Dealing with the Demands: Strategies Healthcare Communication Professionals Use to Cope with Workplace Stress

This study examines how healthcare communication professionals (HCPs) cope with workplace stress while working in an inherently stressful industry. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 HCPs (14 females, 3 males) from seven nonprofit and for-profit hospitals in the midwestern and eastern regions of the United States. Communication positions held by participants included marketing, media/community relations, public information, public relations, corporate communication, and social media. Interviews revealed HCPs use four strategies to cope with workplace stress: prioritizing, seeking colleague support, keeping perspective, and being active. HCPs primarily relied on employee-centered coping strategies, even though all sources of stress were organizationally-based (i.e., workload, lack of resources, client confidentiality). The majority of HCPs emphasized the benefits of using problem-centered (i.e., prioritizing) and emotion-centered (i.e., seeking colleague support) coping strategies. Although mentioned less often, HCPs utilized more avoidance-centered coping strategies (i.e., keeping perspective, being active). More importantly, they highlighted the benefits of using avoidance-centered strategies to help them mentally and physically disengage from workplace stress. Hospital administration should reassess if, and how, they help HCPs effectively cope with workplace stress (i.e., outlets, programs, professional development opportunities) in order to improve the well-being of HCPs and increase the likelihood of organizational success.     

The Common Gaze: Conversations with Cataloging Instructors about Teaching Online at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Past and present instructors from the Library Education Experimental Program (LEEP) online graduate education program at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois discuss their instructional experiences. Topics include: discussion of learning activities that work and those that do not, the differences in participation rates among online students, the challenge of instruction in an environment where visual or physical cues are absent, and the ways in which instructors measure learning outcomes and encourage students to work in groups.     

Situated Knowledge and the Virtual Science and Industry Museum: Problems in the Social-Technical Interface

The Museum is a perspicuous site for analysing the complex interplay between social, organisational, cultural and political factors which have relevance to the design and use of virtual technologies. Specifically, the introduction of virtual technologies in museums runs up against the issue of the situated character of information use. Across a number of disciplines (anthropology, sociology, psychology, cognitive science) there is growing recognition of the situatedness of knowledge and its importance for the design and use of technology. This awareness is fostered by the fact that technological developments are often associated with disappointing gains for users. The effective use of technology relies on the degree to which it can be embedded in or congruent with the local practices of museum users. Drawing upon field research in two museums of science and technology, both of which are in the process of introducing virtual technologies and exploring the possibilities of on-line access, findings are presented which suggest that the success of such developments will depend on the extent to which they are informed by detailed understanding of practice-practices that are essentially socially constituted in the activities of museum visitors and the daily work of museum professionals.