‘Our surgeons want this to be short and simple’: practices of in-hospital medication review as coordinated sociomaterial actions

ABSTRACT

Medication review, a systematic assessment of a patient’s medicines by a health care professional, is intended to prevent medication-related harms. A critical element of medication review concerns whether medication review is conducted in a coordinated way. This article draws from a case example of implementing medication review in two surgical wards of a Swedish regional hospital and aims to analyse how medication review is being accomplished with respect to the coordination of its actions. Using a practice-based ethnographic approach, we present several coordination mechanisms by illustrating how practices are connected to materials involved in medication review. Also, we show how common orientations, ends, and understandings expressed in different medication review practices contribute to the coordination of the practices. In conclusion, this article highlights the complexity of establishing and sustaining medication review as a coordinated practice in routine health care. By closely examining sociomaterial connections, this article sheds new light on the neglected issue of artefacts and arrangements in constituting and transforming a highly complex medication practice.     

Adaptation de la Perspective à une Situation Complexe par des Elèves de 9–12 ans

The research described here deals with relationships between teaching situations and pupils’ notions in the context of three dimensional geometry lessons during compulsory schooling. Specifically, ways in which 9 to 12 year old children adapt perspective drawings of a cube in two quite complex situations are looked at. These situations require that assemblies of cubes be represented with different objectives in mind. Furthermore, the situations are created at the beginning of the learning process as implemented at two different school grades. The article presents the bread range of possible types of visual representations of cube assemblies. Three ways of adapting to these situations can be picked out in terms of this classification, namely:

— successful resolution of the coordination problems posed by perspective representation of assemblies involving several cubes;

— restricted use of perspective drawings for one simple part of the assembly;

— abandonment of perspective drawings in favour of other, figurative or semi-figurative method of graphical representation.

The effect of certain features of each situation considered on pupils’ adaptation is also brought out. These features were used to favour semi-figurative techniques of representation linked to spatial orientation procedures.     

The two faces of political science studies—junior and senior students’ thoughts about their education and their future profession

The article reports on an empirical small scaled interview study among junior and senior students in the political science programme in a Swedish University. The aim is to describe how students at various stages of their studies conceive of their education as well as their future professional life. Questions about their identity as students have also been posed. The results indicate that a programme with a major emphasis on political science appears to have two different faces as experienced by the students. The first half of the programme is experienced as traditional liberal arts studies, i.e., the students enrol in a ‘personal bildung project’ and conceive of political scientists as a kind of watchdog for democracy. Students in the latter part of their studies report an emerging identity as investigators and civil servants and an appreciation of the parts of the studies that enhance their generic skills.     

Beyond Walter Cronkite’s “And That’s The Way It Is”

Television anchors are key public figures in the American news media, vital for the ratings success of their outlets. This study uses content analysis and framing theory to examine US network news anchors’ role at a pivotal career moment—the last minutes in the all-powerful anchor chair—their swan songs. These final words are examined for messages as anchors express gratitude, sum up careers, provide journalism insights, and pronounce final words of wisdom. The textual analysis revealed several dominant frames—becoming one with the audience, expressions of gratitude to staff and viewers, the anchors’ perception of their historical role noting predecessors and successors, and insightful wisdom about journalism’s role in society. The visual analysis showed a style reinforcing a professional presence, signaling authority, and objectivity. Each American lodestar anchor was different, yet they were similar in how they said goodbye and how they wanted to be remembered.     

被子植物的花粉形态系列与系统发育

现代被子植物的花粉类型绝大部分可以归入两大形态系列——连续式系列和短轴式系列。这两 个系列从原始到进化的诸多花粉类型不仅存在于现代植物中，而且地层中的化石花粉也揭示出类似的演化趋向。  本文着重讨论了与这些形态系列关系较为密切的一些植物类群，以及它们在系统发育方面的意义。     

The Development of Simile Comprehension: From Similarity to Scalar Implicature

Similes require two different pragmatic skills: appreciating the intended similarity and deriving a scalar implicature (e.g., “Lucy is like a parrot” normally implies that Lucy is not a parrot), but previous studies overlooked this second skill. In Experiment 1, preschoolers (N = 48; ages 3–5) understood “X is like a Y” as an expression of similarity. In Experiment 2 (N = 99; ages 3–6, 13) and Experiment 3 (N = 201; ages 3–5 and adults), participants received metaphors (“Lucy is a parrot”) or similes (“Lucy is like a parrot”) as clues to select one of three images (a parrot, a girl or a parrot-looking girl). An early developmental trend revealed that 3-year-olds started deriving the implicature “X is not a Y,” whereas 5-year-olds performed like adults.     

