as medical problems requiring medical solutions given the prevailing understandings of health, risk and disease. However, current understandings of risk and disease are not simply the result of technological and scientific advances, they are also socially constructed. We interviewed members of the public, GPs and others, and found that rather than high cholesterol being seen as one of several risk factors that contributes to heart disease, it tended to be promoted simplistically to the status of a disease needing treatment of itself. Statins were justified by those taking them as different to ‘unnecessary medicines’. However, some participants demonstrated resistance to statins, worried about over-medicalisation and deviated from accepted practices, indicating a complex ‘muddling through’ in the face of uncertainty.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Gerónimo Brunet ◽  
Alejandra Girona ◽  
Gabriela Fajardo ◽  
Valentina Iragola ◽  
Leandro Machín ◽  
...  

Abstract Objective: The aim of the present work was to explore and analyze the actions implemented by civil society to contribute to food security in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak in Uruguay, a high-income country in South America. Design: An exploratory systematic approach was used to identify the contributions of civil society to food security through reports in news websites and Facebook posts. Data were analyzed based on content analysis following a deductive-inductive approach. Setting: Uruguay, Latin America. Results: A total of 1220 civil society organizations were identified, which developed two main actions to increase access to food among the Uruguayan population: food baskets and “community pots” (also known as “common pots”). Most of the initiatives targeted citizens under socioeconomic vulnerability in the face of COVID-19, without specifying any specific requirement or population segment. Actions were mainly led by spontaneously organized community groups, and, to a lesser extent, by consolidated organizations. Interactions between organizations were identified. The foods provided by the organizations were mostly aligned with national dietary guidelines. Social media posts evidenced that the main challenge faced by organizations was related to the lack of funds or supplies. Conclusions: Results from the present work suggest that the lack of funds or supplies poses challenges to the medium- and long-term contributions of civil society to food security and stresses the need for comprehensive governmental measures to guarantee food security among Uruguayan citizens.


2021 ◽  
pp. 135910532110614
Author(s):  
Jessica R Carney ◽  
Brigid Behrens ◽  
Laura E Miller-Graff

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted widespread changes and challenges worldwide. In the context of the early months of the pandemic, the current study utilized thematic analysis to assess parents’ ( N = 13) perspectives of need for resources to foster their family’s wellbeing. Five themes emerged: Information Deficits, Need for More Instrumental Supports, Frustration and Worry, Resources Promoting Resilience, and Positive Perspective Shift. Results indicate the importance of information and expanded access to community resources to scaffold resilience in the face of ongoing mass stressors.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel G. B. Johnson

AbstractZero-sum thinking and aversion to trade pervade our society, yet fly in the face of everyday experience and the consensus of economists. Boyer & Petersen's (B&P's) evolutionary model invokes coalitional psychology to explain these puzzling intuitions. I raise several empirical challenges to this explanation, proposing two alternative mechanisms – intuitive mercantilism (assigning value to money rather than goods) and errors in perspective-taking.


1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 203-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias C. Owen

AbstractThe clear evidence of water erosion on the surface of Mars suggests an early climate much more clement than the present one. Using a model for the origin of inner planet atmospheres by icy planetesimal impact, it is possible to reconstruct the original volatile inventory on Mars, starting from the thin atmosphere we observe today. Evidence for cometary impact can be found in the present abundances and isotope ratios of gases in the atmosphere and in SNC meteorites. If we invoke impact erosion to account for the present excess of129Xe, we predict an early inventory equivalent to at least 7.5 bars of CO2. This reservoir of volatiles is adequate to produce a substantial greenhouse effect, provided there is some small addition of SO2(volcanoes) or reduced gases (cometary impact). Thus it seems likely that conditions on early Mars were suitable for the origin of life – biogenic elements and liquid water were present at favorable conditions of pressure and temperature. Whether life began on Mars remains an open question, receiving hints of a positive answer from recent work on one of the Martian meteorites. The implications for habitable zones around other stars include the need to have rocky planets with sufficient mass to preserve atmospheres in the face of intensive early bombardment.


