I am away for a week and will be e-free. Amongst reading materials I'm packing Learning Drupal 6 Module Development. Last evening I came across Wageningen MultiMedia Research Centre (WMMRC) a treat to explore for when I return. Rather than a more complete educational Drupal distribution there are some specific modules that might work as a plug-in:
Last month I posted the advanced notice about this call for proposals, which is now fully released and has been publicised on the SPARC / KT-EQUAL network:
Dear All (but especially researchers who are desperate to secure research funding)
The Call for Proposals to Phase 3 of the cross-research council multi-health agency Lifelong Health and Wellbeing (LLHW) initiative was released today.
Details can be found at:
http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Fundingopportunities/Calls/LLHWPhase3/MRC006680
This is a very significant opportunity, well worth close scrutiny and consideration and, hopefully, subsequent action.
If you have any uncertainties about the programme or its requirements then I am sure that the representatives of the research councils will be very pleased for you to make contact with them.
Importantly this is a call for multidisciplinary research, a requirement which must be wholeheartedly embraced for any proposal to stand a chance of being eligible for consideration.
It's time for action!!
Best wishes
Peter Lansley
Professor Peter Lansley, BSc, MSc, PhD, MCIOB, FCOT
Director, KT-EQUAL – Knowledge Transfer for Extending Quality Life
School of Construction Management and Engineering, URS Building,
University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 219, Reading, RG6 6AW, UK
p.r.lansley at reading.ac.uk
http://www.sparc.ac.uk
The best websites are often variously described as clean, slick, easy to navigate and access. They are considered 'best' often as a consequence of appreciating the need for whitespace. This means of course that they are also minimalist, uncluttered, easier to style consistently and they often have plenty of free space. The Google site and resulting interface is a prime example, to the extent it has become a recognised brand characteristic.
The pressures on curricula almost preempts the phenomena of student cramming. Without careful planning and discipline curricula can be jammed so full that there is no slack, no whitespace.
As a result there is also no space to reflect (Clouder, 2009).
Reference:
Lynn Clouder (2009) Promotion of Reflective Learning, Teaching and Assessment through Curriculum Design, Occasional Paper 10, Connecting Reflective Learning, Teaching and Assessment, Edited by Helen Bulpitt and Mary Deane, Higher Education Academy. p.11.
Additional links:
Whitespace programming language
Dear HIFA2015 colleagues,
Please find below a press release from the Global Health Workforce Alliance. In the words of Dr Mubashar Sheikh, GHWA Executive Director: "The world is now a significant step closer to ensuring health workers are available and accessible to all".
PRESS RELEASE: 'Sixty-third World Health Assembly unanimously adopts the WHO global Code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel. Alliance members and partners applaud Member States. The Alliance 21/05/2010.
[Photo: WHO/Jess Hoffman. Dr Pierre François Unger, State Councillor of the Canton of Geneva, addresses delegates at the opening of the Sixty-third World Health Assembly.]
'Geneva, 21 May 2010 - In a historic move today, the Sixty-third World Health Assembly unanimously passed a resolution to adopt the voluntary WHO global Code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel. With this step, the world's nations acknowledge the global dimension and complexities of the health workforce crisis and the interconnected nature of both the problems and the solutions.
'With this resolution, Member States commit themselves to the voluntary principles and practices for the ethical international recruitment of health personnel taking into account the responsibilities and rights of source and destination countries, other stakeholders, and those of the migrant health personnel themselves. The Code provides ethical principles applicable to the international recruitment of health personnel in a manner that strengthen the health systems of developing countries.
'A drafting committee was established on the first day of the Assembly and after three days of negotiations, stayed up till 4:30 am on Thursday, 20 May 2010 to seek consensus on a draft resolution that retained the principles and spirit of the Code while also representing a way forward for all countries.
'The draft was unanimously accepted at the tenth session of Committee A late evening on 20 May 2010 and brought long awaited joy and celebration to the many organizations and individuals, campaigners and professionals, institutions and Member States who had been working tirelessly since the last three years to see a meaningful and equitable resolution on the Code be adopted at the World Health Assembly.
'"The process was not always easy, but there was commitment from all Member States to see a resolution adopted. This helped to keep the process moving and the results are there to see" says Alliance Board member, Bjarne Garden, Assistant Director, Global Health and AIDS Department, NORAD, a member of the Norwegian delegation.
