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This paper explores the social relations between inpatients in psychiatric wards. Combining Barker's (2002) concept of 'collective illness identity' with Nelson's (1993) concept of 'epistemological communities', I draw attention to the inpatients' collective identification and experiential knowledge. Through the analysis, three aspects of the inpatients' relationships are unfolded. First, how the inpatients, through bodily expressions and narrative accounts, construct a collective illness identity based on shared experiences of symptoms and suffering. Second, the ways in which the inpatients use their shared experiential knowledge to support one another and challenge the mental health professionals. Third, how the inpatients' reflections on the long‐term potential of their relationships reveal a number of concerns related to their continuation. Centrally, the paper points to the potential and challenges that arise from the inpatients' relations to one another and their embeddedness in a specific time and space. Empirically, the paper draws on five months of participant observation conducted in two psychiatric wards in Denmark and interviews with 14 psychiatric patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This paper describes registered nurses' lived experiences of caring relationships in the context of homecare provision for older adults living in Denmark. With the growing ageing population throughout Europe, more older adults will require complex care solutions within already overburdened care systems. This development places demands on the competencies and organisation of homecare nurses, as they become key players in healthcare systems. Fostering caring relationships in homecare is a rewarding and valuable process that enhances the holistic and humanising aspects of caring for older adults. For a caring relationship to be truly caring, we must understand not only the subjective experience of such a relationship but also how it is experienced in relation to and shared with others. Aim: This study aimed to describe the essential meaning of the phenomenon of caring relationships in homecare for older adults based on the lived experiences of homecare nurses. Approach and Methods: Registered nurses working in homecare for older adults were interviewed, and a phenomenological analysis was conducted according to the methodological principles of the reflective lifeworld research approach. Findings: The essential meaning of the phenomenon is described as creating an existential and embodied space in which each patient's world is the foundation of caring. The constituents are as follows: caring for the whole person, a sense of 'at‐homeness' through trusting 'the other', experiencing continuity as caring and prioritising the time to care. Conclusion: Caring competence in homecare for older adults relies on a nurse's ability to intertwine physical and existential care needs and articulate them in their daily work. A focus on the phenomenon of caring relationships brings value to and adds an extra layer to the discussion on caring competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are individuals willing to intervene in public violence? Half a century of research on the "bystander effect" suggests that the more bystanders present at an emergency, the less likely each of them is to provide help. However, recent meta-analytical evidence questions whether this effect generalizes to violent emergencies. Besides the number of bystanders present, an alternative line of research suggests that pre-existing social relations between bystanders and conflict participants are important for explaining whether bystanders provide help. The current paper offers a rare comparison of both factors-social relations and the number of bystanders present-as predictors of bystander intervention in real-life violent emergencies. We systematically observed the behavior of 764 bystanders across 81 violent incidents recorded by surveillance cameras in Copenhagen, Denmark. Bystanders were sampled with a case-control design, their behavior was observed and coded, and the probability of intervention was estimated with multilevel regression analyses. The results confirm our predicted association between social relations and intervention. However, rather than the expected reversed bystander effect, we found a classical bystander effect, as bystanders were less likely to intervene with increasing bystander presence. The effect of social relations on intervention was larger in magnitude than the effect of the number of bystanders. We assess these findings in light of recent discussions about the influence of group size and social relations in human helping. Further, we discuss the utility of video data for the assessment of real-life bystander behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to explore the idea that there are dark side personality differences in the profiles of people at different levels in organizations. This study replicates and extends existing leadership research by focusing on self-defeating behavioral tendencies. A Danish consultancy provided data on 264 adults based on assessment reports. This paper explored linear and quadratic relationships between personality and de facto job level. More senior managers scored high on Cluster B/Moving Against Others scales of Bold, Colorful and Imaginative, and low on Cautious and Dutiful. These Danish data are compared to data from Great Britain and New Zealand which show very similar findings. Practice should take into account that dark side personality traits associated with an assertive, sometimes hostile, interpersonal orientation, predict leadership level up to a point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data from Denmark, the paper examines the development of gender differences in political tolerance during the 1970s and 1980s. There was a large gender gap in tolerance at the beginning of the 1970s, which had totally disappeared by the end of