Tagged / BU research

Supporting you to support students: a survey

Centre for Excellence in Learning

As part of the Fair Access Research project we would like academic staff to complete this survey to help us understand how students are supported at BU. The area we are focusing on is support for students’ health and wellbeing, as this is becoming increasingly important for students and staff in universities. Your responses to the survey will help us find ways to support you in supporting students to succeed at BU.

hands

Questions of access to higher education do not end (or start) at the university gates. Widening participation involves an engagement with long and complex cycles of learning.

The Fair Access Research project seeks to understand the experiences of students from different backgrounds in order to develop practical solutions to enhance outcomes and maximise opportunities. This includes understanding how students are supported at BU.

In the words of Vincent Tinto: “Access without support is not opportunity”. If we are committed to opening up higher education, we must be committed to supporting all students to succeed across the university learning journey.

A recent survey by the NUS found that 78 per cent of students said they experienced mental health issues over the last year. More than half of the students said that they sought no support.

In a report to HEFCE by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) and Researching Equity, Access and Partnership (REAP) it was found that students with mental health and social/communicative impairments (such as autism) have doubled since 2008-09. These significant increases are impacting the structures of support that institutions have in place, including academic support

Living with challenging health and wellbeing needs, and not always seeking support, shapes whether or not you stay and impacts upon attainment. It re-orients (or, perhaps, disorients) your whole student experience. And that includes your interactions with academic staff.

With all this in mind, we are surveying academic staff to find out more about how they understand their role in supporting students’ health and wellbeing.

We have developed a short survey for you all to complete. It should take no more than 10 minutes to complete and we hope that it will lead us to develop ways to support you with your students:

To complete the survey click here

Please complete the survey and share with your colleagues from across the university. Your responses will help us to find ways to support you to better support your students, particularly those most in need.

If you want any more information about the survey please email Alex on awardrop@bournemouth.ac.uk

For more information about the Fair Access Research project please email the Principal Investigators, Dr Vanessa Heaslip (vheaslip@bournemouth.ac.uk) and Dr Clive Hunt (chunt@bournemouth.ac.uk)

New paper by Dr. Sarah Collard in Psychology of Sport & Exercise

Publishing, writing

Collard + Marlow 2016Dr. Sarah Collard (based in FHSS) had her article “It’s such a vicious cycle”: Narrative accounts of the sportsperson with epilepsy accepted in the scientific journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise. [1]  The paper, co-authored with Caroline Marlow, addresses the issues of the psychosocial barriers and benefits of exercising for the sportsperson/people with epilepsy (SWE). Her qualitative research presents the narratives of SWE over time and as a result, offers a deeper understanding of the psychosocial impact of exercising with epilepsy.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

Collard, S.S., Marlow, C. (2016) “It’s such a vicious cycle”: Narrative accounts of the sportsperson with epilepsy, Psychology of Sport and Exercise 24: 56-64.

  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029216300073

Presentation by PhD student Preeti Mahato Jan 27th.

international, PG research, student research

On Wednesday Jan. 27th CMMPH PhD student Preeti Mahato will present her PhD research ideas under the title “Addressing quality of care and equity of services available at birthing centres to improve maternal and neonatal health in western Nepal.”  Her presentation will be held at the Lansdowne Campus at 13.00 in room 301 in Royal London House.

IMG_6459Preeti’s research focuses on birthing centres in western Nepal; and quality and equity of service available at these facilities. In Nepal, birthing centres act as first contact point for the women seeking maternity services especially the basic obstetric care. The focus of this presentation will be to talk about the first review article Preeti Mahato wrote for the ‘Journal of Asian Midwives’ entitled “Birthing centres in Nepal: Recent development, obstacles and opportunities”. The article has been accepted for publication in June 2016 and focuses on introducing birthing centres, their current state of operation under the health system of Nepal, barriers they are facing and what could be done to improve their present state. The quality of care issue available at birthing centre is emphasised, since the number of these facilities are increasing however there is a growing trend to bypass and uptake services at hospitals. Despite barriers to utilisation of services at birthing centres, they can play an important role in increasing institutional delivery rate and proportion of births benefiting from a skilled birth attendant.IMG_6591

The second part of presentation will provide a brief summary on what Preeti has done since writing a review article, as she has worked on a systematic review on quality of basic obstetric care facilities in low and middle income countries.

