Tagged / FHSS

Expanding BU’s India links

Centre for Excellence in Learning, conferences, international, Publishing, writing

Dr. Pramod Regmi and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (both in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences) have been invited to join the scientific committee of the International Conference on Mixed Methods Research [ICMMR-2019].  This year’s ICMMR conference will be held in the School of Behavioural Sciences at the Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam (India) on February 22-24, 2019.  The two BU academics will run an online panel discussion session on academic publishing under the heading “Meet the editors.”  The advantage of such online session is that BU academic don’t have to travel to India saving time and money as well as the environment.  This has benefits for their own work-live balance as well as their carbon footprint. 

BU focuses its global collaborations on three geographical areas, one of these is the Indian sub-continent.  Connect India is BU’s strategic Hub of Practice for the Indian sub-continent, bringing together a community of researchers, educators, practitioners and students at Bournemouth University to collaborate with colleagues in India and Nepal.

 

CQR Lunchtime Conversations Kick Off 3rd Oct at 1 pm RLH 201

PG research

The engaging CQR lunchtime Go Create!

seminar series for 2018-19 begins with

Liz Norton, Caroline Ellis-Hill &

Ann Hemingway

“Creative ways of data gathering &

dissemination”

Oct 3rd 1-2 pm RLH 201

Come prepared for informal conversation, sharing, and audience participation!

“We will be VERY informal!”

See you there!

R

CQR Lunchtime Seminar “Poetry as Research” Wed RLH 201 1pm

Centre for Excellence in Learning, PG research

The Centre for Qualitative Research invites you to its continuing series of lunchtime seminars this Wednesday at 1 pm in RLH 201 for “Poetry as Research” “In Conversation” with Lee-Ann Fenge and Wendy Cutts.

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!

Come along and join ‘In Conversation’!

Wed. 1 pm RLH 201 “Poetry as Research” with Lee-Ann Fenge & Wendy Cutts

BU Research contributes to National Creativity, Arts, Health and Wellbeing report

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.

FHSS Research Seminars 2017-2018

Fusion, international, Knowledge Exchange

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

FHSS Research Seminars 2017-2018

Knowledge Exchange, PG research

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

New BU publication: Centre of Postgraduate Medical Research &Education

Knowledge Exchange, Publishing, writing

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.

 

Kia Ora – greetings from New Zealand!

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:

  • The Pacific Islands Families longitudinal project – this is the only prospective Pacific people study in the world. This longitudinal study is following 1,398 Pacific children and their parents born at Middlemore Hospital in 2000.
  • Research being undertaking exploring Māori living with disabilities.
  • Institutional racism research.
  • Research exploring physical activity and Māori culture.
  • Research examining family violence and intimate partner violence within the Māori communities.

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

Three tales of sexual intrigue from Kip Jones

PG research

C4nQP3CXUAAICo9 ‘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)

Three tales of sexual intrigue from Kip Jones.  A story, a reminiscence, and a scene from a film.

By means of several auto-ethnographic stories (including a scene from a working script for a proposed film), the author interrogates numerous ideas and misconceptions about gay youth, both past and present. 

Being straight or being gay can be viewed within the wider culture’s need to set up a sexual binary and force sexual “choice” decision-making for the benefit of the majority culture. Through the device of the fleeting moment, this essay hopes to interrogate the certainties and uncertainties of the “norms” of modernity by portraying sexuality in youth.

Also available as a draft on Academia.edu

BUCRU – not just for Writing Week

writing

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:

  • Helping researchers develop high quality applications for external research funding (including small grants)
  • Ongoing involvement in funded research projects
  • A “pay-as-you-go” consultation service for other work.

How can we help?

BUCRU can provide help in the following areas:

  • Study design
  • Quantitative and qualitative research methods
  • Statistics, data management and data analysis
  • Patient and public involvement in research
  • Trial management
  • Ethics, governance and other regulatory issues
  • Linking University and NHS researchers

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.

Making the Most of Writing Week: What to do with your Data?

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?

Making the Most of Writing Week: Research grant applications – not THAT PPI

writing

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.

Writer’s block? Wondering where to start? Need someone to talk to? BUCRU can help!

writing

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

New paper Dr. Catherine Angell on CPD in Nepal

Centre for Excellence in Learning, Fusion, international, Knowledge Transfer, open access, Publishing, Training, writing

nnaCongratulations 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 Mackacel-logo-weby (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).

dsc_0124This 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:

  1. (CPD): an opportunity to improve the Quality of Nursing Care in Nepal, Health Prospect (Accepted) 

 

 

Making the Most of Writing Week Part 6: What to do with your data

writing

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?

Making the Most of Writing Week Part 5: Designing your study

writing

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?

Making the Most of Writing Week Part 4: Research grant applications – not THAT PPI

Guidance, writing

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.

Making the Most of Writing Week Part 2: Research grant applications – building a team

Guidance, writing

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).