Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Dr. Pramod Regmi, Senior Lecturer in International Health and Interim Global Engagement Lead in the Department of Nursing Sciences, was invited last weekend to speak at the Third Global Nepali Health Conference, London. He taught on ‘How to write a scientific paper’ with Dr. Om Kurmi from Coventry University and Dr. Bibha Simkhada from the University of Huddersfield (and Visiting Faculty at BU’s Faculty of Health & Social Sciences).
Well done.
Yesterday we had the pleasure of running an Academic Writing Workshop for academics and postgraduate students in the Department of Health & Physical Education based at the Sanothimi campus of Tribhuvan University. Tribhuvan University is the oldest and largest university of Nepal. We base these training session on our various publications on academic publishing, [1-14] and we used the opportunity to advertise our forthcoming textbook on the matter [15].
Prof. Padam Simkhada, Professor of Global Health and Associate Dean International at the School of Human and Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield and FHSS Visiting Professor.
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Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)
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Congratulations to Dr. Pramod Regmi, Lecturer in International Health & Global Engagement Lead, Department of Nursing Sciences, and Dr. Nirmal Aryal, formerly of the Centre of Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), whose editorial “Kidney health risk of migrant workers: An issue we can no longer overlook” has been published today in Health Prospect [1]. Further co-authors (Arun Sedhain, Radheshyam Krishna KC, Erwin Martinez Faller, Aney Rijal, and Edwin van Teijlingen) work in India, Nepal, the Philippines and at BU. The study was funded by GCRF. 
This editorial highlights that low-skilled migrant workers in the countries of the Gulf and Malaysia are at a disproportionately higher risk of kidney health problems. The working conditions are often Dirty, Dangerous and Difficult (referred at as the 3Ds) include physically demanding work, exposure to a hot environment, dehydration, chemical exposures, excessive use of pain killers, and lifestyle factors (such as restricted water intake and a high intake of alcohol/sugary drinks) which may precipitate them to acute kidney injuries and subsequent chronic kidney disease.
References
Congratulations to Dr. Shanti Shanker in BU’s Department of Psychology and Dr. Pramod Regmi in the Department of Nursing Science on their paper ‘The Interdisciplinary Team Not the Interdisciplinarist: Reflections on Interdisciplinary Research’ which was accepted over the weekend by the journal Europasian Journal of Medical Sciences. This interesting paper is co-authored with two BU Visiting Faculty, Ms. Jillian Ireland, Professional Midwifery Advocate in Poole Maternity Hospital (University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust) and Prof. Padam Simkhada based at the University of Huddersfield. Co-author Dr. Sharada Wasti is also based the University of Huddersfield.
With interdisciplinary research growing in popularity, researchers, lecturers, journal editors and funders to consider how this is going to work in reality. This paper argues that interdisciplinary working is with in the team, not ‘in a person’. Multidisciplinary teams provide unique opportunities for researchers from different disciplines (and hence different ways of working and thinking) to collaborate with one another. We need to be careful not to try to create interdisciplinarists, or at least, not too many. We need people who are strong in their discipline and open-minded/flexible/reflective enough to see the value of other people’s disciplines.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMWH (Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health)
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Last night I misread a call from BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth. To be fair the email included two different request to contribute to two different kinds of blog posts with different set of instructions. Of course, I managed not to simply to swap these instructions around, but mix them up properly. The result is the text below that does not fit either of the two calls, I think.
The question I tried to address was: “Tell us how your research published in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth has links to wider issues than health!. The actual call in the email was: “Tell us about your contribution to the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) – We invite our Editorial Board Members who have research or personal interests related to the SDGs to contribute a blog post to our BMC Series Blog network discussing your work/interests as these relate to the SDGs”. 
My adopted question explains the title ‘Health is not a vacuum’. The short overview of the blog I drafted focused on all the papers I have published in this journal over a fifteen-year period from 2006-2021 [1-11]. Not surprising for a sociologist of health & illness, my argument is that there are nearly always issues wider than SDG 3 ‘Good health and well-being’ in the way health care/service or health policy factors affects maternity care and midwifery. Social, cultural and economic factors affect the way maternity services ares provided, used and perceived. SDG 5 ‘Gender equality’ springs to mind first, but also important is SDG 4 ‘Quality education’, especially of girls, and SDG 1 ‘No poverty’, of course strongly linked with SDG 10 ‘Reduced inequalities’.
