

The interview with Nirmal Aryal in Nepali can be read online, click here!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)
Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
The interview with Nirmal Aryal in Nepali can be read online, click here!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)
This week Bournemouth University organised two dissemination events for our risk of kidney disease study in Nepalese migrant workers in the Middle East and Malaysia. A previous blog reported on the first event in the capital Kathmandu (see details here!) . These dissemination events have generated a loads of media coverage in Nepal, both in Nepali and in English.
The study was led by Bournemouth University and a charity in Nepal which whom we have been collaborating for two decades, called Green Tara Nepal. This important study, the first of its kind, was conducted among the Nepalese migrant workers and a comparison group of non-migrants from the same community. This study was funded by The Colt Foundation, based in the UK. In the field it was supported by the Madhes Province Public Health Laboratory, the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration and University College London (UCL).
Dr Pramod Raj Regmi (Principal Academic in International Health in Bournemouth University’s Department of Nursing Sciences) is the lead researcher and our team further comprises researchers Dr Nirmal Aryal and Prof Edwin van Teijlingen (both from BU’s Faculty of Health & Social Sciences), and in Nepal clinicians: Prof Dr Arun Sedhai, Dr Radheshyam KC and Dr Shrawan Kumar Mishra.
Prof Edwin van Teijlingen
Congratulations to Drs. Pramod Regmi and Nirmal Aryal in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences who published their latest paper this week [1]. This peer-reviewed paper ‘Assessing the knowledge of, attitudes towards, and practices in, food safety among migrant workers in Klang Valley, Malaysia’ in the journal Travel Medicine & Infectious Disease assesses the current food safety KAP (knowledge, attitudes and behaviour) as well as strategies to promote food safety awareness, among migrant workers across occupational sectors in Malaysia.
The authors conducted a survey with 403 migrant workers using telephone interviews and online self-administered questionnaires. The respondents were Nepalese, Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers. The majority were male, working in the services industry, had completed high school, aged between 30 and 39 years and had worked in Malaysia for less than ten years. Knowledge was significantly correlated with attitudes and practices. Female respondents had lower knowledge and attitude scores while younger respondents had lower knowledge scores. Indonesian and Filipino respondents had lower knowledge and attitudes scores than Nepalese respondents. Understanding food safety information from social media was positively correlated with the respondents’ food safety knowledge and practices. The paper concludes there is: (i) a to target female, younger, Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers, and (ii) the potential of social media to improve public awareness of food safety and hygienic practices.
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)
Reference:
The BU Erasmus+ visitors included FHSS academics Prof. Steve Ersser, Dr. Michele Board and Dr. Pramod Regmi, as well as the Head of BU International Partnerships Dr. Alistair Morrison and Global Engagement Officer Elaine Hakes, and from the department of Psychology Dr. Shanti Shanker, and last, but not least, FHSS Ph.D. student Yagya Adhikari.
I would personally like to say thank you very much for all the support I have received from GTN over the past two decades!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)
Congratulations the Abier Hamidi, PhD student in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS) whose PhD work was published in The Conversation this week (24 April) under the title Social media now trumps traditional family networks in Libya – my Facebook survey reached 446,000 women. Her piece in The Conversation on the recruitment of female participants for a PhD study in a rather patriarchal society brings together issues of anonymity, gender, and wider social culture.
This is Abier’s PhD research is supervised by Dr. Pramod Regmi, Senior Lecturer in International Health and the Global Engagement Lead in the Department of Nursing Sciences, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).
Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
The BNAC (Britain-Nepal Academic Council) twentieth Nepal Study Days (24-25 April) start today in Huddersfield. BU is directly represented through Dr. Pramod Regmi who will be presenting ‘Health Research Priorities and Needs in Migrant Health: A Review of Reviews’ today. Dr. Regmi based in the Department of Nursing Sciences and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Department of Midwifery & Health Sciences are also part of the paper ‘Nepal Family Cohort Study: Starting a Longitudinal Population Health Study’ which will be presented by our colleague Dr. Om P. Kurmi from Coventry University.
There will also be a BU paper on ‘Perceptions Around Covid-19 and Vaccine Hesitancy: A Qualitative Study Among People Living in Kaski, Western Nepal’ , presented by Dr. Preeti Mahato. Preeti is based at Royal Holloway (University of London) and she is also a Visiting Faculty member of FHSS. She’ll presenting a study recently published in PLOS Global Public Health.
