Four domain link pages updated

The four links pages are still out there and recent interest prompted a review. Given the total number of links included, it is no surprise how url domains are taken over - vape, fitness... It felt good using a links checker and finding and deleting these 'broken' sites and some that are plain dead-ends: the 'domain for sale'. There may be a few more to sort in there...

The pages are archaic in terms of approach - they are not responsive but the format is fine on a desktop and should work on a tablet. The pages started in 1997-98, you don't do this now! People search in real-time for what they need. Besides not everyone may agree with the subjects I have included and the domain in which I have placed them? What is missing?

The intention is to indicate as with another resource the potential scope of Hodges' model in the knowledge and subjects that can be encompassed. I'm not sure of the longer term future of these pages, as I look to new hosting for Drupal.

Over the coming months I will emphasise research, TEL - technology enhanced learning, e-learning and Drupal resources.

Keen to reduce the maintenance overhead, two rows have been removed and categories moved about. As a result there are a couple of 'vacant' columns in there.

In the future I need to investigate the full ramifications of SEO search engine optimization. I receive many requests offering SEO services, and to add links. Given the demanding update task if I can add a few paid links this will help me fund conference travels and studies. ...

As I return to revising my latest essay I'll let you grab a drink and browse, enjoy...(?)

Intra-Interpersonal	Sciences
Sociology	Political

Book: Thinking as Communicating - Sfard (the intra- interpersonal domain)

Previously I wondered about a term that might combine thinking and the formation and process of mental mapping, the creation of a conceptual map - a mental conceptual geography - cogneography?

Thinking as Communicating

Finding Anna Sfard's 1998 paper this past week led me to her book. The following is from the introduction:

I define thinking as individualized form of interpersonal communication. The disappearance of the time-honored dichotomy is epitomized in the term commognition, which combines communication with cognition. The commognitive tenet implies that verbal communication, with its distinctive property of recursive self-reference, may be the primary source of humans’ unique ability to accumulate the complexity of their action from one generation to another.

Sfard's work will have to go on the 'to read' pile (part-time studies begin tomorrow), but it may help provide ways to understand and unravel the intra- and interpersonal domain within Hodges' model. The mathematical emphasis (even though I may struggle with this) is an added bonus.

Sfard, A. Thinking as communicating: Human development, the growth of discourses, and mathematizing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27(2), pp. 4-13.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys4810/phys4810_fa08/4810_readings/Sfard.pdf

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

'Holistic reform of education' in Jordan (an eastern dose of serendipity)

View from The Citadel, Amman 23 April 2013

Yesterday morning I arrived back safe and sound from Amman in Jordan, via Istanbul through to Manchester and full of new experiences and learning. I say 'safe and sound' because travel to the region is clearly not a matter of routine given ongoing events. Checking governmental advice in the UK it becomes a question of personal evaluation as was the unexpected trip to Colombia in 2011. Once the non-trivial decision is out of the way ... Jordan's nursing and educational communities provide a truly remarkable welcome and experience. Not only that, but the kingdom of Jordan and the people have so much to offer in their culture, history, hospitality and engagement.

Returning on Thursday from a full day's trip to Petra - amazing! - I asked for an English language paper to read at the hotel before leaving for the airport. I was provided with a copy of The Jordan Times to accompany a cappuccino^*. On page nine Mona Smadi,^# Asst. Professor, Al Balqa Applied University) wrote an opinion piece on Holistic reform of education. The opening sentence enabled my brain to reconnect with my legs (although I would have gladly walked back through the valley):

A holistic perception of reality means having a vision of the context of the constituent fragments and thereby gaining a clearer perception of the reality in its totality.

Prof. Smadi's focus is children's education and curriculum reform. The overlap between children's education, the professor's concerns and nursing is not limited to how curricula are designed and who owns them. Is, for example, the curriculum centered on the student as an individual nurse, or child? If nurses are to be able to integrate their learning and effectively negotiate the emotional and ethical spaces they find themselves in then when is this deeper thinking to start?

