Publications by authors named "Rebecca L Morris"

Shoreline armouring in coastal cities can cause habitat degradation and biodiversity loss, often exacerbated by common anthropogenic stressors. Boulders are used as riprap to create revetments walls; but the homogenous surface and absence of shelter reduces intertidal biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Eco-engineering can mitigate habitat loss through the addition of water retention and other microhabitats.

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Boulder seawalls constructed with granite riprap for shoreline armouring lack habitat complexity, leading to lower marine biodiversity than natural rocky shores. Baskets of live oysters and cured oyster shells, and strings of cured shells laid on concrete blocks were installed on ripraps in Hong Kong, China with an aim to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functioning towards that of a natural rocky shore. Inhabiting taxa were monitored for at least 18 months and biofiltration capacity of the emerging community was determined ex-situ.

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Climate change is causing widespread impacts on seawater pH through ocean acidification (OA). Kelp forests, in some locations can buffer the effects of OA through photosynthesis. However, the factors influencing this variation remain poorly understood.

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There has been an increase in recognition of the benefits of employing nature-based coastal protection strategies to adapt to the impacts of climate change (e.g., increased storminess, sea-level rise).

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Article Synopsis
  • Living shorelines are designed to protect coastlines from hazards while offering additional benefits like carbon sequestration, but their use in Australia remains limited.
  • A survey and literature review identified 138 living shoreline projects in Australia, with over half deemed successful in reducing hazard risk since 2000.
  • Despite limited peer-reviewed evidence, there is a growing interest and practical implementation of living shorelines across Australia, highlighting a need for better information sharing among practitioners.
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Objectives: The inadequate provision of language interpretation for people with limited English proficiency (LEP) is a determinant of poor health, yet interpreters are underused. This research explores the experiences of National Health Service (NHS) staff providing primary care for people seeking asylum, housed in contingency accommodation during COVID-19. This group often have LEP and face multiple additional barriers to healthcare access.

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A range of conservation and restoration tools are needed to safeguard the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems. Aquaculture, the culturing of aquatic organisms, often contributes to the numerous stressors that aquatic ecosystems face, yet some aquaculture activities can also deliver ecological benefits. We reviewed the literature on aquaculture activities that may contribute to conservation and restoration outcomes, either by enhancing the persistence or recovery of one or more target species or by moving aquatic ecosystems toward a target state.

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Hybrid living shorelines use a combination of engineered structures with natural ecosystems to achieve coastal protection and habitat restoration outcomes, with added co-benefits such as carbon sequestration. Rock fillets constructed along eroding estuarine banks are designed to accumulate sediment, establish mangroves, and stabilise the shoreline. There is, however, a lack of data to support whether rock fillets are achieving these goals.

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Background: Involving patients is a key premise of national and international policies on patient safety, which requires understanding how patients or carers want to be involved and developing resources to support this. This paper examines patients' and carers' views of being involved in patient safety in primary care and their views of potentially using a co-designed patient safety guide for primary care (PSG-PC) to foster both involvement and their safety.

Methods: A qualitative study using semistructured face-to-face interviews with 18 patients and/or carers in primary care.

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Background: Public resources to answer pertinent research questions about the impact of illness and treatment on people with mental health problems are limited. To target funds effectively and efficiently and maximize the health benefits to populations, prioritizing research areas is needed. Research agendas are generally driven by researcher and funder priorities, however, there is growing recognition of the need to include user-defined research priorities to make research more relevant, needs-based and efficient.

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Atoll societies have adapted their environments and social systems for thousands of years, but the rapid pace of climate change may bring conditions that exceed their adaptive capacities. There is growing interest in the use of 'nature-based solutions' to facilitate the continuation of dignified and meaningful lives on atolls through a changing climate. However, there remains insufficient evidence to conclude that these can make a significant contribution to adaptation on atolls, let alone to develop standards and guidelines for their implementation.

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The terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms all provide essential ecosystem services in urban environments. However, the services provided by each realm are often considered independently, which ignores the synergies between them and risks underestimating the benefits derived collectively. Greater research collaboration across these realms, and an integrated approach to management decisions can help to support urban developments and restoration projects in maintaining or enhancing ecosystem services.

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Kelps are ecosystem engineers, which collectively form forests that provide a variety of important ecosystem services for humans and other organisms. Kelp forests are threatened by multiple local and global stressors, one of the most notable is herbivory. Overabundant sea; urchins can consume kelp, leading to a phase shift from productive forests to unproductive; rocky barrens.

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Background: Diagnostic error is a global patient safety priority.

Objectives: To estimate the incidence, origins and avoidable harm of diagnostic errors in English general practice. Diagnostic errors were defined as missed opportunities to make a correct or timely diagnosis based on the evidence available (missed diagnostic opportunities, MDOs).

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One of the paramount goals of oyster reef living shorelines is to achieve sustained and adaptive coastal protection, which requires meeting ecological (i.e., develop a self-sustaining oyster population) and engineering (i.

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Background: Demand for NHS services is high and rising. In children respiratory tract infections (RTI) are the most common reason for consultation with primary care. Understanding which features are associated with good and poor prognosis with RTI will help develop interventions to support parents manage illness.

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Objectives: Primary care records have traditionally served the needs and demands of clinicians rather than those of the patient. In England, general practices must promote and offer registered patients online access to their primary care record, and research has shown benefits to both patients and clinicians of doing so. Despite this, we know little about patients' needs and expectations regarding online access to their record.

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Introduction: Patients and carers should be active partners in patient safety with healthcare professionals and be empowered to use personalised approaches to identify safety concerns and work together to prevent them. This protocol paper details a study to examine the feasibility of a multicomponent intervention to involve patients and/or carers in patient safety in primary care in the UK.

Methods And Analysis: This is a two-phase, non-randomised feasibility mixed methods pragmatic study of a patient safety guide for primary care (PSG-PC).

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Background: Children with respiratory tract infections (RTIs) use more primary care appointments than any other group, but many parents are unsure if, and when, they should seek medical help and report that existing guidance is unclear.

Aim: To develop symptom-based criteria to support parental medical help seeking for children with RTIs.

Design And Setting: A research and development/University of California Los Angeles (RAND/UCLA) appropriateness study to obtain consensus on children's RTI symptoms appropriate for home, primary, or secondary health care in the UK.

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Background: Individuals with diabetes are using mobile health (mHealth) to track their self-management. However, individuals can understand even more about their diabetes by sharing these patient-gathered data (PGD) with health professionals. We conducted experience-based co-design (EBCD) workshops, with the aim of gathering end-users' needs and expectations for a PGD-sharing system.

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Background: Increasingly, consultations in health care settings are conducted remotely using a range of communication technologies. Email allows for 2-way text-based communication, occurring asynchronously. Studies have explored the content and nature of email consultations to understand the use, structure, and function of email consultations.

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Background: Patients and carers should be actively involved in patient safety and empowered to use person-centred approaches where they are asked to both identify safety concerns and partner in preventing them.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to co-design a patient safety guide for primary care (PSG-PC) to support patients and carers to address key patient safety questions and identify key points where they can make their care safer. The objectives were to i) identify when and how patients and carers can be involved in primary care patient safety, and ii) identify the relevant information to include in the PSG-PC.

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The construction of artificial structures, such as seawalls, is increasing globally, resulting in loss of habitat complexity and native species biodiversity. There is increasing interest in mitigating this biodiversity loss by adding topographic habitat to these structures, and/or seeding them with habitat-forming species. Settlement tile experiments, comparing colonisation of species to more and less complex habitats, have been used to inform eco-engineering interventions prior to their large-scale implementation.

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The provision of temporary, specially designed artificial habitat may help support populations of the Endangered Whites' seahorse Hippocampus whitei in the face of rapid coastal urbanisation and declining natural habitats. Three designs of artificial habitat (Seahorse Hotels) were installed in Port Stephens, New South Wales, Australia, where natural habitats had significantly declined. Mark recapture surveys were used to assess seahorse site fidelity and population parameters, and the effect of Seahorse Hotel design on seahorse abundance, epibiotic growth and mobile epifaunal seahorse prey was determined.

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