2 April 2025

First paper by PhD student

NHS, open access, PG research, Publishing, student research, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

We are delighted to announce that Bournemouth University (BU) and University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust (UHD) Clinical Match-Funded PhD researcher, Leila Kattach, has published her first academic paper. This milestone marks an important step in Leila’s research journey and highlights the impactful work being carried out within our clinical research community.

The paper, titled “Nurse-Led Models of Service Delivery for Skin Cancer Detection: A Systematic Review“, was published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing yesterday (April 1, 2025) [1]. This research consolidates evidence on nurse-led models for skin cancer detection, comparing their effectiveness to physician-led care and highlighting their potential benefits in terms of accessibility, cost-effectiveness, and patient satisfaction.

The systematic review, co-authored with Heidi Singleton, Steven Ersser, Debbie Holley, Ian Pearson, and Abdulrahman Shadeed, rigorously analyzed studies from 1992 to 2024, assessing the role of nurses in diagnosing, treating, and supporting skin cancer patients. The findings demonstrate that nurse-led models can complement or even substitute traditional physician-led care, offering high diagnostic accuracy, improved access to care, and enhanced patient education.

Key highlights from the study include:

Comparable diagnostic accuracy between nurses and ophthalmologists in skin cancer detection.

Increased accessibility and reduced waiting times for patients through community-based, nurse-led services.

Significant cost savings associated with nurse-led care delivery.

Patient preference for nurse-led models, citing convenience and enhanced education on self-examination.

The study also emphasizes the need for further research and standardized national guidelines to scale and integrate nurse-led models effectively into healthcare systems.

Leila’s research has strong implications for policy and clinical practice, advocating for:

✅ Enhanced dermatology nursing training to equip nurses with advanced skills in assessment, diagnosis, and treatment.

✅ Development of Dermatology Nurse Consultant Training Programmes to support professional development and independent practice.

✅ Support for community-based care to enhance accessibility, particularly in underserved regions.

✅ Standardization of nurse-led models to ensure consistency and high standards across healthcare settings.

Leila Kattach’s research has a PhD studentship jointly funded by BU and UHD NHS Foundation Trust. The study was conducted in collaboration with academic dermatology experts, specialist clinicians, and a patient representative with lived experience of melanoma, ensuring a patient-centered approach. Leila’s work paves the way for further exploration into nurse-led service delivery models and their long-term impact on skin cancer care, cost-effectiveness, and healthcare workforce sustainability. We look forward to seeing how her research evolves and contributes to improving patient care in dermatology.

👏 Congratulations to Leila Kattach and the research team on this outstanding achievement!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Reference:

Kattach, L., Singleton, H., Ersser, S., Holley, D., Pearson, I. & Shadeed, A. (2025), Nurse-Led Models of Service Delivery for Skin Cancer Detection: A Systematic Review. Journal of Advanced Nursing.[online first] https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.16854

25 January 2025

Cancer Awareness Event at BU

conferences, NHS, Public engagement Edwin van Teijlingen

The Dorset Indian Association in collaboration with the NHS Wessex Cancer Alliance and Bournemouth University ran a very successful Cancer Awareness Event at Bournemouth University today Saturday, 25th January 2025. At the event a range of experts from University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust spoke about the risks and prevention and early detection of various cancers, including bowel, lung, breast, skin, head and neck and other cancers. The presentations also included early detection and aspects of mental health in cancer patients. BU’s Professor Steve Ersser, for example, spoke about a currently on-going interdisciplinary health education project in the cancer field.
There were separate opportunities for the audience to get on breast screening and health checks, provided by the Dorset Breast Screening Unit, LiveWell Dorset and staff based in BU’s Faculty of Health and Social Science.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Faculty of Health & Social Sciences

27 September 2024

Pregnancy & COVID-19 in UK: New study published

NHS, Women's Academic Network, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

This morning the editor of the Frontiers in Psychiatry emailed us that the paper reporting the findings of the baseline data of a large-scale epidemiological study into pregnancy during COVID-19 in the UK has been published [1]. The interdisciplinary research team includes researchers from University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust (Dr. Latha Vinayakarao & Prof. Minesh Khashu) and Bournemouth University (Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen).

