International Forum on Quality and Safety in Health Care conference, Amsterdam 6-8 April 2011

Between the 5th and 8th April a team from the School of Health and Social Care and colleagues from the East Midlands ambulance service travelled to Amsterdam for the 16th Annual International forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare. Professor Niro Siriwardena and Fiona Togher displayed their poster “A case study approach to understand how quality improvement methods led to improvements in primary care for Insomnia” along with around 500 other posters from over 60 countries.

Niro and Fiona presenting on the REST project

Niro and Fiona presenting on the REST project

The large and varied programme of sessions on offer were based around the theme of ‘better health, safer care, lower costs’ and considered how practically as academics and health care professionals these issues could realistically be addressed.

The representation at the conference from so many different counties was excellent and enabled the delegates to gain a much better understanding of some of the issues that other countries face in improving quality of health care as well as the opportunity to learn from others about methods and techniques that they may not previously have considered.

The key note speeches were outstanding; one of the best that was given was by a lady called Kathy Torpie; a patient representative and psychologist who provided a humbling account of the patient experience in hospital following horrific injuries in a car crash. Kathy’s speech reminded the audience of why they were really at the conference in the first place: to improve patient care and experience.

The conference was thoroughly enjoyable, inspiring and generated many ideas for the attendees to mull over and I think it is fair to say that the team would very much like to attend next years conference in Paris!

Amsterdam in spring

Amsterdam in spring

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.

NHS/University Research Forum – 13 July 2011, 11.30-14.00hrs

NHS/UNIVERSITY RESEARCH FORUM
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Wednesday 13 July 2011
1130 – 1400
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The aim of the forum is to enable NHS staff, university staff and students and others interested in health and social care research to discuss and present research happening in Lincolnshire and update their knowledge of research
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MB1019, Main Academic Building, Brayford Campus, University of Lincoln
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A light sandwich lunch will be provided from 11.30
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See attached for further details and to book :
2011 July 13 Research Forum Flyer

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.