Nothing new under the Sun ...

 ... unless you're a 'health' service, or gathering dust on a shelf

January. Is the time of Janus: we look forward and back.

In April, this blog 'Hodges' model: Welcome to the QUAD - W2tQ' will be twenty years young. A blog post will follow with some metrics and statistics, although the 'analytics' that accompany many websites is not the main objective here. Preceding W2tQ and that first post, was the now archived website:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150316193042/http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk/index.htm

Running from 1998-2015, the site's emergence ran as per:

Taught and applied Hodges' model on
 Community Psychiatric Nursing Certificate course 1987-1988.
Using the model in my practice and sharing with colleagues.
Gaining online access 1997.
Finding the Nursing Theory Development Site - NTDS  (no longer available)
which was at https://www.ualberta.ca/en/index.html 
Meeting Brian Hodges at Manchester Met. University in May 1997.
Publishing the website in 1998.

Listed at the NTDS was a broad range of models of nursing and nursing theories. Brian's model, as anticipated was missing. I asked about Brian Hodges's model being added as a resource. Back then I thought, and still do, that Brian's work deserves recognition and more importantly, actually being used by practitioners and learners. It was a shame I thought, that such a person-centered and integrative model should be sat on a shelf (like other great ideas) gathering dust?

Still limping along in theme, functionality and accessibility, at least W2tQ has outlived the original website.

Academia and professional bodies across healthcare disciplines stress the need for research in practice. As a consequence, I've wondered about the pool of research questions that a healthcare, nursing, community nurse might have in mind? Ready and waiting, for those instances when specific funding materialises for a project. How many of these questions might feature as recurring characters? Once articulated, there for a new team member, are several starter-questions, a primer, to encourage exploration and critical thought. (Of course, a researcher needs to frame the question themselves; even if they do not 'own' them - public, patient engagement in research?).

With sustainability still on the political agenda (whatever the media suggests), is there a plan gathering dust, for the redesign, no less, of the National Health Service? Having squandered the demographic dividend of the 1950-1980s, how do we create concurrent health caring and preventive/educational services and systems?

Now, there is a project that Hodges' model could assist with! Better check the shelves (floppy disks!) and blow the dust-off real quick!

Looking back 28th May 1997 & f/w

28th May 1997 - the afternoon I met Brian Hodges' at MMU

28th May 1997 - the afternoon I met Brian Hodges' at MMU, to discuss his eponymous model and a possible website - now archived:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140619200624/http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk/index.htm

Previously: 'Janus' :: 'Brian E. Hodges RIP'

Happy New Year: Nostradamus c/o Al Stewart

"A Man for All Seasons" ...
"A Woman ... and other gender identities ..."
"A Child ..."
"A model ..."

"A model for Past, Present, Future"

A series of Frames - Janus-like view:

Pre-morbid, Diagnosis, Prognosis ...

Clinical and Case -
Assessment
Planning
Formulation
Evaluation
Engagement

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group - population

Nostradamus - Al Stewart
From the Album: Past, Present, Future

"2010" definitely not - future vision is 20:20!

Happy New Year everyone!

As 2010 begins with the first day and month of January I always think of Janus and the origins of January as per the description on Wikipedia:

In Roman mythology, Janus (or Ianus) was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings. His most prominent remnant in modern culture is his namesake, the month of January, which begins the new year. He is most often depicted as having two faces or heads, facing in opposite directions.

Looking to the past and future my eyesight has proved a another source of personal upheaval. In September 2008 I went to get some new specs as I knew all was not well. I thought I was just tired, making excuses for a new pair of glasses and eyes that could still not focus. I went back in January '09 to learn I had a triplopia. After the first op (left eye) I realised how bad my right eye remained.

Picking up a white mug and using the lens mother nature gave me I was shocked to see a green-yellow cast over the mug. I have been able to type online and at work quite well and accurately by relying on my previously attained keyboard skills. Driving was becoming problematic, with traffic lights forming a perfect triangle. The lines in the middle of the road would float and merge in the distance. No wonder the optometrist asked me in July if colours seemed as vivid as they should be. I studied art at GCSE level and thought I had a good appreciation of the colour wheel and all that: Tch!

Now two eye ops later - left eye care of surgeon Mr Heaven and the right by Mr Mars (yes really) I have better than 20:20 distance vision with intraocular implants. I was reminded of younger years coming downstairs and the room looking so bright, as if it had snowed and then here in the UK it did snow.