Preeti Mahato has worked in the field of public health in Nepal for three years after completing her Master of Public Health. She has an interest in sexual and reproductive health, women’s health and maternal and child health. Working as a public health officer she was involved in maternal and neonatal health that developed her interest in pursuing a doctorate related to maternal and neonatal health. Part of her work in Nepal also included monitoring and supervision of birthing centres in rural areas of Nepal and that is how she became motivated to start a PhD at BU.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

New CMMPH international midwifery publication

international, Publishing, writing

Congratulations to Professor Vanora Hundley in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) on the publication of her latest international paper ‘How do midwives in Slovenia view their professional status?’ [1]. slovenia midwifery 2015

The paper explores Slovenian midwives’ views of their professional status, linkng this to the participants’ educational background. Most participants did not consider midwifery to be a profession in its ow right. Midwives with secondary education were more likely to consider practical skills to be important than theoretical midwifery knowledge. In general Slovenian midwives did not feel enabled to practise autonomously causing them several ethical dilemmas. All participants with midwifery secondary school education thought that obstetrics jeopardises midwifery scope of practice, but only half of the B.Sc. participants thought this. One-fifth of all participants estimated that midwifery is also threatened by nursing. The respondents reported feeling a lack of control over their professional activity and policy making; however the majority of midwives claimed that they were willing to take on more responsibility for independent practice. The authors conclude that Slovenian midwifery cannot be considered to be a profession yet. It faces several hindrances, due to its historical development.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

Mivšek, P., Pahor, M., Hlebec, V., Hundley, V. (2015) How do midwives in Slovenia view their professional status? Midwifery 31(12):1193-201

Latest BU Nursing publication

Centre for Excellence in Learning, writing

Scammel J Clin Nurse 2016Congratulations to Janet Scammell, Vanessa Heaslip and Emma Crowley in FHSS on their new publication which appeared at the very end of 2015.  Their most recent paper is the first systematic review of service user involvement in non-mental health specific preregistration  nurse education.  The paper ‘Service user involvement in preregistration general nurse education: a systematic review’ is published in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Nursing. [1]

Well done!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Reference:

  1. Scammell, J., Heaslip, V., Crowley, E. (2015) ‘Service user involvement in preregistration general nurse education: a systematic review’ Journal of Clinical Nursing 25:53-69.

Mental health & maternity care in Nepal: THET-funded training

international, open access

group work NawalparasiIMG_6649

A few days I posted a short report of our first session as part of the THET-funded project ‘Mental Health Training for Community-based Maternity Providers in Nepal’, see this previous post here.  Yesterday we completed the final third day training of the first session of this BU-led project.  Over three days we had 70 ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse Midwives) in attendance, which we think is (nearly) all such staff based in all birthing centres in the district (=province).  The three days were the same, i.e. each session was repeated twice so each day one third of the ANMs could attend, and two-third could be at work in the birthing centre ensuring women could deliver safely.

logo THETAs part of this project we send UK volunteers (health and/or education) experts to Nepal to offer high quality training in areas where it is most needed.  Further detail on this BU-led THET project can be found in our scientific paper Mental health issues in pregnant women in Nepal  published in the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology available through Open Access.  Mental illness is still very much a taboo topic in Nepal as it has often a serious stigma attached to it.  Moreover, the relatively short training of ANMs is often fairly basic and the national curriculum does not cover mental health issues in any detail.  This joint project between Bournemouth University, Liverpool John Mooores University, Tribhuvan University and the local charity Green Tata Nepal addresses issues about mental health in general and in pregnant women and new mothers in particular.  Tribhuvan University is the oldest university in Nepal and one of the ten largest universities in the world (based on student numbers).  The project is multi-disciplinary involving midwives, (mental health) nurses, and doctors as well as global health researchers, educationalists and sociologists.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

 

New Public Health paper on Christmas Eve

Publishing, writing

Douglas 2015 Men healthOur latest paper and the last one for 2015, published the day before Christmas.  The paper ‘Implementing Health Policy: Lessons from the Scottish Well Men’s Policy Initiative’ appeared in AIMS Public Health [1].  The paper draws on evaluation research led by Dr. Flora Douglas (University of Aberdeen).  This was a set of evaluations of the Well Men’s Health projects which were part of an initiative running in many health regions (or health boards as they are called in Scotland).

