Boundary work in response to professionals’ contextual constraints: Micro-strategies in interprofessional collaboration

Boundary-work research has extensively explored how professionals engage in boundary work to protect or expand their professional boundaries in interprofessional collaboration (IPC). Yet professionals’ contextual constraints in everyday work, such as time pressure or legal restrictions, often result in competing interests of the professionals involved in IPC, prompting them to engage in boundary work to limit—instead of protect or expand—their boundaries. Our empirical analysis uses comprehensive qualitative data on IPC in Germany between self-employed general practitioners (GPs) and registered nurses employed in nursing homes in which GPs’ efficiency interests compete with nurses’ safeguarding interests, leading both professionals to engage in boundary-work efforts to limit their boundaries. Our findings provide a comprehensive understanding and framework of professionals’ boundary work, showing that individual GPs and nurses typically hold a portfolio of various defending and accommodating micro-strategies. Based on our first-order findings, we identify how different sources of power enable particular micro-strategies and explore how the choice of micro-strategies depends on different forms of trust in the collaborating partner. Lastly, we outline interactions of micro-strategies, illustrating how the outcomes of professionals’ bilateral boundary work depend on the sequence of these strategies.

Antecedents and Consequences of Perceived Inclusion in Academia

A diversified workforce is a current trend in organizations today. The present paper illuminates the antecedents, consequences, and potential gender differences of a rather new concept salient to contemporary work life, namely, perceived inclusion. The hypothesized relationships were tested in a sample of academics and faculty staff at different higher education institutions in Norway (n = 12,170). Structural equation modeling analyses supported hypotheses that empowering leadership and social support from the leader (but not the fairness) are positively related to perceived inclusion. Further, perceived inclusion is positively related to organizational commitment, work engagement, and work–home facilitation and negatively related to work–home conflict. By utilizing multigroup analyses, we found support for the hypothesis that compared to women, men perceive their organization as more inclusive. However, in contrast to what was hypothesized, the proposed relationships in the model were stronger for men than women, suggesting that not only do men perceive their work environment as more inclusive, but their perception of inclusion is also more strongly related to beneficial outcomes for the organization. These results provide insight into the antecedents of and strategies for fostering an inclusive work environment, as a response to leveraging and integrating diversity in everyday work life.

Opinion of the junior doctors on the existing morale, support and autonomy at their workplace and the factors positively influencing them

Background: Junior doctors form the majority of the workforce in patient care. Their job is perilous, highly critical, tedious and exhausting and it is imperative that they stay motivated while at work. Improving the morale of physicians has the potential to increase efficiency, ensure patient safety and improve patient outcomes. We aimed to identify the existing status and explore the factors affecting junior doctors’ morale, their sense of feeling supported and their levels of autonomy in 2 large teaching hospitals in Bangladesh. Methods: This cross-sectional observational study was done across 2 large tertiary hospitals- Bangladesh Institute of Research and Rehabilitation in Diabetes, Endocrine and Metabolic Disorders(BIRDEM) General Hospital and Dhaka Shishu Hospital, over 4 months period from September- December 2020. The study was carried out on 120 junior doctors by an online questionnaire, distributed through emails and Facebook messenger, asking junior doctors to rate their morale, sense of feeling supported and autonomy and rank the top factors that positively affected them. Results: Data were finally collected from 117 junior doctors after 3 incomplete data were discarded. Most of the junior doctors felt ‘neither good nor bad’ in the domains of existing ‘morale’ (44.4%), ‘feeling supported’ (46.5%) and ‘autonomy’ (48.7%). Additionally, ‘good’ morale was seen in 39.3%, while around 34% rated their support system as ‘good’ and around 24% reported a ‘good’ autonomy. The most important factor positively affecting morale was recognition and reward for good performance (70.1%), factor influencing support was an easy access to senior clinicians (70.4%) and that defining autonomy was constant senior supervision of the everyday work (61.1%). Conclusion: The study aims to identify the existing level of morale, support and autonomy of the junior doctors at their workplace and explore the factors positively affecting them. It is concluded from this study that the junior doctors rated their existing morale, support and autonomy as ‘average’. According to the opinions of the doctors, this study also concludes that, to improve their morale, there is a need to recognize and reward their good work and provide positive feedback. Doctors identified an easy access to senior clinicians with a problem was the primary factor influencing support. Finally, junior doctors wanted constant senior supervision of their everyday work in the wards to improve output. BIRDEM Med J 2022; 12(1): 30-35

Thermal Properties of Special New Generation Personal Protective Clothing for Firefighters-Rescuers

Every day, firefighters put their health and life at risk by saving people and their property not only during fires, but by being always ready during all kinds of unfortunate events. Therefore, they need special personal protective equipment, including protective clothing. The purpose of the study was to compare thermal properties of new (PROTON and SYRIUSZ) and old (US-03) personal protective clothing for firefighters. Measurements of thermal insulation (total, effective and local) were carried out using a full body shape thermal manikin Newton consisting of 34 segments, in which temperature and heat flux were controlled independently. Results of the total thermal insulation of the entire clothing reveal differences between all three models. The lowest values were noticed for the model PROTON with light and shorter jacket and the highest values of thermal insulation for the new model SYRIUSZ, indicating that this model protect the user against heat most effectively. New models of personal protective clothing for firefighters should be recommended for use in everyday work, because they are characterized by better parameters than the previous type of protective clothing, both in terms of thermal protection and mobility.

