Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
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This year’s theme is “LISTEN MAKE SHARE”. Each month two CQR members present their experiences to the audience ‘in conversation’ with either Narrative Methods (listening to stories), Arts-based Research methods (making stories), or Dissemination methods (sharing stories).
The seminars will involve two conversants and plenty of opportunity for audience participation in listening, making, and sharing. Not lectures, the seminars consist of two presenters ‘In Conversation” about a topic or method. There will be no PPT, but plenty of time for audience interaction and feedback!
Dr Caroline Ellis-Hill from the Centre for Qualitative Research (CQR) and the Humanising practice SIG (FHSS), recently attended a discussion of the new All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) report on Arts, Health and Wellbeing Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing at Kings College, London. Speakers included Darren Henley, Chief Executive of Arts Council England, Shirley Cramer, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for Public Health, Lord Howarth of Newport and Ed Vaizey MP, co-Chairs of the APPG.
Caroline contributed to one of the parliamentary inquiry meetings and also led the HeART of stroke study which is cited in the report, and which was funded through the National Institute for Health Research – Research for Patient Benefit (NIHR-RfPB) funding programme. The research was carried out with colleagues from Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) and many external stakeholders including NIHR, the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust and the University of East Anglia.
The APPG report is a landmark document that brings together available evidence from across the UK to support the role of the arts in the health and wellbeing of people across the life-course. The report has ten recommendations which will be considered at national and local policy level, with the aim of promoting the arts within mainstream services when considering health and wellbeing in the future.
The Faculty of Health and Social Sciences Research Seminar Series will be starting again soon.
We noted that the best attended seminars last year were those involving a range of presentations in a one hour slot. These bite-size selections of research topics were great in attracting an audience from across disciplines and created a fun, friendly atmosphere.
To build on this we will be running monthly Research Seminars with 2-3 presenters at each session. These seminars are open to everyone, so whether this is your first venture into research or you are a veteran researcher please feel free to come along and share your experiences.
Seminars will be held between 1 and 2pm at the Lansdowne Campus on the following dates:
18th October 2017
15 November 2017
17 January 2018
21 February 2018
21 March 2018
18 April 2018
16 May 2018
20 June 2018
Details of presenters will be announced via the blog.
Any questions please feel free to email me at: ckillingback@bournemouth.ac.uk
The Faculty of Health and Social Sciences Research Seminar Series will be starting again in the coming academic year.
But first I’d like to say a big thank you again to all those who contributed to the seminars last year. We had a wonderful mixture of presentations and it was great to see the range of research going on in the faculty.
We noted that the best attended were those involving a range of presentations in a one hour slot. These bite-size selections of research topics were great in attracting an audience from across disciplines and created a fun, friendly atmosphere.
To build on this in the coming year we will be moving to monthly Research Seminars with 2-3 presenters at each session. These seminars are open to everyone, so whether this is your first venture into research or you are a veteran researcher please feel free to come along and share your experiences.
Seminars will be held on the first Wednesday of every month (second Wednesday in October) between 1 and 2pm at the Lansdowne Campus.
If you are interested in presenting please get in touch with Clare at: ckillingback@bournemouth.ac.uk
Congratulations to Dr. Sam Rowlands, Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, who published an interesting Commentary in the BJOG together with Prof. Roger Ingham from the University of Southampton. Their paper ‘Long-acting reversible contraception: conflicting perspectives of advocates and potential users’ argues that a patient-centred approach to contraceptive care is fundamental to women’s autonomy. The authors remind the readers that it needs to be appreciated that unintended pregnancy is most likely to be reduced by fulfilling the unmet need for contraception and encouraging those not using any form of contraception, or condoms only, to use a method of their choice accompanied by adequate instruction (where necessary) in correct usage.
I am here as part of my Florence Nightingale Travel scholarship – spending time at the Taupua Waiora Centre for Māori Health Research, AUT University with centre director Professor Denise Wilson. During my two weeks here I have had the opportunity to learn much more about Māori Health and how it is being addressed in New Zealand, as well as learning much more about their culture and beliefs. Specific research projects I have explored include:
Needless to say this experience is the start of some brand new friendship and international links, indeed I am already working on a bid and a paper! I also have plans for two more co-authored papers that will develop over the next few months…watch this space!!
Any nurses, midwives or registered health professionals interested in a Florence Nightingale Scholarship, the call is now open http://www.florence-nightingale-foundation.org.uk/content/page/33/. I’d definitely recommend it!
Dr Vanessa Heaslip, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences
‘True confessions: Why I left a traditional liberal arts college for the sins of the Big City’ by Kip Jones has been published today in Qualitative Research Journal (QRJ)We’re coming to the end of Writing Week in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences and by now you will have made a good start or have put the finishing touches to your academic writing projects. Over the last week, we have given you some tips on writing grant applications and highlighted some of the expertise within BUCRU. If you didn’t get the chance to pop in and see us we thought it would be useful to remind you what we’re about and how we can help.
Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across the University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. We do this by:
How can we help?
