Stress-related mental ill health and its disorders are considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be the new world epidemic and their prevalence rates seem to be increasing worldwide.To examine and identify sub-populations at risk for psychological discomfort in Northern Ireland and map the relative impact of potential predictors.A sample of 4,638 respondents to the NIHSW-2001 survey was analysed with latent class analysis and latent class factorial analysis. Latent class multinomial logistic regression assessed the impact of a range of predictors on class membership.Five sub-populations were differentiated. All subgroups at risk for anxiety and depression were characterized as being younger and female. Disability and adverse life events were strong predictors of risk. Long-standing illness and housing worries were predictors of medium and high risk membership. The effect of civil unrest was significant only for the medium-risk subgroup; marital status and income did not affect group membership.Because all five subgroups showed a different probability, but a similar profile of endorsing GHQ-12 items, it could be hypothesized that an underlying continuum dimension of anxiety and depression is present in the Northern Irish population.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and wellbeing of social workers working with people with learning disabilities has not been fully explored. This paper reports findings from a large United Kingdom study that surveyed health and care workers in six phases of the pandemic and shortly thereafter (2020-23) relating to 310 social workers who worked with people with learning disabilities. Mann-Whitney U tests revealed that these social workers experienced a decline in wellbeing over the pandemic period, but this lessened as time passed. Logistic regression showed that social worker wellbeing predicted intentions to leave their profession. This study offers an evidence-based foundation to guide retention policies in learning disability social work, aiming to stabilise the sector and preserve essential experience for workforce planning.
1An organizational-management consultant/counselor in Framingham, Massachusetts 2Director of Nursing and Patient Services, Health Care International-Scotland, Ltd., Cambridge, Massachusetts
Operating room (OR) directors are frequently faced with the challenge of explaining or justifying OR productivity and the OR staffing budget. This justification may occur annually in conjunction with their budget submission or when consultants are employed to evaluate and improve OR productivity. Whatever the circumstance, a simple step-by-step format that helps physicians and administrators understand the impact of productivity on the nursing budget can be most useful. The authors present a format that was successfully used at a Boston teaching hospital.
Few would question that frontline nurse managers are critical to the success of any organization. They are the key interface with patients, nursing staff, medical staff, other clinical and ancillary staff, and administration. This makes the role one of the most difficult and one of the most important in any healthcare setting. Despite the importance of the role, many new managers receive little, if any, formal preparation. While hospitals are starting to send nurse managers to formal educational programs, the new manager receives little benefit if they do not have help putting it into practice. Even when there is a preceptor, chances are that new managers are still not getting what they need. Preceptors have multiple demands on their time and little, if any, formal preceptor training. One hospital that has successfully tackled this issue is Bryn Mawr Hospital, a Main Line Health System Magnet-designated hospital in suburban Philadelphia. Bryn Mawr Hospital engaged an experienced nurse executive to coach new nurse managers for 4 months on site. While participants agree face-to-face coaching is the most important component of this program, they also say having a seasoned coach gives them the confidence to ask questions they would not have felt comfortable exploring otherwise.
The present study examined the efficacy of Hopeful Minds, a 12 week hope based school intervention programme in a sample of 153 pre- and early- adolescent secondary school children (11–14 years) in the North West of Ireland. This study used a one-group, pretest-posttest design to determine whether participants experienced changes regarding their hope, well-being, and a range of known protective factors. Results from a Wilcoxin Signed Ranks test showed significant increases in children's hope scores post intervention. Resilience and adaptive coping skills of stoicism and social support seeking were also significantly improved. Although pre–post intervention improvements in well-being or emotional regulation/arousal scores were observed, results were non-significant. However, further analysis examined associations between hope and a range of well-being and protective factors using linear regression. Hope was found to be significantly associated with improvements in each of the well-being scores of anxiety, depression, resilience, positive emotion, reduced negative emotion, emotional control, stoicism, social support seeking and self-care. No associations were found between hope and rumination. This study builds upon the extant evidence for the implementation of the Hopeful Minds school based intervention. Further, the study demonstrates that teaching and thereby increasing hope has a significant positive impact on child and adolescent well-being and a range of protective factors; factors known to buffer against mental ill health and suicide.