The work of balancing the role of child welfare worker and mother is often a challenging one, particularly during times of high stress. In this study six women with young children employed in children welfare settings were interviewed about their experience of burnout. The interviews explored their understanding and personal experience of combining both motherhood with their employment as child welfare workers. The centrality of supportive supervision in modifying the experience of burnout is addressed. The unpredictability, responsibility and risk women face in front line child welfare produces extreme stress, which often becomes extremely difficult to manage, in particular when coupled with the task of raising young children.

Whiplash injuries occur in automotive crashes and may cause long term health issues such as headache, neck pain, and visual and auditory disturbance. Whiplash-Associated Disorders are very costly and can impair the quality of human lives. Most studies focus on whiplash injuries that occur in neutral position head postures, although there is some evidence in the literature that non-neutral head posture can significantly increase the persistence of symptoms on patients. Crash dummies have limited biofidelity particularly for out-of-position scenarios and the current neck injury criteria were not derived for situations at which the head motion is not through the sagittal plane. Therefore Finite Element Methods provide an important tool that can be used to predict injury in different impact scenarios. The Finite Element model which was used for this study was previously developed at the University of Waterloo representing a 50th percentile male. The model had been previously validated at the segment level in extension, flexion, tension, and axial rotation. The full cervical spine model was validated in frontal and rear impact as well as tension. Since the final validation of the model, the ligament properties of the upper cervical spine and the muscle implementations had been improved to enhance the biofidelity of the model. To further improve the model, the addition of laxities to the ligaments of the upper cervical spine was studied. Several studies were performed based on the experiments in the literature to determine appropriate laxities for the upper cervical spine model. First, the laxities of -2 to 4 mm on all the ligaments were studied on the segment level of the model to find their effect on the failure force and displacement to failure in extension, flexion, tension, and axial rotation. The model development then went through a series of iterations in order to achieve laxity values that satisfied the failure force and displacement to failure reported in the literature for the four loading cases. Finally the laxities were used on a full cervical spine model and tested in physiological range of motion in extension, flexion, axial rotation, and lateral bending. The laxities were optimized using an iterative process. The results of this study provided laxity values that were acceptable in both segments level failure study and full cervical spine physiological range of motion study. The model was also validated against literature in impact scenarios. Using a cadaver experiment of 7 g rear impact, the global kinematics of the cervical spine was verified against the literature. The model provided good agreement with the head kinematics and relative rotations between the vertebrae for the cadaver tests. An 8 g rear impact cadaver test was used to validate the ligament strains and disc shear strains. For the anterior longitudinal ligament, the capsular ligament, and the disc shear strains, the model results were within one standard deviation of the literature in the majority of cervical spine regions that were reported. The model was also validated against volunteer low severity rear impact to verify the active musculature in the cervical spine. The head kinematics was generally within the boundaries that were reported by the literature. The model was compared to an experiment that used cadavers to investigate non-neutral rear impact scenarios. This experiment used cables and springs to replicate the passive behaviour of the musculature. The model showed good agreement with the extension and axial rotation results in both head kinematics and relative vertebrae rotations. The flexion and lateral bending results were not similar to the experimental data; attributed to the difference in muscle implementation between the two models. A total of 24 simulations were completed to find the effect of impact severity, axial rotation, and muscle activations on ligament strains during out-of-position rear impacts. The results illustrated that in general, ligament strains increased with the severity of impact and decreased with muscle activation. In out-of-position scenarios, the strains increased in some of the ligaments. An increase to the ligament strain as a result of non-neutral posture was mostly visible in the capsular ligaments of the upper cervical spine. The alar ligament and the apical ligaments of the upper cervical spine may fail in out-of-position at high rear impact scenarios. Recommendations for future work on the cervical spine Finite Element model includes the validation of the musculature and the usage of the muscles to rotate the head to a desired position to improve the biofidelity of the model and the results in out-of-position rear impacts. Further optimization of the laxities of the upper cervical spine can increase the biofidelity in this region. The modeling of the vertebral arteries into the FE model can help investigate whether out-of-position can increase the chance of injury of this region. The effect of flexion, extension, lateral bending, and their combination with axial rotation and the study of frontal and side impacts can be helpful in design of safer headrests for vehicles.