BUCRU can provide help in the following areas:
Our support is available to Bournemouth University staff and people working locally in the NHS, and depending on the support you require, is mostly free of charge. There are no general restrictions on topic area or professional background of the researcher.
If you would like support in developing your research please get in touch through bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or by calling us on 01202 961939. Please see our website for further information, details of our current and previous projects and a link to our recent newsletter.
You don’t have to spend Faculty of Health and Social Science Writing Week (3rd to 6th January) working on grant applications. You may already have a dataset and now finally have some time to do something with it. But where to start? It’s often a good idea to go back to your original research questions/aims/objectives… a well thought out research question can help shape your analysis strategy.
Hopefully you will have a record of which variables you were measuring and how data were coded. Were any calculations performed using the raw data to create new variables? How were these done? This is all part of good data management. To find out more visit the information pages created by the Library and Learning Support Team.
Once you are reacquainted with your data, it’s often a good idea (in the case of quantitative data) to start plotting graphs to find out more. Always keep in mind the original aims of the study, it’s easy to wander down a path of distraction. If you are feeling confused by all of this or, have got yourself lost down a data track, the BU Clinical Research Unit team are at hand to help.
Peter Thomas is available on Tuesday and Wednesday while Sharon Docherty is available Thursday and Friday this week. Why not drop us an email or pop by to see us in R505?
Remember, there are members of the BU Clinical Research Unit team available during the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences Writing Week to help you (you don’t need to be FHSS to speak to us, we’re here to help anyone doing health research) along the way. Today we’ll focus on Helen Allen.
Once you have decided on a funder, an important (but sometimes overlooked) aspect of working up a grant application is the planning and documenting of the involvement of service users/patients/relevant groups or organisations (Public Patient Involvement or PPI) ie the people most likely to have a vested interest in the research you are intending to do. Indeed, many major national funders, including the NIHR, require detailed evidence of how service users have been involved. But do you know who to approach? When? How? What can service users be involved with? What can they add? Sometimes it’s relatively straightforward to identify appropriate individuals and organisations. Other occasions can call for more creativity. Hot tip: everything takes longer to arrange than you might think. Allow a minimum of 6 weeks to plan, consult service users and feedback from the PPI consultation to your colleagues.
If you’d like some advice about planning PPI and conducting service user consultations for a project Helen Allen will be pleased to advise you. Helen is available on Tuesday 3rd and Thursday 5th January.
Happy New Year! If making more time for writing grant proposals and research articles is one of your New Year’s Resolutions, then make the most of HSS Writing Week (3rd to 6th January). The aim of this week is to help support staff to find time in their busy schedules to work on those all-important grant proposals and research articles that keep getting lost under piles of marking.
We’re not expecting you to do it alone. Did you know that the Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit can provide support for people undertaking healthcare research? As part of Writing Week, members of the unit will be available to help during the week (see below) so why don’t you pop in and see us (5th floor Royal London House) or send us an email.
BUCRU Availability
| Who? | When? | What with? |
| Peter Thomas
(Professor of Healthcare Statistics & Epidemiology) |
Tuesday and Wednesday | research study design and statistics |
| Helen Allen
(Public and Patient Involvement Lead) |
Tuesday and Thursday | involvement of service users in research projects, arranging focus groups and interviews |
| Sharon Docherty
(Research Fellow: Quantitative Methods) |
Thursday and Friday | designing, conducting and analysing quantitative research |
Congratulations to Dr. Catherine Angell (FHSS) who just had her paper ‘Continual Professional Development (CPD): an opportunity to improve the Quality of Nursing Care in Nepal’ accepted in Health Prospect. The paper is co-authored with BU Visiting Faculty Dr. Bibha Simkhada and Prof. Padam Simkhada both based at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), Dr. Rose Khatri and Dr. Sean Macka
y (also at LJMU), Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery and Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), and our colleagues in Dr. Sujan Marahatta and Associate Professor Chandra Kala Sharma. Ms. Chandra Kala Sharma is also the president of the Nepal Nursing Association (left in photo). Health Prospect is an Open Access journal, hence freely available to anybody in Nepal (and elsewhere in the world).
This paper is first of several based on a study aiming to improve CPD in Nepal and it is partly funded by LJMU and partly funded by BU’s Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL). The CEL-funded part of the project centres on focus group research with representatives of the Ministry of Health & Population, the Ministry of Education, the Nepal Nursing Association and the Nursing Council, and Higher Education providers of Nurse Education (both form Government-run universities and private colleges). The focus group schedule will include starter questions to initiate discussions around the kind of CPD nurses in Nepal need, its format, preferred models, the required quality and quantity, and ways of checking up (quality control). In addition we will be asking a subgroup of nurses registered in Nepal about midwifery skills as midwifery is not recognised as a separate profession from nursing in Nepal. Hence there will be three focus groups specifically about midwifery CPD: one at MIDSON (the Midwifery Organisation of Nepal), one with nurses providing maternity care in private hospitals and one with nurses doing this in government hospitals.
The research is a natural FUSION project in the field of nursing & midwifery as it links Research in the field of Education to help improve Practice in Nepal.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Reference:
You don’t have to spend Writing Week working on grant applications. You may already have a dataset and now you finally have some time to do something with it. But where to start? It’s often a good idea to go back to your original research questions/aims/objectives. As we said yesterday, a well thought out research question can help shape your analysis strategy.
Hopefully you will have a record of which variables you were measuring and how data were coded. Were any calculations performed using the raw data to create new variables? How were these done? This is all part of good data management. To find out more visit the information pages created by the Library and Learning Support Team.
Once you are reacquainted with your data, it’s often a good idea (in the case of quantitative data) to start plotting graphs to find out more. Always keep in mind the original aims of the study, it’s easy to wander down a path of distraction. If you are feeling confused by all of this or, have got yourself lost down a data track, the BUCRU team are at hand to help.
Peter Thomas is available on Tuesday and Wednesday while Sharon Docherty is available Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week. Why not drop us an email or pop by to see us in R505?
So you have formed a strong team, chosen a funder and involved some service users to help develop a research idea with impact. What’s next?
Step 5 is designing your study. The heart of a good piece of research is a strong research question with clear aims and achievable objectives. Sounds easy, right? This is often one of the most difficult aspects of any research project. If you then add having to align your ideas with the priorities of your chosen funder, this task becomes a bit more difficult. However, it is worth the effort. Spending time putting together well constructed research questions will make designing the rest of the study much easier and will even help you formulate your data analysis strategy.
If all of this sounds a bit daunting, never fear because BUCRU are at hand to help. Did you know that some of the members of BUCRU form the Bournemouth branch of NIHR Research Design Service (RDS)? The RDS is here to advise and provide practical support for anyone developing a research grant application to a national, peer reviewed funding competition in the fields of applied health or social care. You can find the Bournemouth team in Royal London House.
If you need help with the design of your study (particularly if it is quantitative) Peter Thomas is available on Tuesday and Wednesday while Sharon Docherty is available Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week. Why not drop us an email or pop by to see us in R505?
With the start of FHSS writing week, we are continuing our series of blogs providing you with some (hopefully) useful advice on how to make the best of this dedicated time. Remember, there are members of the BUCRU team available during this week to help you (i.e. anyone interested in health research) along the way.
Once you have decided on a funder, an important (but sometimes overlooked) aspect of working up a grant application is the planning and documenting of the involvement of service users/patients/relevant groups or organisations (Public Patient Involvement or PPI) ie the people most likely to have a vested interest in the research you are intending to do. Indeed, many major national funders, including the NIHR, require detailed evidence of how service users have been involved. But do you know who to approach? When? How? What can service users be involved with? What can they add? Sometimes it’s relatively straightforward to identify appropriate individuals and organisations. Other occasions can call for more creativity. Hot tip: everything takes longer to arrange than you might think. Allow a minimum of 6 weeks to plan, consult service users and feedback from the PPI consultation to your colleagues.
If you’d like some advice about planning PPI and conducting service user consultations for a project Helen Allen (helena@bournemouth.ac.uk) will be pleased to advise you. Helen is available on Tuesday 26th.
Next week (25-29 July) is Writing Week in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences. A whole week dedicated to freeing up some time for academic writing. So, how can you make the most of this opportunity? Over the next few days, we’ll give you some tips on ways to spend your Writing Week as well as letting you know which members of the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) team can help you and when they are available.
Writing Week is not just about writing papers – it also provides an opportunity to finally start thinking about that piece of research you’ve been dying to do. In BUCRU we have a wealth of expertise to support health research, and several members of our team are also members of the NIHR Research Design Service (more to come on that in a later blog). The next few posts cover our speciality subject – research grant applications.
Step 2 is thinking about your research team. You might have a great idea for a research project, but do you have the right people to ensure a strong, supportive team who can deliver the research? Depending on your research question, you might need a multi/interdisciplinary team of academics from different disciplines, clinicians, nurses, Allied Health Professionals etc. You may have a good network around you already, but what do you do if you don’t? Lisa Gale-Andrews is Clinical Research Co-ordinator in BUCRU, and can help facilitate research collaborations particularly with clinicians in the local health service and with academics across Faculties. Please contact Lisa (lgaleandrews@bournemouth.ac.uk) if you’re looking for contacts and for support in building your research team. She will be available all day Mon-Thurs during Writing Week if you’d like to pop in (R506).
There’s more to come on grant applications over the next few days including choosing a funder, research design, and the importance of patient and public involvement (PPI).
Next week (25-29 July) is Writing Week in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences. A whole week dedicated to freeing up some time for academic writing. So, how can you make the most of this opportunity? Over the next few days, we’ll give you some tips on ways to spend your Writing Week.
Step 1 is to set a goal for the week… but make it realistic. Unless you are one of the lucky people who find it easy to write, you won’t be able to produce a whole grant proposal/manuscript in that time but you can make a start. Go through that list of jobs you’ve been putting off until you “have more time” and decide how you will spend your week.
Don’t forget the BU Clinical Research Unit team are here to help not only HSS researchers but anyone involved in health research. Below is a list of who is available and how each of us can help.
BU staff can login below:
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