This longitudinal study explores how the SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] pandemic affected the mental health of pregnant people in the UK. In mid-to-late 2020, we recruited 3666 individuals in the UK for the EPPOCH pregnancy cohort (Maternal mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Effect of the Pandemic on Pregnancy Outcomes and Childhood Health). Participants were assessed for depression, anxiety, anger and pregnancy-related anxiety using validated scales. Additionally, physical activity, social support, individualized support and personal coping ability of the respondents were assessed as potential resilience factors.

Participants reported high levels of depression (57.05%), anxiety (58.04%) and anger (58.05%). Higher levels of social and individualized support and personal coping ability were associated with lower mental health challenges. Additionally, pregnant individuals in the UK experienced higher depression during the pandemic than that reported in Canada. Finally, qualitative analysis revealed that restrictions for partners and support persons during medical appointments as well as poor public health communication led to increased mental health adversities and hindered ability to make medical decisions.

The study highlights the increased mental health challenges among pregnant individuals in the UK during pandemic. These results highlight the need for reassessing the mental health support measures available to pregnant people in the UK, both during times of crisis and in general.

Reference:

Datye, S., Smiljanic, M., Shetti, R.H., MacRae-Miller, A., van Teijlingen, E., Vinayakarao, L., Peters, E.M.J., Lebel, C.A., Tomfohr-Madsen, L., Giesbrecht, G., Khashu, M., Conrad, M.L. (2024) Prenatal maternal mental health and resilience in the United Kingdom during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: A cross-national comparison, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1411761

2 September 2024

First EPPOCH study paper accepted for publication

open access, Publishing, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

This afternoon the editorial office of Frontiers in Psychiatry informed us that our manuscript “Prenatal maternal mental health and resilience in the United Kingdom during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: A cross-national comparison” [1] has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Psychiatry, section Perinatal Psychiatry. An interdisciplinary team from Germany, Canada and the UK designed and initiated a longitudinal pregnancy cohort in the United Kingdom titled Maternal mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Effect of the Pandemic on Pregnancy Outcomes & Childhood Health (EPPOCH). In the second half of 2020, we recruited 3,600 pregnant individuals via self-enrollment through our website ‘www.eppoch-uk.org’. Our EPPOCH study has since collected a wealth of validated questionnaire data at multiple time points, from mothers (during pregnancy and postpartum) and their children (from birth to age 3), and we are currently distributing our 4-year childhood follow-up questionnaire. This is the first paper from the EPPOCH study.

The UK team is a collaboration between Bournemouth University and University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust, the latter through Professor Minesh Khashu and Dr. Latha Vinayakarao based in Poole Maternity Hospital. The German team is led by Dr. Melanie Conrad, previously at Charité University Medicine Berlin, and now associated with the University of Augsburg, and includes Swarali Datye, PhD student at Charité University Medicine Berlin, whilst our Canadian collaborator, Alison MacRae-Miller, is based at the University of British Columbia, Victoria. This EPPOCH cohort is closely linked with a sister cohort in Canada called the Pregnancy During the Pandemic (PDP) study.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

Reference:

Datye, S., Smiljanic, M., Shetti, R.H., MacRae-Miller, A., van Teijlingen, E., Vinayakarao, L., Peters, E.M.J., Lebel, C.A., Tomfohr-Madsen, L., Giesbrecht, G., Khashu, M., Conrad, M.L. (2024) Prenatal maternal mental health and resilience in the United Kingdom during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: A cross-national comparison, Frontiers in Psychiatry, (accepted).

7 December 2023

Promoting interdisciplinary research

conferences, international, Publishing, REF Subjects, Training, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

This week’s Bournemouth University (BU) advertised a forthcoming event in February 2024 ‘Early Career Researchers and Interdisciplinarity in the Medical Humanities – South West‘. To promote this event I would like to highlight some papers published recently by BU academics on interdisciplinarity.

First, Dr. Shanti Shanker in the Department of Psychology and Dr. Pramod Regmi in the Department of Nursing Science and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Department of Midwifery & Health Sciences published the paper ‘The Interdisciplinary Team Not the Interdisciplinarist: Reflections on Interdisciplinary Research’ [1]. 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. This paper argues that interdisciplinary working is within the team, not the person being interdisciplinary . 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. The worlds needs people who are strong in their discipline and open-minded/flexible/reflective enough to see the value of other people’s disciplines.