 

The focus of this particular paper centres around the fact that little is known about how health professionals translate government health policy into action [2]. Our paper examines that process using the  Scottish Well Men’s Services policy initiative as a ‘real world’ case study [1]. These Well Men’s Services were launched by the Scottish Government to address men’s health inequalities. Our analysis aimed to develop a deeper understanding of policy implementation as it naturally occurred.  We used an analytical framework that was developed to reflect the ‘rational planning’ principles health professionals are commonly encouraged to use for implementation purposes.

Our analysis revealed four key themes: (1) ambiguity regarding the policy problem and means of intervention; (2) behavioral framing of the policy problem and intervention; (3) uncertainty about the policy evidence base and outcomes, and; (4) a focus on intervention as outcome. This study found that mechanistic planning heuristics (as a means of supporting implementation) fails to grapple with the indeterminate nature of population health problems. A new approach to planning and implementing public health interventions is required that recognises the complex and political nature of health problems; the inevitability of imperfect and contested evidence regarding intervention, and, future associated uncertainties.

 

The paper is published in an Open Access journal, so it is easily and freely available to public health professionals, policy-makers and health workers across the globe.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen 

CMMPH

 

Reference:

  1. Douglas, F., van Teijlingen, E., Smith, W.C.S., Moffat, M. (2015) Implementing Health Policy: Lessons from the Scottish Well Men’s Policy Initiative, AIMS Public Health 2 (4): 887-905. http://www.aimspress.com/article/10.3934/publichealth.2015.4.887/fulltext.html
  2. Killoran, A., Kelly, M. (2004) Towards an evidence-based approach to tackling health inequalities: The English experience. Health Education Journal;63: 7-14.

Congratulations to Dr. Caroline Ellis-Hill

NIHRDr. Caroline Ellis-Hill  has just been accepted as a qualitative methodologist on the NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) panel for Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR).  Caroline from the Centre for Qualitative Research (CQR) in FHSS is the second BU academic to join a NIHR panel this year.  Earlier this year Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen was invited to be a member of the NIHR’s HTA Clinical Evaluation & Trials Board ( http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/programmes/hta/our-people ).

Congratulations!

Professors Vanora Hundley & Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Congratulations to FHSS staff on latest KPI publication

Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer, Publishing

Five RiversCongratulations to FHSS Celia Beckett and Jaqui Hewitt-Taylor and colleagues Richard Cross and Pam McConnell based at Five Rivers Child Care, Salisbury. Their first paper describes the exciting process of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project between BU and Five Rivers Child Care which started in 2012 and finished recently in 2015.[1]    The project was established to develop a stepped assessment package that would help to identify the emotional and behavioural needs of children who are looked after to ensure the right services are accessed and to monitor their progress.

 

Congratulations,

Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

  1. Celia Beckett , Richard Cross , Jaqui Hewitt-Taylor , Pam McConnell (2015) Developing a process for assessment of the emotional and behavioural needs of “looked after” children: the Five Rivers model Journal of Children’s Services, 10(4):  324-38.

New joint AECC and FHSS publication

PG research, Publishing

journal 2015

Congratulations to Joyce Miller, Monica Beharie and Elisabeth Simmenes based at the Anglo-European College of Chiropractic (AECC) and FHSS’s Alison Taylor and Sue Way who just had their paper ‘Parent reports of exclusive breastfeeding after attending a combined midwifery and chiropractic feeding clinic in the UK: A cross sectional service evaluation’ accepted in the journal Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine.

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH