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Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
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I was tempted to head this blog ‘Dr. Arnold only two months at BU and first paper published’, but I decide this would perhaps send the wrong message to other new BU staff. Rachel completed her PhD in CMMPH and this is paper is the third publication from her thesis. The other academic publications by Dr. Arnold on Afghanistan have been in BJOG and Social Science & Medicine [2-3].
References:
The month saw the publication of the latest collaborative paper between FHSS academics, BU Visiting Faculty and NHS clinicians. Our paper ‘Design errors in vital sign charts used in consultant-led maternity units in the United Kingdom’ [1] is available for a free download from Elsevier until August 28, 2019. Till then no sign up, registration or fees are required, click here.
The authors, as part of the Modified Obstetric Warning Score (MObs) Research Group, lead by BU Visiting Faculty Richard Isaac, argue that obstetric observation charts in the UK contain poor design features. These charts have common errors such as an inappropriate use of colour, poor alignment and axes labelling. Consequently, these design errors render charts difficult to use and could compromise patient safety. The article calls for an evidence-based, standardised obstetric observation chart, which should integrate ‘human factors’ and user experience.
This research team, earlier published ‘Vital signs and other observations used to detect deterioration in pregnant women: Analysis of vital sign charts in consultant-led maternity units’. [2]
References:
Once you have submitted you manuscript to a scientific journal, the editor has a (quick) look at it and sends it out for review. As I remind students and colleagues in training sessions on academic writing and publishing, the editor and the peer reviewers are academics like me and my colleagues who do both the editing and the reviewing, for free and over and above the day job. Being an editor and a reviewer are part of being any academic’s so-called scholarly activity. We are expected to do this as part of the wider scientific community for the benefit of our academic discipline(s).
When an academic receives an invitation to peer review, the journal will send you a copy of the paper’s abstract. On reading this abstract you then decide whether you wish to do the review. If the paper sounds interesting and it is in your field and you have the time you may volunteer to conduct a review. Once you have agreed you will get the full paper (or more likely you are send a link to the publisher’s website). The requirements of the review report varies between disciplines and often between journals. Some follow an informal structure, but others have a more formal approach, sometimes with scoring systems for sections of the paper.
Unfortunately, academics across the globe are experiencing an ‘epidemic’ of invitations to review for scientific journals. And I am not talking about so-called predatory publishers, i.e. journals and publishers that are only in it for the monetary gain, no I am talking about legitimate journals sending out invitations to review for them. Especially scholars with a few decent publications receive several emails a week from often high quality scientific journals. The photo of my email inbox shows three invitations in a row I received in the space of two hours last week (10th July), two are even from different Associate Editors for the same journal!
I would like to stress that doing peer reviews is very important. It is the backbone of academic publishing. Reviewing is part of our overall scholarly responsibility so we all do it, although some more than others. We all have are favourite journals to review for, perhaps because the journal is high quality, or we like to publish in it ourselves, because we know the editor, or our reviewing is recognised on websites like KUDOS. I would like to urge colleagues who don’t manage to review at least once a month to step up and agree to review a wee bit more often.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health
Preparing Practice-Based Research Outputs for Assessment (REF 2021)
Wednesday 17th July 11:00 – 15:30 on Talbot Campus
The focus of this session will be on :
By the end of this workshop you will have knowledge of the information which reviewers need in order assess research outputs, and how this should be presented to reviewers. You will also have made progress in developing the supporting information for outputs due to be submitted in future REF Mock exercises.
See here for more details and to book.
Research Outputs Writing Days
The Research Outputs Writing Days are very popular. These aim to give authors time and space with like minded individuals to produce publications , and provide insights and tips into how to manage writing time within daily routine.
The event on Tuesday 16th July is now fully booked, but the next is on Thursday 5th September. See here for to book and for details of other dates.
FHSS PhD student Alice Ladur has been awarded a small but very competitive grant by FfWG, the Funds for Women Graduates. FfWG is the trading name of the BFWG Charitable Foundation and the BFWG (British Federation of Women Graduates), which is affiliated to the International Federation of University Women.
Alice is based in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH). Her PhD research in Uganda is supervised by Prof. Vanora Hundley and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. Her thesis research has already resulted in an academic paper published in the international journal BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth, which Open Access.
When: Monday 9th September 2019, 12 noon – 1.30.
Bring lunch, we will provide the coffee/tea and cake
Where: B321, Bournemouth House,
Who: Lee-Ann Fenge and Tula Brannelly
Lee-Ann and Tula sit on the editorial board of the fabulous journal Ethics and Social Welfare. If you have not come across it, it is ten year old journal that specialises in ethics of social work, marginalised communities and theoretical developments in applied philosophy. The journal has a wide international readership, and is particularly popular in Australia and New Zealand. The journal has a commitment to new scholars, and wants to encourage new writers to publish alongside established authors. There is an under subscribed practice section that encourages papers from students, which has shorter contributions that focus on ethics and practice. This is an opportunity to co-create those journal articles that are looking for a home.