'"This brings to fruition the pioneering work seeded by the Alliance three years ago with the creation of the Health Worker Migration Initiative bringing together the Health Worker Migration Global Policy Advisory Council and WHO led team of technical experts. It is the result of the work of multiple stakeholders who have effectively rallied around together. The world is now a significant step closer to ensuring health workers are available and accessible to all", says Dr Mubashar Sheikh, Executive Director, Global Health Workforce Alliance.
'World Health Organization (WHO) has played a key role in coordinating the process. "The Code sets out a roadmap for implementation. Within 2 years WHO will provide guidance to countries on monitoring implementation of the Code, and then report to the Assembly on the progress against implementation. The Code is voluntary, but progress on implementation will be monitored and reviewed" explained Dr Manuel Dayrit, Director, WHO department of Human Resources for Health.
'Health personnel migration has been a clearly identified priority for the Alliance since its inception. During the First Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in March 2008, the Alliance endorsed the Kampala Declaration and Agenda for Global Action, which sparked broad interest in the creation of the Code.
'Progress on the code has been achieved as a result of consultations and discussions, particularly at all six WHO Regional Committees and national consultations, involving participation by a wide range of stakeholder groups. The UN ECOSOC meeting and the G8 Summit in July 2009, and the UN General Assembly in December 2009 had strongly supported and encouraged WHO to move forward in finalizing the draft code of practice. The 126th Session of the WHO Executive Board, January 2010, had discussed a revised draft of the Code and recommended that it be submitted to the 63rd World Health Assembly.
'At this momentous milestone, the Alliance and WHO call upon Member States and all its partners to reinforce its spirit of working together as they now gear up to implementing the code. The Alliance remains committed to facilitating the process and supporting sharing of information among Member States and all stakeholders.'
The Draft Resolution, dated 20 May 2010, is available here:
http://www.who.int/workforcealliance/knowledge/themes/migration/wha_A63_A_Confpaper_11.pdf
Key elements of the draft code (as described in The Lancet, 15 May) are:
In Computing 20 May 2010 Andrew Charlesworth (p.24-26) writes about a report from Gartner the IT industry advisory group warning of a gap in mainframe skills due to the imminent retirement of experienced IT staff. The report notes:
"Increased focus needs to be to be on the preservation of detailed and specialised expertise that goes well beyond basic knowledge."Nursing faces its own challenges in terms of skill gaps and loss of skills due to retirement. In contrast to the mainframe IT market the skills needed is in the orchestration of basic nursing care.
While the coalition government’s Programme for Government reiterates previous commitments around technology and civil liberties, IT procurement and broadband rollout, it is noticeably silent on the future of the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT), with no mention of Conservative promises prior to the election to dismantle the "NHS supercomputer" or the Liberal Democrats' pledge to scrap large parts of the NPfIT.
...
Prognosis for NPfIT remains uncertain - 21 May 2010 - Computing
There are many new insights and remembrances available in the content of -
The HEA mental health SIG presentation yesterday on Hodges' model was very well received. The other sessions were also very interesting and of direct relevance to my role in the care of older adults and mental health. The other sessions were on national dementia strategy and a study of competencies, plus the use of a book club in student learning. I hope other opportunities will arise to spread word of the health career model at other events. The trip (British Museum and an hour in the National Portrait Gallery inc.), networking and dialogue that ensued was very enjoyable. The next meeting will be later in the year and may be in Glasgow, so check their site and I will see if I can post future details on W2tQ.
In addition to the potential of the model being recognised, I also had to defend some points and assumptions that I have carried for a long time:
I arrived in London at noon in preparation for the Higher Education Academy mental health SIG meeting tomorrow at King's College, which includes a presentation on the health career model.
The afternoon was spent at The British Museum exhibition Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance drawings
Early in the life of W2tQ visits to the Tate in London and Liverpool prompted a blog post or two.
Visiting this stunning exhibition even before I fastened and feasted on the first drawing, the subtitled walls announced the various exhibition themes and for me instantly suggested links to health care:
The attack on MP Stephen Timms here in the UK highlights not only the ongoing importance of personal safety for public service personnel, but how much politicians value their constituency work. It is no accident that these sessions are called "surgeries".
The politician meets not just a citizen, but a political obligation and duty to care. In the media reports it was interesting to hear of how much satisfaction MPs get from their constituency work. Listening to the reporting and debate prompted me to realise that although politicians vary in how well they engage and empathise with their constituents the problems they are asked to deal with covers a broad holistic spectrum. Consider this listing written by Tony Wright MP:
There have been two series running on BBC 4 in the UK over recent months and currently with a cartographic and historical focus:
see - The Beauty of Maps
This Vermeer - The Art of Painting - was featured in one programme and reveals the power and status of maps as Wikipedia also explains.