Petra 25 April 2013

Not surprisingly there was a lot of talk about this at the JNC conference. The theory - practice gap is not just alive and kicking there is an echo off the seemingly disparate walls. Given too the debate in the UK about student nurses spending time as a health care assistant before starting their formal nurse education. The word applied in the title of Prof. Smadi's university's is interesting. We are accustomed to applied mathematics, ethics, energy and of course applied nursing research and many other examples?

What of applied nursing - does that make sense? Or is there a circularity of sorts in nursing applied? I will check my notes as this point was raised in conference regards to evidence based care and evidence based practice.

Prof. Smadi's referring to a 'clearer perception' can also be extended to recognition of patterns, contexts and situations that are 'hot' in how they relate to values.

(There are a couple of points to add here which I will get too).


There was another serving of serendipity to add to that at Le Meridien, soon after rejoining the land of the virtual I came across the UK Department of Education's Preparing for Adulthood initiative on twitter. If you read the brief article by Prof. Smadi you will see how the two are closely related. Do lifestyles and family life today for many compromise the ability of families to teach moral values to children? As noted in the text this then becomes a critical role for education. In westernized cultures is this one of the qualities referred to in the saying of 'spending quality time' with the family? An acknowledgement of a deficit?

Source: http://www.preparingforadulthood.org.uk/

Vital and complex work in two senses. On the one hand cultures try to understand themselves; and on the other, they seek to understand the other others out there: now not so far away. The patterns that are realised be they mosaic, prayers, celtic knot, tartan, languages, landscapes - rock cut architecture - sculpture; these patterns work, that is 'make a difference' by virtue of both the detail and the whole.

"Petra is half-built, half-carved into the rock ..." UNESCO.

^#If I have not used the proper name and title I will edit this accordingly asap upon advice.
 
^*Why not an Arabic coffee? Well I had one the day before. What can I say... It was different in the preparation, being an observation as in so many cultural patterns (tea). I would like to think I will have another one day. The key thing is I did not necessarily want to have the capability to run to the airport at 11pm, or back to Petra for that matter.

Case formulation and Reflection in Hodges' model

Case formulation is a process in which I believe Hodges’ model can be used. Johnstone and Dallos (2006) help conjoin case formulation with an original purpose of Hodges’ model, that of supporting reflective practice, as follows:

Formulation and reflective practice. The notion of reflective practice is becoming increasingly important in all therapeutic traditions; that is, the necessity of being aware of one’s own feelings and reactions as a therapist as well as one’s own position in terms of professional status, gender, class, ethnicity and so on, and how these impact upon the therapeutic process. How might these ideas be taken on board in formation? What kind of biases is formulation open to, and how can we minimise them? p.2.

There are of course many concepts mentioned above that are key in staging a therapeutic interaction. As a series of conjoined conceptual spaces Hodges’ model provides a stage were reflections can be made personally, professionally and therapeutically moving to the development of formulations that are shared with clients.

Johnstone, Dallos and contributors also describe the issue of integrative formulation an aspect also of relevance to further study of Hodges' model.

Johnstone L., Dallos, R., (Eds.) (2006). Formulation in Psychology and Psychotherapy: Making Sense of People's Problems, Routledge, Oxford.

106? No! That's not the meaning of 'personalised' care [I]

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

Person-alised care c/o Andrea, Jamal, Leila, Kareem, Nada, Cassie, Graham, Addy, Gizela, Sandra, Kate, Tony, Em, ...	Diagnosis - dementia, confusion, agitation Care needs include: personal hygiene, dressing, washing ...
Carer - support relationship building trust, empathy, rapport...	106 Policy, Governance, Audit, Outcomes, Feedback, Commissioning, ...

What is the meaning of continuity?

BBC News: Dementia patient 'had 106 carers'.