Category / Featured academics

Congratulations to Dr. Pratik Adhikary

Congratulations to Dr. Pratik Adhikary on the fifth (and final paper) from his PhD in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences. This latest paper ‘Support networks in the Middle East & Malaysia: A qualitative study of Nepali returnee migrants’ experiences’ was recently published in the International Journal of Occupational Safety and Health [1].

This is one of the few studies focusing on the support networks of Nepali migrant worker in the Middle East and Malaysia.  The previous four papers have focused more on living conditions and working conditions of migrant workers as well as occupational health and safety abroad [2-5].

 

References:

  1. Adhikary P, van Teijlingen E. (2019) Support networks in the Middle East & Malaysia: A qualitative study of Nepali returnee migrants’ experiences’ – International Journal of Occupational Safety and Health  9(2): 31-35.
  2. Adhikary P, van Teijlingen E., Keen S. (2019) Workplace accidents among Nepali male workers in the Middle East and Malaysia: A qualitative study, Journal of Immigrant & Minority Health 21(5): 1115–1122. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10903-018-0801-y
  3. Adhikary P, Sheppard, Z., Keen S., van Teijlingen E. (2018) Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad, International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care 14(1): 96-105.   https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMHSC-12-2015-0052
  4. Adhikary, P., Sheppard, Z., Keen, S., van Teijlingen, E. (2017) Risky work: Accidents among Nepalese migrant workers in Malaysia, Qatar and Saudi, Health Prospect 16(2): 3-10.
  5. Adhikary P., Keen S., van Teijlingen, E. (2011) Health Issues among Nepalese migrant workers in Middle East. Health Science Journal 5: 169-175. www.hsj.gr/volume5/issue3/532.pdf

New midwifery paper CMMPH

Congratulations to Dr. Luisa Cescutti-Butler and Prof. Sue Way in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) on the publication of their latest research article.  This new paper called ‘The experience of student midwives being taught newborn infant physical examination (NIPE) as an extracurricular activity at a university in the UK: A descriptive survey study’ has been accepted by Nurse Education in Practice [1].  The paper went online pre-publication earlier this week.

Congratulations

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

The last Christmas present

“On the twelfth day of Christmas ….” the editor  of the Journal of Health Research Ms Sunanta Wongchalee informed us that our paper ‘Silicone use in Nepali transgender women: The hazards of beauty’ has been accepted for publication [1].  That is nice belated Christmas present to receive on January 6th and a good start of the New Year.  The paper is written by FHSS’s Dr. Pramod Regmi and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen with Sanjeev Raj Neupane in Nepal.  This is the second paper from this unique study on transgender women in Nepal, the first one was published last year in BMJ Open [2].

References:

  1. Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E.,, Neupane, S. (2020) Silicone use in Nepali transgender women: The hazards of beauty, Journal of Health Research (accepted)
  2. Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Neupane, S., Marahatta, S. (2019) Hormone use among Nepali transgender women: a qualitative study, BMJ Open 9: e030464. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2019-030464.

 

Nepal’s migrant workers & risk at the workplace

For nearly a decade BU researchers have published widely about the hazards and risk of Nepali migrant workers in Asia and the Middle East [1-9].  Despite the fact that most migrant workers end up in semi-skilled and unskilled jobs in their host countries, only a minority report poor working environments.  For example, in Pratik Adhikary’s PhD study in FHSS only just over a fifth of migrant workers reported that their work environment in the Middle East or Malaysia was poor or very poor [4].  This relatively high level of satisfaction appears to seems contradict reports in local media on the risks associated with Nepali migrants working abroad, especially focusing on the football world cup in Qatar [7], official reports that many hundreds of bodies of dead Nepali migrants return home every year [10], and the fact that many of these Nepali migrant workers end up doing the jobs the local populations finds too dirty, dangerous and demeaning (colloquially referred to as 3D-jobs).  Why do so many who travel abroad take to do risky, dirty and otherwise undesirable jobs, but still assess their working environment as not too bad?