Tula and Lee-Ann can tell you more about the journal and how to write for it at this session. We are happy to discuss partial papers, advise on submissions and review processes and provide tailored information about publishing with the journal. Members of the editorial board are doing this in their universities to support capacity building and promote the journal.
If you know of local health and social care practitioners who would like to publish about ethics and practice, please invite them along too.
We look forward to seeing you there. No need to RSVP
BU is going through a process of re-commissioning its research centres this month. Existing centres, like ours CMMPH (the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health) were required to submit evidence of their contribution to BU’s research capacity to deliver our strategic plan BU2025.
This process was an interesting stock-take exercise and offered an opportunity to reflect on our successes. Our friends and associates will be aware of some of our work through our collaborations, joint publications, posts on BU’s award-winning Research Blog as well as our newsletter three times a year. The phrase commonly heard on the television programme Love Island, “You’re my type on paper”, reflects the notion here that a description on paper never quite reflects reality. The same goes for the research centre description of CMMPH, on a structured application form some of the subtle success can be overlooked. First of all, being a research centre is the main function of CMMPH, but certainly not the only one.
CMMPH is much more a university centre in the sense of FUSION, bringing together and creating a synergetic effect between research, Education and Practice. This FUSION enables research to be meaningful and has the ability to impact on the student experience through education as well as ‘real life’ issues and challenges in midwifery practice. This notion of being more than a research centre is reflected in our newsletters which always have sections on Research, Education and Practice.
To highlight this synergetic effect of being a properly fused centre, CMMPH has built a reputation for developing innovative student-led clinics: i) Student Midwife integrated Learning Environment (SMiLE) postnatal clinic in collaboration with Portsmouth NHS Trust; and ii) Newborn infant feeding clinic, in collaboration with the AECC University College. These clinics are underpinned by a growing body of evidence (=Research) from studies undertaken within CMMPH, which identifies their effectiveness in terms of a unique learning environment (=Education) to offer women better maternity care (=Practice). Both student-led clinics are being evaluated by PhD students at BU, one being match-funded with Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and the other a self-funded chiropractic student.
On a different note, in the past four years our academics have been involved in organising five international conferences. CMMPH held two, high profile, international conferences focusing on research in midwifery education (2015, 2018); it organised the BNAC (British-Nepal Academic Council) conference at Bournemouth University in April 2017 (https://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2017/03/24/nepal-conference-at-bu/ and CMMPH staff co-organised a conference in India on Mixed-Methods Research at the Mahatma Gandhi University (2019), and an education conference in Nepal (2018). Prof. Steve Tee, FHSS Executive Dean and National Teaching Fellow, gave a key note speech at the 2018 International Conference on ‘Challenges and Prospects of Quality Education in Nepal in Federalism Era in Nepal’.
CMMPH was on the BU Research Blog this week celebrating its latest media and midwifery publication (to see click here!). This paper is paper of a growing body of interdisciplinary research at BU across faculties and across the UK (see photo left). In addition last month Dr. Chris Chapleo from the Faculty of Management submitted a grant application to the ESRC under the title ‘Rebranding childbirth: understanding the role of marketing in influencing uptake of health services’, a joint application with CMMPH staff (Hundley & van Teijlingen) and Dr. Ann Luce in the Faculty of Media & Communication.
CMMPH is internationally recognised for its midwifery and maternity care research, education and publications. It has strong international links which includes active partnership agreements (MoA) with the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) in Nepal and University of Texas Health Science Centre, School of Nursing in the USA.
Did I mention that CMMPH academics sit on the editorial boards of (or are editors of) all top four world-leading midwifery research journals: Birth, Midwifery, Women and Birth and BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth. Not only is this unique in the UK, as no other midwifery research group can claim this, it is also unique at BU as no other research centre can claim this kind of global coverage! And, last but not least CMMPH staff can claim to have written the eighth most quoted article in the international journal Midwifery (out if 2,626 published papers over the past 35 years).
All in all, on paper, 100% a centre to be proud of.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
This week Evidence-Based Midwifery published the latest article from the BU team working on the portrayal of midwifery and maternity in the media. This qualitative paper ‘Changing the narrative around childbirth: whose responsibility is it?’ is co-authored by a multidisciplinary team including the disciplines of Midwifery, Sociology and Media.[1] The lead author is Prof. Vanora Hundley in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), one of longest established centres at BU, her co-authors are Dr. Ann Luce in the Faculty of Media & Communication, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen director of CMMPH and Sophie Edlund, who was based at BU at the time of the research but who is now at Malmö University in Sweden.
