This month brought, for me, the welcome return of face-to-face conferences. First, I was pleased to have received an invitation earlier in the year to deliver a keynote lecture at the RCN International Nursing Research Conference 2022, which took place at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama on September 5th and 6th. Rather than speak about any one, particular, study I used this as an opportunity to travel over a larger programme of research in the mental health field, pulling out underpinning ideas and key messages along the way.
Boiled down, my talk revolved around four ideas: health care can be thought of as a complex system; complex health systems can be understood through the study of cases, existing at different ‘levels’ of organisation (macro, meso and micro); to appreciate cases of health care system complexity it makes sense to use a plurality of analytic and methodological approaches; and research of this type demands a collaborative, stakeholder-informed, approach. These will be familiar themes to readers of this blog site. My talk at the RCN event, however, represented the most sustained effort I’ve made to date to articulate the principles and practices underpinning the research programme I have been involved in, to synthesise the main lessons learned, and to pull out some overarching observations. At some point it would make sense to write all of this up in an article.
Hot on the heels of the RCN International Nursing Research Conference came the 28th International Mental Health Nursing Research Conference, which took place at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, on September 8th and 9th. St Catherine’s was the home for the Network for Psychiatric Nursing Research Conference, as this event was originally known, for many years: returning there earlier this month seemed fitting after the two online editions of the event which happened in 2020 and 2021. I was pleased to be part of a symposium presenting findings from three NIHR-funded studies into mental health crisis services. Led By Dr Nichola Clibbens, this included a talk by Nicola and Michael Ashman drawing from their (and their colleagues’) realist synthesis of how, for whom and in what circumstances different community mental health crisis services work. Also featuring was a presentation from Professor Steve Gillard and Dr Katie Anderson on mental health decision units in acute care pathways. Third in the linked series of presentations was my talk summarising findings from an evidence synthesis, led by Dr Nicola Evans, into crisis responses for children and young people aged 5 to 25.
More generally, I very much appreciated the opportunity at both these events to renew my connections with friends and colleagues, and to meet and hear new people with interesting things to say. In the case of MHNR2022, particular thanks are due to the organising committee, which brought this conference together under the umbrella of Mental Health Nurse Academics UK without a dedicated events team in support.
Follow @benhannigan
Ben Hannigan's blog 