It is natural to see the health career model as a map, but this map is not just the preserve of the wealthy. Hodges' model can be used universally by all - a common framework.
Use of the term map and its synonyms is in turn common in medicine in many forms:
Happy International Nurses' Day!
For quite a few months I have not connected the MacBook to the external monitor. I did so last night using:
On the Drupal front - despite the title of this post - there's not much to report. The news is brief and yet kind of major in that I've bought my ticket for Drupalcon in Copenhagen. I am really gutted that this year I did not get to the Scottish Ruby Conference in March, after '08 and '09. At least getting to grips with Textmate will also help with Ruby (and Rails) too.
I first came across the work of (Prof.) Danny Dorling in the 1990's in connection with workshops on visualization in the social sciences and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The other week I read a feature on his (very timely) book in the Society section of The Guardian (O'Hara, 2010).
You do wonder exactly where we are in policy terms given the interval since the Black Report. Dorling's book then sounds like a must-read, with the information posted below from the publishers.
In addition in Waterstones at the weekend I found The Spirit Level, available on their 3 for 2 offer. The links also posted below with an insightful 2009 review of The Spirit Level by Daniel Ben-Ami on sp!ked; plus a related LGC & HSJ event:
Implementing the Recommendations of the Marmot Review:
Reducing Health Inequalities
Few would dispute that we live in an unequal and unjust world, but what causes this inequality to persist? Leading social commentator and academic Danny Dorling claims in this timely book that, as the five social evils identified by Beveridge are gradually being eradicated, they are being replaced by five new tenets of injustice, viz:
In an informal yet authoritative style, Dorling examines who is most harmed by these injustices and why, and what happens to those who most benefit. Hard-hitting and uncompromising in its call to action, this is essential reading for everyone concerned with social justice.
"His attack on elitism and despair is impressive, his factual evidence undeniable." Rt Hon David Blunkett MP
Additional resources for Injustice: http://www.policypress.co.uk/injustice_appendix.aspDorling, D., Orford, S. and Harris, R. (1998) Visualization in the Social Sciences, A Report for the ESRC/JISC Advisory Group on Computer Graphics, AGOCG Technical Report No 41 (ISSN 1356-9066). Report as a PDF
O'Hara, M. (2010). Why Britain's battle to bring down social inequality has failed, p.1 of the SocietyGuardian section of the Guardian on Wednesday 21 April 2010.Dear Mr. Jones
In view of your work in patient-centered care, I’d like to invite you and/or your colleagues to submit a paper to this Special Issue of the new journal described further below and via the web link provided. I think our global readers would be very interested in your thoughts (and projects) on innovative ways to get relevant healthcare information into the hands of ‘users’ (both patients and providers), within the user-driven EBM paradigm, per below.
Please also share this call for papers with your colleagues.
Thanks for your consideration,
Susan Ross, MD
International Journal of User Driven Healthcare (IJUDH) Call for Papers
Editor-in-Chief:
Rakesh Biswas,
Center for Scientific Research and Development (CSRD),
PCMS Campus, India
Published: Quarterly
Call for Papers - Special Issue:
Submission Due Date: July 1, 2010
Special Issue On User Driven Healthcare and Evidence-based Medicine
Guest Editors:
Susan Ross, MD, FRCPC
Introduction
User Driven Healthcare (UDH) is part consumer-driven healthcare, part narrative medicine, and part Health 2.0. It stems from a concept of participatory healthcare whereby all stakeholders, enabled by information, software, and cyber-community, focus on healthcare value. But where does Evidence-based Medicine (EBM) fit into this framework? It is sometimes forgotten that EBM is a three-legged stool, comprised of the triad of evidence +provider expertise + patient preferences. In this EBM framework, provider expertise is needed to bridge the inferential gap between population-based evidence and the individual patient. And each patient's values and preferences should narrow that inferential gap further. But since the introduction of EBM nearly two decades ago, the primary focus of EBM proponents has been on Evidence, at the expense of patient preferences and provider expertise. Perhaps this is why the promise of EBM to foster the most efficient and high quality healthcare has not yet been realized.
Objective of the Special Issue
This Special Issue will focus on the following questions: Is the recent emergence of User Driven Healthcare really a new, post-EBM paradigm for healthcare, or just an overdue consideration of the other two legs of the original EBM stool? How might this trend affect all stakeholders?