the 1980s. The analysis shows that at the beginning of the 1970s, the gender gap is partly explained by differences in political involvement, interpreted as a result of the different political socialization of men and women. However, part of the difference is unchanged by any control, and this "unexplained" difference is interpreted as the result of a specific female culture. Against this background, it is surprising that the gender difference in political tolerance has vanished only twenty years later. The paper argues that, during these twenty years, a cultural shift has taken place in Denmark, merging the female and male cultures, and eliminating the hitherto "unexplained" gender difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Relatives are recognised as important for older patients' care and treatment. Variations in relatives' opportunities to negotiate the quality and continuity of older people's care and treatment can potentially lead to inequality in older people's access to care and treatment. Aim: This study aimed to examine relatives' opportunities and strategies for negotiation with health care professionals (HCPs) during the admission of older people to emergency departments in Denmark. Materials and Methods: We planned a qualitative ethnographical study employing a hermeneutic approach. Observations focused on social situations and interactions between relatives and HCPs. The analysis was guided by qualitative content analysis. Results: The analysis derived one main theme, attitude to action, containing three subthemes: frustration obtaining access, presenting the case and a powerful relationship. Being active appeared to be essential to achieving possibilities for negotiation with HCPs. Discussion: Inspired by Bourdieu, habitus, doxical values and institutional logics of relatives seem to affect their opportunities to negotiate with HCPs during older people's admission to an emergency department. Conclusion: Active and proactive relatives seem to have better opportunities to negotiate with HCPs during older people's acute hospital admission than reactive, passive and hesitant relatives. The logic of public management and the medical profession seem to dominate and influence doxa in the EDs and put special demands on the relatives. This imbalance constitutes a risk of inequality in older people's access to health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To explore how hospital nurses experienced their work situation during the COVID‐19 pandemic and how this affected the conduct of their professional and their everyday life. Methods: Interviews using critical psychology. A total of 24 nurses participated, representing departments of both medicine and surgical specialties. All nurses worked either in the department where they are usually stationed or were recruited from other departments to the COVID‐19 department. Results: Five themes were identified: (1) COVID‐19 had importance to nurses' sense of self as a nurse; (2) a new solidarity developed; (3) professional reflections—caring for patients; (4) the importance of recognition and humiliation and (5) COVID‐19 had consequences for the nurses' conduct of everyday life. Conclusion: The findings showed that some nurses caring for patients with COVID‐19 experienced a new solidarity with their colleagues. Other nurses found it to have a negative impact on their conduct of their professional life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this ethnographic study was to explore how a group of nine Danish people with schizophrenia managed physical health issues as they naturally occurred in everyday life. Qualitative methods were used to generate of data. Thematic analysis led to the description of two typical strategies used by participants to manage debilitating physical health issues in everyday life. Modifying everyday life to manage discomfort was a strategy employed to manage potential or actual discomfort associated with ongoing poor physical health, while retreating from everyday life to recover was a strategy used by participants who experienced recurring discrete episodes of poor physical health characterized by fast deterioration. Both management strategies were inexpedient as they failed to produce any positive progress in terms of the participants regaining health. The social context of participants' everyday life was characterized by a lack of interactions with others about their prevailing and ongoing physical health issues. Repeated use of these inexpedient strategies to manage physical health caused potential worsening rather than improvements to physical health. There is a need for future research that explores aspects of beneficial management of physical health issues among people with severe mental illness. Relevant foci of such research include enhancing self‐management of physical health, active help‐seeking behaviours, and opportunities to engage in interactions with others about physical health issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to recent calls for more research on micro-foundations, we seek to link human resource management (HRM) and knowledge transfer through individual-level mechanisms, arguing that individual-level conditions of action influence the extent to which employees engage in knowledge exchange. We examine four such conditions empirically using data from 811 employees in three Danish multinational corporations (MNCs). Our findings suggest that individual-level perceptions of organizational commitment to knowledge sharing, and extrinsic motivation, directly influence the extent to which employees engage in firm-internal knowledge exchange. We also find that intrinsic motivation and engagement in social interaction significantly mediate the relationship between perceived organizational commitment and knowledge exchange. Given that HRM can influence such conditions through an overall signaling effect and various practices, an understanding of these micro-foundations will shed light on how organizations can effectively enhance knowledge transfer through HRM. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The aim of the study was to explore how patient participation is constructed in social interaction processes between nurses, other health professionals and service users, and which structures provide a framework for the participation of service users in a psychiatric context? Methodological design: Ten tape‐recorded interviews of nurses and observations of interactions between nurses, other health professionals and service users reflected differing constructed views of patient participation. Charmaz's interpretation of the grounded theory method was used, and the data were analysed using constant comparative analysis. Ethical issues and approval: The study was designed in accordance with the ethical principles of the Helsinki Declaration (1) and Danish law (2). Each study participant in the two psychiatric departments gave informed consent after verbal and written information. Findings: The articulation of patient participation emphasises the challenge between, on the one side, orientations of ethical care, and, on the other, paternalism and biomedicine. The core category was generated from four inter‐related categories: (i) taking care of the individual needs; (ii) the service user as expert; and (iii) biomedicine, and (iv) paternalism, and their 13 subcategories. Conclusions: This study illuminates the meaning of patient participation in a psychiatric context based on social interaction between nurses, other health professionals and service users. This can contribute to dealing with the challenges of incorporating patient participation as an ideology in all service users in a psychiatric context and is therefore important knowledge for health professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Living in a nursing home may be challenging to the residents' experience of dignity. Residents' perception of how their dignity is respected in everyday care is important. Aim To examine how nursing home residents experience dignity through the provision of activities that foster meaning and joy in their daily life. Method A qualitative design was used and 28 individual semistructured interviews conducted with nursing home residents from six nursing homes in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The data were analysed with qualitative content analysis. Independent ethical committees in all participating countries granted their approval for the study. Findings The participants highlight two dimensions of the activities that foster experiences of dignity in nursing homes in Scandinavia. These two categories were (i) fostering dignity through meaningful participation and (ii) fostering dignity through experiencing enjoyable individualised activities. Conclusion Activities are important for residents to experience dignity in their daily life in nursing homes. However, it is important to tailor the activities to the individual and to enable the residents to take part actively. Nurses should collect information about the resident's preferences for participation in activities at the nursing home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background To improve cardiac care, especially cardiac rehabilitation, patients' perspectives should be better addressed. In Denmark, patients afflicted by a minor heart attack in terms of unstable angina pectoris or non- ST-elevation myocardial infarction are treated in fast-track programmes with subacute treatment in hospital, early discharge and follow-up specialised outpatient cardiac rehabilitation. Knowledge of these patients' experiences of their life situation is essential to develop sufficient care protocols. Aim To gain in-depth understanding of how patients afflicted by a minor heart attack experience their life situation when following cardiac rehabilitation. Methods Focus group interviews and individual interviews were conducted with 11 patients enrolled in the cardiac rehabilitation programme. Data consisted of text in the form of transcribed interviews. A three-phased interpretation inspired by Paul Ricoeur's theory of interpretation was applied. Findings As an overall concept, the patients experienced being forced into a demanding life shaking journey. Three themes emerged: Difficulty accepting the disease: facing the disease is a difficult challenge for the patients, leading to vulnerability and helplessness; Understanding that life has become frail: patients feel shaken as they realise that the disease is chronic and life-threatening; and An altered life: patients must adjust to new limitations in their everyday lives. Conclusions Patients experience an overall demanding transition when they are afflicted by a minor heat attack, whereby their lives are sweepingly changed. Supporting patients' integrity, which becomes vulnerable during the various stages of transitions, is essential to ensure a healthy outcome. Being together with fellow patients during cardiac rehabilitation is a facilitating factor in the course of transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon selected literature from the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Canada we examine how Foucault's concepts of 'episteme', 'rupture' 'parrhesia' 'care of the self', and 'problemitization' have been applied to particular contexts of leadership development, pedagogy, nursing knowledge, and the relationship between caring and politics. Our aims are threefold: to give examples of how selected Foucauldian concepts have been taken up in practice; to clarify how we are positioned today as nurses; and to invite more nurses to engage critically with historical inquiry and to engage in deep philosophical reflection about their relationship with nursing. We begin by examining the conditions and circumstances of Foucault's life, and conclude by posing the question in our subtitle to stimulate debate about the philosophical relevance of Foucauldian scholarship to nursing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Patients