Occupational Health and the Performing Arts: An Introduction.

Objective: Workplace hazards in the performing arts cause injuries, disabilities, and deaths every year. Occupational health professionals are familiar with most of these hazards and are particularly qualified to contribute to efforts to reduce them. This article reviews current health issues in the performing arts and highlights opportunities for occupational health contributions.

Comparative Analysis of Characteristics of Voice Use Amidst Clergy.

The development of "Care of the Professional Voice" as a subspecialty of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery has expanded the concept of professional voice users. Although sometimes uncompensated, the clergy represents a unique group of voice users who are required to perform at a professional level. Additionally, cultural norms create great diversity in terms of style of delivery and typical venues, adding to the interest in this subset of professional voice users.

Appreciative inquiry and older people--finding the literature.

This paper describes the results of a literature search which sought papers specifically on appreciative inquiry (AI) and older people. The results of this search suggested that there were not many papers which met these criteria, and those that did were more often discussion papers rather than research papers. This lack of publication belies the observation that research with older people could benefit from the positive approach entailed in an AI approach.

Older people maintaining well-being: implications for future developments.

This paper indicates the ways in which the strategies which older people have developed for maintaining well-being could be explored further. This exploration, it is argued, is necessary given the scarcity of research in this field, which reduces the impact that these strategies might have for practice.

Older people maintaining well-being: an International Appreciative Inquiry study.

This paper reports on the progress of an international study investigating older people's strategies for maintaining well-being in the UK, Germany, South Africa and Australia. It uses an Appreciative Inquiry framework for investigation.

Older people maintaining well-being: discussion of key literature.

This paper describes the process of initial searching for publications on older people and well-being, and discusses some of the difficulties in doing this is a field where key terms are diverse. The paper selects some publications which were judged to be particularly significant or interesting, rather than an inclusive and fully comprehensive literature report.

Older persons' experiences of whole systems: the impact of health and social care organizational structures.

Aims: An in-depth case study of whole systems working.

Background: This paper reports on the second part of a two-part study exploring whole systems working. Part 1 of the study focused on an in-depth review of the literature pertaining to continuity of care and service integration.

Integrated care for older people: methodological issues in conducting a systematic literature review.

Introduction: Systematic reviews are a useful approach for nurses to take in exploring issues important to their practice, and in this article the process of conducting a systematic literature review on integrated care for older people is described. The review was conducted as one strand of a research project aiming to inform the development of locality-based integrated care for older people in Northern Ireland, a development driven by observations of user needs.

Methodology: Systematic literature review methodology is summarized and critiqued.

The impact of research governance in the United Kingdom on research involving a national survey.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact that research governance processes in the National Health Service (NHS) are having on the conduct of research that involves a national survey and to point to ways that existing processes may develop to facilitate such research.

Design/methodology/approach: The paper describes the experiences of a research team of seeking approval in 357 NHS organisations to carry out a national postal survey to investigate specialist services and specialist staffing for older people in England in the wake of recent policy developments. Through reflection on this experience, the team propose approaches for the development of existing research governance processes.