Midwifery student visit to Melbourne, Australia

A final year midwifery student - Elena Baxter - recently undertook an observational placement in a private maternity hospital in Melbourne, Australia. The objectives for the visit were to observe midwifery practice in Australia and compare this with that in the United Kingdom, to share knowledge and practice with midwives in Australia and  interact with women and families from a different culture.

According to the student, a notable difference in practice was the high medicalisation  and intervention rate within the delivery unit,  including a high rate of caesarean sections  and the high percentage of mothers who were breast feeding.  . The student commented that they felt an increase in confidence in their own knowledge and practice following the visit, they felt  very welcomed by the team and that they helped her to utilise every available opportunity to increase her learning opportunities, the midwives in Australia were very interested to learn about midwifery  practice in the United Kingdom and she recommends this experience to others.

Alzheimer’s Society award for Dr Emma Wolverson

Dr Emma Wolverson attended the Alzheimer’s Society Annual Conference 2018 at the Oval in London. She had been nominated  for an award for dementia leaders 2018 award for outstanding contribution to dementia research ... we are very pleased to report that she won! This award tends to go to biomedical researchers who are working on research into causes and biomedical treatments for dementia , rather than psychosocial research, which shows again what a great achievement this is.

International visit by one of our students

One of our second year BSc nursing students Yusupha Fatty has had a clinical placement with the Medical Research Council (Gambia) for his alternative practice placement.
Yusupha said:

‘It has been a great experience and also gave me the opportunity to see and compare the health care system in Gambia to that of the UK. I was able to work in different clinics and interact with patients and staff’.

International placements are available to all second year SHSW students as a part of their two week ‘alternative practice’ experiences.

We strongly encourage international placements, as they help our UoH students to develop a cultural, clinical and personal awareness of healthcare across the globe. This year, students have had placements across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Australasia. We are currently working on placements in America for our sports scientists.

Our SHSW international coordinator – Julie McDonald will be meeting our year 2 cohort of students in September to discuss these international opportunities.

Further GCRF funding for Prof Liz Walker

Professor Liz Walker has successfully obtained further GCRF funding, with Dr Elsbeth Robson (PI), School of Environmental Sciences, University and Dr Mayeso Lazaro, University of Malawi Chancellor College to undertake a scoping study of hospital patient guardians in sub-Saharan Africa. Dr Lazaro will undertake some initial stakeholder interviews in Malawi and will visit Hull in July.

Award for Faculty member of staff

Sheila 2nd from left

Dr Sheila Hardy who is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Health and Social Work received a prestigious RCN Award of Merit at the RCN Congress Opening Ceremony in Belfast last week. The award was in recognition of her work on physical health and mental illness with the RCN Mental Health Forum.

It started with a tweet...

Mary Dearing writes:

Earlier this year Jane Wray was contacted via Twitter by Hull and East Yorkshire Probation Service. Each year all Probation Services nationally are required to obtain feedback on their service from those who access it. From their experience, although the survey is intended to be anonymous, many of their service users have difficulties with literacy, learning difficulties or a learning disability. It was therefore agreed that as an Alternative Practice experience year 2, student nurses (learning disability) would be given the opportunity to work on making the survey more accessible by making it easy read. Four students took up this opportunity (Zoe Graham, Jassmine Hillson, Amelia Johnson and Katie Taylor). The students spent their Alternative Practice week working on the project supervised by year 3 student Andy Croft who had previously been nominated for a Hull Daily Mail award for developing an accessible information handbook for prisoners to have on arrival to prison.

At the end of the week the students presented their work to Sonja Harrison, Senior Probation Officer with some recommendations for implementation. The next stage will be for the Probation Service to pilot the survey with their service users, it will then be presented to a national board and if accepted, could be rolled out nationally.

National Operating Department Practitioners’ day (#ODPday): What an amazing day we had!!

We were out in force on Monday 14 May for the first ever National ODP day and a great day was had by all. ODPs, student ODPs and ODP Lecturers all proudly promoting our profession on campus at University of Hull, along with at St. Stephens shopping centre in the city centre.

The awareness of the ODP profession went wild on social media throughout the day, bringing together ODPs from across the UK and those who have moved internationally.

There was outstanding support from national companies and the public we met at the shopping centre, which created a most enjoyable and enthusiastic day for us all!

Well done to all involved and a huge thank you to all who supported us…roll on next year!

If you would like to read more about ODPs reads this and this and this!

Natalie Teal

Hull student at Florence Nightingale Commemoration Service

Sarah Habergham, year 3 student learning disability nurse, was selected by Head of School Deborah Robinson to represent the School of Health and Social Work at the annual Florence Nightingale Commemoration Service in London on 9th May 2018.  This was in recognition of her hard work designing the logo and crafting batons for Positive Choices (the annual UK and Ireland student learning disability nursing conference) in Hull 2017.  Here she gives an outline of her day:

Turkish lantern possibly carried by
Florence Nightingale

I enjoyed the train journey, watching people and guessing where they worked/what/who was taking them to London (what a luxury to be able to do that)!  Arriving at Kings Cross I topped up my Oyster card and jumped on the tube.  I crossed Westminster Bridge giving thought to the people who lost their lives there in March of last year. Looked at the Houses of Parliament, as it was a nice day, took the opportunity to walk along the south bank and enjoy the gardens at St Thomas'.