Author(s):  
G.J.C. Carpenter

In zirconium-hydrogen alloys, rapid cooling from an elevated temperature causes precipitation of the face-centred tetragonal (fct) phase, γZrH, in the form of needles, parallel to the close-packed <1120>zr directions (1). With low hydrogen concentrations, the hydride solvus is sufficiently low that zirconium atom diffusion cannot occur. For example, with 6 μg/g hydrogen, the solvus temperature is approximately 370 K (2), at which only the hydrogen diffuses readily. Shears are therefore necessary to produce the crystallographic transformation from hexagonal close-packed (hep) zirconium to fct hydride.The simplest mechanism for the transformation is the passage of Shockley partial dislocations having Burgers vectors (b) of the type 1/3<0110> on every second (0001)Zr plane. If the partial dislocations are in the form of loops with the same b, the crosssection of a hydride precipitate will be as shown in fig.1. A consequence of this type of transformation is that a cumulative shear, S, is produced that leads to a strain field in the surrounding zirconium matrix, as illustrated in fig.2a.


Author(s):  
F. Monchoux ◽  
A. Rocher ◽  
J.L. Martin

Interphase sliding is an important phenomenon of high temperature plasticity. In order to study the microstructural changes associated with it, as well as its influence on the strain rate dependence on stress and temperature, plane boundaries were obtained by welding together two polycrystals of Cu-Zn alloys having the face centered cubic and body centered cubic structures respectively following the procedure described in (1). These specimens were then deformed in shear along the interface on a creep machine (2) at the same temperature as that of the diffusion treatment so as to avoid any precipitation. The present paper reports observations by conventional and high voltage electron microscopy of the microstructure of both phases, in the vicinity of the phase boundary, after different creep tests corresponding to various deformation conditions.Foils were cut by spark machining out of the bulk samples, 0.2 mm thick. They were then electropolished down to 0.1 mm, after which a hole with thin edges was made in an area including the boundary


2002 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 117-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart M. Haslam ◽  
David Gems ◽  
Howard R. Morris ◽  
Anne Dell

There is no doubt that the immense amount of information that is being generated by the initial sequencing and secondary interrogation of various genomes will change the face of glycobiological research. However, a major area of concern is that detailed structural knowledge of the ultimate products of genes that are identified as being involved in glycoconjugate biosynthesis is still limited. This is illustrated clearly by the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, which was the first multicellular organism to have its entire genome sequenced. To date, only limited structural data on the glycosylated molecules of this organism have been reported. Our laboratory is addressing this problem by performing detailed MS structural characterization of the N-linked glycans of C. elegans; high-mannose structures dominate, with only minor amounts of complex-type structures. Novel, highly fucosylated truncated structures are also present which are difucosylated on the proximal N-acetylglucosamine of the chitobiose core as well as containing unusual Fucα1–2Gal1–2Man as peripheral structures. The implications of these results in terms of the identification of ligands for genomically predicted lectins and potential glycosyltransferases are discussed in this chapter. Current knowledge on the glycomes of other model organisms such as Dictyostelium discoideum, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Drosophila melanogaster is also discussed briefly.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 132-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Zubow ◽  
Richard Hurtig

Children with Rett Syndrome (RS) are reported to use multiple modalities to communicate although their intentionality is often questioned (Bartolotta, Zipp, Simpkins, & Glazewski, 2011; Hetzroni & Rubin, 2006; Sigafoos et al., 2000; Sigafoos, Woodyatt, Tuckeer, Roberts-Pennell, & Pittendreigh, 2000). This paper will present results of a study analyzing the unconventional vocalizations of a child with RS. The primary research question addresses the ability of familiar and unfamiliar listeners to interpret unconventional vocalizations as “yes” or “no” responses. This paper will also address the acoustic analysis and perceptual judgments of these vocalizations. Pre-recorded isolated vocalizations of “yes” and “no” were presented to 5 listeners (mother, father, 1 unfamiliar, and 2 familiar clinicians) and the listeners were asked to rate the vocalizations as either “yes” or “no.” The ratings were compared to the original identification made by the child's mother during the face-to-face interaction from which the samples were drawn. Findings of this study suggest, in this case, the child's vocalizations were intentional and could be interpreted by familiar and unfamiliar listeners as either “yes” or “no” without contextual or visual cues. The results suggest that communication partners should be trained to attend to eye-gaze and vocalizations to ensure the child's intended choice is accurately understood.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document