The (non) use of prioritisation protocols by surgeons.

Priority setting and rationing is a dominant feature of contemporary health policy. In New Zealand, clinical priority assessment criteria (CPAC) tools have been developed to make access to elective surgery more equitable and efficient. Research was undertaken to identify how surgeons used these tools in the consultation.

Nurse and parent partnership during children's vaccinations: a conversation analysis.

Aim: This paper is a report of a study conducted to examine the elements of partnership and communication between nurses and parents during actual events of immunization.

Background: Childhood immunizations require collaboration with parents, who may be anxious about immunization safety or subjecting their children to painful procedures.

Methods: Ten interactions during immunization events from six purposively selected general practices were videoed in 2005, giving 168 minutes of talk.

Parents and nurses during the immunization of children--where is the power? A conversation analysis.

Background: Best practice for health care practitioners is considered patient-centred approaches which empower patients. Immunization of young children requires maintaining this approach while retaining professional management.

Objective: The objectives were to assess situations within the immunization event with discordance between health provider and caregiver and evaluate strategies used to empowering parents while obtaining the desired clinical outcome.

Network 'norms' or 'styles' of 'drunken comportment'?

Much of what is qualitatively known about alcohol consumption derives from anthropological studies, focusing on the macro or structural level, involving cultural 'norms' within either 'wet' or 'dry' societies. However, we argue for a meso, social network rather than 'societal' level of analysis and a focus not on societal 'norms', but on 'styles' of 'drunken comportment' within these networks. Although most 'drunken comportment' is acknowledged as excusable by the fact that alcohol has been consumed, some networks place a tighter 'within-limits' boundary on their own behavior than others.

"Knowing one's self" anorexic: implications for therapeutic practice.

Objective: Recent postmodernist studies of anorexia nervosa (AN) challenge current clinical understandings and therapies by illuminating not what AN is but how what it is known to be by clinicians helps construct the disorder and therapy for it. This study points to the equal if not greater importance of how patients know AN.

Methods: Using a deconstructive approach, the discourses of a group of women diagnosed with severe AN were analyzed to reveal radically different versions of "knowing one's self" anorexic.

Performing coolness: smoking refusal and adolescent identities.

The implications of smoking refusal for personal identity style were studied through conversations in six small focus groups or dyads of 13- and 14-year-old non-smokers from an urban New Zealand secondary school. The approach to analyzing their talk was informed by notions of 'performativity' and 'social space' to focus on the connections between identity and social relations. Smoking emerged as a key signifier of power and status.

The moral universe of injecting drug users in the era of AIDS: sharing injecting equipment and the protection of moral standing.

Recent work on HIV counselling suggests that the protection of the moral status of the recipient is a key factor in the successful uptake of advice. This study suggests it may be equally important in the uptake of health promotion messages. A discourse analysis of the talk of 20 young injecting drug users (IDUs) identified a contradiction between their asserted self-identity as careful and socially responsible injectors, and their admission of risky lending and borrowing of injecting equipment.

Patrons of the sex industry: perceptions of risk.

This paper reports on an in-depth study of how men who buy sex construe risk in relation to their sexual activities. Twenty men were contacted in a massage parlour, four more through sex workers or newspaper advertisements. In-depth, face-to-face interviews were recorded.

Purchasing a cycle helmet: are retailers providing adequate advice?

Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the selling of cycle helmets in retail stores with particular reference to the adequacy of advice offered about the fit and securing of helmets.

Methods: All 55 retail outlets selling cycle helmets in Christchurch, New Zealand were studied by participant observation. A research entered each store as a prospective customer and requested assistance to purchase a helmet.

Hepatitis C seroprevalence amongst injecting drug users attending a methadone programme.

Aim: To study the seroprevalence of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) amongst a population of injecting drug users and to examine the relationship between potential risk factors and HCV infection.

Methods: A sample of 116 clients attending a methadone treatment clinic in Christchurch took part in this study. Blood samples were analysed to detect antibodies to HCV and to test for HCV RNA: Serum transaminases were also measured.

AIDS policy response in New Zealand: consensus in crisis.

Typically, Western governments have aimed to construct consensus over HIV/AIDS policy. The history of policy formation in New Zealand is examined, and is found to reflect the general pattern. There was a deliberate strategy designed to establish the broadest possible consensus.

Knowledge, attitudes and activities of male clients of female sex workers: risk factors for HIV.

Aims: To examine HIV related knowledge, attitudes and practices amongst male clients of female sex workers in New Zealand.

Methods: A sample of 30 clients were contacted in the commercial sex areas of the three main urban centres. A brief structured interview was undertaken by a fully trained interviewer who was herself a sex worker.