These Nepal Studies Days pay serious attention to our ongoing interdisciplinary study ‘The impact of federalisation on Nepal’s health system: a longitudinal analysis’ which was reported in several national newspapers in Nepal last week. Tomorrow there will be a plenary session by Prof. Simon Rushton, the PI on this project in which BU collaborates. He will be talking about ‘Nepal’s Health System During Federalisation: Emerging Issues and the Co-production of Policy and Practice Recommendations’. Later that day there will be two further presentations based on this large-scale study, the first one by Dr. Sharada P. Wasti followed by one delivered by Dr. Sujata Sapkota.
The first paper in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences (FHSS) for 2023 appeared online today. The open access journal NursingOpen (publisher Wiley) add our paper ‘Stakeholders’ perceptions of continuing professional development among Nepalese nurses: A focus group study’. [1] The lead author Dr Bibha Simkhada and co-author Prof. Padam Simkhada are both Visiting Faculty at Bournemouth University. The paper reports on a study into stakeholders’ perceptions of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in nursing in Nepal. It is worth noting that nurses (and midwives) in Nepal have to renew their nursing licence every six years with the Nepal Nursing Council. However, there are no requirements of having completed any CPD in this post-registration renewal process, or to show any evidence of on-the-job learning. This qualitative study generated three major themes: (a) policy level including the national situation of CPD, political influence and training guided by the policy; (b) organizational level incorporating perceptions towards forms of CPD, staff shortage, poor staff retention, seniority for training, financial constraints and lack of continuity of training; and (c) individual level including motivation for training and lack of relevant training. It is the third paper from work supported by FHSS QR funding [2-3]
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Cenre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)
References:
This week saw the publication of another Bournemouth University paper on academic writing and publishing. This latest paper ‘Struggling to reply to reviewers: Some advice for novice researchers‘ has been published in the scientific journal Health Prospect: Journal of Public Health. This journal is published in Nepal and it is Open Access, hence freely available across the globe.
Peer review is the process by which academic journals assess and regulate the quality of content they publish, by inviting academic experts to review your submitted manuscripts. It is a process of quality control. Once you have submitted your paper to a journal the editor will select potential peer reviewers within the field of research to peer-review your manuscript and make recommendations. In many case the peer review process can be a positive experience for you as it allows you to develop your skills and improve your written work. For example, good reviewers may notice potential imbalances, point out missing key references or highlight different potential perspectives, and thus help you to enhance the overall quality of the paper. On some occasions, however a reviewer can be a complete pain in the neck!
The paper is written by a multidisciplinary team based in the Department of Nursing Sciences (Dr. Regmi), the Department of Social Sciences and Social Work (Dr. Harvey), and the Department of Midwifery & Health Sciences (Dr. Taylor & Prof. van Teijlingen). The authors bring their combined expertise in midwifery, social work, health education, sociology and health services research to offers the readers advice how to deal with the more difficult reviewers.
Reference:
Our student nurses had a change of tutor this week, with James King, author of ‘Accelerating Excellence: the Principles that drive elite performance’ coming in to offer a keynote to set up their day. James outlined, through numerous examples, how to drive up our performance, whether we are studying, working, or trying to move to that healthier lifestyle! His main message was that it is elite performers do not simply add more and more hours to improve, but they change their mindset, and train in the ‘sweet spot’. He followed through with some clear principles about moving from ambition to follow through. Media student Sam Pickle came along to film the session, and kindly took the photos of James.
One student said afterwards: ‘I wish we had James talk to us in the first year, his messages are so clear, and it would have really helped me get into the mindset‘
and with the film on its way, we can share James’ work more widely.
About the book:
In Accelerating Excellence James King draws on his fifteen years of experience as a trusted advisor to some of the worlds most elite and exclusive organisations combined with cutting edge scientific research to reveal the foundational principles that are proven to drive elite performance. This inspiring book is bursting with highly actionable strategies you can apply today that will make you better tomorrow.
You will learn how to:- Align with the principles all outlier performers have leveraged in order to obtain and sustain elite performance- Ignite your psychological firepower and unleash the inner confidence, motivation and resilience that we all know drive success. – Apply a methodology that will channel your ambition, talent and effort so allowing you to get better faster.- Rapidly acquire skills that stick blowing the 10,000-hour rule out the water. – Win the head game mastering your emotions so you can access your best when it matters most – Generate breakthrough solutions to innovate and stay ahead of the rest. Accelerating Excellence will revolutionise the way you perceive excellence, potential and talent, crushing some of the most entrenched assumptions along the way. You will emerge inspired about the possibility that exists before you, enriched with purpose, structure and direction along with a biological and psychological edge over the competition.
Sharon Holland and Debbie Holley