with cancer experience side effects related to their antineoplastic treatment. Demands for efficiency limit the time patients spend with health professionals. This requires that professionals are able to offer adequate support to patients in coping with side effects of treatment in everyday life. However, it appears that the level of information about and support in living with side effects may be insufficient. Objective To explore patients' experiences of how side effects from chemotherapy and radiotherapy impact everyday life as well as the information needs in coping with these side effects. Methods Nine patients' experiences were analysed and interpreted using a phenomenological-hermeneutical approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Findings The patients are deeply impacted by side effects in their everyday life. They struggle to take power but experience loss of control. They feel inexperienced without knowledge in an 'ongoing system', and because of lack of continuity, they do not come up with their real needs. To avoid pitfalls in the information, the patients need individualized support from the professionals. Conclusion If the patients have to be supported during everyday life with side effects from cancer treatment in an individualized way, the professional must be aware that the patients risk adapting to the busy healthcare system. To empower the patient, the professional must be able to sense the patients' appeal for help and enter into caring relationships. Implications for practice To ensure targeted information, the relationship between nurse and patient must build on nursing values including the patients' illness - perspective. However, the professionals must take a critical look at how they provide information and how they act to empower the patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. To study how traumatized refugees, their therapists, and their interpreters perceive both curative and hindering factors in psychological therapy, thereby highlighting the mediators of change in a transcultural clinical setting. Design. Four experienced clinical psychologists affiliated to two centres for the rehabilitation of traumatized refugees, were asked to select their two 'most successful' and two 'least successful' cases by going back to all the cases that they had concluded within the last 2 years, a pool of approximately 200 patients. The selected 16 patients, their therapists, and their interpreters were invited to semi-structured, in-depth, individual interviews with the aim of acquiring more knowledge on what had been helpful and what not helpful in the psychological treatment. Method. The senior author who conducted the interviews was not aware of whether the patient belonged to the 'successful' or 'unsuccessful group' prior to the interview. All interviews were audio taped. A qualitative phenomenological approach was used in the analysis of the data. The data were analysed (1) triad by triad for the 16 triads consisting of a patient, his/her therapist, and his/her interpreter, and (2) separately for each of the three groups of respondents. The analysis involved going through each protocol sentence by sentence and developing key-concepts for the therapeutic interventions and for the interpersonal relations. When the generation of key-concepts was finalized, the material was analysed for a second time, in order to place the relevant data under the key-concepts/categories. The categories and illustrative verbatim quotations from the interviews are presented in separate tables for the three groups. Results. The relationship between the therapist, patient, and interpreter, and the development of trust and a good working alliance was seen by all as the most important curative factor. Psychoeducative methods, cognitive interventions, as well as the provision of practical help and advice were also regarded as curative and facilitating factors. Hindering factors fell into the following five categories: factors related to the patient, to the therapist, to the interpreter, to the therapeutic method itself, and to factors external to the therapy. Therapists and interpreters considered severe psychopathology and substance abuse in addition to PTSD; chronic pain and physical illness; lack of motivation for treatment; and overwhelming social and/or economic problems as obstructive factors for the establishment of a working alliance and more generally for a successful outcome. As to the patients who did not benefit from the treatment, the unsuitability of a psychological treatment for their symptoms, and social and economic problems were seen as the main hindering factors. Conclusion. The therapeutic or working alliance is a common element of all types of psychological treatments, and is generally considered as a 'non-specific' factor. There are grounds to modify this view in working with traumatized and tortured patients from different cultural backgrounds. In cases where patients have experienced humiliation and evil, and now live in exile, the establishment of a relation of trust in fellow human beings is the first aim of the treatment. The article argues that the professional's compassion constitutes a primary factor in the therapeutic process in such cases. The risks of overinvolvement in the treatment of heavily traumatized patients are well described in the literature, and have also appeared in this study. In psychotherapy research, strong personal commitment is seldom mentioned by therapists for fear of its being considered unprofessional or unethical. However, a strong commitment can be of value, not only for the patients, but also for the therapists and interpreters themselves. The results of this study suggest that deep compassion on the part of the professionals is widespread in the treatment of traumatized patients, and that it is considered as a healing factor by most patients, interpreters, and therapists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This study deals with the problem of breakdown in out-of-home