Secondly, the Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences published our editorial ‘Public Health is truly interdisciplinary’ [2]. This editorial was largely written to counteract some of the jurisdictional claims made in Nepal by certain people in Public Health. These claims express themselves in arguments around the question whether Public Health is a single academic discipline or a broad interdisciplinary profession comprising many different individual academic disciplines. There are two quite distinct and opposing views. Some argue that Public Health is a broad-ranging single discipline covering sub-disciplines such as Epidemiology, Management, Medicine, Nursing, Health Psychology, Medical Statistics, Sociology of Health & Illness and Public Health Medicine. Those who support this argument, typically see: (a) Public Health is the overarching dominant discipline, which brings these sub-disciplines together; and (b) that a true Public Health practitioner amalgamates all these individual elements. Others argue that Public Health is more an overarching world view or interdisciplinary approach for wide-ranging group of professionals and academics [2]. In this view some Public Health professionals are first trained as clinicians, others as psychologists, health economists, health management, statisticians, or demographers, and so on and have later specialised in Public Health.

Thirdly, doing multidisciplinary research is not without its problems, hence we reflect on some of these in the paper ‘Interdisciplinary Research in Public Health: Not quite straightforward’ [3]. The authors are BU’s Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Nirmal Ayral in the Department of Nursing Science and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, and BU Visiting Professor Padam Simkhada and BU graduate Dr. Pratik Adhikary (currently at the University of the West of England). We all are Public Health researchers, with very different educational backgrounds and training, reflecting the diversity of and interdisciplinarity in the field. Several of us have a first degree in Education or Health Education, but one has a first degree in Sociology. Whilst four of the five authors have Master degree in Public Health and/or Health Promotion, two have a Master in Education. Most of the authors have a Ph.D. in Public Health, but again the Ph.D. of one of us is in Sociology. The key point is that we are all working in Public Health.

Unfortunately the ‘Early Career Researchers and Interdisciplinarity in the Medical Humanities – South West’is for ECRs from the South West Hub only.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMWH

References:

Shanker, S., Wasti, S.P., Ireland, J., Regmi, P., Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2021) The Interdisciplinary Team Not the Interdisciplinarist: Reflections on Interdisciplinary Research, Europasian Journal of Medical Sciences 3(2):1-5.
Wasti, S.P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P. (2020) Public Health is truly interdisciplinary. Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences 6(1): 21-22.
van Teijlingen, E., Regmi, P., Adhikary, P., Aryal, N., Simkhada, P. (2019). Interdisciplinary Research in Public Health: Not quite straightforward. Health Prospect, 18(1), 4-7.

28 September 2023

Results of the third Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) published, recognising BU’s contribution to society

Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer, Public engagement ematthews

The difference Bournemouth University’s research, education and expertise makes to society has been recognised through the third Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) exercise.

The KEF is released annually by Research England and aims to increase efficiency and effectiveness in public funding for knowledge exchange and to encourage universities to understand and improve on their performance.

BU’s performance in the third KEF demonstrates several areas of strength, including our research partnerships, working with business, and local growth and regeneration.

Our work with health and care providers, including partnerships with University Hospitals Dorset (UHD) and Dorset Healthcare, supports initiatives across research, education and practice in the region, helping people to live better for longer.

This includes student placements and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for staff, with over 32,000 learner days undertaken by NHS staff at BU over the past three years. Collaborative research with UHD includes optimising nutritional care for inpatients and creating a medical simulation game to help prepare junior doctors for the pressures of life on the ward.

The university’s expertise in environmental science is helping to protect and preserve our natural environment, from working with the National Trust and RSPB to monitor habitats and support conservation efforts in the Purbecks, to the ecological consultancy work undertaken by Bournemouth University Global Environmental Solutions (BUG).

BU also supports business and entrepreneurship across the region. Around 60 SME owners have so far participated in the university’s Help to Grow: Management Programme while BU’s Eco-Entrepreneurs Fund, delivered in partnership with Santander, has supported BU students and graduates to develop businesses which address the climate and ecological crisis.

As well as regional engagement, the university works with communities and organisations on a national and international level – such as the Disaster Management Centre, which is assisting communities globally, including in Sierra Leone, in crisis preparedness and recovery.

Professor Keith Phalp, Pro Vice-Chancellor at Bournemouth University, said: “We are proud to be a catalyst for growth, using our skills and expertise to support our region and enrich society.

“The KEF provides an opportunity to assess our progress in knowledge exchange and the impact of our work. It is great to recognise the contribution of our staff, students and graduates in supporting this work on a regional, national, and international scale and making a real difference to the world around us.”

