Adult Protective Services workers' experiences with serious illness and death.

This study examined the emerging issue of experiences with end-of-life issues in adult protection. A national survey of adult protective services (APS) workers (N=508) examined encounters with serious illness, injury, death, and bereavement and how these situations were handled professionally and personally. APS workers often encountered clients and caregivers with life-threatening illnesses, and clients receiving hospice services. About three-quarters had worked on at least one case involving a client's death. Overall, more education and training about serious and terminal illness, death, grief, and bereavement is needed to prepare APS workers to work with clients and their families facing a variety of end-of-life situations.

Improvisational choreography in teleservice work.

This naturalistic study of the ordinary work practice of sales representatives employed by the call centre of a large office-equipment company focuses on the actions of those sales reps during their calls with customers. We show how this work performance is organized through an improvisational choreography of action involving not only the turn-by-turn interchange with customers on the telephone but also the concurrent utilization of a variety of tools and artefacts. While 'improvise' and 'choreograph' may appear to be conceptually incongruent, our analysis demonstrates that even though these teleservice workers recurrently fabricate their actions out of materials and means that are conveniently on hand, the convenience is often carefully arranged to afford such extemporaneous composition. Finally, we conclude from this analysis that the traditional topics of 'work routines' and 'routinization' need to be respecified in order to take into account how any 'routine' is a contingently produced result (and in this centre, a craft-like performance).