Student midwives spend approximately 50% of their three year undergraduate programme in the clinical area. Going to a new placement is often a stressful time for them as they consider ‘will they fit in’, ‘will they know enough’, ‘have they the right skills’, ‘what will they be able to learn whilst there to meet their practice assessments’ and so on. Other concerns relate to being away from home, what hours they are expected to do and how they cope with ‘difficult’ mentors. If students are unfamiliar with healthcare environments it takes time for them to adjust and become used to the environment. It was these thoughts that began fermenting in my head back in 2010 and following a positive response from students whose views on a book on placements were informally sought, I pitched the idea to a commissioning editor at Wiley Blackwell. In addition wider research had revealed that no such book existed within the published midwifery arena. Finally, in 2012 a contract was agreed between myself, and Margaret Fisher, Associate Professor in Midwifery at Plymouth University to co-edit nine chapters for submission in November 2014. The book is now due for publication on the 11th December 2015.
Professor Paul Lewis wrote the forward and chapter contributions from Bournemouth University lecturers, Dr. Sue Way, Stella Rawnson and myself, prepare prospective and current students for midwifery practice and the profession, caseloading and the elective period. Jo Coggins and Henrietta Otley, both midwives practising in North Wiltshire were co-opted to write chapters on ‘Preparing for practice’ and ‘Low-risk midwifery placements’. Other chapters were written by Margaret Fisher and Faye Doris at Plymouth University.
The final published edition is small enough to fit into a uniform pocket and contains many vignettes from students currently or previously studying at Bournemouth and Plymouth University. Their stories reflect ‘real life’ clinical experience and ‘Top Tips’ provide overall advice. Three original cartoons illustrating the vagaries of placement were devised by Clare Shirley (formerly a BU student, now a newly qualified midwife) and Hugo Beaumont (4th year medical student at Plymouth University). Students and women have provided photographs. Both Margaret and I hope students far and wide will enjoy the book which aims to provide a realistic perspective on clinical placement, by offering hints and tips and encouragement along their student journey.
Category / Nursing & Midwifery
HSS Writing Week 4th-8th January – How can Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit support you?
The Faculty of Health and Social Sciences is holding a Writing Week between 4th-8th January 2016 aimed at supporting staff to find time in their busy academic diaries to prioritise writing grant applications and papers for publication.
The Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit offers methodological and statistical collaboration for all healthcare researchers in the area. It supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across Bournemouth University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. It incorporates the Dorset office of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Design Service who offer free methodological support to researchers who are developing research ideas in the field of health and social care.
BUCRU will be supporting Writing Week in HSS by holding two drop-in sessions on Tuesday 5th January and Thursday 7th January 12-2pm in R508 Royal London House. We would also like to extend the invitation across the other Faculties for anyone who feels we may be able to support them. For those unable to attend the drop-in sessions, we would be delighted to arrange an alternative appointment.
Please see further information here, contact our adminstrator Louise Ward on 01202 961939 / bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or visit our website. We look forward to seeing you!
Midwifery: A Revolutionary Practice?
This title was suggested by one of our collaborators Jeffery L Nicholas. Jeff is a scholar at Providence College in the USA who came to visit Bournemouth University recently. It is a great title, especially since many think about midwifery in terms of its long tradition. Some refer to midwifery as the ‘second oldest profession’. This blog post highlights some of the thinking generated through cross-national inter-disciplinary research.
Jeff (philosopher) and Edwin (medical sociologist) have been discussing the kind of political challenges midwives face today: struggles around the health of the mother and child, over costs (especially the underfunding of the NHS) and providers, and over the rights of women and families to choose. We both believe strongly that these struggles are inter-connected, and Jeff thinks a new approach is worthy of investigating for possible theoretical and practical aid in these struggles.
Specifically, Jeff looks at midwifery as a particular kind of practice with revolutionary potential. This question emerges from the work of Alasdair MacIntyre (1929—). MacIntyre condemns the bureaucratic society in which people become manipulators and manipulated. He also rejects large-scale, nation-state politics by which citizens might wrest control of their lives from those in charge. Rather, he focuses on the every day activities that comprise most of our lives. These activities—practices—come with their own ends that participants attempt to achieve, and they help teach individuals the virtues they need to act as agents in their lives, to participate in their communities, and to flourish. A strong community based around practices is one in which all can pursue the good life together, even if threatened by the state.
Having these discussions made us think about the substantive question, such as “Do some of the NHS free-standing midwife-led units, or some of the UK’s independent midwifery practices or The Farm Midwifery Center in Tennessee comprise such communities?” and “How can we best study this phenomenon?” Taking the discussion one of two steps further we brainstormed questions such as “How can midwifery education help an individual develop the virtues to live a flourishing life?” and “How does the student midwife learn to reason in her every day work?”
We hope these questions interest others, and that, together, we might pursue avenues of research to help us understand midwifery in the wider society, to support midwives and communities of midwives, to support human beings in their every day lives, and to birth a better world.
Prof. Jeffery L. Nicholas (Providence College)
&
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
BU roadmap development workshop on digital healthcare technology
Participants show casing Prof Tamas Hickish’s slide on a future Digital Healthcare Institute
Twenty three academics and two colleagues from an SME came together in a work shop organised by Professor Hongnian Yu, Professor Tamas Hickish and Dr Carol Clark. The aim of the workshop was for colleagues to share their knowledge, expertise and experiences in the field of Digital technology.
Digital technology is transforming healthcare and there is a need for interdisciplinary teams at both local, national and international levels to collaborate in order to realise potential. At Bournemouth University leadership in digital healthcare technology is diluted by multiple groupings and departments associated with this strength. Therefore the aims of the workshop were to create a roadmap of research to integrate BU expertise and capacity. The aim was to capture envisioned future research requirements and act as a foundation for future research proposal development. Additionally, the workshop was to establish connections between the participating researchers and scope possible future research collaborations.
Thank you to Jason and Jayne for their help in getting this off the ground.
If anyone is interested in collaborating please contact:
Prof Hongnian Yu yuh@bournemouth.ac.uk; Prof Janet Dickinson jdickinson@bournemouth.ac.uk Dr Shuang Cang scang@bournemouth.ac.uk Dr Carol Clark cclark@bournemouth.ac.uk
HSS Writing Week 4th-8th January – How can Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit support you?
The Faculty of Health and Social Sciences is holding a Writing Week between 4th-8th January 2016 aimed at supporting staff to find time in their busy academic diaries to prioritise writing grant applications and papers for publication.
The Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit offers methodological and statistical collaboration for all healthcare researchers in the area. It supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across Bournemouth University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. It incorporates the Dorset office of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Design Service who offer free methodological support to researchers who are developing research ideas in the field of health and social care.
BUCRU will be supporting Writing Week in HSS by holding two drop-in sessions on Tuesday 5th January and Thursday 7th January 12-2pm in R508 Royal London House. We would also like to extend the invitation across the other Faculties for anyone who feels we may be able to support them. For those unable to attend the drop-in sessions, we would be delighted to arrange an alternative appointment.
Please see further information here, contact our adminstrator Louise Ward on 01202 961939 / bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or visit our website. We look forward to seeing you!
Suicide in India: Modelling data
The latest BU research publication used a modelling approach to suicide in India [1]. The paper ‘Time Trend of the Suicide Incidence in India: a Statistical Modelling’ is now online and freely available as it was published in an Open Access journal. The first author of this paper is BU Visiting Faculty Dr. Brijesh Sathian. The modelling resulted in some useful predictions of future risk of suicide at a population level, see for example: 10.12691.ajphr-3-5A-17.fig_1
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Reference:
Sathian, B. , De, A. , Teijlingen, E. V. , Simkhada, P. et al. (2015). Time Trend of the Suicide Incidence in India: a Statistical Modelling. American Journal of Public Health Research, 3(5A), 80-87. Online at: http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajphr/3/5A/17/
Professor Elizabeth Rosser elected to the Board of Directors of Sigma Theta Tau International
Congratulations to Professor Elizabeth Rosser, who has been elected to the Board of Directors of the prestigious nursing society Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI). Elizabeth is only one of two members on the STTI Board from outside of the USA. The Board is small with only 10 members in total.
Founded in 1922 STTI recognises the value of leadership, scholarship and excellence in nursing practice. In 1936, STTI became the first U.S. organization to fund nursing research. Today, STTI supports these values through its numerous professional development products and services that focus on the core areas of education, leadership, career development, evidence-based nursing, research, and scholarship.
Elizabeth was elected to the STTI Board at the 43rd Biennium of Sigma Theta Tau International in Las Vegas where she was representing the Phi Mu Chapter (England) as President. It is fitting recognition for Elizabeth’s work in establishing and leading the All England Chapter.
