Tied to the mast: achieving anonymity

It isn't just me - is it?
Other people must have this problem.
No?

It isn't that it's an embarrassing body problem -
although time will tell on that
- it's just Frustrating.

If you venture to write a paper for publication then the submission process usually asks you to render the paper Anon. This makes good sense: right and proper. While some scholars can spend decades on a specific problem, or project the majority of academics must be fleet of foot. Usually, they have to  chase funding, publish, publish and shift from flower to flower garnering citations and increasing aplomb. There must be exceptions I suppose, were researchers become a 'known' quantity, associated not just with particular research subject, but with a set of peers and establishments. Of course I'm Generalizing.

Here though I can't help wishing it was different - that's what this mission is all about. Trying to get other people on board, to recognize the potential value of Hodges' model in health, social care and beyond.

Speaking
of
beyond
it is

marvellous 

to note that the past two days have seen over 100 

visitors 

to 

W2tQ. 

Thanks

everyone.

As to the anonymity bit, well I've climbed the pole, I've balanced on the beam and yet sadly this new gymnastic element the anonistic-maneuver is beyond me.

I don't want to moan, but in this case models offer no anonymity.

If I could hide I would: the long and short of it is I'm stuck ....

If it is not Brian Hodges himself writing about the model, then who is?

Now clearly I'm no Odysseus, but it seems I'm tied to this thing. This conceptual contraption. This mast.

Jokes aside though, it makes you wonder how many other innovations, worthy projects, ideas of merit, struggle against what appears to be a figure ground illusion?

You see with h2cm even when duly anonymised -  one moment we have an unknown - a personally, politically neutral entity. The next moment - ah! hold on. Now I can see who it is and hear this 4-track song.

Oh wondrous enchanted music ....


There is a way around this...!

Additional link:
http://hodges-model.blogspot.co.uk/2007/01/hodges-model-what-is-it-1-house-of.html

Original image sources:
Figure ground labelled
http://psylux.psych.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/html/figure_ground.html
Odysseus
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/tag/social-structures/

Dementia - The size of the challenge

The image and link below is the first of a set on Flickr produced from the Prime Minister's presentation and meeting with the Alzheimer's Society on March 26 2012. A transcript and video are also available:

Transcript - Prime Minister's speech to the Dementia 2012 conference

As the image below suggests there are many stats including the startling variation in services nationwide, for example:

In Belfast diagnosis is at almost 70 per cent.
Here in England we’ve got neighbouring areas with massively different rates…
… in Sheffield 57 per cent; in East Riding – less than 80 miles away – it’s 29 per cent.

Alcohol: Messages in bottles, domains and anagrams

The perennial health news item that is alcohol has bubbled and overflowed this week. In 1987-88 I visited several nearby alcohol services in Blackburn, Preston and Salford with a questionnaire to compare and contrast with Chorley which at the time had no dedicated alcohol services. There was Alcoholics Anonymous AA and Al-Anon, but nothing specific through health beyond community psychiatric nurses. The project was for the CPN(Cert.).

Back then I remember a Consultant Psychiatrist saying that the level of alcohol consumption is directly related to cost. The literature I read also drew attention to historical comparisons. I think it was Alcohol Concern who supported this view and called for urgent action. Of course all that was some 24 years ago. Incredible that there is some movement in 2012. In 2007 the taxi driver from Elounda to Heraklion airport described the movement and horizontal stasis that adorns the pavements (and spills onto the roads) of Malia as we zipped by. The Brits do have a problem. A Consultant physician highlighted this from a hospital ward on BBC Radio 4 news today.

Don't get me wrong: I like an occasional drink but my enjoyment of alcohol has been tempered over the years by several experiences:

• An early party aged 15 (and at a church social club) preloading was already in vogue. No sooner were a group of us sat at a table than someone threw up on the table. It was alcohol.
• Biology and human biology lessons helped instil the impacts of alcohol.
• Having to say 'goodbye' to clients with a drink problem, duly referred by their GP. I cannot support them in their drinking after several attempts to effect change.
• Appreciating the link between drink and risk behaviours.
• Working with people whose 'ill-health career' has seen them having to live with, but not themselves recognise Korsakoff's syndrome.
• Seeing people over three decades who cannot be supported in the community with their family, relatively young for residential care, but given a lack of specialised facilities - there they frequently are.

Hopefully the policy turn will have a positive impact extending beyond news headlines:

Minimum alcohol price planned for England and Wales
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17482035

Alcohol pricing: politics under the influence 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/23/alcohol-pricing-politics-under-influence?newsfeed=true

With the prospect of an alcohol and a new NHS information strategy in England you hope that some dots can be joined. Here are a few:

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

Motivation    Psychological effects Attitudes to risk         Predisposition Personality     Education    Vulnerability	Data     Evidence      Public health Physical effects    Dual diagnosis Research       Violence - statistics
Social contradictons and attitudes - 'image' Upbringing       Cultural attitudes  Marketing          Media	Cost per unit      Services        Funding   Cost to health budget      Reporting Policy   Lobbying   Taxes   Commissioning

Beer label c/o http://www.beerlabelizer.com/

'Real Stout' = 'Sale Tutor'

How solid is the framework? Paper: Perceptual ratings of opposite spatial properties...

