Postgraduate symposium

Tomorrow I’m off to the School of Healthcare Sciences’ first-ever Postgraduate Research Student symposium, taking place in the grand surroundings of Cardiff University’s Glamorgan Building.

This has given me the perfect excuse to find out, once and for all, the particular meaning of the word ‘symposium’ (as opposed to ‘colloquium’, for example). So for those interested (which won’t be many of you, I’m sure), the Collins English Dictionary defines ‘symposium’ thus:

  1. a conference or meeting for the discussion of some subject, esp an academic topic or social problem
  2. a collection of scholarly contributions, usually published together, on a given subject
  3. (in classical Greece) a drinking party with intellectual conversation, music, etc

A ‘colloquium’, on the other hand, is:

  1. an informal gathering for discussion
  2. an academic seminar

I’m glad that’s sorted. Looking at the third definition of ‘symposium’ above, and then at the organising committee’s Socratic quotation reproduced in the flyer at the top, I now realise I ought to prepare for an event in the ancient Greek style. I may bring my guitar, all the better to join in with.

Standard professions?

The Times Higher Education reports this week on comments made by Vince Cable at an event hosted by the Sutton Trust. According to the THE, the Business Secretary:

[…] has criticised the “qualification inflation” that means entrants to “very standard” professions such as nursing require a degree.

In truth I find the THE‘s report a little disjointed, as elsewhere it quotes Vince Cable on a host of other matters including private schooling, support for postgraduate study and the promotion of social mobility.

But I understand enough of it to take issue with the Business Secretary’s side-swipe at graduate nurses. On what grounds might we distinguish ‘standard’ from ‘elite’ professions, or sustain the argument that only those joining the latter must of necessity possess degrees? We await an explanation. In the meantime, for a considered review of nursing education I refer readers to the report of the Willis Commission, which I wrote about on this blog last year. For a research-oriented post on the division of labour in health care (and particularly, on professions in the mental health field), try this post.

Returning to the REF

Photo by Antony Theobald (ant.photos) Creative Commons 2.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) licence

This is the month that universities in the UK make their submissions to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014. The REF is a big deal, as I’ve written about before. It is also continuing to attract plenty of commentary, much of it critical. For some time Dorothy Bishop, Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at Oxford University, has been using her personal blog to critique exercises in research rating. Her objections include their poor cost-effectiveness and the dangers of using journal impact factors as a proxy for the quality of individual papers. In his blog Peter Coles, Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Sussex University, has attacked the REF for becoming self-serving. Quoting from a Times Higher Education (THE) story he also writes of the practice in some universities of research-active academics not selected for REF return being shifted onto teaching-only contracts. This week, Professor Peter Scott from the Institute of Education writes in The Guardian that research assessment is now ‘out of control’ whilst the THE has recently reported on the case of Lancaster University historian Professor Derek Sayer who has appealed against the decision to include him in the REF on the grounds that the procedures used to exclude some of his colleagues have been discriminatory.

And so it goes on. In the REF proper, outputs (typically articles in journals) will be graded by experts as ‘world leading’ (4*), ‘internationally excellent’ (3*), ‘internationally recognised’ (2*), ‘nationally recognised’ (1*) or as either ‘sub-national’ or ‘not research’. These gradings will be made using the criteria of originality, significance and rigour. Universities get to select which of their staff will be included in their returns, drawing on their preparatory assessments of the quality of eligible outputs and underpinned by strategic ambitions of where they want to be in the HE firmament once the official REF results are published and institutions ranked. My guess is that, for most researchers and their employers, the most important distinction needing to be made will have been between outputs which are internationally excellent (3*) and outputs which are ‘only’ internationally recognised (2*). For reasons of reputation and likely future funding an article assessed as being at least the former is much more likely to be included in a REF submission than one which is not.

Quality assessments informing imminent REF returns will have been made by busy people with varying degrees of expertise in the (sub)areas in which the papers they have been reading lie. I’m going to speculate that there will be many hundreds (thousands?) of academics with outputs which will have attracted inconsistent scores from internal and external reviewers. Who knows, perhaps there are even some with individual outputs assessed by different people as simultaneously being ‘world leading’ and ‘unclassified’. Many will certainly have papers differentially judged as being 2* or 3*, leaving all sorts of tricky decisions to be made on submission or non-submission with all manner of possible consequences for both individuals and universities.

Back in the world of actually doing research, as opposed to the world of assessing research outputs and fretting over returns to assessment exercises, I am pleased to say COCAPP is now receiving questionnaires from service users and RISC is deep into phase 2. If you head over to this NISCHR page you’ll also find news of the Plan4Recovery project, led by Michael Coffey. This is a collaboration involving Hafal, and I’m very pleased to be a co-applicant along with Sherrill Evans and Alan Meudell. Plan4Recovery is advertising for a research officer, and is about to have its first advisory group meetings. Exciting times.

Reviewing health and social care research in Wales

Here in Wales, a month or so ago the National Institute for Social Care and Health Research (NISCHR) published a document outlining ideas for its restructuring, and opened a discussion on how research should be prioritised, organised and supported in the future. NISCHR says that it:

[…] proposes to engage its stakeholders, including patients, the public, the NHS, social care organisations, universities, industry, the third sector and other government departments to review the infrastructure and programmes it currently funds and help determine what changes should be made.

Now, details of a series of open meetings have appeared. I’ve registered for the November 29th meeting taking place at the Cardiff City Stadium. I will also be offering up some ideas for the School of Healthcare Sciences’ collective response.

A number of things are currently brought together under the NISCHR umbrella. Funding is provided for national-level registered research groups (RRGs), regionally based academic health science collaborations (or partnerships) and a biomedical research centre and series of biomedical research units. Social care research is assisted through capacity-building funding. Support is also provided for Involving People, and for all-Wales training in research governance and related matters. Studies on the NISCHR portfolio are eligible for funded, in-the-field, help via a network of clinical studies officers and research nurses. NISCHR also oversees approval processes for NHS research, funds a number of trials units and has (this year) launched a faculty. There is also the small matter of NISCHR’s competitive funding schemes, which provide project-by-project support for high-quality studies of importance to health and social care in Wales.

Given all of this, NISCHR’s review is, I think, an important process to be contributing to. One of the NISCHR schemes mentioned in the review document is the Research Capacity Building Collaboration for Nursing and Allied Health Professionals (RCBC Wales). This has been an excellent initiative, entirely delivering (so far as I can tell) on its ambitions to develop capacity. As such, it deserves to be continued (and better still, expanded). I have to declare an interest here, of course, being an alumni of the RCBC Wales scheme having secured a postdoctoral fellowship in 2006. This was the funding which allowed me to investigate the establishment, work and wider system impact of crisis resolution and home treatment services, as I’ve variously blogged about in the past here, here and here.

The NISCHR document also draws attention to the use of Welsh health and social care research funds to support NIHR NETSCC Programmes. This paves the way for researchers in Wales to apply, on an equal footing to colleagues in England, for support from the HS&DR Programme, the HTA Programme and others. This mechanism facilitates cross-UK collaboration, which has to be a good thing. It is only through this support that Wales-based colleagues and I have been able to work on the COCAPP and RiSC projects.

I also see mention by NISCHR of an ongoing review of the operation of R&D offices, and in this regard I hope that a way is found to further rationalise approval and governance processes. The NHS research passport system could be better (it’s not really much of a ‘passport’ at all), and there are variations still in the ways different R&D offices process applications.

It is also clear that NISCHR is considering the level and type of support it offers to its all-Wales RRGs, and the connections these might have with biomedical research centres and biomedical research units working in overlapping areas. NISCHR is, if I understand this correctly, thinking through how organisations like the Mental Health Research Network Cymru and the National Centre for Mental Health might relate.

So, there we have it: evidence that changes to health and social care research organisation and funding in Wales are on the cards, with plenty of time remaining for people with an interest to get involved in shaping future arrangements.

More unwanted invitations

In a post I wrote in May I complained about academic spam, and particularly the endless receipt in my email inbox of unwanted invitations to write papers for unknown journals specialising in areas I know absolutely nothing about. Emails of this type keep on coming, and I thought I’d share one directly with readers who may be interested. Remember, the additional sting in the tail is that if I ever do take one of these offers up I’ll probably then be asked to pay an author processing charge.

Today, the OMICS publishing group sent me this:

Dear Dr.Ben Hannigan,

Greetings from OMICS!
We are really happy to connect with an expert like you in the field of Journal of Civil and Legal Sciences which is a very important area of publication in our Journal of Civil and Legal Sciences.
We believe your potential in submitting a manuscript towards our journal and please let us know your response regarding this.
In the context of your busy timings or other professional commitments if you cannot agree to this, we expect you to suggest any other expert like you for this.
Hope to hear from you soon.

Nice to know that civil and legal sciences are an important area for OMICS to publish in their Journal of Civil and Legal Sciences. Who’d have thought it? I’ve actually hidden my personal expertise in this area very well, pretending instead to be an academic mental health nurse who knows something about systems, services, work and roles.

OMICS, you won’t be hearing from me.

Mental health services at a time of austerity

Last week I drafted a short, commentary-type, paper for a special edition of Mental Health Nursing which will be focusing on practice and services during a time of austerity. Some years ago I was on the editorial board of MHN. I’m pleased to learn that having disappeared from the library shelves in favour of becoming an online journal (available only to members of Unite the Union) it has made a return in traditional paper form. I’ve been sent a stack of copies, which I’ll be distributing to students.

Anyway: no sooner had I completed my draft and sent it onwards than yesterday’s big health and social care story broke. Under the banner England’s mental health services ‘in crisis’ the BBC ran a report drawing on a joint investigation conducted with Community Care magazine. The headlines were sobering, suggesting over 1,500 mental health hospital beds being lost since April 2011. These bald figures were illustrated with personal stories, revealing people needing crisis admission being transferred to wherever beds could be found around the country, and wards running at over 100% occupancy.

