Karen Willis
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 75506 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Karen Willis |
| PRENOMES | Karen |
| SOBRENOME | Willis |
| ASSINATURA | WILLIS K |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Victoria University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8036-8814 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 51 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 148 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 50 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1995 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Lonely in place? The intersection of loneliness and place in the chronic illness experience
Disruption and Improvisation
Chronic illness can disrupt many aspects of life, including identity, social relationships, and anticipated life trajectories. Despite significant scholarship on chronic illness, we know less about the ways in which chronic illness impacts feelings of loneliness and how people with chronic illness deal with loneliness. Drawing on concepts of biographical disruption and liminality and data from walking and photo-elicitation interviews with 14 peop…
Chinese Medicine as Boundary Object(s)
Despite being defined in the West as alternative medicine and often seen as incommensurable with biomedicine and bioscience, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has, paradoxically, assimilated into dominant spaces of knowledge production and legitimation, such as the International Classification of Diseases. In Australia, TCM comprises a designated area of cooperation with China, and TCM research is carried out in numerous universities by otherwis…
There but not really involved
Loneliness is one of the most pressing and rapidly growing contemporary social challenges around the world. Yet we still lack a good understanding of how loneliness is constituted and experienced by those most affected. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 40 people with chronic illness who were experiencing loneliness to explore what loneliness means to them and how it impacts in their daily lives. Drawing on ideas around liquidity and p…
Covid‐19, Healthcare Workers and
The pandemic has generated global, social, and workplace disruption, with profound effects on healthcare delivery, healthcare staffing, and healthcare workers' mental health. While a significant number of healthcare workers globally have been infected with the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus leading to coronavirus disease (COVID‐19), importantly, all healthcare workers have been affected by the immense workplace and psychosocial disruption caused by the pandemi…
SDG5 “Gender Equality” and the Covid-19 pandemic
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted healthcare and societies, exacerbating existing inequalities for women and girls across every sphere. Our study explores health system responses to gender equality goals during the COVID-19 pandemic and inclusion in future policies. Methods: We apply a qualitative comparative approach, drawing on secondary sources and expert information; the data was collected from March-July 2022. Australia, Brazil, …
Friendship, connectedness and (in)authenticity for those with chronic illness
Friendship, a key element of social networks, has been under-studied in the social sciences. Chronic conditions can disrupt many aspects of life including identity, anticipated life trajectories and social relationships. Friendship relationships are important sources of support for chronic condition management. However, for individuals with chronic conditions, developing and maintaining close friendships may be particularly difficult. Despite sig…
The Psychological and Wellbeing Impacts of Quarantine on Frontline Workers during Covid-19 and Beyond
The current study points to specific aspects of mental health care that can be applied to participants of similar voluntary quarantine programs in the future. It seems necessary to screen for psychological needs at various stages of quarantine, and to allocate appropriate care and improve its accessibility, as many participants did not utilise the routine support offered. Support should especially target disease-related anxiety, symptoms of depre…
Chronic condition self-management is a social practice
Self-management is widely promoted in Western health care policies as a way to address the impact of increasing rates of chronic conditions on health care systems. Mostly informed by psychological theories, self-management frameworks and interventions tend to target individual behaviours as demarcated from the many aspects of social life shaping these behaviours. Using Bourdieu's theory of practice, we develop four propositions for a relational a…
A time for self-care? Frontline health workers’ strategies for managing mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic
Frontline healthcare workers have experienced detrimental mental health impacts during the COVID-19 pandemic including anxiety, emotional distress, stress, fatigue, and burnout. But little is known about how these healthcare professionals take care of their own mental health in the midst of considerable personal, occupational and social disruption. In this article, we use qualitative data from an Australian national survey to examine the self-car…
The Workplace and Psychosocial Experiences of Australian Senior Doctors during the Covid-19 Pandemic
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had significant mental health impacts among healthcare workers (HCWs), related to resource scarcity, risky work environments, and poor supports. Understanding the unique challenges experienced by senior doctors and identifying strategies for support will assist doctors facing such crises into the future. A cross-sectional, national, online survey was conducted during the second wave of the Aust…
Mental Health Symptoms and Workplace Challenges among Australian Paramedics during the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in considerable occupational disruption for paramedics and was associated with significant negative impacts on mental health. Findings emphasise the need for more adaptive working conditions, mental health support for paramedics, and enhanced crisis preparedness across the health system for future crises
Challenging times
Chronic health conditions represent a key challenge for contemporary public healthcare. Current policy promotes self-management support to reduce demands on health services and improve patients’ health and wellbeing. Though there is emerging recognition that self-management is achieved in collaboration between health professionals and patients, how chronicity is managed in interaction remains relatively underexplored in research. In this paper we…
The Covid-19 Crisis
International audience
Covid-19 Crisis
Informed Choice and Nudging in Mammography Screening
The tension between providing adequate information and achieving sufficiently high participation in population-based screening programmes, such as mammography, represents an ongoing challenge for health authorities. The theory of nudge illuminates how individuals may be nudged towards healthy behaviours without restricting individual freedom of choice. We analyse information provided on health authority webpages and uncover the subject positions …
Moral Distress and Perceived Community Views Are Associated with Mental Health Symptoms in Frontline Health Workers during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Safeguarding healthcare workforces during crises is important for both patient safety and workforce longevity. Targeted interventions are required to prevent or minimise moral distress and associated mental health concerns in healthcare workers during COVID-19 and other crises
Differences in Coping Strategies and Help-Seeking Behaviours among Australian Junior and Senior Doctors during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Junior and senior staff utilised different coping and help-seeking behaviours. Despite recognition of symptoms, very few HMS engaged formal support. The varied predictors of coping and help-seeking identified may inform targeted interventions to support these cohorts in current and future crises
Occupational Disruptions during the Covid-19 Pandemic and Their Association with Healthcare Workers’ Mental Health
Occupational disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic occurred commonly in health organisations and were associated with worse mental health outcomes in the Australian health workforce. Feeling well supported was associated with significantly fewer adverse mental health outcomes. Crisis preparedness focusing on the provision of timely and useful communication and support is essential in current and future crises
Covid Just Amplified the Cracks of the System”
The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified existing workplace stresses and created new challenges for people working on the healthcare frontline, including rapid workplace changes and increasing uncertainty at work, along with fear of contracting the virus. The purpose of this study is to examine the workplace challenges described by Australian frontline health workers during the pandemic. Drawing on a national online anonymous survey of 9518 healthca…
Staying Connected During a Global Pandemic
This qualitative organisational ethnography explores and analyses the ways in which a local government-provided volunteer telephone support program for vulnerable and older members of the community quickly adapted to continue working during the pandemic. Thematic analysis of data collected through researcher participation in 26 weekly zoom debrief sessions with local government staff and volunteers captures the experience of providing telephone s…
Between knowing and doing person-centredness
Self-management is a contemporary model of chronic condition care that places expectations on, and roles for, both patients and health professionals. Health professionals are expected to form partnerships with their patients, and patients are expected to be active participants in their own care. In these new roles, control and responsibility for self-management are shared between people with chronic conditions and their health professionals. We s…
Comparative optimism about infection and recovery from Covid‐19; Implications for adherence with lockdown advice
BACKGROUND: Comparative optimism, the belief that negative events are more likely to happen to others rather than to oneself, is well established in health risk research. It is unknown, however, whether comparative optimism also permeates people's health expectations and potentially behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVES: Data were collected through an international survey (N = 6485) exploring people's thoughts and psychosocial behavi…
Living with motor neurone disease
This article is a discussion between two former colleagues and longstanding friends about the lived experience of illness and disability. In January 2013, Kirsten Harley, a promising early career sociologist was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND), a degenerative neurological condition with a typical life expectancy of 2-3 years. In this article, which is part interview and part shared reflection, we consider how Kirsten's knowledge of soc…
Controlled, Constrained, or Flexible? How Self-Management Goals Are Shaped By Patient–Provider Interactions
A person-centered approach to goal-setting, involving collaboration between patients and health professionals, is advocated in policy to support self-management. However, this is difficult to achieve in practice, reducing the potential effectiveness of self-management support. Drawing on observations of consultations between patients and health professionals, we examined how goal-setting is shaped in patient–provider interactions. Analysis reveal…
Healthcare choice
The promotion of choice is a common theme in both policy discourses and commercial marketing claims about healthcare. However, within the multiple potential pathways of the healthcare 'maze', how do healthcare 'consumers' or patients understand and experience choice? What is meant by 'choice' in the policy context, and, importantly from a sociological perspective, how are such choices socially produced and structured? In this theoretical article,…
Gatekeepers in the healthcare sector
Knowledge matters
In many contemporary healthcare systems, individuals are expected to be rational actors – weighing up available knowledge and making choices about their healthcare needs. In the policy context, this has been most explicitly applied to the financing of healthcare where there is encouragement for the purchase of private health insurance. However, perceptions of public and private healthcare provision, knowledge about healthcare needs, and the types…
Constructing health consumers
Significant transformations of the health care services sector over the past three decades have seen an increasing reliance on the private provision of health care services mediated through private health insurance. In countries such as Australia and the UK, private health insurance is promoted as providing a greater choice for individuals and easing the burden on the public system. While these claims, the policy contexts and the decision-making …
Without hope everything would be doom and gloom’
This paper contributes to our knowledge of young people and their views of the future. Although studies of young people have examined how young people think about their future in terms of their goals (most often their career objectives), there is little work that unpacks how young people give meaning to the idea of ‘hope’ in their lives. This study provides additional insight into what young people hope for in the future, their ideas about what t…
Goals for living with a chronic condition
Living Well? Strategies Used by Women Living With Metastatic Breast Cancer
Metastatic breast cancer is a disease of changing status-once an imminent death sentence, now a chronic (albeit incurable) disease. Medical intervention advances mean women with metastatic breast cancer now have symptoms alleviated and, potentially, life extended. Living with this disease, however, requires more than a medical approach to symptoms. We were interested to know whether women manage, and if so, how, to "live well" with metastatic can…
Chronic condition self-management is a social practice
Self-management is widely promoted in Western health care policies as a way to address the impact of increasing rates of chronic conditions on health care systems. Mostly informed by psychological theories, self-management frameworks and interventions tend to target individual behaviours as demarcated from the many aspects of social life shaping these behaviours. Using Bourdieu's theory of practice, we develop four propositions for a relational a…
Navigating and making choices about healthcare
Personal choice/social responsibility
Screening for breast cancer is a key public health policy for women. However, there is controversy about when women should commence screening because the evidence of benefit for women younger than 50 years remains unclear. In Australia women who are aged 40-49 years are allowed to participate in breast cancer screening, although government policy indicates that participation should be based on these women making an 'informed choice' about partici…
Supporting farmer and fisher health and wellbeing in ‘difficult times’
While links between rurality and health are clearly established, there continues to be interest in the resources that can make a difference to rural, often underserved, small communities. This research investigated how collective features of communities of place and industry communities of common purpose, influence farmer and fisher strategies to maintain good physical and mental health in the face of difficult climatic and economic factors. Cent…
Participating in Research
With growing emphasis on the importance of scientific evidence through clinical trials, qualitative studies have been used to deepen our understanding of research from participants' perspectives. For people with a chronic illness, research participation could represent an additional impost on lives already overwhelmed with medical and care issues, and little is known about participants' motivations when the research requires them to think differe…
Imposed Structures and Contested Meanings
This article explores the concept of structured community participation in health, which refers to groups that are established by health decision‐makers to provide a ‘community’ viewpoint of health issues and services. The imposed nature of this form of participation is, however, potentially problematic in that it may not ensure that the community's views arc heard. Rather, structured community participation may entrench dominant interests. Drawi…
Between knowing and doing person-centredness
Self-management is a contemporary model of chronic condition care that places expectations on, and roles for, both patients and health professionals. Health professionals are expected to form partnerships with their patients, and patients are expected to be active participants in their own care. In these new roles, control and responsibility for self-management are shared between people with chronic conditions and their health professionals. We s…
Healthcare in the news media
This article reports on a discourse analysis of the representation of healthcare in the print news media, and the way this representation shapes perspectives of healthcare. We analysed news items from six major Australian newspapers over a three-year time period. We show how various framing devices promote ideas about a crisis in the current public healthcare system, the existence of a precarious balance between the public and private health sect…
Women's work. Maintaining a healthy body weight
Disruption and Improvisation
Chronic illness can disrupt many aspects of life, including identity, social relationships, and anticipated life trajectories. Despite significant scholarship on chronic illness, we know less about the ways in which chronic illness impacts feelings of loneliness and how people with chronic illness deal with loneliness. Drawing on concepts of biographical disruption and liminality and data from walking and photo-elicitation interviews with 14 peop…
Living with motor neurone disease
This article is a discussion between two former colleagues and longstanding friends about the lived experience of illness and disability. In January 2013, Kirsten Harley, a promising early career sociologist was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND), a degenerative neurological condition with a typical life expectancy of 2-3 years. In this article, which is part interview and part shared reflection, we consider how Kirsten's knowledge of soc…
Understanding Risk, Choice and Amenity in an Urban Area at Risk of Flooding
This paper reports on a qualitative interview study of residents' perceptions of the probability and impact of flooding in a socially disadvantaged urban area identified and publicised as at risk of inundation. The people in this study engage with expert definitions of flood risk, but expert knowledge is not their most important reference point. While residents understand that the area is at risk of flooding, two key points emerge in their discus…
Imposed Structures and Contested Meanings
This article explores the concept of structured community participation in health, which refers to groups that are established by health decision‐makers to provide a ‘community’ viewpoint of health issues and services. The imposed nature of this form of participation is, however, potentially problematic in that it may not ensure that the community's views arc heard. Rather, structured community participation may entrench dominant interests. Drawi…
Personal choice/social responsibility
Screening for breast cancer is a key public health policy for women. However, there is controversy about when women should commence screening because the evidence of benefit for women younger than 50 years remains unclear. In Australia women who are aged 40-49 years are allowed to participate in breast cancer screening, although government policy indicates that participation should be based on these women making an 'informed choice' about partici…
A hierarchy of evidence for assessing qualitative health research
Generating best evidence from qualitative research
Rigorous and systematic analysis of qualitative data is integral to the production of high-quality research. Studies that give an explicit account of the data analysis process provide insights into how conclusions are reached while studies that explain themes anchored to data and theory produce the strongest evidence.
Taking responsibility or averting risk? A socio-cultural approach to risk and trust in private health insurance decisions
The increasing political significance of private health insurance can be located in an altered understanding of the role of individuals and the State in protecting citizens' welfare. In common with other Western societies, contemporary Australia is marked by an expectation that people will fund their own needs and identify and manage their own risks throughout their life course. However, we lack information on how people come to make their decisi…
I Come Because I Am Called”
In this article I report on research investigating factors associated with participation in mammography screening in Sweden. I conducted semistructured interviews with 32 women aged 40-49 years who attended mammography screening in rural Sweden. Study participants undertook screening in the context of a health system in which women aged 40 years and above are contacted by mail with an appointment time to attend for screening. Study participants p…
Women's work. Maintaining a healthy body weight
Exploring implementation and sustainability of models of care
Research on new models of care in health service provision is complex, as is the introduction and embedding of such models, and positive research findings are only one factor in whether a new model of care will be implemented. In order to understand why this is the case, research design must not only take account of proposed changes in the clinical encounter, but the organisational context that must sustain and normalise any changed practices. We…
Understanding Risk, Choice and Amenity in an Urban Area at Risk of Flooding
This paper reports on a qualitative interview study of residents' perceptions of the probability and impact of flooding in a socially disadvantaged urban area identified and publicised as at risk of inundation. The people in this study engage with expert definitions of flood risk, but expert knowledge is not their most important reference point. While residents understand that the area is at risk of flooding, two key points emerge in their discus…
Participating in Research
With growing emphasis on the importance of scientific evidence through clinical trials, qualitative studies have been used to deepen our understanding of research from participants' perspectives. For people with a chronic illness, research participation could represent an additional impost on lives already overwhelmed with medical and care issues, and little is known about participants' motivations when the research requires them to think differe…
Constructing health consumers
Significant transformations of the health care services sector over the past three decades have seen an increasing reliance on the private provision of health care services mediated through private health insurance. In countries such as Australia and the UK, private health insurance is promoted as providing a greater choice for individuals and easing the burden on the public system. While these claims, the policy contexts and the decision-making …
Supporting farmer and fisher health and wellbeing in ‘difficult times’
Supporting farmer and fisher health and wellbeing in ‘difficult times’
While links between rurality and health are clearly established, there continues to be interest in the resources that can make a difference to rural, often underserved, small communities. This research investigated how collective features of communities of place and industry communities of common purpose, influence farmer and fisher strategies to maintain good physical and mental health in the face of difficult climatic and economic factors. Cent…
Using documents to investigate links between implementation and sustainability in a complex community intervention
Without hope everything would be doom and gloom’
This paper contributes to our knowledge of young people and their views of the future. Although studies of young people have examined how young people think about their future in terms of their goals (most often their career objectives), there is little work that unpacks how young people give meaning to the idea of ‘hope’ in their lives. This study provides additional insight into what young people hope for in the future, their ideas about what t…
‘I’m managing myself’
In this article, we examine the choice to use a complementary and alternative medicine product (St John’s wort) for the management of mental health risk. We draw on data from a study in which we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 41 adults who self-reported depression, stress or anxiety, in Melbourne, Australia, in 2011. We identified three groups of users – regular St John’s wort users, whose use was continuous; irregular users,…
Healthcare choice
The promotion of choice is a common theme in both policy discourses and commercial marketing claims about healthcare. However, within the multiple potential pathways of the healthcare 'maze', how do healthcare 'consumers' or patients understand and experience choice? What is meant by 'choice' in the policy context, and, importantly from a sociological perspective, how are such choices socially produced and structured? In this theoretical article,…
Men's perspectives on fall risk and fall prevention following participation in a group-based programme conducted at Men's Sheds, Australia
Research on older men's views regarding fall prevention is limited. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences and perspectives of older men regarding fall risk and prevention so that fall prevention programmes can better engage older men. Eleven men who had taken part in a group-based fall prevention programme called Stepping On conducted at Men's Sheds in Sydney, Australia, participated in semi-structured interviews du…
Living Well? Strategies Used by Women Living With Metastatic Breast Cancer
Metastatic breast cancer is a disease of changing status-once an imminent death sentence, now a chronic (albeit incurable) disease. Medical intervention advances mean women with metastatic breast cancer now have symptoms alleviated and, potentially, life extended. Living with this disease, however, requires more than a medical approach to symptoms. We were interested to know whether women manage, and if so, how, to "live well" with metastatic can…
Knowledge matters
In many contemporary healthcare systems, individuals are expected to be rational actors – weighing up available knowledge and making choices about their healthcare needs. In the policy context, this has been most explicitly applied to the financing of healthcare where there is encouragement for the purchase of private health insurance. However, perceptions of public and private healthcare provision, knowledge about healthcare needs, and the types…
The Palgrave international handbook of healthcare policy and governance
"The Palgrave international handbook of healthcare policy and governance." Health Sociology Review, 25(3), pp. 341–342
Gatekeepers in the healthcare sector
Fall prevention programs for culturally and linguistically diverse groups
Objectives: Older people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds are one of the fastest growing and rapidly ageing population segments in Australia. This qualitative study aims to explore the experiences, needs and challenges that individual program providers encountered in implementing and delivering a fall prevention program for CALD groups and meeting the linguistic, cultural and contextual needs of the program participan…
Navigating and making choices about healthcare
Healthcare in the news media
This article reports on a discourse analysis of the representation of healthcare in the print news media, and the way this representation shapes perspectives of healthcare. We analysed news items from six major Australian newspapers over a three-year time period. We show how various framing devices promote ideas about a crisis in the current public healthcare system, the existence of a precarious balance between the public and private health sect…
Psychology (32 obras) · Medicine (30 obras) · Political science (30 obras) · Sociology (27 obras) · Health care (22 obras) · Public relations (20 obras) · Social Psychology (15 obras) · Nursing (14 obras) · Disease (11 obras) · Mental Health and Patient Involvement (11 obras)