Seminar – Insomnia and sleeping tablets: a European perspective – 30 March 2011

At a well-attended seminar on 30th March, academics from Universities of Ghent and Antwerp in Belgium presented at University of Lincoln.

Sibyl Anthierens (medical sociologist working at the University of Antwerp) presented on “Benzodiazepines: sleeping through the problem”. This included works on the perceptions of general practitioners, patients and nurses on initiating (or avoiding) benzodiazepines in primary care.

This was followed by Thoen Anke (general practitioner) speaking about e-learning, specifically an interactive e-module including several tools and interventions useful within a benzodiazepine-consultation to support GPs.

Prof Thierry Christiaens (general practitioner, clinical pharmacologist and professor of general practice) then described an experimental real-life training programme set up with a simulation patient to look at the effect of possible interventions/tools within a benzodiazepine consultation.

Finally, Hanne Creupelandt (clinical psychologist) spoke about interactive meetings taking place with GPs in local quality groups discussing the non- pharmacological approach of insomnia, anxiety, stress and benzodiazepine withdrawal.

Good working links have been formed with our European colleagues in Belgium particularly in the area of insomnia and benzodiazepines and we plan to build on this with future work.

School of Health and Social Care Seminar Series 2010-11

Professor Nancy Harding

NHS Management: Living on the boundary between the self as unitary manager and the self as intersectional ‘me’.  Professor Nancy Harding (University of Bradford)

According to Prof Harding the notion of management was formally introduced into the NHS in the 1980s, following publication of the Griffiths Report.  The instigation of New Public Management, as this came to be known, was interpreted variously. A more confusing term also appeared in the discourse around management practices, namely “talent management”.  The succeeding quarter of a century has seen a legitimisation of the role of management in the NHS, an increase in the numbers of managers employed, and numerous attempts to improve the quality of managerial work. In all of this, the manager has been imagined to be a rational, logical, non-emotional, powerful and one-dimensional person.  Intersectionality theory would warn against such a presumption.

However, two interview-based studies of NHS managers suggest they move fluidly and unquestioningly between an identity or sense of self of a rational manager working within an organizational structure, and an identity or sense of self as fluid, emergent, irrational and with multiple identities. It seems that their position(s) as managers, colleagues, friends and workers all coincide with the various intersecting aspects of being a manager that does not always fit the often ‘faceless’ aspects of management theory.

The paper drew on these studies looking at the the aesthetics of leadership and the introduction of talent management into the NHS, to explore how managers can move between a subject position (‘the rational manager’) and a living, embodied sense of self that is not only separate and distinct from the self as manager, but also contradicts that managerial self.  Harding suggested that intersectionality theory challenges the presumption of theories of control and resistance that are highly influential in critical approaches to NHS management. Control and resistance are shown to require theories of categorisation that are confounded by the lived experience of working as a manager in the NHS.

Community & Health Research Newsletter – Winter 2011

PDF : SHSC Research Newsletter Winter 2011

SHSC Research Newsletter Winter 2011

Nursing team research evening – 8 December 2010

On 8th December 2010 members of the academic nursing team hosted a research event in Bridge House, whereby current students were invited to listen to presentations of staff research activity. John McKinnon delivered a presentation about his PhD whilst other team members presented posters and reports from recent research projects.

Graduates from both the BSc Nursing and the BSc Health and Social Care also came along to meet and chat informally with current students about the process of conducting and writing up their dissertations.

The evening was well attended and well received. Similar events are being planned for the future.