This is very bad news, and suggests a shrinkage back to the way things last were in the early to mid 1990s. In writing my paper for MHN I fished out my copy of this article by David McDaid and Martin Knapp, in which the point is made that at times of economic hardship demand for mental health care increases. And yet, as we are finding, services are actually retracting as austerity bites.

Classroom time

This morning I’ll be in a classroom urging a group of post-registration community nurses to embrace the idea that mental health is everybody’s business. It’s a session I regularly get to do on the School of Healthcare Sciences’ Fundamentals of Community Practice module. We’ll be looking at rates of mental ill-health within populations, and at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines on depression. We’ll also get to think about what district nurses, health visitors and others can do to promote mental health in their day-to-day work.

This is a session where I additionally get to introduce people to Healthtalkonline. This is an excellent resource for everyone: teachers, practitioners, service users and carers. Here’s how it describes itself:

People’s stories: see, hear and read their experiences…

Healthtalkonline is the award-winning website of the DIPEx charity. Healthtalkonline and its sister website, Youthhealthtalk, let you share in more than 2,000 people’s experiences of over 60 health-related conditions and illnesses. You can watch video or listen to audio clips of the interviews, read about people’s experiences if you prefer and find reliable information about specific conditions, treatment choices and support.

The information on Healthtalkonline relies on external funding and is based on qualitative research into health experiences, led by experts at the University of Oxford. These personal stories of health and illness will enable patients, families, carers and healthcare professionals to benefit from the experiences of others.

Healthtalkonline has a repository of clips in which people talk about their personal experiences of mental health difficulties. I have it on good authority that there is more on the way, too, so this is a site to keep coming back to.

Supporting doctoral students in mental health nursing

Over on the Mental Health Nurse Academics UK blog, Julia Terry from Swansea University has written a post introducing the new Mental Health Nurse Doctoral Students’ Network which she has worked so hard to convene. The group met, for the first time, as part of an NPNR conference fringe at Warwick University last month.

Here’s what Julia has to say:

Welcome to the first official blog post for the:

paperchain people

 Mental Health Nurse Doctoral Students’ Network

At the NPNR in Warwick this year 10 Mental Health Nurse Doctoral Students came forward and agreed that a network was a good idea.

This network can work in a number of ways:

  • Meeting up for occasional face to face discussions
  • Using an email group to contact like-minded people
  • And using this blog

You may have questions, tips to share, events and books to recommend, the possibilities are wide.

As you’re reading this we’ve now increased the network to 24 interested doctoral students already, so the interest seems to be there. Thanks for your support.

Top tip:

2 great books I read from start to finish and keep going back to –

Petre, M., Rugg, G. (2010) The unwritten rules of PhD research. 2nd ed. Berkshire: Open University Press

Phillips, E., Pugh, D. (2010) How to get a PhD: a handbook for students and their supervisors.  Berkshire: Open University Press

I found them very easy to read, and good to dip in and out of. Tips about writing, planning your time, supervision, etc..Well worth a read.

Bw, Julia Terry

Great work, Julia: I hope people get involved.

Whilst I’m on the topic of postgraduate research, I note that the European Academy of Nursing Science (of which I am a Fellow) runs a doctoral student summer school for nurse researchers. There’s also the Academy of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting Research with its mentorship scheme.

World Mental Health Day 2013 [update]

Now that I have learned how to embed YouTube videos into this blog (it isn’t difficult, really) I can update this morning’s post by adding a clip of Welsh Government Minister for Health and Social Services Professor Mark Drakeford speaking, on the occasion of World Mental Health Day 2013, at the Senedd. My thanks to Hafal for using its twitter account to draw my (and everyone else’s) attention to this:

World Mental Health Day 2013

Today is World Mental Health Day. Here’s a snip from the WHO:

Every year on 10th of October, The World Health Organization joins in celebrating the World Mental Health Day. The day is celebrated at the initiative of the World Federation of Mental Health and WHO supports this initiative through raising awareness on mental health issues using its strong relationships with the Ministries of health and civil society organizations across the globe. WHO also develops technical and communication material and provides technical assistance to the countries for advocacy campaigns around the World Mental Health Day.

The theme of World Mental Health Day in 2013 is “Mental health and older adults”.

Here in Wales, the day is being marked by (amongst other things) the organisation Hafal bringing its latest campaign, Lights! Camera! ACTION!, to the Senedd in Cardiff. From Hafal’s website I see that this event will be attended by the Welsh Government Minister for Health and Social Services, Professor Mark Drakeford. I hope this all goes well, as I’m sure it will. Last month’s revelation that Asda, Tesco and Amazon were selling ‘mental patient fancy dress costumes’ reminds us (as if it were needed) of the progress still to be made to improve public understanding of mental health issues and to tackle stigma and discrimination.

For a general overview of mental health priorities and challenges around the world, here’s a five minute video produced by the World Health Organization: