Weaving together observations and insights from ethnographic research gathered over two years, this article considers how design and everyday life intertwine to create convivial places, but also ...pauses to take in the moments when tensions rise and conviviality fails. To illustrate, the article takes as an example the redevelopment of a small urban square in London, designed by landscape architects Gustafson Porter and completed in 2011. Gustafson Porter’s practice is deeply informed by inclusive design, and they strive to design barrier-free environments that ‘promote choice, flexibility of use and enable everyone to participate equally’. Taking in both the material design of the square and the social encounters that happen there, the article considers how inclusion and exclusion operate in a public space like General Gordon Square, and reflects on the challenges of making and maintaining conviviality. It suggests that inclusive design might be imagined as a vision of convivial culture in which we live together with difference.
This paper follows the progress of a small rural primary school in the UK as it goes about cultivating a new vision of the future by transforming its outdoor spaces. Exploring the significance of ...these outdoor spaces as they are imagined, made and experienced, from the first design stages to the first days of use, the paper considers how feelings about children's access to and engagement with nature are entangled with cultures of protection and surveillance. Using observations from a multimodal ethnography, including video tours and photography workshops alongside observant participation and interviews, the paper illustrates how, in practical terms, changing an educational landscape can also shift a school culture, giving children greater freedom outdoors to live, learn and grow together.
With swimming pools and lidos closed during the pandemic, the number of people dipping their toes in rivers, lakes and seas and swimming wild has swelled. In this paper, we reflect on the ways in ...which swimmers living in cities have found ways of immersing themselves, and how they have forged new friendships and communities in the water. Drawing on conversations with swimmers at a lake in an urban park and focusing on small and embodied everyday social interactions, from flashes of nudity to recognition between strangers, we explore how the opening - and temporary closures - of the lake have sparked convivial moments and how swimming reconfigures urban public space. Within this paper we engage with ideas of belonging and becoming. We think about absence and exclusion flowing alongside belonging and conviviality, and reflect on what that means for our understandings of leisure spaces, urban publics and bodies. We suggest that the power of wild swimming to restore, refresh and bring people together can revive our ideas about the place of water and wilderness in cities, while also drawing attention to enduring and pervasive inequalities.
The contemporary rise of body studies has led sociologists to take embodiment seriously, however, the issue of methodology in relation to the body remains largely under-explored. This article ...addresses the concern to capture the elusive body from a methodological perspective and discusses the video diary as a novel device for attending to bodily experience. The article considers how observation is redesigned through the video camera and describes the different ways in which bodily experience can be represented on screen. Using examples from video diaries made by participants in a multi-method study of the body, health and illness in everyday life, it shows how video diaries can contribute to an embodied sociology by making the body visibly, audibly and viscerally present.
Using a GoPro harnessed to the body of participants, we sent the camera into the sea, in order to explore how swimming under an open sky makes people feel about themselves and the natural world. ...Giving people GoPro cameras to record their swims and make pre- and post-swim video diaries, we aimed to investigate the rejuvenating effects of cold water and the connections between swimming and wellbeing. We are interested in the ways in which wellbeing is experienced, understood, and constructed in situ as an unfolding event. Here, we reflect on the methodological challenge of conducting research on the move and in water. We suggest that the technological innovation of the GoPro, a lightweight, small, rugged and, most essentially for us, waterproof camera, provides new means of addressing methodological challenges, while the combination of this technology with the video diary method enables the development of a multidimensional and multisensory account that mixes together talk and action, helping us to develop more immersive and attentive ways of doing research through which we can come to understand different ways of being in the water.
Introduction:
As the number of patients sustaining hip fractures increases, interventions aimed at improving patient comfort and reducing complication burden acquire increased importance. Frailty, ...cognitive impairment, and difficulty in assessing pain control characterize this population. In order to inform future care, a review of pain assessment and the use of preoperative intravenous paracetamol (IVP) is presented.
Materials and Methods:
Systematic review of preoperative IVP administration in patients presenting with a hip fracture.
Results:
Intravenous paracetamol is effective in the early management of pain control in the hip fracture population. There is a considerable decrease in use of breakthrough pain medications when compared with other pain relief modalities. Additionally, IVP reduces the incidence of opioid-induced complications, reduces length of stay, and lowers mean pain scores. Another significant finding of this study is the poor administration of all analgesics to patients with hip fracture with up to 72% receiving no prehospital analgesia.
Discussion:
The potential benefits of IVP as routine in the early management of hip fracture-related pain are clear. Studies of direct comparison between analgesia regimes to inform optimum bundles of analgesic care are sparse. This study highlights the need for properly constructed pathway-driven comparator studies of contemporary analgesia regimes, with IVP as a central feature to optimize pain control and minimize analgesia-related morbidity in this vulnerable population.
In this commentary article, we describe the impact that an ageing population is having on the nature of major trauma seen in emergency departments. The proportion of major trauma victims who are ...older people is rapidly increasing and a fall from standing is now the most common mechanism of injury in major trauma. Potential barriers to effective care of this patient group are highlighted, including: a lack of consensus regarding triage criteria; potentially misleading physiological parameters within triage criteria; non-linear patient presentations and diagnostic nihilism. We argue that the complex ongoing care and rehabilitation needs of older patients with major trauma may be best met through Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA). Furthermore, the use of frailty screening tools may facilitate more informed early decision-making in relation to treatment interventions in older trauma victims. We call for geriatric medicine and emergency medicine departments to collaborate-equipping urgent care staff with the basic competencies necessary to initiate CGA should be a priority, and geriatricians have a key role to play in delivery of such educational interventions.
Animating sociology Bates, Charlotte; Moles, Kate; Kroese, Lily Mae
The Sociological review (Keele),
09/2023, Letnik:
71, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article outlines the collaborative process of making a watercolour animation drawn from research with women who swim wild in rivers, lakes and seas. Discussing graphic storytelling in sociology, ...anthropology and related disciplines, we share our experiences of creative collaboration, describing in detail the practical process of making a research-led animation to share with the wider swimming community and situating the project within a larger discussion of graphic and public ethnography, live methods and the possibilities of representation. The article contributes to the ways we can make methods lively and shows how we can both literally and metaphorically animate sociology.
Abstract Confusion and delirium are the most common behavioural disorders seen in emergency departments and acute medical or surgical units. Delirium can be regarded as the new ‘cognitive superbug’. ...Confusion can be seen as a mild form of delirium and can give warning of the development of the more severe disorder. It causes an acute change of mental status characterized by abnormal and fluctuating attention. It affects 10–30% of medically ill patients, especially elderly individuals and often shortly after hospital admission. It causes prolonged admission, increased morbidity and mortality, and delayed discharge, often culminating in long-term care. Its causation is reviewed and its prevention and management are described.
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