John Spencer

Newly qualified doctors spend much of their time with nurses, but little research has considered informal learning during that formative contact. This article reports findings from a multiple case study that explored what newly qualified doctors felt they learned from nurses in the workplace. Analysis of interviews conducted with UK doctors in their first year of practice identified four overarching themes: attitudes towards working with nurses, learning about roles, professional hierarchies and learning skills. Informal learning was found to contribute to the newly qualified doctors' knowledge of their own and others' roles. A dynamic hierarchy was identified: one in which a "pragmatic hierarchy" recognising nurses' expertise was superseded by a "normative structural…

This aim of this paper was to explore new doctors' preparedness for prescribing. This was a multiple methods study including face-to-face and telephone interviews, questionnaires and secondary data from a safe prescribing assessment (n= 284). Three medical schools with differing curricula and cohorts were included: Newcastle (systems-based, integrated curriculum); Warwick (graduate entry) and Glasgow [problem-based learning (PBL)], with graduates entering F1 in their local deanery. The primary sample consisted of final year medical students, stratified by academic quartile (n= 65) from each of the three UK medical schools. In addition an anonymous cohort questionnaire was distributed at each site (n= 480), triangulating interviews were conducted with 92 clinicians and questionnaire data were collected from 80 clinicians who had worked with F1s. Data from the primary sample and cohort data highlighted that graduates entering F1 felt under-prepared for prescribing. However there was improvement over the F1 year through practical experience and support. Triangulating data reinforced the primary sample findings. Participants reported that learning in an applied setting would be helpful and increase confidence in prescribing. No clear differences were found in preparedness to prescribe between graduates of the three medical schools. The results form part of a larger study 'Are medical graduates fully prepared for practice?'. Prescribing was found to be the weakest area of practice in all sources of data. There is a need for more applied learning to develop skill-based, applied aspects of prescribing which would help to improve preparedness for prescribing.

The aim was to explore the use of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data to map the micro-topography of an intertidal wetland in southeast Queensland Australia. The driver for this was the need to identify and map the habitats of the immature stages of an aedine disease vector mosquito (Aedes vigilax (Skuse)). We derived a high resolution digital elevation model (DEM) data set at a vertical resolution of 0.05 m from LiDAR data. The relative accuracy of the DEM across the site was tested by comparing water depth predictions derived from the DEM against in-situ water depth readings from pressure sensors over a 10-day tidal cycle, which included high spring tides. We found that the field observations of micro-topographic units important for mosquito management matched those delineated from the DEM. The micro-topography included a low berm or central ridge that was more or less continuous across the site, a shallow back basin and fringing mangroves. The fringing mangroves had unimpede...

In 2004, an aerial reconnaissance survey of Gulf of Carpentaria rivers identified alluvial gully erosion as a likely key sediment source into many rivers. The process is found to varying degrees within alluvial river types along most Gulf rivers, and is more extensive in the larger, steeper gradient rivers. It is hypothesised that the high connectivity between alluvial gullies and trunk streams makes these features a significant sediment source to the Gulf. The process appears to differ significantly in scale and process from the well documented, largely colluvial, gullies that abound in southern Australia. New conceptual models of the processes driving these gullies, and controls on their morphology and spatial distribution, are required if this process is to be adequately parameterised into existing sediment budget models, such as SedNet, in northern Australia. It is likely that similar features exist in eastern draining tropical rivers, suggesting existing SedNet models may need ...

River classification schemes are now widely used by a range of government agencies, managers and researchers to help reach an understanding of river form and process among the geomorphic complexity found in river channels, as a basis for understanding ecosystem patch dynamics and connections, and as means of organising and prioritising research and management activities. With some exceptions, existing schemas are generally qualitative, relying largely on expert judgement to delineate “homogeneous geomorphic reaches” for a specific river, from field, GIS, and/or remotely sensed data. In this paper, we demonstrate that continuous data for a number of morphological metrics can be derived relatively cheaply from available remotely sensed and GIS data, as a basis for a regional to continental geomorphic river classification. This approach is intended as a “proof of concept” for further development into a classification approach that can be applied across Northern Australia. Others, have ...

Alluvial gully erosion is a dominant sediment source of many large rivers draining into the Gulf of Carpentaria. Recent field reconnaissance and aerial survey has highlighted that gullies have a considerable impact on the landscape. In order to understand alluvial gully erosion it is essential that a detailed survey of the nature and extent of alluvial gully erosion be undertaken. Remote sensing is the only practical approach for undertaking this assessment due to the extent and nature of gully erosion in Australia's tropical rivers. In this paper a two level method for mapping gully erosion in Australia's tropical rivers is reported that uses Aster (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) satellite image data as the regional level data source. The first level is a data centred remote sensing overview and the second level is a remote sensing image analysis method. Results of a pilot study looking at a 600km2 section of the Mitchell River demonstrate f...

The recent drought in southern Australia and the increasing realisation that this may be the norm as a result of global warming has led to increased interest in developing the land and water resource of the tropical savannah in northern Australia. Intensive land and water resource development in tropical savannahs in other parts of the world has been shown to lead to significant land degradation, and there are signs this has already occurred with the comparatively moderate levels of historic grazing and agriculture in northern Australia. It is critical that we understand contemporary and historical landscape dynamics before land use is intensified in this region. As a way of beginning to quantify key sediment sources and to start to understand potential changes in relative contributions associated with land use and other drivers, we have begun to construct a sediment budget for the Mitchell River, a 71 360 km2 catchment draining into the Gulf of Carpentaria. We present some prelimin...

Catchments in northern Australian have undergone dramatic land-use changes from traditional Aboriginal management to widespread cattle grazing post-European settlement. Quantifying the soil erosion impacts of these changes is essential to the future sustainable management of the soils in these catchments. Rates of gully erosion in alluvial soils were measured using recent GPS surveys and historical air photographs. The results indicated that median erosion rates currently and historically are within the same order of magnitude (0.1 to 1m per year). Historic air photo analysis demonstrated rapid increases in gully area of 2 to 10 times their initial 1949 area. Extrapolation of gully area growth trends backward in time suggested that most gullies initiated between 1880 and 1950. European cattle were introduced into the lower Mitchell catchment in the 1880's, suggesting the contribution of land use intensification to either gully initiation or acceleration. It is hypothesized that ...

Given the non-spherical shape of Enceladus, the satellite may experience gravitational torques that will cause it to physically librate as it orbits Saturn. Physical libration would produce a diurnal oscillation in the longitude of Enceladus' tidal bulge, which could have a profound effect on the diurnal stresses experienced by the surface of the satellite. Although Cassini ISS has placed an

Three contrasting stratigraphic assemblages characterize fault-bounded terranes in the Southern Plomosa Mtns. (1) The Six Price sequence (SPS) consists of Proterozoic coarse-grained granitoid overlain by Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata. (2) The Apache Wash sequence consists of a basal mega-breccia and conglomerate unit overlain by sandstone in a fining-upward sequence. Paleozoic blocks in the mega-breccia include a Cambrian Muav-like lithology not