placements for Danish teenagers. How often are these placements prematurely terminated against the requests and intentions of the child welfare authorities? Which factors seem to increase and decrease placement breakdown? The sample consists of 225 youths and 367 placements during the years 2004-2008. Among the 225 youths, 44% experienced a breakdown, and 33% of the 367 placements ended with a breakdown. A large proportion of the placement breakdowns (20%) occurred before 4 months, and within the first year, 62% of the placement breakdowns had taken place. Replacements took place in 61% of all placement breakdowns. The analysis showed that type of placement and number of youth at the same placement had significant association to placement breakdown, but variables based on the social worker's clinical assessment showed no association to breakdown. However, while the logistic regression model was significant, it explained only 6% of the variance. Earlier studies have indicated that breakdown is a substantial problem of child welfare in several other western countries, Denmark is no exception. These corresponding breakdown rates point out that no child welfare system yet have found a method to reduce breakdown substantially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the present study was to examine psychological aspects of intra- and interpersonal learning for patients with Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidemia treated with Exercise on prescription. The research design consists of a qualitative investigation of 30 patients in Denmark undergoing a community-based exercise treatment at baseline, a post-intervention investigation after four months and a follow-up one year after the start of intervention. The results demonstrated that, for the majority of the participants, interaction under group conditions contributes to maintaining the commitment to exercise. For a corrective emotional experience – a correction of an emotional situation a person could not handle in the past – to occur requires two conditions: the group and the environment must be experienced as sufficiently safe, and there must be feedback to permit reality-testing. However, existential psychological aspects such as fear of dying or the universality of suffering triggered, but could not sustain, a change in health behavior. The article concludes that behavioral change is strengthened by interaction with health personnel and with the training group. These new insights likewise demand an increased focus on the human resources of general practitioners or physiotherapists who handle the training. They should learn about their supportive role for the participants, the regressive urges of the participants and the benefits of promoting group relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of consumer education has been mainly to teach and educate students to act as informed, rational and prudent consumers. This perception of consumption as reasoned behaviour or action is inadequate in the late modern society, where consumerism is first and foremost characterized by globalization, cultural change and the liberation of the individual. The results of a research study involving Danish pupils aged 12–19 years present a picture of consumption connected both to material and non-material aspects of life. Consumption as such has a significant impact on and meaning for the individual: it becomes a means by which human beings communicate and interact. Consumption is part of children's and young people's education and socialization, and plays a role in the development of identity and self-image. Institutional consumer enlightenment and the education of students in school stand in contrast to informal consumer socialization and the education of individuals. The aim of formal consumer education may be described as ‘educating for critical consumer awareness and action competence’. However consumer education finds itself in the dilemma between ‘consumership’ and ‘citizenship’. This pilot study is aimed at understanding consumer socialization in order to improve formal consumer education and to reflect on how empowerment becomes part of consumer education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blood and Wolfe's theory of resources in marital decision-making was tested in a survey of American and Danish urban families. In both countries, marital power was neither consistently nor always positively correlated with the resources (family income or occupation) brought into the marriage by each spouse. However, wife's employment, whether part-time or fulltime, contributed to her increased power within the household. The importance of socioeconomic resources for marital decision-making may not derive primarily from the availability of financial and status rewards as much as from the opportunities for gaining experience in interpersonal and decision-making skills outside the family which an individual can then utilize within the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An examination was made of the nature of parent-adolescent interactions in the United States and Denmark, the independence which adolescents experience in both countries, and the association between family patterns and feelings of independence. Data were analyzed from a survey of 2,327 American and 1,552 Danish adolescents. While the United States and Denmark are characterized by different distributions of family patterns, the interrelationship among these patterns and the consequence for adolescent socialization follow similar trends in both countries. The authoritarian pattern of decision-making between parent and child is the one most frequently observed in the United States, while the democratic is the modal family pattern in Denmark. American parents treat their adolescents as children longer than Denmark. It is speculated that these different family patterns in adolescence may be related to differences in early child-rearing methods between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]