Transforming Conditions of Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism

This chapter provides an in-depth understanding of the conditions for feminist and LGBTI+ activism in Russia, Turkey, and Scandinavia, including legislative frames, access to resources and funding, employment conditions, and geographical and geopolitical locality. Instead of taking the relations between the state, civil society, and feminist and LGBTI+ activists for granted as an overarching explanatory model for comparative analysis, the chapter examines the multifaceted nature of the relations between the state, civil society and feminist and LGBTI+ activists in Russia, Turkey, and Scandinavia. Further, the chapter scrutinizes transnational, national, and local scales that influence the conditions of activism across the three research contexts. The discussions in the chapter are wrapped up by an interrogation of how donor politics influence the activist agenda in Russia, Turkey, and Scandinavia and of what resistant practices activists lean on in their everyday work.

‘The Everyday Work of Repair’: Exploring the Resilience of Victims-/Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

This interdisciplinary article uses what Das has termed ‘the everyday work of repair’ as a framework for thinking about resilience. It is not the first to discuss resilience and the everyday. What is novel is the context in which it does so. Extant scholarship on conflict-related sexual violence has largely overlooked the concept of resilience. Addressing this gap, the article draws on semi-structured interviews with victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Colombia and Uganda to examine what everyday resilience ‘looks’ like and how it is expressed within and across highly diverse social ecologies. In so doing, it reflects on what everyday resilience means for transitional justice, through a particular focus on hybridity. It introduces the term ‘facilitative hybridity’, to underscore the need for transitional justice processes to give greater attention to the social ecologies that can crucially support and enable the everyday work of repair and everyday resilience.

Glucosylimidazolium Hydroxide: A Bench-Stable Carbohydrate Based Building Block

Hygroscopic effects in ionic liquids and salts in general, and how to suppress said hygroscopy, often needs to be considered during the everyday work routine. Chemicals that decompose, undergo hydrolysis or in any way change their composition when exposed to air are generally not considered to be bench-stable. In this study, we synthesized a low-hygroscopic, bench-stable carbohydrate-based hydroxide salt. This new product was synthesized in an optimized three-step procedure with 91% overall yield. Its worth as a building block was proven through the reaction with different natural acids, leading to new carbohydrate-based ionic liquids (CHILs) in the process.

Rape myths in practice: the everyday work of accounting for rape survivors

Abstract‘Rape mythologising’ has been found to be a reason why survivors of rape feel blamed, and might contribute to low rates of reporting or conviction. No research to date examines whether ‘rape mythologising’ occurs in the conversations of sexual health staff when discussing rape cases. Conversation Analysis was used to analyse a focus group conversation between five sexual healthcare clinic staff who routinely provided support to rape survivors, on the topic of three rape cases presented at the clinic. Three forms of conversation were noted in the focus group: (1) assessing ‘relatability’ in cases, (2) diagnostically reconstructing events and (3) apportioning blame to rapists. Implications for professional training are discussed. In all three, a tension was noted between drawing on rape myths and professional non-blaming discourses. This research demonstrates the need for further training of those who work with rape survivors.

Application of Deep Learning in Petrographic Coal Images Segmentation

The study of the petrographic structure of medium- and high-rank coals is important from both a cognitive and a utilitarian point of view. The petrographic constituents and their individual characteristics and features are responsible for the properties of coal and the way it behaves in various technological processes. This paper considers the application of convolutional neural networks for coal petrographic images segmentation. The U-Net-based model for segmentation was proposed. The network was trained to segment inertinite, liptinite, and vitrinite. The segmentations prepared manually by a domain expert were used as the ground truth. The results show that inertinite and vitrinite can be successfully segmented with minimal difference from the ground truth. The liptinite turned out to be much more difficult to segment. After usage of transfer learning, moderate results were obtained. Nevertheless, the application of the U-Net-based network for petrographic image segmentation was successful. The results are good enough to consider the method as a supporting tool for domain experts in everyday work.

Managing categories: The role of social technology in kindergarten teachers’ work to promote early intervention and integration

Early intervention and integration are highly valued ideals in kindergartens in Norway. Building on two research projects informed by institutional ethnography, the authors address how kindergarten teachers ‘do’ early intervention and integration in their everyday work. They argue that this work largely revolves around managing categories, whether making categories fit people or making people fit categories. In this work, the kindergarten teachers rely on social technology that is influenced by a ‘psy-discourse’. Despite good intentions, the social technology and the professionals’ use of it ends up constructing the categories they are intended to help or ‘heal’.