The results of the KEF have been published in the form of institutional dashboards, with institutions measured against seven perspectives – including working with businesses, the public and the third sector; intellectual property and commercialisation; and public and community engagement.

In recognition of the fact that universities have different areas of expertise and work in regions with different needs, all universities in England have been placed into different clusters according to their expertise, size and research activity.

BU is in Cluster E, alongside other large universities with a broad range of disciplines generating research. Other universities in the cluster include Oxford Brookes University, Nottingham Trent University, and Portsmouth University.

Professor Dame Jessica Corner, Executive Chair of Research England, said: “Across the breadth of higher education, institutions make rich and diverse contributions to the economy and society through their knowledge exchange activities.

“The KEF continues to be a powerful tool to describe the breadth of scope of knowledge exchange. It also provides important evidence of different university strengths through peer group comparisons.”

Visit the Knowledge Exchange Framework website to view the institutional dashboards and find out more about the KEF.

12 April 2023

BU-UHD 2nd Research Event – May 24-Invite for Abstracts

NHS ngkounta

BU-UHD 2nd Research Event – May 24-Invite for Abstracts

NHS Research Research news

We are delighted to announce that bookings are now open for our 2^nd research event: Collaborative Research: A Time For Action!

The BU-UHD partnership exists for the benefit of staff, students, patients, and the local community. This joint event will act as a catalyst for discussion around research collaboration and a perfect opportunity for networking.

To book your tickets, visit:https://atimeforaction.eventbrite.co.uk

The event starts with a keynote presentation from Professor William Rosenburg, newly appointed chair of Wessex Health Partners.

With facilitated discussions on developing future research in health inequalities; workforce and people; sustainable futures; digital futures and medical sciences this event is likely to be of interest to a wide range of BU and NHS staff.

Posters and presentations provide a chance to view and talk about collaborative research already underway.

Light refreshments will be served during the event.

Please, find the Abstract Submission form here: BU- UHD 2nd Research Event May 24 – Abstract Submission Form

All applications to be submitted to BU-UHD Research Steering Committee by 30 April 2023

Via bupartnership@uhd.nhs.uk

2 December 2022

New paper FHSS Visiting Faculty

NHS, Publishing, Women's Academic Network, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

The latest issue of the journal Performing Ethos: An International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance includes the paper ‘The birth of a lullaby and these COVID years’ by Jillian Ireland, who is BU Visiting Faculty. Jillian is Visiting Faculty in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) and Professional Midwifery Advocate in Poole Maternity Hospital, University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust (UHD).

Her new paper describes the birth (an appropriate verb to be used by a midwife) of a lullaby. This particular lullaby grew from a community-based maternity care intervention. This project was funded by the Burdett Fund for Nurses, supported by the Foundation of Nursing Studies, and co-created by local women and staff from maternity, health visiting and the Children’s Centre in the community. The beautiful illustrations in this paper are by two local artists: Alan Mercel-Sanca and Allison Churchill.

Reference:

Ireland, J. (2022) The birth of a lullaby and these COVID years, Performing Ethos: An International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance, 12: 39–52, https://doi.org/10.1386/peet_00045_1

12 August 2022

BU and University Hospitals Dorset celebration and networking event

Industry collaboration ematthews

An event to celebrate the partnership between BU and University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust (UHD) is being held at BU on 18 October 2022.

The event will showcase collaborative research that has taken place between both organisations, and provide networking opportunities for BU academics to meet counterparts at UHD who are interested in further collaborating on research and professional practice.

The partnership between BU and UHD will celebrate its second anniversary as a part of the event, though the organisations have had strong links for many years.

The event will provide an opportunity to hear from senior leaders at both organisations, to understand the collaborative work on current research projects and disciplines, and opportunities for future collaboration.

The event will take place in the Executive Business Centre on Tuesday 18 October 2022, starting at 5.15pm, places are limited. Booking is essential via Eventbrite.

BU Research Blog

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First paper by PhD student

Cancer Awareness Event at BU

First EPPOCH study paper accepted for publication

Promoting interdisciplinary research

Results of the third Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) published, recognising BU’s contribution to society

BU-UHD 2nd Research Event – May 24-Invite for Abstracts

BU-UHD 2nd Research Event – May 24-Invite for Abstracts

New paper FHSS Visiting Faculty

BU and University Hospitals Dorset celebration and networking event

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