Gender is highlighted or at least part of the argument in many of our papers in low- and middle income countries [2,3,5, 7,10,11], but also in a high-income context [1,6]. Education, both health education and education more generally, for example education levels of maternity service users, appears in several papers [1,6,8-11] whilst poverty is a key factors in several papers based on our work in Nepal [2,3,5,6,11]. Several of our papers address issues wider than health that are not strictly speaking SDG, such as paper on cultural differences in postnatal quality of life among German-speaking women living either side of the Swiss-German border [4], and of course, our paper on media and childbirth [6].
Last, but not least, all papers published in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth are Open Access and freely available online!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)
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Today ResearchGate informed Prof. Vanora Hundley and I that our paper in the Nursing Standard of 2002 had reached 90,000 reads. This short methods paper called ‘The Importance of Pilot Studies’ [1] was one of our earlier attempts, nearly two decades ago, to publish more of our work in practitioners journals. This approach has been highly successful in terms of reaching a wider audience. We have written longer, more sophisticated research methods papers on pilot studies over the years, including in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, Social Research Update, and the SAGE encyclopedia on research methods [2-6], but none of these has been read or cited as often as our short paper in the Nursing Standard. 
The term ‘pilot studies’ refers to mini versions of a full-scale study (also called ‘feasibility’ studies), as well as the specific pre-testing of a particular research instrument such as a questionnaire or interview schedule. Pilot studies are a crucial element of good study design. Conducting a pilot study does not guarantee success in the main study, but it does increase the likelihood of success. Pilot studies fulfill a range of important functions and can provide valuable insights for other researchers. There is a need for more discussion among researchers of both the process and outcomes of pilot studies.
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Congratulations to Faculty of Health & Social Sciences’ PhD student Karim Khaled and supervisors Prof. Vanora Hundley and Dr. Fotini Tsofliou on the acceptance of your manuscript ‘Perceived Stress was associated with Poorer Diet Quality among Women of Reproductive Age in the UK’. This paper will appear in the international journal Nutrients.All three are associated with our research unit CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health). This paper is supported by BU’s Open Access Fund will be freely available online soon.
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Yesterday the international journal Midwifery (published by Elsevier) announced that our paper “Male Involvement in Promotion of Safe Motherhood in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. A Scoping Review” has been published online. [1] This paper is based on Dr. Alice Ladur’s innovative PhD thesis on men’s involvement in their partners’ maternity care in Uganda. This is Alice’s second PhD paper, her first one was published in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth. [2]
The second international midwifery paper that came out last week is ‘Slovenian midwifery professionalization: Perception of midwives and related health professions’ which appeared in the European Journal of Midwifery. [3] This paper is written with colleagues from Slovenia: Polona A. Mivšek, Majda Pahor, and Valentina Hlebec.
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This morning International Journal of Mental Health Nursing informed us that our article ‘Cultural issues on accessing mental health services in Nepali and Iranian migrants communities in the UK‘ has been published today. This paper is written by an interdisciplinary team including Hannah Blunt who works at Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust, Dr. Bibha Simkhada who is Senior Lecturer in Nursing at the University of Huddersfield and Dr. Mariam Vahdaninia who works in the Peninsula Medical School at the University of Plymouth. Both Mariam and Bibha worked with me at Bournemouth University at the time of the study.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)
Congratulations to Mrs. Sulochana Dhakal Rai on the publication today of her PhD article ‘Classification of Caesarean Section: A Scoping Review of the Robson classification‘ in the Nepal Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology [1]. Sulochana’s PhD project in the Centre of Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) is supervised by Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Juliet Wood and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen at BU and she is supported in Nepal by Prof. Ganesh Dangal [Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Kathmandu Model Hospital] and senior obstetrician Dr. Keshar Bahadur Dhakal [Karnali Province Hospital, Nepal]. Sulochana has already published two earlier papers from her PhD thesis research [2-3].
