Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI) held its third open meeting at the university on 14th May, with this year’s theme being dementia friendly environments. The day was well attended by practitioners, family carers, the general public and people with dementia. It started with a lovely buffet lunch sponsored by Alzheimer Research UK, providing an opportunity for delegates to network and to browse the information stands hosted by themselves and BUDI Ph.D. students. The open meeting was formally opened by Professor Gail Thomas who praised the innovative work being carried out by the BUDI team. Delegates then heard presentations from Dr Fiona Kelly on dementia friendly design, Dr Jan Wiener on the use of eye tracking technology to explore navigation skills and difficulties, Kathrin Büter on using computer technology to support dementia friendly design in hospitals. This session closed with a presentation by architect Niall McLaughlin on his work with communities and older people to design care homes that meet everyone’s needs and are inspirational, therapeutic spaces. The final part of the day involved a question and answer session where delegates and presenters discussed some of the issues raised during the day including how to ensure that the concept of good design filters down to those commissioning, designing and using buildings that people with dementia also use. This successful event is sure to have got people thinking and sharing some of what they heard and we look forward to holding similar events in the future.
Category / REF Subjects
Übersetzen: Translation of the MGI in German

The Mother-Generated Index (MGI) is a validated tool to assess postnatal quality of life. It was originally designed and tested by Dr. Andrew Symon (http://nursingmidwifery.dundee.ac.uk/staff-member/dr-andrew-symon) at the University of Dundee. This instrument is usually administered several weeks or months after birth and correlates with indices of postpartum mood states and physical complaints. The instrument had not been translated into German before or validated for use among German-speaking women, nor have the results of the tool been assessed specifically for the administration directly after birth. Our recent paper (Susanne Grylka-Baeschlin, Edwin van Teijlingen, Kathrin Stoll and Mechthild Gross) in Midwifery describes the systematic translation process of the MGI into German and to assess the convergent validity of the German version of the instrument directly after birth and seven weeks postpartum
Susanne Grylka-Baeschlin, as part of a European COST Action, has spent time at Bournemouth University’s Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health. Susanne Grylka-Bäschlin is a Swiss midwife based at the Hannover Medical School, Germany, who studies cultural differences in postnatal quality of life among German-speaking women in Switzerland and Germany.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
IT as a Utility Community conference
As part of the community, BUCSU is supporting Southampton University with this UK network.
IT as aUtility: Network+ community conference
Thursday 19th – Friday 20th June 2014
This will be a two-day presentation and reflection on the achievements so far and the future plans of the RCUK-funded IT as a Utility Network+. The event will be an opportunity to further examine the role of IT utilities in the digital economy both now and in the future.
If you are interested in booking onto this event, please book your place via Eventbrite.
In addition to this, BU will be hosting a ‘Data as a utility and analytics as a service’ workshop at the Executive Business Centre on Monday 9th June from 12pm – 6pm.
Getting on Board with the Bournemouth and Poole Sustainable Food Cities Partnership:

Bournemouth and Poole Borough Councils were recently successful in a collaborative bid to become one of only six UK cities, to receive matched funding and support from the UK Sustainable Food Cities Network, over a 3 year period. BU is one of the funding partners; a number of BU staff are already contributing to what is an exciting development for the region.
The Sustainable Food Cities Network is an alliance of public, private and third sector organisations committed to promoting sustainable food. The Network comprising the Soil Association, Food Matters and Sustain aims to help people and places to share challenges, explore practical solutions and develop best practice in all aspects of sustainable food (Sustainable Food Cities 2014).
There are now opportunities for others to be involved. We have identified a number of potential project areas (at undergraduate and Master’s level) where students in particular, might wish to participate and where further research would support the work of the Partnership. Potential topic areas relate to the broad range of aspects related to sustainable food and drink including: the impacts of climate change, food security and food waste, food poverty, health and nutrition, well-being, food tourism, Fairtrade, community growing, the conversion of grey to green spaces, local food production, food marketing and distribution.