The paper addresses societal’s interest in all aspects of childbirth, which is reflected in both social and traditional media. Stories often focus on dramatic, risky and mostly unrealistic events; misrepresenting childbirth and maternity care professionals. The authors raised the question: “Whose responsibility is it to ensure accurate representations of childbirth?” Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with ten midwives working in the UK some working in the NHS, some in Higher Education or independent practice, the authors distilled four separate but inter-related themes:
(1) not my responsibility;
(2) fear of retribution;
(3) power balance; and
(4) social media.
The themes sat within two wider societal issues that reflect the current challenges for midwifery, these were (a) the ongoing battle between the social and the medical models of childbirth and (b) the impact of gender. Finding that midwives fear the media resonates with experiences from a number of countries and professional groups. There is a need to change media discourse in both fictional and factual representations of childbirth and midwives have a critical role to play in this, but to do this they need to equip themselves with the skills necessary to engage with the media. Guidelines on responsible media reporting could ensure that media producers portray pregnancy, midwifery and maternity care as naturally as possible.
This paper is paper of a growing body of interdisciplinary research at BU across faculties, which had already resulted in six earlier publications. [2-7] In addition last month Dr Chapleo from the Faculty of Management submitted a grant application to the ESRC under the title ‘Rebranding childbirth: understanding the role of marketing in influencing uptake of health services’, a joint application with CMMPH staff (Profs. Hundley & van Teijlingen) and the Media School (Dr. Luce).
References:
A few times a month ResearchGate alerts me that another paper has reached a miles stone of so having been read some many times. Today the ResearchGate message is about 600 reads for our paper ‘Research Methods Coverage in Medical and Health Science Curricula in Nepal’. [1] This paper was a report on research methods teaching in health-related Higher Education (HE) courses in the health and medical field in Nepal. This paper originates from a DelPHE (Round 4), British Council award. Our study ‘Partnership on Improving Access to Research Literature for HE Institutions in Nepal’ (PARI Initiative) was a collaboration between the oldest university in Nepal, namely Tribhuvan University and two UK university of which BU was one. A further paper from the PARI Initiative was published a year later. [2] The lead author of both papers in BU Visiting Faculty Prof Padam Simkhada, who is Professor of International Public Health at the Public Health Institute at Liverpool John Moores University.
The Nepal Journal of Epidemiology is a full Open Access journal which means anybody across the globe can access it for free. The Nepal Journal of Epidemiology is part of Nepal Journals Online (NepJOL) a service established by INASP in 2007, which provides online publication of Nepali journals.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
References:
Congratulations to Bournemouth University’s Professor Colin Pritchard, Honorary Doctor of Science Anne Silk and their Southampton colleague Lars Hansen who recently published the paper ‘Are rises in Electro-Magnetic Field in the human environment, interacting with multiple environmental pollutions, the tripping point for increases in neurological deaths in the Western World?’ This paper in Medical Hypotheses (published by Elsevier) is a worrying analysis of the effects of (recent) technological progress on our health. If this paper does not make you worry , at least remember one message: “No mobile phones in trouser pockets or under your pillow as you’re being bathed in 450Mhz.”
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Reference:
Pritchard, C., Silk, A., Hansen, L. (2019) Are rises in Electro-Magnetic Field in the human environment, interacting with multiple environmental pollutions, the tripping point for increases in neurological deaths in the Western World? Medical Hypotheses 127: 76-83.
Prof. Bhimsen Devkota will be presenting our paper ‘Challenges and Dilemmas in Conducting Conflict Research During Armed Violence: Lessons Learnt from Fieldwork in Nepal’ at a conference tomorrow. The two-day Nepal Research Conference on Peace, Justice and Inclusive Society will be held in Lalitpur, Nepal. Bhimsen was my PhD student at the University of Aberdeen and he is now based at the leading government university in Nepal, Tribhuvan University. He studied the role and motivations of Maoist health workers in Nepal who were part of the insurgency against the government /king (1995-2006). We published four papers on his exciting fieldwork [1-4].
During the conflict the Maoist recruited their own health workers to treat combatants (Bandage) and to provide limited services to the communities under their control. However, there was no systematic information on numbers, their abilities/ skills, experience and career motivations and their integration strategies in the subsequent peace process. During his fieldwork in rebel controlled areas Bhimsen had to use all his social and emotional skills to get the research done. He is the only PhD student I have ever supervised who was put a gun to his head during his fieldwork. Our paper is highlighting some of these real-life research issues, including gaining trust and having an identity acceptable to the research participants.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternity & Perinatal Health)
References:
Edwin will be sharing a platform with two Bournemouth University Visiting Faculty, both based at Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: Prof. Minesh Khashu, Consultant Neonatologist and Clinical Director Wessex Maternity Children and Young People Clinical Network and Ms. Jillian Ireland, Professional Midwifery Advocate.
