Deborah and Julie's Oman blog - entry 4

Tuesday 

Good day in practice today in busy units. Julie worked with Niamah  (Hull Alumni), Mark Gretton and Jo Hatfield I'm sure will recognise her. Deborah is pictured with some of the ICU team.

 Deborah and Julie 

Deborah and Julie's Oman blog - entry 3

Monday -  weather still hot 42 degrees today.

Various visits today to various important people (directors), all very pleasant, all with business cards, we both felt a bit lacking in this department as we didn't have any to give in return.

Chance to see the room I'll be teaching in on Wednesday. Our presentation to potential students went well, a very good idea to have one person from the faculty and one from practice. Lots of questions asked. I hope we managed to do a good job and make both the University and Hull sound appealing. Yesterday evening we were taken to see a few of the sites.

The harbour

In the picture of the harbour, the very large boat is the Sultan's yacht, the other picture is of the marina which is a little further up the coast. I countered these views with a picture of Hull marina in my presentation - not quite sure what the potential students made of this. I showed a couple of pictures of Hull city football team and several of the chaps at the presentation recognised one of the players and knew a bit about the team. One of the directors even told us Sunday's score!  A day in practice tomorrow.

The marina

Big news is we've discovered BBC world news on the TV and very importantly they have hourly weather forecasts for this part of the world, you never know when  you might need a thick woollen jumper in Oman. Even though it's delivered in typical BBC style the forecast is highly amusing and very reminiscent of Carolline Aherne's weather girl in The Fast Show: 'Scorchio!'

Deborah and Julie

New book by Julie Santy-Tomlinson

Julie Santy has co-authored:

Julie Santy-Tomlinson

Clarke S, Santy-Tomlinson J (2014) Orthopaedic and trauma nursing: an evidence-based approach to musculoskeletal care Wiley, Oxford 

Deborah and Julie's Oman blog - entry 2

Julie and Huda

We spent the day at the Sultan Qaboos hospital today. The day began with numerous talks about the nursing directorate. Many of the problems are similar to those in the UK. Increasing demands and not enough in-patient beds. Met up with Huda who arranged our visit. Huda has done various programmes of study in the UK. We toured the hospital and everyone was very friendly and welcoming, we both got the impression they were very pleased to see two nursing visitors from the UK.

 We are due to give a formal presentation tomorrow which is basically saying how wonderful Hull, its hospitals and the faculty is. During our tour Huda kept reminding the ward managers about it, so goodness knows how many folks will turn up! Lots of overseas trained nurses on the wards and the nursing directorate has just a  few Omani members. The opportunity to study in the UK is only open to Omani nurses. During our tour we encountered many Omani nurses who had already been to the UK or other countries to study US, Australia and Wales.

It's not all work
Julie in the souk (market)

Big issue here with haematology problems and women turning up unannounced to give birth. I think they said eight deliveries in the ED within the last few weeks. Apparently mothers will travel from miles around to give birth as the hospital is seen as a centre of excellence. If a mother is in the early stages of labour they will turn her away and ask her to go to her booked hospital. Some though leave it too late or sit in the car park until they are fully dilated at which point they obviously can't turn them away! 

Deborah and Julie

Deborah Julie's Oman blog - entry 1

Deborah Briggs and Julie Dimaline arrive in Oman:

Left for our trip to Oman early Friday morning, it took us well over twenty four hours to get here  due to a flight delay. Arrived 5 am ish Saturday morning desperate for some sleep,  although there was  a room booked  check in wasn't until 2pm. Barclaycard to the rescue though and we did manage to get some sleep. Today, Saturday is a free day to recover from the journey. We decided to go for a walk to the beach, got some strange looks from the locals, no other pedestrians out and about due to the heat. Walk soon abandoned. Tried out the pool at the hotel - managed half an hour!

Early start tomorrow we are being picked up by our driver at 7.30 for our first visit to the Sultan Quaboos Hospital. Not sure what to expect, other than the sun will obviously be shining and it will be too hot to walk anywhere!

Deborah and Julie

New publication by David Barrett

David Barrett is lead author on:

David Barrett

Barrett D, Liaw ST, de Lusignan S (2014) Unravelling the tangled taxonomies of health informatics Informatics in Primary Care 21: 152-155

Meet Dr Jeannette Roddy

We are pleased to share with you that Jeannette Roddy has passed her final PhD examination; her thesis was titled: 'A Client Informed View of Domestic Violence Counselling'

Jeannette Roddy