12th May Lancaster, Workshop: Patient knowledge and involvement in healthcare

An event I am looking forward to: 

Royal Institute of Philosophy Workshop
Storey Institute, Lancaster
Monday 12th May

In recent years great efforts have been made to listen to “patient voices” in healthcare practice, research, and policy, but such initiatives have met with mixed success and many patients continue to feel that their view are overlooked (sometimes despite the best efforts of health care professionals). In this workshop we consider whether and why patient views matter. We ask what factors act to limit the possibilities for communication between patients and professionals, and consider how they might be overcome.

• 10-10.40 Chaos, conflict and cooperation. Havi Carel, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Bristol University
• 10.40-11.20 Silencing the sick. Ian J. Kidd, Addison Wheeler Fellow in Philosophy, Durham University
• 11.50-12.30 On trusting and being trusted. Garrath Williams, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Lancaster University
• 2-2.40 Patient advocacy challenged: The case of ME/CFS. Nancy Blake, Patient activist and PhD candidate, Lancaster University
• 2.40- 3.20 Medical paternalism and the right not to know. Emma Bullock, Postdoctoral Fellow “Concepts of Health”, King’s College London
• 3.50-4.30 Negotiating as individuals and groups. Rachel Cooper, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Lancaster University

Organisers: Ian J. Kidd and Rachel Cooper

Free and open to all, but numbers are limited. To reserve a place please email
Rachel Cooper - on r.v.cooper AT lancaster.ac.uk

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.

Syria's Trojan women

The Syria Trojan Women project began by creating drama workshops in Amman, Jordan in autumn 2013, and put on a theatrical production of Euripides’ anti-war tragedy, 'The Trojan Women' in December with a cast and crew of Syrian refugees. The first performances were a great success, and we hope to stage further performances in and around Amman, and a tour of Jordan and the region. http://www.syriatrojanwomen.org/

My source: Charlotte Eagar, Syria's Trojan women. FT Weekend, Life&Arts, 4 - 5 January 2014. pp.1-2.

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

individual

"personal	parallels" p.2.
drama therapy	conflict

group - population

http://hodges-model.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Jordan

FOUR QUARTETS T.S. Eliot from EAST COKER - IV

FOUR QUARTETS

T.S. Eliot

EAST COKER
(No. 2 of 'Four Quartets')

IV
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
    Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
    The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
    The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
    The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.


T.S. Eliot Nobel Prizes biography
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1948/eliot-bio.html

Source copy:
http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/notes.htm

http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/2-coker.htm

A Nurse at the Front - book

The First World War Diaries of Sister Edith Appleton

Book cover: A nurse at the Front

This book, the second in a series of four unique War Diaries produced in conjunction with the Imperial War Museum, will tell a story that is rarely heard: the experiences of a nurse working close to the Western Front in the First World War. Incredibly, Edith Appleton served in France for the whole of the conflict. Her bravery and dedication won her the Military OBE, the Royal Red Cross and the Belgian Queen Elisabeth medal among others.

Her diary details with compassion all the horrors of the 'war to end wars', including the first use of poison gas and the terrible cost of battles such as Ypres, but she also records what life was like for nurses and how she spent her time off-duty. There are moments of humour amongst the tragedy, and even lyrical accounts of the natural beauty that still existed amidst all the destruction. [Publisher's description]

Use and ab-use of knowledge

The effective ‘use’ of knowledge is constantly espoused in health care both informally with patients and formally in evidence based research. Knowledge is the key to improving patient safety and delivering efficient, high quality care interventions and effective outcomes. Things become complicated in health and social with the number of potential knowledge sources and the disciplines intent on seeing, gathering, recording and utilizing knowledge that is theirs. From that adopted vantage point they are bound to have a certain perspective.

There are still vestiges of C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures (1959) when we view the use and ab-use of knowledge, particularly the way knowledge is sliced, diced, partitioned and housed into disciplines. In the Introduction to Michel Serres' Parasite, Cary Wolfe notes that:

... the Latin prefix ab- meaning, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us, “off, or away from”: "abuse" value at a tangent to use and exchange value, at a distance from it: a different vector, a different type of value (Wolfe, 2007). p. xx.

Literally looking at the model we see that whilst there is increasing interdisciplinarity and collaboration between disciplines, practitioners and managers, academics and policy makers … there remains much ab-use between the domains of (care) knowledge.

If by definition abuse brings individuals, agencies and whoever falls in-between into disagreement, dispute and possibly much worse then clearly a tool that can help furnish a common understanding and insight should be welcomed.



For all that Hodges’s model can offer as a common foundation and bridge for the disciplines, we must ask where is the patient, the carer and the public? Is there a new discipline emerging?
 
What is needed to help gauge the potentials of use and ab-use in health and social care ...?

Additional links - for the image:
Coxeters Loxodromic Sequence of Tangent Circles
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CoxetersLoxodromicSequenceofTangentCircles.html

Donald Coexeter
http://www.geometry.net/detail/scientists/coxeter_donald.html

Snow, C.P. (2001 [1959]). The Two Cultures. London: Cambridge University Press.

Wolfe, C. (2007). Introduction to the New Edition. Bring the Noise: The Parasite and the Multiple Genealogies of Posthumanism. In Serres, M. (1980). The Parasite. University of Minnesota Press.

Image source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coxeter_circles.png