New midwifery publication PhD student Carol Richardson
Carol Richardson, joint Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and CMMPH’s PhD student, published her latest article ‘On running for supervisor’ in the most recent edition of The Practising Midwife. Carol as Clinical Academic Doctoral Midwife is conducting her thesis research on the topic of pregnancy and obesity. Her PhD is supervised by FHSS Prof. Vanora Hundley, Dr. Carol Wilkins & Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.
Congratulations!
November Café Scientific joint venture between FHSS & FMC
This month’s Café Scientific last week (Nov. 3rd) was run as a collaboration between CMMPH and the Media School. Café Scientific is a monthly event hosted at Café Boscanova for Bournemouth University.
This month’s debate was chaired by CMMPH’s Prof. Vanora Hundley (sitting in the centre of the photo taken by Naomi Kay). The debaters on either side were Dr. Ann Luce and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. Ann Luce is a well recognised media researcher and a Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Communication who argued against the motion “Fear in childbirth: is the media responsible?” Two opposing presentations generated a lively debate. The audience, however, was not with Ann and overwhelmingly voted in favour of the motion.
The next session of Café Scientific also has a health flavour as James Gavin will be talking on Tuesday December 1st on: Upwardly mobile: Why stair climbing helps us stay active.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
BU PhD student Sheetal Sharma’s publication in MIDWIFERY
Ms. Sheetal Sharma, PhD student in FHSS, published her latest paper in Midwifery (Elsevier) this week. This latest paper ‘Midwifery2030, a woman’s Pathway to health: What does it mean?’ is co-authored by a number of illustious midwifery researchers. The 2014 State of the World’s Midwifery report included a new framework for the provision of womancentred sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health care, known as the Midwifery2030 Pathway. The Pathway was designed to apply in all settings (high-, middle- and low income countries, and in any type of health system). This paper describes the process of developing the Midwifery2030 Pathway and explain the meaning of its different components, with a view to assisting countries with its implementation.
Sheetal is currently in her final year of a PhD on the evaluation of the impact of a maternity care intervention in Nepal.
Sheetal Sharma
Congratulations!!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Dr. Catherine Angell & Prof. Vanora Hundley (all CMMPH)
&
Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada (based at Liverpool John Moores University).
Reference:
ten Hoope-Bender, P. Lopes, S., Nove, A., Michel-Schuldt, M., Moyo, NT, Bokosi, M., Codjia, L., Sharma, S., Homer, CSE. (2015) Midwifery2013, a woman’s Pathway to health: What does it mean? Midwifery
BU featured by Kidney Research Charity
Bournemouth’s biomedical research features in this season’s Kidney Research UK ‘Update’ magazine (page 13). We share this issue with Lauren Laverne (sort of)!
KRUK is one of Britain’s leading kidney research charities and has awarded us an Innovation Award to identify genes that underpin the development of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in diabetes. The innovative part of the research is that it uses the fruit fly Drosophila – a novel tool in the research armoury that has helped us understand the genetic basis of human development and behaviour as well as cardiovascular disease. Research at Bournemouth will use unique genetic tools to establish how insulin signalling maintains the expression of evolutionarily conserved genes that regulate kidney function in both flies and humans. This simple model organism has enormous power to help us identify new pathways of clinical significance to CKD – a condition that affects and kills thousands of people every year in the UK.
If you are keen to learn more about the research – email me at phartley@bournemouth.ac.uk
NIHR Research Design Service Research Grant Writing Retreat
Do you have a great idea for research in health or social care?
Would your team benefit from protected time and expert support to develop your idea into a competitive funding application?
The NIHR Research Design Serice (RDS) are offering a unique opportunity for health and social care professionals across England to attend a week-long residential Grant Writing Retreat at Bailbrook House, Bath in June 2016. The purpose of the Retreat is to give busy professionals dedicated time to rapidly progress their research idea into fundable proposals. The Retreat will provide a supportive environment for teams of two or three people to develop high quality research proposals prior to application to national peer-reviewed funding streams. Find out more.
Don’t forget, your local branch of the NIHR Research Design Service is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) on the 5th floor of Royal London House. Feel free to pop in and see us, call us on 61939 or send us an email.