References:
This week saw the publication of ‘Perceived barriers to accessing Female Community Health Volunteers’ (FCHV) services among ethnic minority women in Nepal: A qualitative study’ [1]. This article in the Open Access journal PLoS ONE highlights the key role volunteers play in delivering health services to minorities/the poorest people, especially in low-income countries like Nepal.
This paper studies community health workers in Nepal, who are known as Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs). To address this issue, we conducted a qualitative study to explore perceived barriers to accessing maternal and child healthcare services among ethnic minority groups in two different parts of Nepal with varying degrees of access to local healthcare centres. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty FCHVs, 26 women service users and 11 paid local health workers. In addition, 15 FCHVs participated in four focus group discussions.
A thematic analysis of the data identified five major themes underlying barriers to accessing available maternal and child healthcare services by ethnic minority groups. These themes include: a) lack of knowledge among service users; b) lack of trust in volunteers; c) traditional beliefs and healthcare practices; d) low decision-making power of women; and e) perceived indignities experienced when using health centres. The paper concluded that community health programmes should focus on increasing awareness of healthcare services among ethnic minority groups, and the programmes should involve family members (husband and mothers-in-law) and traditional health practitioners. Both the FCHVs and local healthcare providers should be trained to communicate effectively in order to deliver respectful care among ethnic minorities if we want to achieve universal healthcare coverage for maternal and child health in low- and -middle income countries.
The paper is based on the PhD research conducted by Dr. Sarita Panday in ScHARR at the University of Sheffield. Dr. Panday is currently affiliated with the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Centre (APARC) at Stanford University in the USA. Her co-authors are Prof. Paul Bissell at the University of Huddersfield, FHSS’s Visiting Prof. Padam Simkhada at the Liverpool John Moores University and BU Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. This is the second paper from Dr. Panday’s excellent thesis, the first paper was also published in an Open Access journal BMC Health Services Research [2].
References:
The journal Women and Birth (by Elsevier) published the latest academic paper by Dr. Alison Taylor today. Alison’s paper ‘The therapeutic role of video diaries: A qualitative study involving breastfeeding mothers’ had been online as a pre-publication for a while but today in appeared officially in print [1]. Alison is a Senior Lecturer in Midwifery in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) and this scientific paper is part of her completed PhD research project.
The paper is based on a large number of video clips recorded by new mothers. The total recording time exceeded 43 hours. This paper focuses on one theme, the therapeutic role of the camcorder in qualitative research. Four subthemes are discussed highlighting the therapeutic impact of talking to the camcorder: personifying the camcorder; using the camcorder as a confidante; a sounding board; and a mirror and motivator. Dr. Taylor and colleagues conclude that frequent opportunities to relieve tension by talking to “someone” without interruption, judgement or advice can be therapeutic. Further research needs to explore how the video diary method can be integrated into standard postnatal care to provide benefits for a wider population.
This is the second paper originating from Alison’s PhD research, the first one appeared in Midwifery (also published by Elsevier) [2]. Dr. Taylor’s PhD thesis was supervised by Prof. Emerita Jo Alexander, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (in CMMPH) and Prof. Kath Ryan at the University of Reading.
[Drawing of Breastfeeding Woman by Allison Churchill.]
REFERENCES:
The Spring newsletter of the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) is available online now, click here! Also you can read more about our Centre on our webpages. CMMPH embraces the notion of FUSION as a key Bournemouth University centre. This is illustrated in each newsletter which always has sections on the three segments of Fusion: Education, Practice and Research.
Thursday 6th June 09:30 – 16:30
A whole day REF impact case study writing retreat, consisting of a two hour presentation on case study writing with the rest of the day spent writing. The trainer will be on hand the whole day to provide 1:1 support and guidance. Attendees are required to have an impact case study to write and work on; own laptop is required for the session.
The writing retreat will provide guidance on:
If you can’t make the retreat on 6th June, there is another scheduled for 4th July.
See here for more details and to book.
This workshop, delivered by publishing expert Patrick Brindle, aims to give participants a range of practical approaches to writing about methods in your research bids.
He uses a range of exercises. The workshop covers around 20 writing strategies, and provides more clarity and power to the often-difficult challenge of writing about methods. The course also looks at common mistakes and how to avoid them when writing about methods. The focus throughout is on building confidence and increasing your repertoire of writing strategies and skills.
Tuesday June 4th 09:30 – 16:30
See here for more information and to book on.
Please contact Alexandra Pekalski if you have any queries.