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Latest HSC paper in Birth

Publishing

The international journal Birth published our latest paper:

Whitford, H., Entwistle V.A., van Teijlingen, E., Aitchison, P., Davidson, T., Humphrey, T., Tucker, J. (2014) Use of a birth plan within woman-held maternity records: A qualitative study with women and staff in northeast Scotland, Birth (Epub ahead of print).

The co-authors of BU Professor Edwin van Teijlingen are affiliated with a wide-range of Scottish institutions: the University of Dundee; the University of Aberdeen, the University of Stirling, the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen and NHS Grampian, Aberdeen.

 

This latest paper considers the use of a birth plan section within a national woman-held maternity record.  Unlike England, Scotland has a national women-held maternity record. In Poole, for example, a midwife needs to complete another maternity record for women who want to deliver in the Poole area than those who want to delivery in Bournemouth Hospital and another form for those might want to go to the New Forest Birth Centre, and again another one for the Dorchester area.   In Scotland a pregnant women receiving antenatal care in one health area and delivering in another can take her same record/notes along.  As midwives (and other staff) only have to be familiar with one set of records, this reduces the chance of errors and avoiding duplication.

This qualitative study comprised interviews with women and maternity service staff in Northeast Scotland. In our study staff and women were generally positive about the provision of the birth plan section within the record. Perceived benefits included the opportunity to highlight preferences, enhance communication, stimulate discussions and address anxieties. However, some women were unaware of the opportunity or could not access the support they needed from staff to discuss or be confident about their options. Some were reluctant to plan too much. Staff recognised the need to support women with birth plan completion but noted practical challenges to this.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Delivering healthcare in prisons

PG research, Research Ethics

A special event has been arranged at BU that will focus on health care within prisons. The session to be held on 28th May will be led by Jane Senior from the University of Manchester. Jane is a clinician-researcher and Research Project Manager for the Offender Health Research Network. Jane is a qualified mental health nurse with over 20 years of post qualification experience of working in prison and secure mental health settings.

Jane’s session will be of great value to anyone :

  • thinking about undertaking research within UK prisons
  • wanting to know more about health care delivery in prisons
  • thinking of working with or in a prison health care team

During the session Jane will outline findings from her recent prison research projects. These include studies into how to manage the health and wellbeing of older prisoners and her recent work in developing the Older Prisoner Health and Social Care Assessment and Plan (OHSCAP). She will also highlight some of the specific issues that can arise when undertaking research within a prison environment.

Staff and students are welcome to attend the session. If you would like to attend please email Holly Crossen-White (hcrossen@Bournemouth.ac.uk).

HSC paper cited over hundred times in Scopus

Publishing

The academic publisher Elsevier alerted us today that our paper has been cited for the 101st time in Scopus.  The paper ‘Factors affecting the utilization of antenatal care in developing countries: Systematic review of the literature’ was published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing.  The paper was part of the first author’s Ph.D. research into maternity care in Nepal.

This paper is one of the four outputs submitted to the UK REF for both Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen as part of the Bournemouth University submission and for Dr. Padam Simkhada as part of the University of Sheffield submission.

 

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH, School of Health & Social Care

Don’t forget to join us at the first R&KEO coffee morning

The first Research and Knowledge Exchange Office coffee morning is on 22 May 2014, starting at 9.30am in the Retreat (Talbot campus). This is intended to be an informal opportunity for you to meet with members of the R&KEO team, and you’re welcome to come along and have a chat with us, or just to enjoy a coffee and cake. The next event (please note the change of date) will take place on 19 June in R303, Royal London House between 9am and 10am.

If you can’t make either of these dates, we have several more coffee mornings arranged for the next academic year; the first event of 2014-15 will be in the Retreat on 30 October.

We look forward to seeing you on 22 May!