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Congratulations to Sara Stride and her PhD supervisors on the publication of ‘Identifying the factors that influence midwives’ perineal practice at the time of birth in the United Kingdom’ in the international journal Midwifery [1]. The Obstetric Anal Sphincter Injuries (OASI) Care Bundle is designed to reduce the incidence of obstetric anal sphincter injuries. However, introducing behavioural change requires an understanding of current practice. This national study aims to establish midwives practice at the time of birth, and the factors that influence this. The paper concludes that there has been a growth in the number of midwives using “hands on” at the time of birth but midwives feel that they require additional training in regards to identifying an OASI. The study should be repeated following the roll out of the OASI care bundle, to identify its impact on midwives’ perineal practice. This nation-wide study identified the need for improvements in the recognition of OASI by midwives, and in future repeating the study would identify whether the OASI care bundle has influenced midwives’ practice.
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Reference
Congratulations to Debbie Almeida (in the Department of Midwifery & Health Sciences) who had another article published last month. This latest academic article “Dominant versus non-dominant hand during simulated infant CPR using the two-finger technique: a randomised study” appeared in Resuscitation Plus [1]. Debbie’s BU co-authors are Carol Clark, Ursula Rolfe and Jon Williams.
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This is a reminder about our ‘Virtual Writing Workshop’ on 29 June 13.30 – 16.30pm. We will have 2 blocks of writing (just over an hour each and then a break in the middle to get a coffee and chat to other researchers if you wish). If you can’t make 13.30 you can join a bit later – no worries.
This is for anyone (PhD student, academic, full time researcher) who wants to/needs to write and would like to do that in the company of colleagues from across the university.
Please come prepared with something you are working on. We recommend turning off email notifications and anything else that could distract to help us get the most out of the time – but your decision – it’s your time!
Please click this Zoom link to join us.
Kind regards, BU Research Staff Association
Research Staff Coffee Break – The Place to Be!
On Thursday, 10 June, we held our second Research Staff Coffee Break and were delighted to welcome some new faces. We discussed recovering as a researcher from COVID-19-related disruption and lots of other topics. It’s always interesting to hear other people’s experiences, pick up tips, learn about each other’s research and meet colleagues with similar interests – even when we are working in different faculties and totally different specialities!
RSA Speed Networking
One intriguing suggestion was the idea of the RSA hosting ‘speed research networking events’ where attendees meet each other one-on-one in breakout rooms and present their research interests briefly. This could be a great first step in finding future collaborators and is in keeping with the university’s emphasis on inter-disciplinary research. In addition, we agreed that hearing about research from a wide range of disciplines and faculties fosters an exciting cross-fertilisation of ideas. We’re still considering this idea – but watch this space for future speed research coffee dating opportunities!
RSA Writing Workshop
We spent a lot of time talking about the need to publish, and agreed that making time to work on publications in a busy schedule is a constant challenge. One of the solutions that we considered was the idea of dedicated, regular (fortnightly or monthly) RSA writing workshops to create structured time and space to write. We thought this was a great suggestion and a very practical way of helping each other and the research community! We discussed whether we ought to conduct these face-to-face or online only; in the end, we agreed that a mixed or hybrid model would suit the needs of most people as all colleagues may not be able to be physically present on campus. In terms of the structure, we agreed on a 2-hour-long workshop with breaks in between.
So, we plan to host the first writing workshop on the afternoon of 29 June (1.30 pm – 4.30 pm). This is for anyone (PhD student, academic, full time researcher) who wants to/needs to write and would like to do that in the company of colleagues from across the university. If you would like to attend, please find the Zoom meeting link / log in details below.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://bournemouth-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/87978735999?pwd=aG5qN0xBb1ZjZVkxVmI1RkRSVUNPdz09
Meeting ID: 879 7873 5999
Passcode: 9t@BPf1M
RSA Feedback Survey
As the RSA, we want to run events that are helpful for you as researchers at BU. If you have 5 minutes to spare, it would be great if you could fill out our survey so that we can make sure the RSA is putting on events which you would find useful – please click the link (it should only take 5 minutes to complete):
RSA Representatives Contact Details
If you would like to contact any of the RSA reps to discuss any issues confidentially, our contact details are below:
University Research Staff Reps:
Michelle Heward mheward@bournemouth.ac.uk
Ashok Patnaik apatnaik@bournemouth.ac.uk
Faculty of Health & Social Science:
Preeti Mahato pmahato@bournemouth.ac.uk
Rachel Arnold rarnold@bournemouth.ac.uk
BU Business School:
Rafaelle Nicholson rnicholson@bournemouth.ac.uk
Ashok Patnaik apatnaik@bournemouth.ac.uk
Faculty of Media & Communications:
Oliver Gingrich gingricho@bournemouth.ac.uk
Ethzaz Chaudhry echaudhry@bournemouth.ac.uk
Faculty of Science & Technology:
Kimberley Davies daviesk@bournemouth.ac.uk
Today Prof. Vanora Hundley, based in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, gave a well-received presentation on ‘Changing the narrative around childbirth: whose responsibility is it?’ at the 32nd ICM (International Confederation of Midwives) Virtual Triennial Congress. Prof. Hundley presented online a BU collaboration published in the journal Evidence-based Midwifery [1]. This presentation is part of a larger body of interdisciplinary work between media and heatlh scholars at Bournemouth University [see 2-6].