Information Session: If you are interested in finding out more, an information session on the Partnership and the student project opportunities will be held on Thursday June 19th from 2.00 – 3.30 pm in TAG31.
A more detailed list of the potential projects is available upon request. If you would like a copy of the list or you are unable to attend the information session and would like to discuss any of these potential projects or other ways that BU students could assist and be engaged with the Sustainable Food Cities Partnership, please contact one of the following BU staff and partnership members:
Dawn Birch – The Business School – dbirch@bournemouth.ac.uk
Chris Shiel – School of Applied Sciences – cshiel@bournemouth.ac.uk
Jill Quest – The Media School – jquest@bournemouth.ac.uk
Media School Academics Join EU CyberPark Project
The EU COST funded CyberPark project brings together participants from 21 countries to explore how ICT can help attract more users to engage with public spaces more efficiently, enhancing their health and wellbeing. With the emergence of social media, wearable technologies and devices such as Google Glass, a future where technology is embedded in the environment and where landscapes respond to the people who pass through them may no longer be just science fiction fantasy. The CyberPark project will explore how nature and the digital can be brought closer together, drawing on the expertise of urban planners, architects, anthropologists and researchers from the arts and humanities.
Bronwen Thomas, Sue Thomas and Sam Goodman from the Media School’s Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community will all be contributing to the four-year project from May 2014. Bronwen Thomas is Director of the Centre and an Associate Professor in the Media School. She has published widely on new media narratives and organized the Location-based Storytelling symposium here at BU in 2012. Sue Thomas is a Visiting Fellow in the Media School, and recently published a book on Technobiophilia (Bloomsbury, 2013) exploring the relationship between nature and cyberspace. She is currently developing ideas around digital well-being. Sam Goodman is Lecturer in Linguistics in the Media School, with research interests in Medical Humanities and literary representations of space, place and landscape.
You can read more about the project on Sue Thomas’s new Wired Well-being column for The Conversation at https://theconversation.com/cyberparks-will-be-intelligent-spaces-embedded-with-sensors-and-computers-26837
Full details of the COST action can be found at
http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/tud/Actions/TU1306
BUDI Open Public Meeting – 14 May 2014
This is a reminder that the BUDI Open Public meeting is tomorrow (14 May) there are still a few spaces available.
This year’s event focuses on dementia friendly environments, how design helps to support people living with dementia. The hospital environments and the philosphy of dementia friendly environments will be covered by external speakers.
To book your free place please go to eventbrite http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/budi-open-meeting-dementia-friendly-care-environments-tickets-9876528964
Understanding Crowdsourcing and CCTV surveillance
Staff, students and members of the public are invited to join us for the next Cyber Security Seminar…
‘Understanding Crowdsourcing and CCTV surveillance’
Tuesday, 27th May
Coyne Lecture Theatre
4pm – 5pm
Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) has many different uses but is often considered an archetypal surveillance technology. These infrastructures generate large amounts of data; so much so that the technique of crowdsourcing has recently been applied to the problem of searching for abnormalities in live surveillance video; the premise being that many inexpert watchers are cheaper but as efficient as a small number of experienced security experts. However, the merits of crowdsourcing watchers of surveillance video are largely unknown.
In this talk Dr. Paul Dunphy will describe exemplar infrastructures of this type, and two user studies that assess the performance of the watchers of CCTV video online. The results prompt a discussion regarding the effectiveness of using crowdsourcing in such contexts, and the role such infrastructures can play in society.
Speaker Bio: Paul is a postdoctoral researcher in the Culture Lab at Newcastle University. He is interested in multi-disciplinary approaches to understand and design security and privacy technologies.
If you would like to join us for this presentation, please book your place via Eventbrite.
Latest HSC paper in Birth
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
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
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
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!
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:
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
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”.
Latest CEMP Research Bulletin

Here is the updated CEMP Research / Innovation bulletin for May / June 2014. CEMP bulletin May June 2014
Please contact Julian or Richard in CEMP if you are interested in any of the funding opportunities here, or have other ideas for collaborative projects with CEMP.