Hot beverage and cupcake

HSC study focus of Independent newspaper article

Professor Colin Pritchard

Published research in the Journal for the Royal Society of Medicine Open (JRSM Open for short), conducted by Professor Colin Pritchard and Andrew Harding in HSC, is today (Friday 02/05/14) the focus of an article in the Independent newspaper.

Andrew Harding

After the Francis Report into the scandal at Mid Staffordshire lay considerable blame at the Board for failing to tackle “…an insidious culture…focused on doing the system’s business – not that of the patient…”, Professor Pritchard and Andrew Harding looked at the occupational backgrounds of non executive directors (NEDs) of 146 NHS acute trusts (n=1,001 NEDs). The NHS is modelled on corporate governance, where a board of directors are scrutinised and held to account by non executive directors.

Considering NEDs principle task is to hold the executive, and thus the NHS, to account, the study found a shocking lack of non executive directors with medical, clinical or patient representation or background. As the Independent headline indicates, only 8% of non executive board members were healthcare professionals. Instead, it was far more prevalent and common for non executive directors to be from a commercial, or financial background – with a high proportion having been employed or current employees of major financials firms such as Deloite, KPMG, Grant Thornton, Merrill Lynch, Price-WaterHouse Coopers and JP Morgan. Females NEDs and those from ethnic minorities were also found to be in short supply.

For a full breakdown of the findings the article can be found, and is openly available here.

 

Could new framework take pressure off businesses who have to deal with privacy compliance?

 

 

The next Cyber Security seminar will be on:

‘Legal – URN (User Requirements Notation) Framework for Privacy Compliance’

Tuesday, 13th May

Coyne Lecture Theatre, Talbot Campus

4pm -5pm.

 

Bournemouth University is delighted to welcome Dr. Sepideh Ghanavati from CRP Henri Tudor, who will be visiting on the 13thMay to present an overview of the Legal-URN framework, which includes compliance analysis techniques and provides guidelines to manage multiple regulations at the same time.

The number of regulations an organisation needs to comply with has been increasing, and the pressure is building for them to ensure that their business processes are aligned with these regulations. However, because of the complexity and intended vagueness of regulations in general, it is not possible to treat them the same way as other types of requirements.

The cost of being non-compliant can also be fairly high; non-compliance can cause crucial harm to organisations, who may incur financial penalties or loss of reputation. Therefore, it is very important for organisations to take a systematic approach to ensuring that their compliance with related laws, regulations and standards is established and maintained. To achieve this goal, a model-based privacy compliance analysis framework called Legal-URN has been proposed.

If you would like to join us for this presentation, please book your place via Eventbrite.

We will look forward to seeing you!

Ethics

This workshop will comprise a 20 minute presentation on ethical considerations, policy, and principles, followed by a Q&A session on your ethical issues or questions related to your research.

This workshop will be facilitated by Julia Hastings Taylor, Research and Knowledge Exchange, and is aimed at Academic Staff.

For more information and to book on to this event please visit the Organisational and Staff Development Pages on the Staff Intranet.

Doctoral Supervision Development: Established Supervisors

Aim: To provide participants with the necessary knowledge to maintain their skills in supervising doctoral Postgraduate Research Students at BU and to share best practice between peers.

The workshop will focus primarily around the sharing of experience and good practice between established supervisors but will also cover the following areas:

  • Review of the Codes of Practice at BU purpose & operation
  • Focus on funding for doctoral students & building research teams
  • Trouble shooting: problems, issues, rules & regulations
  • Sharing of good practice

Monday 12th May 2014, 13:00-16:00, Talbot Campus.

To book your place on this workshop, please email staffdevelopment@bournemouth.ac.uk

Embedding Sustainability in Leadership

This short masterclass will explore the Leader’s Role in Organisational Sustainability and the link to the whole concept of Corporate Social Responsibility. Embedding sustainability in the leadership of an organization requires a new paradigm – viewing one’s organization as a good neighbor, good citizen and a good employer. Participants will explore these dimensions using the World Cafes method and will apply the concepts of the stakeholders’ theory (Freeman, Harrison and Wicks, 2007) to their own institution. At the end of the event, each participant will have a clear understanding on how to embed sustainability practices in its own work to contribute to the overall CSR of the organization.

Thursday 8th May 2014, 15:30-17:00, PG146, Thomas Hardy Suite, Talbot Campus.

For more information and to book on to this event please visit the Organisational and Staff Development Pages on the Staff Intranet.

Panel discussion at Conference of the Canadian Society Sociology of Health Montreal 2014

Bournemouth University Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen was invited to take part in a panel discussion at the 4th Conference of the Canadian Society of Sociology of Health.  The panel consisted of academics are long-term collaborators on a project called Birth by Design (BBD).  The meeting was made possible by fellow BBD collaborator Prof. Ivy Bourgeault (University of Ottawa).

The BBD collaboration comprises academics from a range of different scholarly backgrounds including sociology, political science and midwifery.  The group started in 1997 with international colleagues who worked originally on a collaborative project called ‘Birth in Europe and North-America’.  This work resulted in the book Birth by Design1 and many papers in major sociology academic journals including Sociology of Health & Illness and Social Science & Medicine.2-10

 

 

 

 

The panel discussion was introduced and led by BBD collaborator Prof. Cecilia Benoit (University of Victoria, Canada). Dr. Sirpa Wrede (University of Helsinki) outlined the BBD project and the new methodological insights it provided at the time of cross-national comparative research into maternity care.  Prof. Raymond DeVries (University of Michigan & Maastricht Universiteit) spoke of the difficulties Dutch midwives face in their effort to maintain the unique maternity care system in the Netherlands.   Prof. Gene Declercq (Boston University School of Public Health) presented findings of a study of US mothers.  Prof. Jane Sandall (King’s College London) spoke about the policy implementation gap and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen reminded the audience to keep a theoretical perspective in mind when conducting comparative research in general.     Prof. Bourgeault had organised that all slides were translated in the French as the conference was bi-lingual.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

 

References:

  1.  DeVries, R., Benoit, C., Teijlingen van, E. & Wrede, S. (eds.) (2001) Birth by Design: Pregnancy, Midwifery Care and Midwifery in North America and Europe, New York: Routledge.     Birth by Design was short-listed for the 2004 BSA Medical Sociology Book Prize!
  2. van Teijlingen, E.R., Sandall, J., Wrede, S., Benoit, C., DeVries, R., Bourgeault, I. (2003) Comparative studies in maternity care RCM Midwives Journal 6: 338-40.
  3. DeVries, R., Wrede, S., van Teijlingen E., Benoit, C. & Declercq, E. (2004). Making Maternity Care: The Consequences of Culture for Health Care Systems. In: Vinken, H., Soeters, J. & Ester, P. (Eds.), Comparing Cultures, Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 209-231.
  4. Benoit, C. Wrede, S., Bourgeault, I, Sandall, J., DeVries, R., van Teijlingen E. (2005) Understanding the social organisation of maternity care systems: Midwifery as a Touchstone, Sociology of Health & Illness, 27(6): 722-737.
  5. Wrede, S., Benoit, C., Bourgeault, I.L., van Teijlingen E.R., Sandall, J., De Vries, R. (2006) Decentered Comparative Research: Context Sensitive Analysis of Health Care, Social Science & Medicine, 63: 2986-2997.
  6. van Teijlingen, E.R., Wrede, S., Benoit, C., Sandall, J., De Vries, R. (2009) Born in the USA: Exceptionalism in Maternity Care Organisation Among High-Income Countries Sociological Research Online, 14(1) www.socresonline.org.uk/14/1/5.html
  7. Sandall, J., Benoit, C., Wrede, S., Murray, S.F., van Teijlingen E.R., Westfall, R. (2009) The reconfiguration of professional relations with clients: social service professionalism or market expert? Current Sociology 57(4): 529–553.
  8. Bourgeault, I.L., Declercq, E., Sandall, J., Wrede, S., Vanstone, M., van Teijlingen E. DeVries, R. & Benoit, C. (2008) Too posh too push? Comparative perspectives on maternal request caesarean sections in Canada, the US, the UK and Finland. In: Chambré, S.M. & Goldner, M. (eds.) Advances in Medical Sociology Patients, consumers and civil society. Vol. 10. London: JAI Press, 99-123.
  9. Sandall, J., Benoit, C., van Teijlingen E., Wrede, S., Declercq, G. & De Vries, R. (2012) Gender and maternal healthcare. In: Kuhlmann E. & Annandale, E. (eds.) Palgrave Handbook of Gender & Healthcare (2nd edn.). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 389-404.
  10. Benoit, C., Sandall, J., Benoit, C., Murray, S.F., van Teijlingen E., Wrede, S., Declercq, G. & De Vries, R. Maternity Care as Global Health Policy Issue. In: E. Kuhlmann, E., Bourgeault, I. (eds.) Palgrave International Handbook on Health Care Policy & Governance,  Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming).

Grants Academy to the Rescue! Last chance until the Autumn!

Grants Academy, Training

The Grants Academy has been described by members as ‘brilliant’, ‘excellent’, ‘extremely educational and stimulating’ and ‘very beneficial’. It has also increased bids submissions from members acting as a Principal Investigator by 41% and 20% as a co-Investigator. Members have significantly increased their funding successes too and obtained funding from organisations such as the AHRC, European Commission, ESRC, British Academy, English Heritage and Burdett Trust for Nursing.

How does the Academy work?  Members attend an initial two day training course off campus, facilitated by an external expert bid writer with a well-developed draft proposal. The training days will cover the art of proposal craftmanship, the rules of the writing game and other invaluable information to help you perfect your proposal during the days. Feedback on these days from existing members have been very positive, ‘the workshop was the best I have ever attended’. 

Members can then further develop their proposal over a couple of weeks, gaining unlimited support from the external facilitator in doing so and the cohort re-gathers for a mock peer review panel of each other’s applications. This gives a unique insight into this process in a supportive environment and helps further refine the proposal. One member has described this session as ‘[I now have] profound insights in[to] how the system works…and to realize how that must be for professional reviewers’.

What other support is given? Throughout the 18 month membership of the Grants Academy, members benefit form UNLIMITED support from the external facilitator (and in some cases additional external reviewers) which has been invaluable in helping members secure external funding ‘[His] input enabled me to produce a clearer, more logical and convincing proposal. He also alerted me to issues I had not previously considered and encouraged me to think about ‘impact’ and value for the UK in new ways’.

Members also have bespoke assistance from R&KEO in finding funding and collaborators. They also have access to a library of successful proposals from BU, a travel grant (£250), guaranteed places on Funder visits organised for them and surgeries with external facilitators.

How do I apply? To apply for a place, please contact me Dianne Goodman and I will send you a Membership Agreement Form that will need to be signed by you, your line manager and your DDRE.

The next training sessions due to take place on the: 12th and 13th of May and the 9th of June 2014 and will be the last until the Autumn

Due to our Grants Academy scheme’s success you may be added to a waiting list if no spaces are available on this training session. We are hoping to announce further Grants Academy sessions in the Autumn. You are welcome to apply and register for these Grants Academy sessions and we are happy to put your name on our list.

What’s the small print? When making your application, you must ensure that you are available for the 3 dates in their entirety. Membership is only obtained once all training days have been attended. Obligations of membership are that at least one proposal for external funding must be submitted within the first six months of membership. As the training days are attended with a draft proposal, this should be obtainable. Within 18 months at least three proposals for external funding must have been submitted. Failure to meet these obligations will lead to membership being revoked.

If you have any questions about the Grants Academy please get in touch with Dianne Goodman (scheme administrator) or Rebecca Edwards (scheme manager).

Grants Academy Next Workshops – get yourself booked in today – I have only a few spaces left!!

Fusion Funding – My exploratory visit to the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

As previously reported on BU research blog, I was awarded Fusion Investment Funds to explore opportunities for research collaboration and staff and student exchanges with the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Durban, South Africa. I am posting this blog to report on my exploratory visit to UKZN last week (Tuesday 22nd to Friday, 25th April, 2014).

The first day of my visit was spent in what I would call ‘high level meetings’ with UKZN senior management staff. In the morning I met Professor Anesh Maniraj Singh who is the Dean of the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance. He expressed his enthusiasm for the research collaboration and the staff and student exchanges and indicated that he will come over as soon as the partnership agreement is signed. Next I met Professor Stephen Migiro, the Dean and Head of the Graduate School of Business and Leadership. He was also very much in favour of the proposal. He talked about the problems the university was facing especially in finding external examiners for their PhD students and hoped that once the partnership is signed, some BU staff may be engaged as examiners. The final meeting of the day was with the Acting Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor John Mubangizi. He was so impressed with the proposal that he instructed the Dean of the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance and the Dean of the Graduate School of Business and Leadership to work with me so that the proposed partnership is signed as soon as possible subject to both BU and UKZN due processes.

On my second day I met the students to gauge their interest in coming over to BU. I made a 20 minutes presentation outlining the nature of the student exchange after which I invited questions. There was quite a lot of interest and excitement about the proposed student exchange judging by the number of questions that I had to answer. At the end of the session I invited the students to indicate by raising their hands if they would be interested. No prizes for guessing that 100% of the students would be interested in coming to BU once such an exchange agreement has been signed subject to financial constraints.

The morning of third day at UKZN was taken up by a meeting with Professor Lesley Stainbank (Professor of Accounting) where we discussed possible research collaboration. I spent my lunch in the company of Professor Anesh Maniraj Singh talking about how the proposed partnership could effectively benefit his School of Accounting, Economics and Finance and ‘catch up’ with the developments in teaching and research in the UK.

My final day involved a 50 mile drive UKZN’s Pietermaritzburg Campus where I presented a research paper entitled ‘The impact of DEFRA guidelines on the reporting of greenhouse gases’. The presentation was attended by about 50 people who appeared knowledgeable about the topic of the presentation. I rounded up my visit to UKZN with a talk to the postgraduate students who expressed the hope that the proposed student exchange could include a summer school for them so that they could also come for a short period and experience the education atmosphere at BU.

My overall impression of the visit is that UKZN is a very good university which has very good teaching, research and student facilities that are equivalent to those at BU. The staff and the students that I met were very friendly and showed commitment to working with BU students and staff once the partnership agreement is signed. I am very grateful to the Fusion Investment Fund that enabled me to visit UKZN. I brought some material about UKZN as a university and also about the research being undertaken by its staff. Feel free to email me at vtauringana@bournemouth.ac.uk if you need any further information.

Dr Ven Tauringana
Associate Professor of Accounting, The Business School.

Free places for BU staff at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) workshop 21st May 2014

Fusion

Thanks to FIF Mobility Strand Funding, Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI) are delighted to be welcoming colleagues from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York to Bournemouth University from 20-23rd May 2014. As part of their visit, BU Staff are being invited to join a free workshop. In this workshop MoMA’s specially trained Museum Educators will share their successful model and established approach for making their services dementia-friendly (validated via evaluation from New York University).

This workshop showcases MoMA’s innovative style of education delivery, providing attendees with an opportunity to hear the success of their approach and a practical demonstration in the Atrium Gallery. Staff with an interest in alternative teaching methods and those working with vulnerable groups may be particularly interested in attending. Please also pass on this information to any PhD students you feel may benefit from attending.