Recommended Topics
Topics to be discussed in this special issue include (but are not limited to) the following:
I am of course really pleased that Prof. George Kernohan employed h2cm in his presentation last month - Beyond These Walls - Public Engagement Colloquium which I posted on W2tQ.
Considering his abstract I have added some observations below that I hope will further highlight the model's potential utility in this and other areas.
To begin George is quite right to describe the model as -
'a relatively simple way to think about and summarise the variety of engagement types.'This explains the model's use as a student resource, a foundational framework on which to superimpose their learning and map placement and professional development experiences. As a learning activity reflection is greatly concerned with the student's accounts of engagement with patients, colleagues, carers and the public at large. This also flags up the belief that the model has some generic educational purposes in health and beyond with patients, carers and the public.
The first quadrant [SCIENCES] deals with scientific response to individual signs and symptoms: where engagement aims to ensure that people comply with the healthcare intervention: engagement is about informing the patient and their informal carer about their physical needs and responses.People comply when they understand treatments and this understanding needs to be demonstrated. There has been much emphasis on concordance, but this has to be earned as Prof. K. indicates.
The second quadrant [POLITICAL] deals with mechanistic and group activity: for example political interventions to agree rules, policy and systems. Engagement here refers to members of groups working under a specific governance system or approach– activists and unions lobby for change, in this care domain. Arrangements for protection of vulnerable people are set through engagement here. Ethical issues guide the group mechanistic activities.The past couple of years has seen a whole new group of people acting in this domain. The Mental Capacity Act has resulted in various protections for individuals who are assessed as lacking mental capacity. Whilst this is quite specialist and the province of secondary care and social services, the public will increasingly be exposed to vulnerable adults in their community, on their street. (I saw a gent walk past last night - to be collected by a care worker and taken back to the near-by care home. There was some resistance as they reached the corner. Deprivation of liberty and best interest sprang to mind. ...)
The final domain [INTER-intraPERSONAL] emphasizes the role of the individual in needing tailor-made care, requiring dignity and respect. Here lies a more holistic type of care and is more ‘mind’ than ‘body’ where interpersonal aspects of engagement are more person-centred.This domain and the proximity of the 'individual' axis is the focus of nursing care. The rationale for individualised, personalised, person-centred, client-centred care is found here. We need to cross the individual axis repeatedly in order to achieve holistic care. There is no single destination. This journey is never a 'single' in two senses: neither one-way, nor travelled alone hence George's objective in public engagement.
Across all four care domains, public engagement is a key sustaining action to make the model meaningful but also to provide some reassurance that engagement although complex and varied, can be managed in a logical way to enhance care.I can see what George means by stating that engagement can be managed in a logical way.
Logic's extent varies across the care domains of Hodges' model; from the logical affirmation and assurance that underpins evidence based interventions to the decision algorithms that inform NHS Direct. There is also a need for recourse to several forms of logic as the model is traversed and negotiated. Folk theory, dreams, the chaos of elections and economic uncertainty, and the public's sense of demographic trends also have their place.Hodges' model found a place in a session at:
With the title of my talk sorted here is the programme for the Mental Health SIG meeting:
Health Sciences and Practice Subject Centre
Room: 1.17 Franklin Wilkins Building (1st floor)
Franklin-Wilkins buildings, King's College London,
150 Stamford Street, London SE1 9NH
We hear a lot about information and how important it is, being in what is described as the information age, the information economy. ...
Nurses, patients and carers (plus managers) would instantly recognise that if a care plan and subsequent care delivery was based on the following assessment:
| oriented, not depressed | hypertension, falls, dizziness, headaches, pyrexia |
| carer due hip operation | admitted 1st May 2010 1200hrs to clinical decisions unit |
Peter Jones | Blogging at "Welcome to the QUAD" since April 2006
Born in Liverpool. Three children. Community Mental Health Nurse NHS plus Independent Scholar & Informatics Specialist
RMN, RGN, CPN(Cert.), PGCE, BA(Hons) Comp/Phil, PG(Dip)COPE.
Work in Central & West Lancashire, England
Publications: 1982 to date
The views expressed on W2tQ are entirely my own, unless stated otherwise. Comments are disabled. If you would like to get in touch please e-mail me at h2cmng at yahoo.co.uk, or click on this button ...
This work is licenced under a
Creative Commons Licence.
