Paper: Low-cost strategies to improve dementia care

An interest in health and science invites some thought about chaos, complexity and catastrophe theory. These suggest quite a cold - mechanistic - perspective of reality. So trying to think of clinical and nursing examples beyond fluid dynamics, the heart muscle... to more socially oriented applications demands some creative thinking.

In my work within intermediate support in the community for decades my colleagues and I come across cases were husband, wife, partner have looked their significant other to the nth degree. That degree can include hiding the extent of a person's cognitive problems from other family members. Suddenly there is a real catastrophe as the carer is taken acutely ill and hospitalised.

Left at home soon the dependency is revealed. Trying to negotiate care at home can then be a real challenge.

Alternately, when people living with dementia are hospitalised for physical reasons another host of challenges arise.

I've a relative who works over at Warrington General Hospital and it's great to be able to help highlight a paper written by Michelle Beavan their dementia champion and published in Nursing Times:

Beavan M (2014) Low-cost strategies to improve dementia care. Nursing Times; 110: online issue.

Bleeding holism

Holistic, integrated and 

person centered care

 is what happens when 

 respect and empathy 

bleed.

Sense making? miss-il-es civil-ians te-ears

individual

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

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

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

group

tears	tears
civilians to defend m i s s i l e s	m i s s i l e s to defend civilians

Source: Various news media over several days - current and past...
 

disABLED: What's behind a symbol?

individual

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

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

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

group

	NY State

Well done NY excellent MOVE!

(and hope to visit next year)

My source: James Moore, Clash of Symbols, The Independent 20 June 2014, p.35.
 
Image source from upper right:
http://in-abled.com/blog/2014/04/would-martin-luther-king-jr-care-about-disabilities/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability

Would you let a robot take your blood?

A Robot With A Hypodermic Needle 

Written by Lucy Black
27 July 2013

Would you let a robot take your blood? The answer to this question illuminates our real relationship to machines that aspire to rise above the robot vac. Is there another sort of uncanny valley?

Veebot is a very clever use of some basic image processing plus some very accurate positioning mechanisms. It first locates a good vein using infrared. Once it has a target it switches to ultrasound to make sure that there is enough blood flow to make it worth inserting the needle.

More...

My source:
International Society for Presence Research: June
http://ispr.info/

individual
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ------------------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

group

trust, confidence, anxiety, expectations, 'needles' - phobia, previous experiences, model of the 'other', intelligence, physical tests to differentiate mental health problems, subjective feelings - 'creepiness' human pa	safety, measurement, imaging, mechanics, technology, electromagnetic spectrum, infra red, ultrasound, motion, accuracy, research, trials, evidence, logic, blood sample,  appearance, (surgical robots R-here) factors in             RFT - 'right first time'
public awareness, interaction, relationships, community of practice - acceptance, publicity, media, dissemination	investment, policy, certification, law, standards, testing, supervision, labour relations

New: Journal of Critical Anti-Oppressive Social Inquiry (CAOS)

CAOS 

is an interdisciplinary peer reviewed journal that publishes original articles/art work/poetry that foreground critical forms of social inquiry, research and practice.  

More...

From local field to global arena: the rough and tumble of conceptual sport

Jo hit the deck. it was a foul tackle, an apt description for a move that Jo did not see coming.

Talk about a change of perspective!! Sheesh! Was it bone crunching, did I hear something?

It could have been worse. At least the ground knows it’s March and not January.

There was no anticipation, no reflex adjustment, no ability to shift, just in time, no poetry in motion this time.

The coach and physio dashed on to the field. Jo looked up and said “OK, tell me straight, what’s the damage?”

Coach looked down. "Well you're talking that's a start." Assessing rapidly though and through gritted teeth he replied:

“It’s not looking good Jo.”
“Wha?

[Silence]

Oh come on tell me…”

“Well, kid it’s bad, yes, really bad.

You’ve got an academic detachment.”

Jo groaned, "Oh no, not that! What about the future!!"

<->

OK, sorry about that and I do realise that a great many world class athletes are very well educated people.

The tendency of young and promising athletes to relinquish contact with their academic side and really be the best they can be - remains a challenge for some, but this post concerns academic detachment as in - educational institutions and students with the world.

Call it a paradox, a contradiction in this hyper-connected world, what with gap years, travel opportunities.... that there seem so many examples of a lack of awareness of the bigger picture that is the international stage. Not just in students, in education, but the wider citizenry.

Does this matter. Well it does, at least according to the 2012 Conference of The Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) which included:

Academic detachment is not an option in the 21st Century

on the theme “Building a Secure World through International Education.”

