The aims of this study were to explore how health visitors (HVs) and community health nurses (CHNs) assess unsettled baby behaviours, how their perceptions of these behaviours influence decisions about support offered, and how able they feel to deliver support to families of unsettled babies.

Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted, recorded and transcribed. Data were analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis.

Potential participants were invited nationally via social media and via Health Visiting Service managers from an NHS Trust. Interviews took place remotely.

17 HVs and 3 CHNs were purposively selected to include a wide range of perspectives.

Three themes were developed, (1) HVs’ perceptions of parents’ sense-making which explains how HVs/CHNs understand parents’ beliefs around unsettled babies; (2) care pathway which highlights the importance HVs place on creating emotional space for the baby, the parent and the health visitor within the pathway (containment); and (3) service delivery decline, which outlines the impact of funding cuts to the services on the HVs’ ability to provide support for families. Lastly, a new concept – the Tipping Point model - was created to holistically conceptualise the experiences of HVs providing support for unsettled babies in the UK.

Policy makers need to organise services to value and support the role of the health visiting team in ‘containment’. HVs identified a training need around assessing and advising about unsettled babies to place them in a stronger position to support families. Further research is needed into different models of support for families of unsettled babies from the wider primary care team and/or from digital services.

Barcode medication administration (BCMA) systems are increasingly being implemented in hospital settings, with the aim of decreasing medication administration errors. However, the majority of the literature demonstrating the value of BCMA in supporting patient safety is from the USA. Furthermore, little is known about the underlying mechanisms that support its use. This study aims to explore the impact of BCMA on patient safety including medication admisntration errors and nursing time spent providing direct patient care, in terms of what works, for whom, under what circumstances, and how.

We will use a mixed-methods realist evaluation. The study will be conducted in four phases, at two London NHS teaching trusts and one South West Region NHS Trust using different electronic health record systems. Phase 1 will involve documentary analysis and a narrative review to develop an initial programme theory for how BCMA is expected to work. Phase 2 will use interviews with key informants to refine this programme theory. The programme theory will then be tested in phase 3 using mixed methods: (1) observation of nurses’ medication administration; (2) analysis of alert data from the BCMA systems to understand the alerts’ clinical significance and utility and (3) interviews with nurses and hospital inpatients to explore their views. These data will be triangulated to refine and finalise the programme theory in phase 4, together with recommendations for practice.

The Study Coordination Centre has obtained approval (24/SC/0326) from the Oxford B NHS Research Ethics Committee and the Health Research Authority. The study’s findings will be presented at scientific meetings and published in peer-reviewed journals. Additionally, summaries of the findings will be produced, targeted at relevant groups such as healthcare professionals, policy-makers and study participants.

We aimed to describe the current evidence for interventions to enhance gender equality and equity in academic medicine. We also wished to characterise the nature of the interventions, who delivered them and whether they seek to ‘fix the women’, or target issues at organisational and systemic levels.

We extracted data using a form developed for the study and applied the Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) and Morahan frameworks to describe and characterise interventions. We used the Quality Assessment with Diverse Studies (QUADS) tool to critically appraise included studies.

We searched five electronic databases in November 2022 and August 2023 (Medline (OVID), Embase, CINAHL, Web of Science, Google Scholar) and undertook handsearching.

We included qualitative or quantitative original studies published in full that described any new intervention designed to enhance gender equality/equity in recruitment, retention or promotion in academic medicine. The settings were Schools/Faculties of Medicine in Higher Education Institutions. The population of interest was female clinical academics/physician scientists.

Data were extracted by one researcher using an Excel form specifically designed for this study with a second researcher applying the form to a subset of seven studies; significant agreement was achieved. Four researchers applied the TIDieR framework to the included studies. Due to the small number of studies and significant heterogeneity, it was not possible to perform a meta-analysis.

The search of electronic databases yielded 1747 studies. A further 62 were identified through handsearching. Following removal of duplicates, 764 articles were screened for eligibility, and 199 full-text articles were screened. Of these, 27 met the inclusion criteria.

The most commonly reported interventions were career development or leadership skills programmes, followed by mentorship and multifaceted interventions. Most papers reported positive findings, but many relied on subjective measures. Robustly designed studies often reported mixed findings. The majority of interventions aimed to ‘fix the women’, with few addressing inequality at organisational level.

Acknowledging the possibility of publication delay, we found that despite strong evidence of the negative effects of the pandemic on women’s research productivity, there were no new interventions designed to mitigate this. Many existing interventions create ‘institutional housekeeping’ by relying on women for their delivery. This can result in failure, especially during a crisis like COVID. Most studies were low to moderate quality. More robust research and a more holistic approach are needed, moving away from ‘fixing the women’ to address the organisational and systemic structures which underpin inequality.

CRD42023391086.