Competition for seats in Canadian medical schools has driven many Canadians to seek medical education abroad. Systematic barriers make it necessary for internationally educated physicians (IEPs) hoping to practice in Canada to complete postgraduate residencies. To do so, they must transition into new medical education systems. The transitional experiences of internationally educated physicians are not well understood. This phenomenological qualitative study reveals the perspectives of twenty recent graduates from the University of Manitoba Family Medicine residency program. Canadians Studying Abroad constituted the majority of participants. Participant interviews revealed the presence of clinical practice gaps, created by curricular differences in the timing of graduated clinical responsibility between the Canadian and international medical education systems. Participants also shared their experiences of being singled out (visibility and invisibility), rejected and mistreated. They perceived that IEP residents were assigned low status in resident hierarchies. Their experiences are conceptualized as stigmatization.

The term ‘epidemic’ is often used to describe the obesity phenomenon and indicate that overweight or obesity is a worldwide phenomenon. While the prevalence of overweight and obesity has been increasing, reviews on overweight and obesity studies indicate a clear need for further effectiveness studies of innovative and cost-effective strategies to improve the long-term outcomes of weight loss and weight maintenance programmes in large populations. Current weight loss interventions, while successful in the short term, are often not cost effective enough to deliver on a large scale because they are labour and time intensive. Most importantly, they do not cover large populations. Despite some individual successful weight loss in these interventions programmes, individuals still need to self- manage their weight following intervention. It is unrealistic to expect health professionals and clinicians to provide timely and long-term ongoing support for 2.1 billions overweight and obesity populations around the world (OECD Health Statics, 2014).Therefore, the solutions for weight control may be more effective if grounded within the online community, that is, design long-term solutions that build and draw on social capital to support weight maintenance and are scaled to cope with large populations. Understanding the individual weight loss experiences through informal online social support and utilising the advantages of computer-mediated communication (CMC) can be a timely and cost-effective way to help people self-manage their weight. A three-month online longitudinal phenomenological interview of 17 informants recruited from an online community forum was applied to explore the weight loss experiences with assistance of informal online social support. Four weight loss threads selected by the informants during their weight loss process were also interpreted to map out the key roles of informal online social support and the interaction process that takes place in an online community forum. This research describes the lived experiences of individuals’ self-help weight loss process and maps out the critical moments and differential experiences involved in the Stages of Change (SoC) to explain the individual differences during different weight loss stages. This research also identifies the interrelationships of Processes of Change (PoC) for facilitating behaviour change. The findings of this research contribute to demonstrate the interaction process between community members and the process of providing and receiving social support at different individual members’ weight loss stages, which helped them to continue to lose weight or maintain their weight. The informal online social support could meet different self-help weight loss individual’s needs during different weight loss stages, which is difficult to be provided by the healthcare providers. The findings also contribute to social marketing as a way of offering a cost-effective and efficient way to assist the self-help individual to self- manage their weight in the long term. It may also be a viable way of addressing the issues of costs and labour intensity found in the current weight loss interventions that want to serve large populations.

MA (Psychology) / Department of Psychology / See the attached abstract below

Thesis (MPH.) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / Background: Disclosure of Human Immune Deficiency Virus (HIV) is still a challenge to people living with the disease because of the discrimination, stigma and judgemental attitudes. Women prefer to keep their illness to themselves and make it a secret. The revealing of HIV status relies on an individual who is living with the illness. The concept of non-disclosure is a vital issue that threatens immediate families in which there are people, especially women battling the non-disclosure of their HIV status. Objectives: The objectives of the study were to explore and describe the experiences of concealing HIV positive status to the immediate family by women living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus at the selected villages in Limpopo Province. Methods: The qualitative and descriptive phenomenological method was followed. Due to saturation, ten women participated after being selected through purposive sampling from the database with the consideration of the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews in Sepedi. The data was transcribed, translated and analysed through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results: WLW-HIV continue to manage to live with a secret about their HIV status due to the unpleasant feelings they hold about the illness continue, still pointing fingers and sceptical about disclosing, particularly to their children. They further tell lies about their illness and hide their medications away from the members of their family. The reasons about concealing their status include among others fear of prejudice, lack of trust, fear of abandonment and rejection, fear of blame and humiliation, denial, misconceptions that people still hold about HIV and the view of it as a predicament. Others conceal because of the lack of support and the target of the disclosure. xii Conclusion: The outcomes of the study have uncovered that there is still less awareness by members of the society about HIV/AIDS, which puts pressure on the WLW-HIV to effectively deal with an HIV positive status and disclose to their family members. These factors contribute to concealment and compromise the level of support that WLW-HIV would get from their family members, further impacting negatively on adherence. Keywords: Concealment, HIV/AIDS, Phenomenological study, Stigma and Immediate family.

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Text in Afrikaans / In this qualitative research study the landscape of the age-old tradition of contemplative spirituality within the context of the reformed tradition was investigated. An empirical study was done to determine the pastoral needs and experiences of Afrikaans speaking believers from the reformed tradition, involved in contemplative spirituality. Questionnaires and qualitative interviews were used for this purpose. The research path has been further shaped by social construction theory as a postmodern approach. This study was born out of my own discovery of the healing qualities of contemplative spirituality and secondly due to the growing demand among Afrikaans speaking reformed believers for exposure to the disciplines of contemplative spirituality. Little research is available on this topic and is it the hope of this research to open new conversations about contemplative spirituality in the Afrikaans reformed tradition. / Practical Theology / M. Th. (Praktiese Teologie)