The Aging Physician and Retirement

The attitude of physicians toward retirement was studied using a questionnaire sent to physicians aged 65 and older. The information obtained was supplemented by organizing a study group of interested doctors. Of the 58 respondents whose average age was 71, 54 were still in practice and 65% had no plans for retirement. There was a strong urge to maintain the status quo. The group discussion centered around the loss of control over one's declining practice and the fear of diminishing competence with advancing age. The dedicated lifetime pursuit of a medical practice makes retirement extremely difficult for today's older physician. This study supports surveys on the working life span, longevity and mortality of North American physicians.

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Alice’s Garden: Imagining Agency in the Natural World in Clare Boylan’s Black Baby

Estudios Irlandeses ◽

10.24162/ei2020-9752 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 42-52

Author(s):

Maureen O’Connor ◽

Keyword(s):

Life Span ◽

Natural World ◽

Status Quo ◽

New Materialism ◽

Culturally Specific ◽

Generative Process ◽

Untimely Death ◽

The Status ◽

Feminist New Materialism ◽

Interracial Family

The Irish writer Clare Boylan is something of a forgotten figure, despite enjoying significant literary success in her lifetime. Because of her untimely death, little critical work has been done on her fiction. Her blackly comic sensibility responds sensitively to characters situated in culturally specific environments, with particular attention paid to the vexed and contradictory position of women in their relationship to the natural world, and so this essay conducts a reading of her 1988 novel, Black Baby, using the insights of feminist new materialism and critical posthumanism, especially as articulated by Rosi Braidotti. In every genre, contemporary Irish women’s writing finds space in the natural world to explore alternatives to the status quo. Black Baby imagines an interracial family of women (and cats) in the enchanted environment of a miraculously blooming winter garden. By staging Alice’s most transformative moments, including her final moments of semi-consciousness, in a garden, Boylan makes recourse to the idea of an unending, generative process. Nothing really dies when life is no longer an individualised experience, but an impersonal moment of radical inclusion that exceeds the material limits of any one life span.

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DIY: Consumer driven research

Market Research Society Journal ◽

10.1177/147078539703900207 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 39 (2) ◽

pp. 1-18

Author(s):

Caryl Varty ◽

Frances Yelland

Keyword(s):

Consumer Research ◽

Financial Services ◽

Group Discussion ◽

Status Quo ◽

Secondary Stage ◽

The Status ◽

Key Issues ◽

Optimal Implementation

This paper focuses on the research industry's adherence to the group discussion in qualitiative research, its validity for consumer research in the late 1990s and its optimal implementation and practice. The authors examine the thesis that responses obtained from the consumer are not as accurate as they could be and suggest that the input into and methodology of conventional moderated groups may, in some instances, be inappropriate and out of date. A number of consumer-driven, DIY groups were carried out, without a moderator, in the IT and financial services sectors. The unmoderated groups were given clear instructions regarding the process and content of their tasks. Key issues are compared for unmoderated and DIY groups. It is concluded that unmoderated groups are likely to work best in mature, sophisticated, post-modernist societies which are ready to and experienced in challenging the status quo. Unmoderated groups allow a much clearer understanding of the agenda as set by respondents. The unmoderated approach has particular value in exploratory and explanatory research, as well as the initial phases of NPD work, whereas well-moderated groups are more appropriate for diagnostic, tactical and secondary stage NPD work.

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