I made my way through the hospital to the hall where I was greeted by Professor Ian Peate OBE, chatted to him about learning disability nursing, my dissertation, the City of Culture. Saw some student nurses so naturally I got speaking to them. Coffee and pastries ... then we were put into groups around tables and had two hours to ask the panel questions around topics including the impact of the Nursing Associate role on Registered Nurses, parity of esteem, withdrawal of the NHS Bursary, how to recruit students on to undergraduate Programmes, the future of the NHS, percentage of male nurses. I anticipated I would have to 'shoe horn' learning disability nursing in at every given moment but I didn't need to! It was at the forefront as much as other fields which was so refreshing.

After a buffet lunch we went around the hospital looking at the Florence Nightingale statue, the chapel, went to the museum then tea arrived.

Westminster Abbey seemed unreal, there was a lot of security, we were informed a princess would be arriving. We went to see the nurses' chapel in the Abbey which is situated above so we could peer down and see from a different angle which was amazing. There were lots of nurses in their uniforms and military too. The service started with the choir - which resonated around the Abbey, it was really quite spectacular, a bit 'goose bumpy'. The whole of the service was awe inspiring, the stories told and the emphasis put on how important student nurses are was more than any compliment ever given.

The bells rang at the end of the service, the student nurses walked down the centre of the Abbey, with people either side smiling at us - I felt a bit famous!  The whole day was amazing from start to finish, I felt I was part of a community, a community of nurses all speaking the same language, the language of kindness. I realised we are all nurses with different specialities, there's no such thing as a 'proper' nurse.

More GCRF funding for Hull

Professor Liz Walker has successfully obtained GCRF funding (£30,000) with Prof Monica Magadi, Dr Rosemary Wall (PIs), Dr Nicholas Evans and Dr Elsbeth Robson for a project researching the role of culture and global civil society in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Eastern and Southern Africa. The project will include a stakeholder engagement workshop in Kenya and a two day workshop at Hull, in July, with a number of overseas collaborators to work on a joint grant application and international networking to facilitate engagement with key international players (e.g. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Funds (UNICEF).

Death Online Research Symposium (DORS4): The University of Hull, UK, August 15 – 17 2018

The 4th Symposium of the International Death Online Research Network will explore the ways in which online connectivity is changing how, when and where we engage with death and dying and how we invest death-related practices with meaning in the online environment.

Confirmed Keynote Addresses:

Professor Charles Ess, University of Oslo, Norway

Dr Elaine Kasket, psychologist and author of forthcoming book:

All the Ghosts in the Machine

The conference will host a special workshop for participating Post Graduate students and early career researchers.

For further information contact Dr Jo Bell

To register go to this link

Online booking for conference accommodation at The Courtyard (conveniently located on the main University of Hull campus) will be available soon.

To reserve accommodation at The Courtyard contact

If you are interested in joining the Death Online Research Network, please contact Dr Stine Gotved

Supporting hope at the end of life

Paula Gawthorpe published this piece: Supporting hope at the end of life on the Evidence-Based Nursing blog

GCRF project funding

Dr Gloria Likupe is has successfully obtained GCRF funding with Professor Monica Magadi from the University of Hull and  two colleagues at the University of Malawi Chancellor College  (Dr Jesman Chintsanya and  Mr Julius Chingwalu)  to establish collaboration with them and government stakeholders on a project to explore provision of adolescent sexual health in schools. Jesman will be visiting University of Hull early July and Gloria will be going to Malawi late July.

Brazilian Conference paper

Julie Macdonald co-authored:

Jess  Silva Ortiz Rosa Presenting the poster

"The importance of Palliative Care for patients with Head and Neck cancer and Hospice Care in the United Kingdom” presented at the XX1 Dental Conference of the University of Brasilia 22-25th May 2018.

Julie writes:
As a palliative care lecturer and school co-ordinator of international activities I am very proud to say that Jessica was a student of mine from Brazil who came to study palliative care, cancer care and pain management modules within the then Faculty of Health and Social Care at the University via the Science without Borders scheme. Jessica was a student of dentistry in Brazil and embraced learning about palliative care and the hospice movement in the United Kingdom as they have no hospices in Brazil and the students all admired this model of care. Colleagues and I loved working with the students and Jessica and I have stayed in touch and this conference presentation is the result. This was the first time Jess had presented a poster.

Grant success’ for Professor Mark Hayter and Dr Anand Ahankari

Dr Anand Ahankari

Professor Mark Hayter and Dr Anand Ahankari have been awarded a grant from the Global Challenges Research Fund to develop research links in India around gender equality in adolescents. They will be visiting educational and health institutions and NGO’s and giving research seminars in colleges and universities in the region as part of planning for a major project with Indian health partners.

Prof MArk Hayter

Experience Focussed Counselling with Voice Hearers

Professor Colin Martin has co-authored:

Joachim Schnackenberg. Mick Fleming, Helen Walker, Colin R. Martin (2018) Experience Focussed Counselling with Voice Hearers: Towards a Transdiagnostic to Understanding Past and Current Distress—A Enquiry Community Mental Health Journal doi:  10.1007/s10597-018-0280-6