The finding that UK midwives fear the media resonates with experiences from many other countries and professional groups. There is a need to change media discourse in 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.
The following RKEDF training events are coming up this month.
These are all online events.
Please email OD@bournemouth.ac.uk to book now!
| Monday 14th June – Wednesday 16th June
Writing Academy A three day workshop including planning and writing your research article, developing a strategy for getting your articles published, read and cited, and a writing day. |
| Thursday 17th June 15:00 – 16:00
Impact and Funding Bids How to write about impact successfully in funding applications. |
| Tuesday 22nd June 13:30 – 15:00
On Writing – Improving Writing Practice How to improve your writing practice by making more compelling knowledge claims, theories and arguments from your research and writing for your audience, with Professor Matthew Bennett. |
| Wednesday 23rd June 16:00 – 17:00
Early Career Researchers Network Meeting There will be presentations from two Early Career Researchers about their respective research projects followed by Q&A. |
| Thursday 24th June 11:00 – 12:30
Getting Started in Public Engagement with Research Public engagement in the research landscape; why it is important and what it can do for researchers. |
| Wednesday 30th June 16:00 – 17:00
BRIAN, Building your staff profile with research websites An introduction to BU’s publication management system. |
BOOKING: Unless otherwise stated, to book, please email OD@bournemouth.ac.uk.
You can see all the Organisational Development and Research Knowledge Development Framework (RKEDF) events in one place on the handy calendar of events.
If you have any queries, please get in touch!
The national health ethics organisation in Nepal, the Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC), invited Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen to be part of its week long training programme next week. Edwin will be running a session on Focus Groups as qualitative on Bank Holiday Monday (31 May) and a session on Publishing Qualitative Research on Friday 4th June. As part of BU’s International Partnerships our staff help build research capacity in a number of low- and middle-income countries, such as Nepal.
The invitation came through Prof Madhusudan Subedi, one of his Nepali collaborators on a research project on ‘The impact of federalisation on Nepal’s health system: a longitudinal analysis’. The project, funded under the DFID/ESRC/MRC/Wellcome Health Systems Research Initiative, examines the consequences for the health system of Nepal’s move to a federal government structure. The PIs for the project, Dr. Simon Rushton and Dr. Julie Balan , are based at the University of Sheffield, further collaborators include: Prof. Padam Simkhada (BU Visiting Faculty) who is based at the University of Huddersfield, Dr. Pratik Adhikary (BU Visiting Faculty & BU PhD graduate) who is based at PHASE Nepal and Prof. Sujan Marahatta, who is based at Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences in Kathmandu (MMIHS). BU has a further collaboration with MMIHS as we currently have an Erasmus+ student & staff exchange.
This week saw saw the publication of two book chapters on very different aspects of university education. First, Prof. Debbie Holley, Dr. Ben Goldsmith and Dr. David Fevyer co-authored ‘Inspiring Learning through Technologies’. This is chapter 5 in the newly published second edition of the textbook Enhancing Teaching Practice in Higher Education published by SAGE [1]. 
And just a three days ago Emerald Publishing published a chapter on external examining in The Role of External Examining in Higher Education: Challenges and Best Practices. The chapter ‘Acting as External Examiners in the UK: Going Beyond Quality Assurance’ [2] is co-authored by Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) and FHSS Visiting Facutly Prof. Padam Simkhada (University of Huddersfield) and Dr. Amudha Poobalan (University of Aberdeen).
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BU staff can login below:
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