Seminars, hospitals, falls, and a cuddle with a koala
Earlier this month I was invited back to Australia for another research visit to Monash University. I was invited to visit Melbourne last year for a research visit and to present at a one-day seminar. This was along with two other UK colleagues from Birmingham and York, who also specialise in falls prevention (one is a geriatrician and the other a nurse). The three of us were invited back and this time we presented at two one-day seminars.
The seminars
Day 1: The first day was focused on falls prevention among older people. I was invited to give two presentations, one on an area of long-term interest to me; increasing older people’s uptake and adherence to falls prevention interventions. The other was to present findings on a pilot project funded by all the RCUK’s and departments of health (led by the MRC), on the topic of outdoor falls. This led to some interesting discussions, and it was also useful to hear other presentations from leading researchers from Sydney.
Day 2: The second day focused on patient safety. Some challenging issues were discussed such as learning lessons from mid-Staffs. There was also some discussion of preventive medicine, and I was invited to lead a workshop on behaviour change techniques to increase participation in physical activity interventions for the prevention of falls.
Research visit
Before the two one-day seminars, we had some engaging discussions sharing about the research being conducted at our respective institutions. This included work that will lead to an international position paper on how to advance the science of falls prevention research. We also visited a local hospital whereby we were invited for a Question Time type meeting, with the three of us UK visitors plus our host (Dr Anna Barker, Monash University) were quizzed on falls prevention in the hospital setting(!). This proved stimulating and interesting that the same issues being tackled over here are similar to what is experienced at the other side of the world. We also had the excitement of the first participant to be recruited into the RESPOND trial in which I am a collaborator. The RESPOND trial is a multi-site randomised controlled trial that will test the effectiveness of a patient-centred programme to prevent secondary falls in older people presenting to the emergency department with a fall. The protocol paper should be published in the near future…
And the koala…
Before heading back to the UK I managed to get 24 hours in Adelaide to visit a colleague who visited the UK back in around 2007. We’ve kept in touch over the years as her PhD was on a similar theme to mine around the psychological barriers to older people’s participation in falls prevention interventions. We managed to get to a zoo and queue up for the much awaited cuddle with a koala. This was fab; like cuddling a teddy bear that is alive! My hosts also kindly arranged for a fish and chip meal on the beach before catching the flight home (felt a terribly British thing to do!).
On the whole this was a good visit to do. It led to several useful discussions that I have taken back with me that will shape my research direction, both in the immediate future with my current grant proposal writing and subsequent proposals. It was also useful to strengthen the collaboration between our institutions and engage in useful dialogue with practitioners about the issues I as a researcher am trying to help them overcome.
Dr Samuel Nyman
BUDI and Psychology Research Centre
More about academic writing

Earlier this year (13th Jan. 2014) we wrote a BU Research Blog under the title ‘Writing about academic publishing’. We can now add two further contributions this body of work. The first article in Nepal Journal of Epidemiology offers some advice on how to construct a title for an academic article. The authors (BU Professors Edwin van Teijlingen and Vanora Hundley; BU Visiting Faculty Ms. Jillian Ireland and Dr. Padam Simkhada and international collaborator Dr. Brijesh Sathian) have a wealth of experience reviewing papers and all have experience as editor board members and/or editors. The authors are associated the editorial boards of the many journals, including: Birth, BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth, Medical Science, Nepal Journal of Epidemiology, Essentially MIDIRS, Sociological Research Online, Hellenic Journal of Nursing Science, Midwifery and Asian Journal of Health Sciences. In our joint capacity as reviewers and editors we have seen some great and some awful titles. The paper in Nepal Journal of Epidemiology is an attempt to improve the appropriateness and usefulness of titles chosen by budding authors.
