Covid and the common good: In-group out-group dynamics and Covid-19 vaccination in Wales and the United States.

Vaccination is a social act, where benefits spill-over to third parties. How we approach such social decisions is influenced by whether likely beneficiaries share salient social identities with us. This study explores these dynamics using representative survey data from two contexts: national identity groups in Wales (N = 4187) and political partisans in America (N = 4864).

Covid and the coalfield: Covid-19 vaccine hesitance in Wales and Appalachia.

Background: Vaccine hesitancy is a barrier to Covid-19 vaccine uptake and displays a social gradient, compounding health disparities. While social gradients are a vital concept in health, they flatten distinctions between types of disadvantaged community. This paper focuses on vaccine hesitance in post-industrial and de-industrialising coalfields.

Cross-level group density interactions on mental health for cultural, but not economic, components of social class.

Background: The ethnic density literature links mental health to ethnic minority status in one's neighbourhood. This design has also been applied to other identities, including sexual and political minorities, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to class-based identities. We use a Bourdieusian framework to examine whether a 'class density' association with mental health can be found for economic capital - people's material assets - and cultural capital - symbolic signifiers of class, such as tastes and interests.

Can hospital episode statistics support appraisal and revalidation? Randomised study of physician attitudes.

Hospital episode statistics were originally designed to monitor activity and allocate resources in the NHS. Recently their uses have widened to include analysis of individuals' activity, to inform appraisal and revalidation, and monitor performance. This study investigated physician attitudes to the validity and usefulness of these data for such purposes, and the effect of supporting individuals in data interpretation.

Laying the foundations for good medical practice: a new educational resource.

Balancing service commitments with educational development is never easy. The European Working Time Directive and the Chief Medical Officer's report on senior house officer training bring new challenges. The Royal College of Physicians has developed 'Laying the Foundations for Good Medical Practice', a resource that enables tutors to teach generic skills to small groups of trainees in a fun and interactive way.

Standards in medical record keeping.

Medical records serve many functions but their primary purpose is to support patient care. The RCP Health Informatics Unit (HIU) has found variability in the quality of records and discharge summaries in England and Wales. There is currently a major drive to computerise medical records across the NHS, but without improvement in the quality of paper records the full benefits of computerisation are unlikely to be realised.