For over a century there has been a large ongoing migration from Newfoundland to other parts of Canada and the US. Between 1971 and 1998 alone, net out-migration amounted to 20% of the province’s population. This exodus has become a significant part of Newfoundland culture. While many literary critics, writers, and sociologists have referred to Newfoundland out-migration as a “diaspora,” few have examined the theoretical implications of applying this emotionally charged term to a predominantly white, economically motivated, inter-provincial movement. My dissertation addresses these issues, ultimately arguing that “diaspora” is an appropriate and helpful term to describe Newfoundland out-migration and its literature, because it connotes the painful displacement of a group that continues to identify with each other and with the homeland. I argue that considering Newfoundland a “diaspora” also provides a useful contribution to theoretical work on diaspora, because it reveals the ways in which labour movements and intra-national migrations can be meaningfully considered diasporic. It also rejects the Canadian tendency to conflate diaspora with racialized subjectivities, a tendency that problematically posits racialized Others as always from elsewhere, and that threatens to refigure experiences of racism as a problem of integration rather than of systemic, institutionalized racism. I examine several important literary works of the Newfoundland diaspora, including the poetry of E.J. Pratt and Carl Leggo, the drama of David French, the fiction of Donna Morrissey and Wayne Johnston, and the memoirs of Helen M. Buss/ Margaret Clarke and David Macfarlane. These works also become the sites of a broader inquiry into several theoretical flashpoints, including diasporic authenticity, nostalgia, nationalism, race and whiteness, and ethnicity. I show that diasporic Newfoundlanders’ identifications involve a complex, self-reflexive, postmodern negotiation between the sometimes contradictory conditions of white privilege, cultural marginalization, and national and regional appropriations. Through these negotiations they both construct imagined literary communities, and problematize Newfoundland’s place within Canadian culture and a globalized world.

Thesis (MProjMgmt)--University of South Australia, 2000

The contemporary field �lesbian health� was shaped by a range of social and political changes in the last third of the twentieth century, as well as by discourses originating in the historical regulation of lesbianism. In discourse, lesbians have been produced as invisible, passive victims of heterosexist and potentially homophobic health-care providers. This project sought to understand how lesbians produce and manage their own health, and their interactions with doctors and other health-care providers. The research questions asked how discourses about lesbianism and the construction of the lesbian health field influence the ways in which lesbians construct and manage their own health, and how lesbians position themselves as they negotiate clinical spaces. Using semi-structured interviews, 19 women, aged between 22 and 64 years, who identified as lesbian, gay, same-sex-attracted and queer were interviewed. Interview data were analysed using discourse and content analysis. When they engaged with the health-care system, some participants produced their lesbianism as a social matter of no relevance to health; while for others their lesbianism was central to their health. An analysis of power relations revealed the complexity of ways the participants used agency to speak or remain silent about their sexual orientation. This was motivated by complex embodied understandings about the potential for emotional, physical or ontological harm involved in coming out in clinical spaces. Some chose to remain silent all, or some of the time, others to assertively identify themselves as lesbian. This depended on a range of contemporaneous factors including safety concerns, past experience and personal judgement. Whether to come out or not in the medical encounter was not necessarily a conscious decision, but was shaped by the individual�s embodied �sense for the game�. While the health-care system had frequently provided less than optimum care, these women were not passive, but used agency to decide whether or not their sexual orientation was relevant to the medical encounter.

Zugl.: Halle (Saale), Univ., Diss., 2004

Zugl.: Berlin, Techn. Univ., Diplomarbeit

University, Diss., 2006--Bonn.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of New South Wales, 2004. / Also available online.

Universiẗat, Diss.--Düsseldorf.