The second addition is an editorial in the international journal Midwifery published by Elsevier. Together with HSC Visiting Faculty Prof. Debra Bick we address the question: ‘Who should be an author on your academic paper?’ Still too often we hear about worrying stories from fellow academic s and postgraduate students about inappropriate behaviour related to authorship of academic journal papers. The Midwifery Editorial advises academics to discuss authorship and authorship order early on in the writing process. At the same time, it highlights that authorship ‘rules’ or ‘traditions’ can vary between different academic disciplines. Thus when working in a multidisciplinary team, issues of authorship of any papers which arise out of the study should be discussed before problems or concerns arise.
We would like to take this opportunity point our readers to another interesting and useful BU Research Blog written by Shelly Maskell under the title: ‘How to design a completely uninformative title’ (7th Feb. 2014).
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen & Prof. Vanora Hundley
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health, Bournemouth University
References:
- van Teijlingen, E., Ireland, J., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P., Sathian, B. (2014) Finding the right title for your article: Advice for academic authors, Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 4(1): 344-347.
- van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Bick, D. (2014) Who should be an author on your academic paper? Midwifery 30: 385-386.
Highest marks for International Fellowship for Midwives research in Nepal
In 2013 Wellbeing of Women joined the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) to offer the International Fellowship for Midwives (worth £20,000). Their first ever recipient was BU Lesley Milne with her supporting team. Lesley is a Senior Lecturer in Midwifery based at BU’s Portsmouth Branch Campus and her proposal set out to undertake a research project to explore barriers to facility birth in Nepal.
Apart from Lesley herself the BU team comprises Vanora Hundley, Professor in Midwifery, Edwin van Teijlingen, Professor of Reproductive Health Research, and two HSC Visiting Faculty members, namely Dr. Padam Simkhada, Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, and Ms. Jillian Ireland, Community Midwife NHS Poole Hospitals.

Small commercial pharmacy outside local hospital (Nepal)
At the end of March 2014 we submitted the final report on the research to Well-Being of Women and the RCM and this report gained an ‘A’ in their scoring system. Last week at the feedback meeting in Well-Being of Women’s office in London Lesley presented some of her key findings which she illustrated with some of her photographs. The comments from those round the table were that the topic was well researched and that the qualitative research findings could help focus the funders in their future work.
Having reached the dissemination stage, we are planning scientific papers as well as a feedback session in Kathmandu (in September this year). Currently we are working on two academic papers, one is in an advanced stage approaching submission and the other is just passed its draft stage.
Lesley Milne, Vanora Hundley, Jillian Ireland (Visiting Faculty),Edwin van Teijlingen & Padam Simkhada (Visiting Faculty)
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health
School of Health & Social Care
HSC Writing Retreat: Freedom to write
Today saw the first of two Writing Retreat workshops organised by HSC. The intensive writing day was led by Ms. Caroline Brimblecombe. Caroline is a Norwich-based training consultant and project manager, who leads workshops in the technique of freewriting, as well as on academic writing. She holds an MA in Public Policy from the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, and spent many years as a public sector manager and policy analyst. She used a combination of exercises based on notions of creative writing and free writing. The Writing Retreat offered advice and a dedicated space and time to practice academic writing. Today’s intensive session was attended by the first cohort of HSC academics, who considered some of their challenges to writing and some of the rewards. Not surprisingly there were more challenges than rewards, and the former included lack of time, high workload and interruptions. Personal satisfaction and a sense of achievement scored high on the list of rewards.
Caroline suggested the participants considered ‘Serial Writing’. This is the notion that you write regularly, hence the ‘serial’. The idea is to create a flow of writing to help you generate content as well as a habit of writing. This will be a valuable tool for workshop participants who have committed to working with a mentor to produce a manuscript for submission by the end of July.
For those motivated staff members who would like to have a go at this. The next session is planned for the 28th of May and there are still a few free places available. Please contact Jo Temple if you would like to sign up.
We both participated ourselves and we would highly recommend this Writing Retreat!
Edwin van Teijlingen & Vanora Hundley
CMMPH