More theoretical papers on the drivers of migration have referred to many interconnected factors and links [11-12].  Local drivers in Nepal include poverty, lack of employment opportunities, having a history of work-related migration, a growing culture of migration (i.e. it becomes more or less an expectation) and many more.  One local element that is perhaps too easily ignored is that many Nepali migrant workers would have ended up in dirty, dangerous and demeaning jobs at home too.  And the risk, on for example building sites in Nepal might be even greater than that in Qatar or elsewhere in the Middle East as some of the photos below illustrate.  These photos of an accident involving an external building lift were taken today on a building site in Kathmandu.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

  1. Adhikary P., Keen S., van Teijlingen E. (2011) Health Issues among Nepalese migrant workers in Middle East. Health Science Journal 5: 169-75. www.hsj.gr/volume5/issue3/532.pdf
  2. Adhikary, P, Sheppard, Z., Keen, S., van Teijlingen, E. (2017) Risky work: accidents among Nepalese migrant workers in Malaysia, Qatar & Saudi Arabia, Health Prospect 16(2): 3-10.
  3. Simkhada, P.P., Regmi, P.R.van Teijlingen, E., Aryal, N. (2017) Identifying the gaps in Nepalese migrant workers’ health and well-being: A review of the literature. Journal of Travel Medicine, 24 (4). https://doi.org/10.3126/nje.v9i3.25805
  4. Adhikary P, Sheppard, Z., Keen S., van Teijlingen E. (2018) Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad, International Journal of Migration, Health & Social Care 14(1): 96-105 https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMHSC-12-2015-0052
  5. Regmi, P.van Teijlingen, E.Mahato, P.Aryal, N., Jadhav, N., Simkhada, P., Zahiruddin, Q.S., Gaidhane, A. (2019) The Health of Nepali Migrants in India: A Qualitative Study of Lifestyles and Risks. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16 (19). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16193655
  6. Aryal, N., Regmi, P.R., Faller, E.M., van Teijlingen, E., Khoon, C.C., Pereira, A., Simkhada, P. (2019) Sudden cardiac death and kidney health related problems among Nepali migrant workers in Malaysia. Nepal Journal of Epidemiology, 9 (3), 788-791. https://doi.org/10.3126/nje.v9i3.25805
  7. Adhikary P, van Teijlingen E., Keen S. (2019) Workplace accidents among Nepali male workers in the Middle East and Malaysia: A qualitative study, Journal of Immigrant & Minority Health 21(5): 1115–1122. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10903-018-0801-y
  8. Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Mahato, P., Aryal, N., Jadhav, N., Simkhada, P., Syed Zahiruddin, Q., Gaidhane, A., (2019) The health of Nepali migrants in India: A qualitative study of lifestyles and risks, Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health 16(19), 3655; doi:10.3390/ijerph16193655.
  9. Regmi, P., Aryal, N., van Teijlingen, E., Adhikary, P. (2019) Nepali migrant workers and the need for pre-departure training on mental health: a qualitative study, Journal of Immigrant & Minority Health https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10903-019-00960-z.pdf
  10. Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of Nepal. (2018) Labour migration for employment: a status report for Nepal: 2015/2016 – 2016/2017. In. Kathmandu, Nepal: Ministry of Labour and Employment.
  11. Van Hear, N., Bakewell, O., Long. K. (2018) Push-pull plus: reconsidering the drivers of migration, Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies, 44:6, 927-944, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2017.1384135
  12. Iqbal, M., Gusman, Y. (2015) Pull and Push Factors of Indonesian women migrant workers from Indramayu (West Java) to work abroad. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(5): 167   https://www.mcser.org/journal/index.php/mjss/article/view/7893

New Year’s Eve Celebrations Without the Fizz? New Publication in BULR by Martine Hardwick

Martine Hardwick, Lecturer in Law and PhD Candidate in the Department of Humanities and Law, has published a timely commentary in the Bournemouth University Law Review looking ahead to a change in the law on 31 December 2019. On this date, opposite sex couples will finally be able to register their civil partnerships – which until now has been reserved for same sex couples.

However, this change in the law raises important questions for cohabiting couples. Despite longing for more protection and fairness from the law, co-habiting couples will not be presented with the opportunity as heterosexual couples to celebrate on New Year’s Eve. Instead, they will still be bound by the strict rules of formation and dissolution which mirror those of marriage.

