Dementia friendliness
Strategies to create dementia friendly communities are intended to tackle the discrimination and social exclusion that people living with dementia often experience in their everyday lives, and are increasingly being prioritised by policymakers around the world. A recent study in the North East of England examined how elements of social environments shape meaningful everyday practices of care outside the home, specifically looking at three everyday activities: eating out, going to the cinema, and shopping.1 Maintaining such activities in public is part of keeping on with normal family life, but they can also expose individuals to stigmatising judgements. Despite this, a complex array of material things, people, places, and immaterial qualities such as ambience can come together to make care possible. The authors suggest there is a need to promote a less rigid, more flexible ethos in these public places.
Compassion fatigue
Compassion fatigue refers to an identifiable set of negative psychological symptoms experienced by helping professionals, which can also be conceptualised as a combination of burnout and secondary traumatic stress. A recent Slovakian study surveyed a sample of 102 nurses, 44 doctors, 57 paramedics, 39 home nurses, 66 teachers, 103 psychologists, 40 psychotherapists and coaches, 76 social workers, 39 priests and pastors, and 41 police officers.2 They found that participants with higher levels of compassion fatigue scored higher in ‘self-criticism’ leading the authors to recommend designing programs to combat compassion fatigue that teach helping professionals to better manage their workload and learn healthier inner talk (less self-critical and more self-compassionate). If only it were that easy.
Foundational science
Educators have long advocated for bridging across the foundational science (FS) and clinical science components of medical education. This has led to, for example, a greater clinical focus in the pre-clinical, early years of medical curricula. A recent Californian study examined the reverse — how FS was incorporated in clinical teaching, specifically in internal medicine rounds.3 They found that rounds used a teacher-centred model where FS knowledge was transmitted as pearls external to the clinical context. FS content arose primarily when the patient was complex. Barriers preventing FS discussion were lack of time and perceived lack of personal FS knowledge. The article offers a potential strategy for FS integration in clinical teaching: the adoption of a learner-centred model that encourages students, with guidance from clinical supervisors, to explore a relevant clinical question that can only be answered by understanding and applying FS in its clinical context.
Anal sex
In sexual health research, anal sex is frequently framed using medicalised parameters, driven by quantitative methods, and focused on men who have sex with men, providing little understanding of anal sexual practices in heterosexual relationships. A recent study from Sheffield sought to examine relational and pleasure-based dimensions of sex using focus groups and interviews with a range of individuals including sexual health practitioners and young people.4 Their findings centred on three themes: anal sex as deviance, anal sex as phallocentric, and anal sex as agentic. The authors argue that the anus as a site for pleasure should be talked about for this potential, irrespective of the dominant constructs that define it, the opinions that condemn it, and the lack of information that mystifies and intrigues it. Open, frank, and non-judgemental conversation about anatomy and safer sex practices, they suggest, should be a routine aspect of sex and relationships education and sexual health provision, regardless of the (sometimes assumed) identity and sexual practices of the recipient.
Podcast of the month
The masters of podcasting, Serial, cast their American gaze on schools in Birmingham, making for a captivating rollercoaster story: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.html
- © British Journal of General Practice 2022