Date: 21st May 2014
Time: 11:00 – 15:30
Venue: Talbot Campus

There are a limited number of places available on this workshop for BU staff. To book a place, or for more information, please email mheward@bournemouth.ac.uk or call 01202 962538.

Please be aware that spaces for this workshop are limited, and will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Research Professional – all you need to know

Funding opportunities

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to ResearchProfessional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using ResearchProfessional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of ResearchProfessional.  To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional 

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on ResearchProfessional.  They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with ResearchProfessional.  The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat.  Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month.  You can register here for your preferred date:

27 May 2014

24 June 2014

22 July 2014

26 August 2014

23 September 2014

28 October 2014

25 November 2014

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

PG Researcher Development Workshops available in May

PG research

WHAT’S ON in May 2014 – revised

 

  • Finding Information and Using Researcher Tools – 19 May
  • Managing your Citations using Endnote and Endnote Web – 21 May
  • Interviewing in Semi-Structured Interviews – 21 May
  • The Art of Facilitation – 28 May
  • An Introduction to Public Engagement – 29 May – new addition

The advanced workshop on Public Engagement (7th May 2014) has been postponed and will be rearranged at a later date.

Full details and sign up lists are available via myBU (Graduate School PGR Community).

Don’t forget that if you have both staff and student email accounts, you’ll need to log on with your student username and password.  Please check your student email account for email reminders for PGR workshops.

 

Neuroscience@BU seminar: “Emergent oscillatory activity in the cerebral cortex” Friday the 2nd of May 14:00 PG 10 (Poole House)

Next Friday the 2nd of May at 14:00 h in PG10, we will have a research seminar in neuroscience entitled “Emergent oscillatory activity in the cerebral cortex”.

Our guest is Prof. Maria Victoria Sanchez-Vives, http://www.sanchez-vives.org/,  ICREA Research Professor at the IDIBAPS (Institut d’Investigacions Biomediques August Pi i Sunyer) in Barcelona, head of the Systems Neuroscience group.

Prof. Maria Victoria Sanchez-Vives has published a number of influential papers in journals like e.g. Science, Nature Neuroscience or PNAS and is currently the Chief Editor of Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. She has been funded by Human Frontier Science Program, national and international agencies and has been partner in six European Projects. She is currently coordinator of the FET EU project CORTICONIC.

Her main interests include how neuronal and synaptic properties as well as connectivity determine the emergent activity generated by neuronal networks. The integration of the cortical information giving rise to bodily representation and the combination of brain-computer interfaces and virtual reality for understanding these processes, is another research line of her group.

We strongly suggest not to miss the opportunity to attend to this seminar. Afternoon cakes, coffee and tea will be served during the event.

Best wishes, Emili

Emili Balaguer-Ballester, PhD
Faculty of Science and Technology , Bournemouth University
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, University of Heidelberg

———————————

Title: “Emergent oscillatory activity in the cerebral cortex”.

Abstract: “Understanding complex systems like brain networks is a challenge. Cortical networks can perform computations of remarkable complexity, accounting for a large variety of behaviours and cognitive states. At the same time, the same networks can engage in stereotypical patterns of spatio-temporal activation, such as the ones that can be observed during sleep, anaesthesia and in cortical slice. Collective phenomena emerging from activity reverberation in cortical circuits at different spatio-temporal scales results in a rich variety of dynamical states. Slow (around or below 1 Hz) and fast (15-100 Hz) rhythms are spontaneously generated by the cortical network and propagate or synchronize populations across the cortex. This is the case even in isolated pieces of the cortical network, or in vitro maintained cortical slices, where both slow and fast oscillations are also spontaneously generated. The similarity between some of these patterns both in vivo and in vitro suggests that they are somehow a default activity from the cortical network. We understand that these emergent patterns provide information on the structure, dynamics and function of the underlying cortical network and their alterations in neurological diseases reveal the circuits dysfunction”.