Questioning whether the UK has missed an opportunity to provide more rights for cohabiting couples and highlighting a solution drawn from France in the form of Pacte Civil de Solidarité (PACS), Martine argues that learning lessons from the French legal system has to be the way forward in giving cohabitants protection while respecting their autonomy.

You can read Martine Hardwick’s full article here.

FHSS PhD student Orlanda Harvey in this month’s edition of HED Matters

PhD student Orlanda Harvey featured in this month’s edition of HED Matters as Early Career Researcher (ECR) with an article on ‘ECR Spotlight: From Social Work to Studying Steroids’ [1]HED Matters is an online magazine about the use of legal and illegal substances to enhance the human condition published biannually by the HED network. It brings together recent advances in drug research and experiences from both drug users and practitioners. This December 2019 issue focuses on sexual human enhancers.  Orlanda’s PhD research project addresses men’s experiences of recreational Anabolic Androgenic Steroid (AAS) use.

Earlier this year she also published a peer-reviewed paper form her research : “Support for people who use Anabolic Androgenic Steroids: A Systematic Scoping Review into what they want and what they access” in the Open Access journal BMC Public Health [2].  Since there is a paucity of research on support for people using Anabolic Androgenic Steroids (AAS), this latter article synthesised the available evidence.  Orlanda’s  PhD I the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences is being supervised by Dr Margarete Parrish, Dr Steven Trenoweth and Prof Edwin van Teijlingen.

 

References:

  1. Harvey, O., (2019) ECR Spotlight: From Social Work to Studying Steroids, HED Matters 2(2):16-19.
  2. Harvey, O., Keen, S., Parrish, M., van Teijlingen, E. (2019) Support for people who use Anabolic Androgenic Steroids: A Systematic Literature Review into what they want and what they access. BMC Public Health 19: 1024      https://rdcu.be/bMFon

CMMPH represented at The European Midwives Association (EMA) conference

EMA held its 6th triennial education conference in Malmo, Sweden from the 28-29 November 2019. Dr. Luisa Cescutti-Butler and Professor Sue Way had three abstracts accepted, two of which highlighted units of learning in our midwifery undergraduate programme (Evaluating the student experience of introducing newborn infant physical theory into a pre-registration midwifery programme in the UK and An evaluation of the student experience of peer facilitated learning) and a further one which was focused on a national collaborative project on grading practice (Developing a set of key principles to achieve consistency in assessing pre-registration midwifery competency in practice in the UK). The opening keynote speaker at the EMA Conference was Fran McConville – Midwifery Expert at WHO.  Fran presented on ‘Strengthening Quality Midwifery Education for Universal Health Coverage 2030’. Our takeaway message from her presentation was the following important statement: “When midwives are educated to international standards, and midwifery includes the provision of family planning……more than 80% of all maternal deaths, stillbirths and neonatal deaths could be averted”.

On the social side we were privileged to a hear a woman from the Sammi tribe in Sweden sing three traditional songs and a tradition adopted from Syracuse in Sicily which was the ‘Santa Lucia’ group of singers celebrating the start of Christmas who sang  Xmas Carols in Swedish. We were also able to network with some significant and contemporary midwifery leaders such as Gill Walton (CEO of the Royal College of Midwives), Fran McConville (WHO) and Grace Thomas, Reader and Lead Midwife for Education (Cardiff University).

BU professor visiting University of West Bohemia

The University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (Plzeň in the Czech Republic) invited Bournemouth University’s Professor Edwin van Teijlingen for an academic exchange visit with BU Visiting Faculty Ms Jillian Ireland (Professional Midwifery Advocate at Poole Maternity Hospital) .  Yesterday he presented a session about academic publishing to staff and students in the health faculty.  This afternoon his audience comprised sociology students in a session on ‘The medical/social model of childbirth’.  The two guests from Dorset were also shown round the obstetric wards of the two main maternity hospitals in the city of Pilsen.  The international visit was funded by the European Union!

Ms Ireland has shared two presentations with student midwives and staff sharing the development of maternity services in partnership with families in Dorset using the ‘Maternity Matters’ website (developed as early adopters of ‘Better Births’ –  Improving outcomes of maternity services in England – A five year forward view for maternity care). A particular focus on birth trauma was complemented with discussion of care and self-care of midwives.