The point I’d like to make is that Hodges’ model is fit to assist in some of the objectives that the AIEA outlines in this context:

Keynote speaker Abiodan Williams, Senior Vice ‐ President of the US Institute for Peace, offered remarks at the opening plenary. Mr. Williams said that his own international education began with post ‐ secondary level study at the Lester B. Pearson College, United World College of the Pacific, in Victoria, BC. To develop graduates committed to peace and security, he urged educational institutions to teach:

• Knowledge – including greater interdisciplinarity and learning about conflict prevention
• International outlook – to shape the attitudes and outlook of a new generation, encourage all students to spend at least six months studying abroad, learn at least one new language and take at least one course about another country
• Sensibility – alluding to Fielding’s definition of ‘good nature’, developing people of benevolent and amiable temper of mind, who sympathize with the problems of others and who enjoy the happiness of others

“Academic detachment from the world is not an option in the 21st Century,” he said. Globalization is here to stay, and international education is playing a key role in contributing positive answers to many of the challenges that it presents.

Many institutions are actively engaged in programs that further environmental and energy sustainability, broader access to health care and education, resolution of conflicts, pursuit of fundamental human rights, economic development, and greater cross‐cultural understanding around the world. Harnessing the collective effort, and lessons learned, from each of these individual initiatives is important in moving internationalization forward. [AIEA conference website]

With thanks to Katy Rosenbaum:

27 March 2014:
Good morning,
Thank you for your email. I will check with my colleagues to see if they have any suggestions for someone who might be able to provide more information on work within this theme, and if they have any insights on this, I will certainly forward these on to you.
In the meantime, all conference session materials that presenters made available to download are available at the link below. The zip files include multiple presentations and handouts; underneath are links to these materials hosted on other websites: http://www.aieaworld.org/2012-conference#Presentations
The article you referred to mentioned Abiodan Williams' keynote address, which is available here: http://www.aieaworld.org/assets/docs/Conference_Materials/2012/abiodunwilliamsspeech2012.pdf
Thank you for your interest; I hope this information is useful. If my colleagues have other suggestions, I will certainly pass them on.

Best,
Katy Rosenbaum
Program Associate - AIEA
Association of International Education Administrators
www.aieaworld.org
kathryn.rosenbaum AT duke.edu

Additional link:
http://www.ruthnestvold.com/tomjones.htm
Thanks Dad.

... 11.12.13 . ... time to deliberate upon Dementia ... G(r)8

@dhgovuk

#G8dementia

News update: 11.12.13 posted 2024hrs UT 
BBC News G8 'will develop dementia cure or treatment by 2025'

See also:
Department of Health, 29 November 2013, England
Dementia: A state of the nation report on dementia care and support in England

Site: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dementia-care-and-support

Above banner source acknowledged and with thanks:
http://dementiachallenge.dh.gov.uk/category/g8-dementia-summit/

Call for papers: Social Robots: Form, Content, Critique - International Journal of Social Robotics

Dear Humanists,

With the usual apologies for duplications and request for cross-posting to suitable lists and potentially interested colleagues - on behalf of my co-editors:

Call for Papers: Social Robots: Form, Content, Critique
special issue of The International Journal of Social Robotics

Co-editors: Michaela Pfadenhauer (Karlsruhe University / Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Satomi Sugiyama (Franklin College, Switzerland), Charles Ess (University of Oslo).
 
We invite papers from scholars and researchers across the disciplines (including philosophy, robot ethics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, media/sociology, information science, art history) that examine and explore social robots through three distinct but inextricably interwoven frameworks:

• Form/appearance (e.g., human/animal likeness in appearance; everyday media forms and robotic functions; cultural attitudes toward robot forms, etc.)
• Content/AI/applications (e.g., implications of artificial intelligence in everyday human experiences such as memories, relationships, and conceptions of the self and self-understanding;  applications that shape human-robot interactions; applications of mobile media and their implications in human's robotic experiences, etc.)
• Critical issues that undergird the above, including; ethics, intimacy, emotions, authenticity, etc.

Paper submission deadline: 1 January 2014
Notification to authors: 1 March 2014
Submission of authors' revised papers: 1 May 2014
Final acceptance: 1 June 2014
(accepted papers will be immediately published at the IJSR webpage with a Digital Object Identifier for citation purposes)
Publication: August, 2014

The call is an outcome of the COST Strategic Workshop on Social Robotic and Sustainability that took place in Brussels, Belgium, on 10-13 June 2013.
http://www.cost.eu/events/socialrobotics

The online submission system is available at:
http://www.editorialmanager.com/soro/
Authors are required to register on the website and to follow the Journal's Instructions for Authors' as provided there.

Many thanks in advance,

- Charles Ess
Professor in Media Studies
Department of Media and Communication
Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations
http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/

My latest book, Digital Media Ethics, is now available from Polity:
http://www.politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=0745656056

University of Oslo
P.O. Box 1093 Blindern
NO-0317
Oslo Norway
email: charles.ess AT media.uio.no

My source: http://digitalhumanities.org/humanist

Study on attitudes to epistemic uncertainty in safety - Call for participants

From: Eugenio Alberdi, e.alberdi AT CSR.CITY.AC.UK
To: SOCIOTECH AT JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Sent: Tuesday, 17 September 2013, 19:57
Subject: Study on attitudes to epistemic uncertainty in safety - Call for participants

The Centre of Software Reliability and the Department of Psychology at City University London are running a study on reactions to epistemic uncertainty in decision problems about safety.

Perceived errors in such decisions are often debated hotly after the fact, but there is still a need to study how the input to the decision maker can help or hinder correct decisions.

If you are involved in any capacity with probabilistic reasoning about safety and risk, we would be grateful if you take the survey at:

http://www.csr.city.ac.uk/people/eugenio/probabilities_survey.html

This study arises from research project UnCoDe -
(UNcertainty and COnfidence in safety arguments: effect on expert DEcision makers):

http://www.city.ac.uk/informatics/school-organisation/centre-for-software-reliability/research/research-projects/uncode

All participants will have the opportunity to read the final report from the study and the other project outputs.

Regards,

_eugenio

Dr. Eugenio Alberdi

Research Fellow, Centre for Software Reliability,

City University, London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB

Email: e.alberdi AT city.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)20 7040 8424  Fax: +44 (0)20 7040 8585

http://www.city.ac.uk/informatics/school-organisation/centre-for-software-reliability/staff/dr-eugenio-alberdi

6Cs Live! Story of the Month - Competition

Dear Peter,

We wanted to let you know about our new and exciting Story of the Month competition, in partnership with Nursing Times online.

This is your chance to really shout about the great work that you or your team is doing that underpins the values of the 6Cs – and what’s more, if you win you will be featured in Nursing Times online and 6Cs Live! Communications Hub.

So please take the time to fill in the short entry form on the 6Cs! Live Communication Hub – it’s not too long and time consuming we promise. 

Click here to find out more and access all the information you need.

Each month the entries will be reviewed by four judges, Matthew Hodson (COPD Nurse Consultant at the Homerton University Hospital, London), Sam Sherrington (Head of Nursing and Midwifery Strategy at NHS England), Jenni Middleton (editor of Nursing Times) and Matt King who is a lawyer, professional speaker, charity campaigner and 6Cs Live! Patient Champion.

The deadline for August entries is Friday 2^nd August so you’ve still got a chance to be our first winner of ‘Story of the Month’.

We look forward to hearing from you and good luck!

If you have any questions please email us.

6Cs Live! Team

Don't forget to make your 6Cs Live! pledge: www.6cs.england.nhs.uk

Living in the Memory Room: BBC Radio 4

Some people have no choice - they must become time travellers ....

There are 800,000 dementia sufferers in the UK. Kim Normanton presents a personal programme about memory and dementia, inspired by her mother's illness. She explores a new approach to treatment - recreating the past.

As her mother's memory of recent events was destroyed ... more

Jordan JNC Conference: Mental health and stigma, Student nurse's aptitude and the MDGs

There were a great many fascinating talks at the conference in Amman. The following caught my attention:

Dr Heyam Dalky on Perception and Coping with Stigma of Mental Illness: Arab Families' Perspectives

Since I trained in the late 1970s there has been a marked positive change in the social stigma associated with medical and mental health conditions. People are by and large more enlightened regards epilepsy for example. Although perhaps some of the progress can be related to medication, medicine management and community follow-up. Mental health professionals and services are aware of the potential damage that a diagnosis of 'schizophrenia' can inflict on young adults. Despite any sense of progress I might see, there is much still to be done as campaigns such as Time To Change attest.

It was very useful then to revisit the historical development of thought in stigma. Dr Dalky also shared global insights into stigma perception within families by citing research in a range of countries; for example, in Jordan, Morocco, Sweden, Germany, China, Malaysia, and Ethiopia.

Within Hodges' model the individual, as in the self, is given a pivotal and yet mobile place (transferable from the top of the model to the center) this led me to the concept of self-stigma (Corrigan, 2009) as I draft a paper on h2cm, case formulation and diagrams.