How spatial abilities enhance,and are enhanced by,dental education

In two studies with a total of 324 participants, dentistry students were assessed on psychometric measures of spatial ability, reasoning ability, and on new measures of the ability to infer the appearance of a cross-section of a three-dimensional (3-D) object. We examined how these abilities and skills predict success in dental education programs, and whether dental education enhances an individual's spatial competence. The cross-section tests were correlated with spatial ability measures, even after controlling for reasoning ability, suggesting that they rely specifically on the ability to store and transform spatial representations. Sex differences in these measures indicated a male advantage, as is often found on measures of spatial ability. Spatial ability was somewhat predictive of performance in restorative dentistry practical laboratory classes, but not of learning anatomy in general. Comparisons of the performance of students early and late in their dental education indicated that dentistry students develop spatial mental models of the 3-D structure of teeth, which improves their ability to mentally maintain and manipulate representations of these specific structures, but there is no evidence that dental education improves spatial transformation abilities more generally.     

A winding road – professional trajectories from higher education to working life: a case study of political science and psychology graduates

This qualitative and longitudinal study focuses on graduate employment and the development of graduate employment paths. The aim of this article is to explore the present professional trajectory from higher education to working life, with particular reference to graduates from two different study programmes at Linköping University in Sweden: Political Science and Psychology. More specifically, the article focuses on how graduates construe their professional trajectories in terms of their envisaged future work as senior students, and later as novice and early-career professionals with 18 and 34 months of work life experience. The results indicate that graduates’ professional identities and vision of their future work change over time. The set of categories, depicting the graduates’ vision and experiences of their professional trajectories, do not seem to follow a specific temporal and logical progression in their career. Rather, they appear in different order and at different points in time after graduation. The results, instead, endorse the discourse of lifelong learning and the need for flexibility and employability on the labour market.     

Creating a ‘world class’ programme: reciprocity and constraint in networked global collaboration

The article reflects on the construction of a common Master’s programme across four universities located on four continents, in order to explore the role of networks in international educational collaboration. The study draws on the documented processes of the principal members of the programme team. It is presented as a case study of the development of the programme that uses ideas drawn from actor‐network theory to draw attention to the conjunction of human and non‐human actors that shaped the resulting web‐based courses. Constraints arising from major institutional and systemic obstacles were addressed through the effects of the actor‐network. The reciprocity of action and de‐centring of individual activity made possible through the collaboration enabled the human actors to sustain a level of innovation within their own institutions that would not have been possible through them acting alone.     

A reconstruction of the gender agenda: the contradictory gender dimensions in New Labour's educational and economic policy

This article reviews current interpretations of Labour's education policy in relation to gender. Such interpretations see the marginalisation of gender equality in mainstream educational policy as a result of the discursive shift from egalitarianism to that of performativity. Performativity in the school context is shown to have contradictory elements ranging from an increased feminisation of teaching and the (re)masculinisation of schooling. Also, whilst underachievement is defined as ‘the problem of boys’, the production of hierarchical masculinities and ‘laddishness’ by marketised schools is ignored. The policy shift towards performativity also masks girls' exclusion and the disadvantages working‐class girls face within the education system. The rhetoric of gender equality, although stronger in the field of post‐16 training and employment, is no less contradictory. The effects of New Labour are found in the aggravation of social class divisions within gender categories and the spiralling differences between male and female paths. Gender equality ideals in education are therefore shown to have a far more complex relationship to New Labour politics than previously thought.