In researching conceptual spaces and h2cm I came across the following paper:

Bianchi, I. , Savardi, U., Burro, R. (2011). Perceptual ratings of opposite spatial properties: Do they lie on the same dimension? Acta Psychologica, 138, 3, 405-418.

As constructed h2cm makes several assumptions with its axial structure. Is the placement of humanistic – mechanistic and individual – group on continua truly representative of the opposites of continua?

It seems that to address this question we must investigate cognitive linguistics. Bianchi et al., raise the following for consideration:

The idea that two contrary properties lie on the same continuum has formed the basis of various methodologies used in experimental research in the field of Psychology since the late sixties (e.g. the differential semantic method, Likert scales, etc.); however, an increasing number of methodologists are facing problems connected to the assumption of unidimensionality in opposite scales ... (p.405).

I wonder to what extent the original purposes of h2cm can support the existing continua? Nursing and the scope of nursing should also be able to substantiate the model. Nursing is person-centred. 

The idea that opposites presuppose an underlying continuum has been a default assumption in linguistics and cognitive semantics for more than two decades even though it has been noted that in every-day language people describe their perceptions in terms of opposites (“you are driving fast”, “the walk is long”, “the room is small”, “it's hot today”) instead of using unidimensional scales (respectively, velocity, size and temperature) (p.406).

Related post:
http://hodges-model.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/combining-h2cm-informing-science-and.html

Dame Fiona Caldicott to lead Confidentiality Review

Dame Fiona Caldicott has agreed to lead an independent from Government review of the balance between protecting patient information and its sharing, to improve patient care.

The Department expects to respond to the panel’s recommendations when the review publishes during 2012.

The recommendation for a review of the balance between protecting patient information and its sharing, to improve patient care was part of the Future Forum’s recommendations to Government on the modernisation of health and care.

... more.

My source:
IHTSDO CoP

Use and ab-use of knowledge

The effective ‘use’ of knowledge is constantly espoused in health care both informally with patients and formally in evidence based research. Knowledge is the key to improving patient safety and delivering efficient, high quality care interventions and effective outcomes. Things become complicated in health and social with the number of potential knowledge sources and the disciplines intent on seeing, gathering, recording and utilizing knowledge that is theirs. From that adopted vantage point they are bound to have a certain perspective.

There are still vestiges of C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures (1959) when we view the use and ab-use of knowledge, particularly the way knowledge is sliced, diced, partitioned and housed into disciplines. In the Introduction to Michel Serres' Parasite, Cary Wolfe notes that:

... the Latin prefix ab- meaning, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us, “off, or away from”: "abuse" value at a tangent to use and exchange value, at a distance from it: a different vector, a different type of value (Wolfe, 2007). p. xx.

Literally looking at the model we see that whilst there is increasing interdisciplinarity and collaboration between disciplines, practitioners and managers, academics and policy makers … there remains much ab-use between the domains of (care) knowledge.

If by definition abuse brings individuals, agencies and whoever falls in-between into disagreement, dispute and possibly much worse then clearly a tool that can help furnish a common understanding and insight should be welcomed.



For all that Hodges’s model can offer as a common foundation and bridge for the disciplines, we must ask where is the patient, the carer and the public? Is there a new discipline emerging?

What is needed to help gauge the potentials of use and ab-use in health and social care ...?

Additional links - for the image:
Coxeters Loxodromic Sequence of Tangent Circles
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CoxetersLoxodromicSequenceofTangentCircles.html

Donald Coexeter
http://www.geometry.net/detail/scientists/coxeter_donald.html

Snow, C.P. (2001 [1959]). The Two Cultures. London: Cambridge University Press.

Wolfe, C. (2007). Introduction to the New Edition. Bring the Noise: The Parasite and the Multiple Genealogies of Posthumanism. In Serres, M. (1980). The Parasite. University of Minnesota Press.

Image source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coxeter_circles.png

International Women’s Day

Some links for today:

Africa’s Girl Power

Helping Adolescent Girls is Key to Women's Empowerment

On International Women’s Day,
Protect Women Human Rights Defenders ...

Sources - as above and ...
HIPnet
Educate Girls in Africa

Health & Social Care - Shoeing the Horse*

Anvil

*humanistically ...

Anvil image:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blacksmith_anvil_ganson.svg

Original horseshoe image:
http://www.ranchomilagrokansas.com

RCN nursing journals are now available through HINARI

Dear All,

I am pleased to share that, as of last month, the journals published by the Royal College of Nursing (UK) are now available through HINARI, which means that HINARI users can now access the following journals:-

- Cancer Nursing Practice
- Emergency Nurse
- Learning Disability Practice
- Mental Health Practice
- Nurse Researcher
- Nursing Children and Young People Nursing Management
- Nursing Older People
- Nursing Standard
- Primary Health Care

This brings the total number of nursing journals available via HINARI to 172, including journals from BMJ Publishing, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, Informa Healthcare, John Wiley, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Mary Ann Liebert, Sage, SLACK, and Thieme.

Best wishes to all.

Richard Gedye
Publisher Co-ordinator
Research4Life

My source:
HIFA2015 Health Information For All by 2015