A Comparative Analysis of the Perception of Cancer Patients and Healthcare Providers (Oncology Physicians, Nurses, Social Workers) in Support of Integrated Community-Linked Cancer Plans

This study aimed to examine the awareness and status of cancer patients and healthcare providers (physicians, nurses and social workers) regarding community linkage, in order to establish a desirable care plan model in a future research project. The survey was conducted via two methods: face-to-face for cancer patients (n = 308) and oncology physicians (n = 210), and due to COVID-19 circumstances, online for nurses (n = 200) and social workers (n = 313). As a result, more than 95% of the healthcare providers responded that cancer patients required community-linked services and discharge plans, whereas 50.7% and 79.2% of cancer patients noted the importance of community-linked services and discharge plans, respectively. Social workers, among healthcare providers, showed the most positive experience about connecting patients to community services since 69.7% of them responded as “excellent”. However, as a group, cancer patients considered the necessity of community-linked service as less important, as only 50.7% responded as agreeing it was necessary. The barriers to community linkage were the lack of communication among the different professions of healthcare providers, and the ambiguity in their roles. The findings of this study will inform future community-linked health research, policies and systems for cancer patients. In particular, an in-depth interview with cancer patients will be required to explore their lack of acknowledgment about the necessity of community-linked services. Therefore, this study is expected to contribute to the improvement and supplementation of cancer policies.

Why Do People Undergo THR and What Do They Expect to Gain—A Comparison of the Views of Patients and Health Care Professionals

Little concerted effort has been made to understand why individuals undergo total hip replacement (THR) surgery and their rehabilitation goals. Similarly, insight of views and perspective of health care professionals’ (HCPs) regarding surgery and what objective measures help them with decision-making is lacking. This patient and public involvement report aimed to explore both patients’ and HCPs’ perspectives of THR surgery. Twenty patients, 10 pre-THR, 10 post-THR, 9 physiotherapists, and 6 surgeons took part. Results suggest a consensus among patients and HCPs on pain reduction being the main reason for undergoing THR. The inability to carry out simple daily activities such as dog walking and sleep deprivation had a significant effect on patients’ mental and physical well-being. This article is the first to explore the views of THR patients and HCPs on reasons behind THR surgery amalgamated into a single report. As walking is important, wearable activity monitors are suggested as a possible motivator to enhance patient compliance to self-care rehabilitation and increase quality of life. A future research project on the use of such wearable activity monitors in enhancing mobility post-THR is therefore planned.

Towards a Disentanglement of the Links between the Memory Boom and the Neoliberal Turn

The memory boom and the related emergence of cosmopolitan victimhood-centred memories, increasingly criticized for depoliticizing the past and thus contributing to the depoliticization of the present, have been simultaneous with the curtailment of the welfare state, the abandonment of the politics of redistribution, the erosion of social and economic rights, and the growth in social and economic inequalities. Yet if the latter are often being considered to be among the reasons leading to the current right-wing populist wave in Europe and elsewhere or at least are seen as entangled therewith, the relevance of the memory boom for these developments has not been properly interrogated. Against this background, this contribution makes a plea for a critical appreciation of the linkages between the memory boom and the global ascension of neoliberalism. It acknowledges the contemporaneity of the two phenomena, which have been fundamentally informing our present age, roughly since the end of the 1970s, and calls for a critical engagement with their interwoven character. In doing this, it argues that scholarship should pay particular attention to the relationship between past, present, and future that the neoliberal turn in its various shapes and guises implies, as well as to the regimes of temporality that underlie various instantiations of the memory boom. It ends by taking heed of recent theorizations in memory studies and by asking to what extent can they be used in order to have a better grasp of the critical juncture we are currently lying at and to contribute to a radical change of the political status quo. Thus, the article makes some preliminary steps towards disentangling the interconnections between the memory boom and the neoliberal turn, and aims to provide a blueprint for a substantial future research project that should look in depth at these entanglements.

Social Media for Social Justice in Adult Education: A Critical Theoretical Framework

Social media as a communicative forum is relatively new, having been around for only ten years. However, this form of digital engagement has revolutionized the way many people interact, network, form relationships, learn, generate and share knowledge. As a noncentralized tool for communication, social media may provide space for critical discourse around issues of social justice, as discussion can be global in scope and is controlled by users themselves. This paper outlines a critical theoretical framework through which to explore the use of social media in adult education to foster such critical and social justice-themed discourse. Drawing upon five critical theorists and their work, this framework sets the stage for a future research project – one that is significant for this increasingly digital world in which we live.

Picturing the Pharaoh Through Language – Remarks on the Linguistic Image of the Egyptian King in the Old Kingdom Religious Texts

The author of the paper aims at scrutinising the linguistic image of the Egyptian pharaoh in the so-called Pyramid Texts. Was the Egyptian ruler perceived as a human representative of the god on Earth or rather was he a or the god himself? Special emphasis will be put on names and epithets of the King when described or referred to in religious texts of the Old Kingdom. This study is planned as a part of a future research project on picturing the pharaoh through language in religious and royal texts from the beginning of the Old Kingdom till the end of the New Kingdom, and realised in cooperation with Dr. Andrzej Ćwiek and Jadwiga Iwaszczuk.Furthermore, the paper is also a presentation of use of ethnolinguistic methods in Egyptology. Using scholarly methods of the ‘linguistic worldview’ research project in which the present author participates, it is intended to study selected ancient Egyptian concepts. Although language analysis as well as widely understood and studied ‘life context’ of ancient religious notions let us only a textual and linguistic reconstruction of the world presented, concurrently, helps us understand better the Egyptian religious way of description and thinking.

THE SECURITISATION OF TIBETAN BUDDHISM IN COMMUNIST CHINA

This article examines the troubled relationship between Tibetan Buddhism and the Chinese state since 1949. In the history of this relationship, a cyclical pattern of Chinese attempts, both violently assimilative and subtly corrosive, to control Tibetan Buddhism and a multifaceted Tibetan resistance to defend their religious heritage, will be revealed. The article will develop a security-based logic for that cyclical dynamic. For these purposes, a two-level analytical framework will be applied. First, the framework of the insecurity dilemma will be used to draw the broad outlines of the historical cycles of repression and resistance. However, the insecurity dilemma does not look inside the concept of security and it is not helpful to establish how Tibetan Buddhism became a security issue in the first place and continues to retain that status. The theory of securitisation is best suited to perform this analytical task. As such, the cycles of Chinese repression and Tibetan resistance fundamentally originate from the incessant securitisation of Tibetan Buddhism by the Chinese state and its apparatchiks. The paper also considers the why, how, and who of this securitisation, setting the stage for a future research project taking up the analytical effort to study the why, how and who of a potential desecuritisation of all things Tibetan, including Tibetan Buddhism, and its benefits for resolving the protracted Sino-Tibetan conflict.

A Most Curious Lack of Curiosity: Global Unions as the Missing Link in Labour Movement Studies

This paper is based on the author’s contribution to ‘The Research Agenda for the Left Today’ panel held during the Society for Socialist Studies 2006 conference. It argues that, despite the recent renewal of academic interest in labour movements, there is a gap in contemporary research on organized labour around the existence of and potential future role for actually existing global trade unions. The purpose of this paper is to spark an interest amongst left academics in a future research project on the organizations which comprise the recently created Council of Global Unions, and in particular the recently created International Trade Union Confederation. After a brief introduction to the history of these organizations and an outline of their activities, the author offers a number of questions that may prove interesting for those concerned about the future direction of organized labour at the global level.

Measuring Translation Competence Acquisition

The following article describes the development of instruments for measuring the process of acquiring translation competence in written translation. Translation competence and its process of acquisition are firstly described, and then the lack of empirical research in our field is tackled. Thirdly, three measuring instruments especially developed to measure translation competence acquisition are presented: (i) to measure notions about translation, (ii) to measure students’ behaviour when faced with translation problems, and (iii) to measure errors. Pilot studies were carried out for three years to test, improve and validate the measuring instruments. Finally, a future research project, which shows a possible application of the measuring instruments, is presented, and the main elements of the research project are described: the construct, dependent and independent variables, hypotheses, moments of measurements and the samples to be used.