New CMMPH paper published from COST collaboration
This week saw publication of a new CMMPH paper in BMC Health Services Research. This methodological paper ‘Assessing the performance of maternity care in Europe: a critical exploration of tools and indicators‘ is a collaboration between several European maternity-care researchers based in Spain (Ramón Escuriet, Fatima Leon-Larios), Belgium (Katrien Beeckman), Northern Ireland (Marlene Sinclair), the UK (Lucy Firth, Edwin van Teijlingen), Switzerland ( Christine Loytved, Ans Luyben) and Portugal (Joanna White). Dr. Ans Luyben is also Visiting Faculty in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences at Bournemouth University. The underlying work was supported by the European Union through a COST Action called Childbirth Cultures, Concerns, and Consequences headed by Prof. Soo Downe at the University of Central Lancashire. COST is seen by the EU as an important tool in building and supporting the European Research Area (ERA).
This paper critically reviews published tools and indicators currently used to measure maternity care performance within Europe, focusing particularly on whether and how current approaches enable systematic appraisal of processes of minimal (or non-) intervention in support of physiological or “normal birth”.
The authors conclude: “The review identified an emphasis on technical aspects of maternity, particularly intrapartum care in Europe, rather than a consideration of the systematic or comprehensive measurement of care processes contributing to non-intervention and physiological (normal) birth. It was also found that the links between care processes and outcomes related to a normal mode of birth are not being measured.”
Professor Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Fear in childbirth: is the media responsible?
The media are often blamed for influencing society’s attitudes and views. In this month’s Café Scientific we will debate the impact of the mass media on women’s views of childbirth. The motion is: “Fear in childbirth: is the media responsible?”
Café Scientific is being hosted at Café Boscanova in Bournemouth on November 3rd at 19.30. The debate is open to the general public. It will be chaired by Prof. Vanora Hundley, Professor of Midwifery and the two proponents on either side of the debate are Dr. Ann Luce and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. Ann Luce is a well recognised media researcher and a Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Communication. Edwin van Teijlingen is a medical sociologist and Professor of Reproductive Health Research.
The debate will touch upon social perceptions and beliefs about childbirth can increase women’s requests for interventions, such as caesarean section, with long-term health implications for mothers and babies. This month’s Café Scientific will explore the role of the mass media in shaping these beliefs and identify whether media portrayals are responsible for rising rates of intervention.
Join us for an interactive debate on the impact of the mass media on women’s views of childbirth. The audience will be given the opportunity to vote on the motion before and after the debate.
These academics have written a paper on the topic of debate, a copy of which can be found here!
Open Access publishing does not have to be expensive!
As it is Open Access Week I would like to clarify one of the Open Access publishing myths. One of the common replies I receive from academics colleagues when raising Open Access publishing is that it is (too) expensive. This is, of course, true for many academic journals, but not all are expensive. Some don’t even charge a processing fee at all. Infamously, The Lancet Global Health charges an article processing fee of US $4750 upon acceptance of submitted research articles. More moderately priced scientific journals still charge anything up to about £1,500 per article.
Academic publishing has been big business for decades, and Open Access has rapidly become part of that business. While traditional book and magazine publishers struggle to stay afloat, research publishing houses have typical profit margins of nearly 40%, according CBCNEWS who quote Vincent Larivière from the University of Montreal’s School of Library & Information Science.
At the same time we see a sharp increase in so-called Predatory Publishers who have set up business for the sole reason to make money from Open Access publishing. They have not established or taken over academic journal for the greater good of the discipline or the dissemination of research findings to the widest possible audience. Unscrupulous publishers jump on the Open-Access bandwagon BU librarian Jean Harris recently shared an interesting article about Predatory Publishers (click here to read this!).
However, there are other format of Open Access. One of our more recent papers on research ethics was published in the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology which is an online Open Access journal that does not charge authors for publishing! Also the Journal of Asian Midwives, where FHSS PhD student Preeti Mahato recently had her article accepted, is hosted in Pakistan by Aga Khan University through its institutional repository eCommons. Publishing in this Open Access online journal is also free of charge. In other words, Open Access publishing does not have to be expensive!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
ESRC Social Sciences at BU
Get some of these interesting presentations in your diary now ‘Enhancing social life through global social research’:The social sciences at BU. For details click here!