Many thanks to Messrs Heaven and Mars and the team at Wigan Royal Albert Edward Infirmary (where I also did my general nurse training). They have done an excellent job!

Post an out-patient appointment in two weeks I will finally be able to sort some reading glasses.

If winter is a time for reflection well as per my final post of 2009 then I have reflected much of late, but at least I can see clearly now.

I hope you can too - especially if you are in a position of power and influence!

Take care wherever you are now and over the coming year ....

Image source:
Eric Sutic http://www.onecloud.nu/Visual/things/janus.jpg

Nursing - a model with 'glocal' aspirations

Reading through Dan Pink's book again I came across this ....

The rise of Empathy has even begun to color parental advice. In a recent survey of of Australian information technology managers, 90 percent said they would not recommend that their own children pursue careers in the L(ogic)-Directed field of software engineering. What would they recommend their children do instead? "I'd rather my kids opt for nursing as a profession," said Joseph Michaels, who works for a telecommunications company in Sydney. "It has both global and local demand." p.165.

And wherever nurses travel so too must the reflective tools they employ.

In the paper on Hodges' model and Michel Serres I wrote the following:

The scholastic 3Rs alone are no longer sufficient to equip youngsters for current and future challenges. Wither health literacy without digital, information and visual literacy (accessibility issues acknowledged)? Carroll and Rosson (2007) recognise the moral imperative of participative design. If technology has the capacity to change, people must be involved in that change. Are governments granted the electorate they deserve? The ability to appreciate what lies between analysis and synthesis is the 21st century touchstone. In being educated to care for others, self, and the planet there is a need for a generic model that can be taught globally, across curricula, cultures, and ethnic divides. Janus-like we must combine the local and global, achieving glocal perspectives (Erikson, 2001, chap.19).

Daniel H. Pink (2006) A whole new mind, How to thrive in the new conceptual age, Cyan, p. 165.

Eriksen, T.H. (2001). Small Places, Large Issues, Pluto Press.

Michel Serres on W2tQ

Michel Serres: A blog

Salutogenic Perspectives and Supertankers - Public Health

Supertankers are BIG. Very BIG. So cantankerous they take 'ages' and lots of space (3 kilometres) to turn. Health and social care is in a difficult spot. It needs to change and turn in two respects. One is about perspective, attitude, mindset or raison d'etre; the other concerns a more physical volte-face: policy that frees practise.

So, firstly services need to mutate rather drastically, two faces are needed like Janus, able to look in opposite directions. Instead of (just) gazing into the past and future health services must be disease, ill-health facing AND also health promoting.
Secondly, in addition to the need to adopt a mythical visage, the health service needs to either challenge or perfect its constant-turning. By that I mean the one minute screening, assessing, planning and delivering 'traditional' care; while the next minute addressing a health promotion opportunity or more focused preventive programme.

The cacophony of demand for care services and our need to care means that we must re-turn to the same historic vista, back to the routine target-oriented (vital) business of vomit, piss, sputum, blood, fears and tears: day and night - 365/24/7. Well, what's the alternative? Two distinct services:

• A National HEALTH Service (a real one)?
• A National ILL-HEALTH Service (what we have now)?

From a resource and organisational perspective both go hand-in-hand. There is no choice. Is there? Like Janus's chronological duality, disease and health promotion are two sides of the same coin. The health team just have to get on with it: dealing with ill-health, while being ever-ready to be health promoting (even if all that twisting and political shouting flags their energy levels).

To recap then, health and social care workers need the skills and knowledge to look in two directions, treating the effects of ill health; while also promoting health and maximising wellness. Dedicated health promotion teams aside, they must constantly turn - switching to-and-fro - from one task to the other. Demonstrating Neo-like capacities, health professionals deal with disease with one hand, while waving health promotion's standard in the other; but unlike Neo in The Matrix there is no virtual escape. If only the phone would ring!

Hodges model can (as ever) help generate and support pathological (illness and disease) views of health PLUS alternative salutogenic* perspectives, that is - health promoting views.

When it takes an age to do something physically,
IF there is a way to do it virtually,
to see in two directions and do two things at once
in the blink of an eye THEN
let that be the start
a new vis~age
lead on.
(and don't worry - the phone is ringing) ...

*Sullivan, G.C. (1989) Evaluating Antonovsky's Salutogenic Model for its adaptability to Nursing, J. Adv. Nurs., 14: 4.

Image source: c/o Eric Sutic