Ann Lazarsfeld-Jensen

Telling stories out of school: Experiencing the paramedic's oral traditions and role dissonance

Role dissonance is an uncomfortable experience for graduate paramedics, and some blame their university education for the problem. For paramedics the conflict is between identifying as a rescuer and acting largely as a care giver. With vocational pathways into so many uniformed professions closing down in preference for graduate entrants, young new professionals have to negotiate a rapidly changing work culture. Their older colleagues may be challenged and threatened by the new order. For paramedics the problem is compounded by the newness of its place in the tertiary landscape. Since 9/11 young people have been increasingly attracted to rescue roles. Yet in Australia there is increasing need and scope for health workers in remote and aging populations, a preference not immediately attractive to young people hoping for a more heroic future. While the near professions such as nursing have established their discourses around culture, role and pedagogy, paramedics is still trying to chisel its identity. The myths of paramedic glories past tend to add to the confusion of graduates. Due to a lack of empirical studies of non-clinical aspects of paramedicine, a bricolage methodology was used to refresh data from two discrete qualitative research projects conducted in 2011. Both projects had originally been interested in optimal paramedic preceptorship before and after graduation, but neither had explored the implicit theme which revealed the role of rescue experiences in paramedic culture and identity. The bricolage included a new search of literature from near professions and applied new theoretical frameworks to the analysis of the extant data, to demonstrate how storytelling as an element of paramedic collegiality perpetuates rescue stories that are then used to define paramedic work.

The lost tribes of Mansfield: how an English market town was won by the Mormons in mid-Victorian times

AbstractIn mid-Victorian times the Mormon Church flourished in the English market town of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. Hundreds of poor families willingly abandoned everything familiar to make perilous Atlantic crossings to pioneer an American Zion. Although young people initially led the emigration, they were soon joined by parents and siblings whose sea passage was subsidised by the Mormon Migration Fund. The vigour of the Mormon Church (LDS) among miners and framework knitters is a phenomenon made more interesting by evidence that the practice of polygamy was known to the converts. In one case documented in this article Mansfield women followed their missionary to Utah to become his plural wives. The social geography of Mansfield as well as its unique spiritual legacy of dissidence created conditions similar to those that fuelled the extraordinary exodus of Welsh Mormon converts. In this article, unreliable LDS family history records are examined in the light of British genealogical sources, to reconstr...Abstract In mid-Victorian times the Mormon Church flourished in the English market town of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. Hundreds of poor families willingly abandoned everything familiar to make perilous Atlantic crossings to pioneer an American Zion. Although young people initially led the emigration, they were soon joined by parents and siblings whose sea passage was subsidised by the Mormon Migration Fund. The vigour of the Mormon Church (LDS) among miners and framework knitters is a phenomenon made more interesting by evidence that the practice of polygamy was known to the converts. In one case documented in this article Mansfield women followed their missionary to Utah to become his plural wives. The social geography of Mansfield as well as its unique spiritual legacy of dissidence created conditions similar to those that fuelled the extraordinary exodus of Welsh Mormon converts. In this article, unreliable LDS family history records are examined in the light of British genealogical sources, to reconstruct a small group of families swept up in enthusiastic emigration to Utah.

A Foucauldian journey into the islands of the deaf and blind

This autoethnographic study integrates Foucaults genealogical approach to explore disability, notably deafness and blindness, from historical, social, and personal perspectives. Disability as a modern institution is defined through nuances of language and silence so that power constructs are hidden and continue to evolve through social collusion. Multiple modern circumlocutions intensify the sense of dislocation, emphasising the difference it attempts to conceal, which makes disability a ripe field for ethnographic work. The two men studied, Blind Brewster and Deaf Brewster, led creative working lives that found a small place in history. Both were sustained by a deep piety. The language used to hide disability in the contemporary world is more destructive than protective, in comparison with the blunt labelling of the deaf and blind two hundred years ago when it was a point of distinction, not discrimination.

Learning and teaching in clinical practiceTelling stories out of school: Experiencing the paramedic's oral traditions and role dissonance

Role dissonance is an uncomfortable experience for graduate paramedics, and some blame their university education for the problem. For paramedics the conflict is between identifying as a rescuer and acting largely as a care giver. With vocational pathways into so many uniformed professions closing down in preference for graduate entrants, young new professionals have to negotiate a rapidly changing work culture. Their older colleagues may be challenged and threatened by the new order. For paramedics the problem is compounded by the newness of its place in the tertiary landscape. Since 9/11 young people have been increasingly attracted to rescue roles. Yet in Australia there is increasing need and scope for health workers in remote and aging populations, a preference not immediately attractive to young people hoping for a more heroic future. While the near professions such as nursing have established their discourses around culture, role and pedagogy, paramedics is still trying to chisel its identity. The myths of paramedic glories past tend to add to the confusion of graduates. Due to a lack of empirical studies of non-clinical aspects of paramedicine, a bricolage methodology was used to refresh data from two discrete qualitative research projects conducted in 2011. Both projects had originally been interested in optimal paramedic preceptorship before and after graduation, but neither had explored the implicit theme which revealed the role of rescue experiences in paramedic culture and identity. The bricolage included a new search of literature from near professions and applied new theoretical frameworks to the analysis of the extant data, to demonstrate how storytelling as an element of paramedic collegiality perpetuates rescue stories that are then used to define paramedic work.