Three sessions:
Part 1. Young people and development
Part 2. Ethnographies of religion & cultures
Part 3. Social science research in diverse communities
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Management of male obesity: The qualitative evidence (BMJ Open)
Yesterday BMJ Open published our latest article on the weight management in obese men, under the title A qualitative evidence synthesis on the management of male obesity.[1] To the best of our knowledge, this is the first synthesis of qualitative studies investigating men’s perceptions and experiences of weight management services. The interdisciplinary study was conducted between the three research centres at the University of Aberdeen, namely the Health Services Research Unit (HSRU), the Health Economics Research Unit (HERU) and the Rowett Institute of Health & Nutrition, the University of Stirling’s NMAHP Research Unit, the University of Edinburgh’s Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research & Policy (SCPHRP) and Bournemouth University.
Studies published between 1990 and 2012 reporting qualitative research with obese men, or obese men in contrast to obese women and lifestyle or drug weight management were included. The studies included men aged 16 years or over, with no upper age limit, with a mean or median body mass index of 30 kg/m2 in all settings. In total 22 studies were identified.
Health concerns and the perception that certain programmes had ‘worked’ for other men were the key factors that motivated men to engage with weight management programmes. Barriers to engagement and adherence with programmes included: men not problematizing their weight until labelled ‘obese’; a lack of support for new food choices by friends and family, and reluctance to undertake extreme dieting. Retaining some autonomy over what is eaten; flexibility about treats and alcohol, and a focus on physical activity were attractive features of programmes. Group interventions, humour and social support facilitated attendance and adherence. Men were motivated to attend programmes in settings that were convenient, non-threatening and congruent with their masculine identities, but men were seldom involved in programme design.
The paper concluded that men’s perspectives and preferences within the wider context of family, work and pleasure should be sought when designing weight management services. Qualitative research is needed with men to inform all aspects of intervention design, including the setting, optimal recruitment processes and strategies to minimise attrition. This paper grew out of the larger ROMEO study which was published in our full HTA (Health Technology Assessment) report, which is also freely available on line, click here! [2]
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Reference:
- Archibald, D., Douglas, F., Hoddinott, P., van Teijlingen, E., Stewart, F., Robertson, C., Boyers, D., Avenell, A. (2015) A qualitative evidence synthesis on the management of male obesity. BMJ Open 5: e008372. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2015-008372 http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/10/e008372.full.pdf+html
- Robertson, C., Archibald, D., Avenell, A., Douglas, F., Hoddinott, P., van Teijlingen, E., Boyers, D., Stewart, F., Boachie, C., Fioratou, E., Wilkins, D., Street, T., Carroll, P., Fowler, C. (2014) Systematic reviews of & integrated report on the quantitative, qualitative & economic evidence base for the management of obesity in men. Health Technology Assessment 18(35): 1-424. http://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/118180/FullReport-hta18350.pdf
BU professor invited to give key note at 2016 Dutch Midwifery Conference
Professor Edwin van Teijlingen (CMMPH) has been invited to present a key note speech at the Kennispoort Verloskunde conference in Utrecht, the Netherlands in January 2016. He will be speaking about ‘Dealing with risk in maternity care: the social versus medical model’. The presentation is based on a number of publications around the sociological topic of the medical/social model of childbirth. [1-3]
One of the ways sociologists analyse health and health care is in terms of a ‘medical’ versus a ‘social’ model, or in this field, a midwifery model. As pregnancy and birth are biological and physiological events which are very much embedded in a social and cultural setting, these are good examples to highlight the use and misuse of the medical and social model. Modern Western society has a slightly paradoxical view of pregnancy. On the one hand, the average woman in childbirth is not ill because pregnancy is not an illness. On the other hand, pregnant women are deemed to need a lot of health care throughout pregnancy and childbirth. Making the distinction between a medical and a social model of a social phenomenon is not exclusive to midwifery. Over the past decades researchers have pointed to the existence of a medical and social model in alcohol misuse, obesity, sex, eating disorders, infertility treatment, to name but a few phenomena.
References:
- van Teijlingen, E. (2005) A critical analysis of the medical model as used in the study of pregnancy and childbirth, Sociological Research Online, 10 (2) Web address: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/10/2/teijlingen.html.
- MacKenzie Bryers H., van Teijlingen, E. (2010) Risk, Theory, Social & Medical Models: critical analysis of the concept of risk in maternity care, Midwifery 26(5): 488-496.
- van Teijlingen, E. (2015) Sociology of Midwifery. In: Sociology for Midwives Deery, R., Denny, E. & Letherby, G. (eds.) Cambridge: Polity Press, 22-37.
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