In her presentation Dr Dalky notes:

• Link and Phelan (2001) defined stigma as the co-occurrence of the components of: 
• labeling, stereotyping, separation, status loss, and discrimination.
• “self-stigma” or “stigma perception,” is the extent to which individuals believe others stigmatize them because of who they are.

They say travel broadens the mind and listening to this presentation you really see the difficulties, objectives and aspirations that not only practitioners share but families and our clients too.

Heyam F. Dalky, PhD, RN, Jordan University of Science & Technology, Irbid, Jordan
 

Ever since my engineering aptitude was measured in the mid 1970s by predicting the movement of a series of gears I've always held a special place for aptitude and attitude, as reflected here on W2tQ.

Mrs. Maxie Andrade, et al. presentation Aptitude Towards Nursing: Is it Measurable? highlighted a central challenge within nurse education.

Nurse training represents a major personal investment for the student (their family too in many cases), the educational institutions and societies concerned. As a sign-off mentor I assess third year students on their final placement. This is a great responsibility that is usually a privilege, but it can be a frustration at the loss entailed for a failing student.

Mrs Andrade defined aptitude:

Is a condition, a quality or a set of qualities in an individual, which is indicative of the probable extent to which one will be able to acquire under suitable training some knowledge, skill or composite of knowledge, understanding and skill

Ref: Mangal S L. General Psychology. Fifteenth reprint. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd; 2008.

The main questions:

Do nursing students possess the required ability (aptitude) to become an effective nurse?

What abilities do we really expect from nursing students?

The development of a tool to measure aptitude was described, reviewing the literature. Are there any existing tools within nursing? What exactly should a tool measure? Statistics and results were listed. This was a very interesting presentation and of particular interest to me.

Mrs. Maxie Andrade, Asst. Professor, Manipal College of Nursing Manipal, Manipal University


There was also a reminder of the time left to achieve the Millennium Development Goals [MDGs] c/o Prof. Hester C. Klopper's keynote: The nursing education tipping point: Forces of change. 

Less than 1,000 days and that was last month.

One thing I noticed and a sign of the issues in the Eastern Mediterranean is that the JNC conference website has proved unavailable at times. It is accessible as I post this.

Andrade M. Perceptions of health care consumers, deliverers and nurse educators on nurses, nursing practice and nursing education system. Manipal University, Manipal: 2010. (Dissertation work).
Andrade M. Choice of nursing career: Pleasure or pressure. International Journal of Nursing Education. 2012; 4(1); 42-44. 
Corrigan, P.W., Larson, J.E., Rüsch, N. (2009). Self-stigma and the “why try” effect: impact on life goals and evidence-based practices. World Psychiatry. 8(2): 75–81.

Jordanian Nursing Council 4th International Nursing Conference “The Tipping Point: Creative Solutions to Health and Nursing Challenges”

Well, I arrived in Amman for this conference at midnight and have not been this far east before. It is certainly different and there is much to look forward to.

I panicked slightly in Istanbul briefly reading the boarding time on my e-ticket as the flight time. So, I was looking for 1920, but the flight was 2020 and not yet displayed.

The hotel Le Meridien is excellent, my driver last night and the staff are very friendly. I was told on the 35 minute trip from airport to hotel that events nearby have impacted on tourism. People have had to seek other work as many tourist offices have closed. At breakfast it does give you pause to wonder about what is happening not all that far away.

I've not checked the conference venue yet. There's a reception this evening and workshops ongoing through today. I opted for:

4

15:00-18:00

Nicola McHugh, MSc, MA, RN

Understanding and Using Research in clinical Nursing Practice

In preparation we've been asked to read:

Seers, K. et al., (2008). A randomised controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of a single session of nurse administered massage for short term relief of chronic non-malignant pain. BMC Nursing, 7:10 doi:10.1186/1472-6955-7-10. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6955/7/10

Two workshops are recorded - an approach to consider for the future - as with using Skype.

Although only two days long there are a great range of concurrent sessions, amongst them:

• Differences in Perception Between Nurses and Patients Related to Patients’ Health Locus of Control Ayman M. Hamdan-Mansour
• Fostering Global Citizenship in Nursing Education: The Role of the United Nations Mary E. Norton 
• Aptitude Towards Nursing: Is it Measurable? Maxie Andrade 
• Comparison of Structure, Process, and Outcomes of Healthcare Service Provision between Advanced Community Nurse Practitioner and General Nurse Practitioner Noppawan Piaseu
• Development of a Multimedia Computer -Assisted Learning with Integrated Content of Anatomy and Physiology for Enhancing Nursing Students’ Skills on Physical Examination in Adult: Head and Neck Examination Chularuk Kaveevivitchai
• Assessment of Nursing Students' of Azad Islamic University of Saveh' Perception about Importance of Caring Behaviors Based on Caring Model of Watson Lida Nikfarid

My presentation is tomorrow afternoon and on Wednesday I'm chairing a session.

More to follow on this and some reading ...

Smoking health harm campaign launched UK

A Hodges' model matrix on this theme will follow in the new year.

Clusters of empathy

There still is Complexity in Primary Care group but it is now essentially silent. I've met several people through the group over the years.

It might be decades since James Gleick's book Chaos (1987) and yet there is plenty of mileage left in complexity. One of the people I met through the group and hoped to meet in Australia at the ICN Congress is Paul Bennett who informed me of the following paper:

Academic Psychiatry, 33:6, Nov-Dec 2009 p.489

Winseman, J., Malik, A., Morison, J., Balkoski, V. (2009) Students’ Views on Factors Affecting Empathy in Medical Education. Academic Psychiatry. 33:484–491.

In explaining Hodges' model to Paul he was struck by the conceptual clustering in this paper. It isn't that there is a direct match between the paper's figure 2 and the care (knowledge) domains of the model, but multidimensional scaling is a potential tool to explore Hodges' model too.

The influence of political factors in medical education might be another aspect to consider. This is a dimension Hodges' model can encompass.

An acute concern at present in the NHS is the prospect of a seven day service, necessitating changes to the contracts of doctors and other disciplines.

Thanks to:
Paul Bennett, Primary Health Care Education Officer
Broken Hill University Department of Rural Health - Broken Hill
PO Box 457, BROKEN HILL NSW 2880
http://sydney.edu.au/medicine/drh/

The Willis Commission on Nursing Education: Recommendations

Here are the recommendations from this commission (the full report is also available):

• Patient centred care should be at the heart of all pre-registration nursing education and continuing professional development.
• There were no shortcomings found in nursing education that could be directly responsible for poor standards of care or a decline in care standards.
• Nurses and their organisations must stand up to be counted on the challenge of poor care and loss of public confidence in order to restore professional pride.
• Nursing education needs to imbed patient safety and dignity as a top priority.
• Better evaluation of and research into nursing education programmes is necessary to ensure a programme that is fit for purpose.
• The future nursing workforce requires nurses to work in a variety of settings.
• Recruitment campaigns need to widen their diversity in order to encourage the widest, best possible range of applicants.
• Health care service providers must fully support nursing education.
• Universities need to recognise nursing as a practice and research discipline.
• Attention needs to be paid to developing a strategic understanding of the nursing workforce as a whole and as a UK-wide resource.

My source: RCN and others

Two recent references informing my studies: Concept maps & Threshold concepts in mental health

These two references inform my study of Hodges' model:

Zubrinic, K., Kalpic, D., Milicevic, M. (2012). The automatic creation of concept maps from documents written using morphologically rich languages. Expert Systems with Applications. 39. 12709–12718.

Stacey, G., Stickley, T. (2012). Recovery as a threshold concept in mental health nurse education. Nurse Education Today. 32, 534–539.

I will post again soon with some thoughts on the above. If you can suggest other recent resources please get in touch.


And on a personal note ALL THE BEST TO DAN, KAREN & little ANNA too. 10.11.12 a day to remember.

Paralympics: States of Body & Mind

Very Best Wishes to all Paralympians.

Day 6 - Paralympic Torch Relay
The Cauldron is lit in Stoke Mandeville as the FOUR flames unite

Disability is also a State of Mind:

:that frequently marks the beholder.

How does it mark you?

Who do you see?

.... Let us together rejoice in Ability ...

Image c/o London 2012

Art and Science of Listening: the conceptual antenna

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

Ability to listen to oneself: self-awareness.	A Fractal Antenna
Active listening.  Attending to other(s), searching for meaning. Supporting self-discovery. Awareness of power, powerlessness, hopelessness, hope.	Governments make promises. Do they ever listen?   Some words are powerful by virtue of their slippery, illusory nature: engagement, Rights, freedom, advocacy, Services.

Ever since hearing of catastrophe theory (New Scientist, Open University) in the 1970s, followed by the emergence of chaos and complexity I've wondered about how chaos and complexity affect each of the care domains.

In health and social care we need a conceptual antenna.

Beyond and combining the four domains there is the additional dialogue, that is Spiritual.

Fractal antenna image source:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1045486&page=3