The Quirk on the Hill: Moodling + paying attention

The Quirk on the Hill: Moodling + paying attention: Moodle is a term I came across in Brenda Ueland's book - If you want to write . In it she says "So you see the imagination needs ha...

Book to buy!!

My friend Kate Evans' book has been published. I believe it will help many!! Will be recommending it to anyoe who passes in Academia and for our students.

https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/other-books/pathways-through-writing-blocks-in-the-academic-environment/

Oh to be in Cambridge now Spring is nearly here

I cam across this project and wish I was nearer so I could experience all of it.

http://www.thresholds.org.uk/

This blog post from Roselle Angwin made me think about the stories we share in healthcare. The press love the bad sensationalist ones.

This made me think about how my vision to integrate creative/expressive arts in healthcare has a place in the human consciousness. Roselle was one of the first practitioners of writing and well being back in 2004 when I first stumbled upon the power of poetry - her work continues to be inspirational.


http://roselle-angwin.blogspot.co.uk/

Reblogged from qualia and other wildlife: once more into the nude, dear friends, once more

qualia and other wildlife: once more into the nude, dear friends, once more: Where I'm directed to sit in the maxillo-facial corridor of the Outpatients' Department of Torbay Hospital there's a huge red and blue sign ...

Stirring up memories

Reading Annie Cooper's blog  today has surfaced memories for me about what I saw and found difficult when I was a student. Like her I remember reporting what I thought was bad practise but can't remember the detail. I appear to have forgotten what happened next - I must have been questioned and completed paperwork BUT I can't remember...
Someone once suggested I look to the War Poets as a model for writing poetry about my student days. At the time I thought this was a little dramatic and in no way was my experience that bad but thinking about it now makes me think that maybe it was. I have buried a lot of emotional responses to those 3 years and I suspect I suffered from emotional trauma that stays with me until this day. I try and keep it out of the classroom but it motivates me every single time I am with the students. Just because I had a c**p three years doesn’t mean they have to.

My group of students have just finished University and will be signing themselves over to the NMC soon as they pay for their first registration. Their collective thanks for my guidance through the last three years was very moving I was touched by their gratitude thinking it is only my job, but I care about them and make sure they don't come away spending the next 30 years trying to repair the damage. I still have work to do about that as I contemplate meeting the next cohort in 4 weeks time.

The book!!

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hj100uC2W08C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Please take a look at this and if interested and feeling flush - buy it. I am pleased to be included in this gorgeous offering. Chapter 9

Artists Books

Have been thinking about the right type of medium to "display" my thoughts and explorations around health care, humanity, care and compassion and think I have found it. I am not very good at having the confidence to believe in really focusing on one approach. I am afraid of being a one trick pony and instead think that a bit of this and a bit of that might do. I think this is the way forward and I greatly admire Theresa's work so I am going to investigate the ways I can express myself in book form using images (photos etc), words and ephemera.

Take a look at this as well

http://diybookit.wordpress.com/


http://theresaeaston.wordpress.com/

Conference

This conference in Glasgow appears to the right audience. Can I get over inertia, cynicism and insecurities to put in a paper?
http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/research/conferences/attentivewriters/

Not this again

Interesting article in the Guardian about who is occupying hospital beds - people with long term conditions and older people who can not remain at home without lots of support.
Not new but got people tweeting!!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network/2013/jan/14/society-problems-overwhelming-nhs

Maybe in times of austerity it all becomes more of an issue.
We have tried to shift resources  from hospital to community for 20 years - hospital consultants have too much power and no one in the community has enough clout to do anything about it!!

Thinking

One of my problems over the years has been "too much thinking" - instead of just blinding getting on with what I am paid to do I think. I consider what I am doing, why I am doing it, whether I could do it any better - all this thinking led me to leave clinical practice and move in Higher Education. I thought that thinking would be one of the activities prized within the Academy. I could not have been more wrong and since I joined I have descended into a pit of despair.

Lecturing to students this week about the nature of nursing knowledge I mentioned a couple of "thinkers" in nursing whose work I have read and learned from over the years. I decided to have a glance at Nursing Philosophy - a nursing journal, whose title almost seems, for the Daily Mail, at least, a bit of an oxymoron - get on with doing your job - nurses don't need philosophy I can hear them shouting!!

As if a message what being sent from on high I came across this article:-

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1466-769X.2012.00551.x/abstract

 

I have long admired Gary Rolfe's output and his thoughts on the knowledge we use in nursing. I have never had the energy or self- belief to get my words out there but I do hope I can encourage the students to read his work. I said to them this week that I think when I am walking the dog and this article contains a scholarly discussion about what is happening in nursing with Universities. It has helped me recognise the sources of my own disquiet, frustration and dissatisfaction. However I fear I have descended into despair and whether I can pick myself up and develop scholarly work from within I am beginning to doubt.

Long may it last that scholarly articles like this can be freely available to share and spread the word.

Self-discovery

Here is a copy of a post I placed on the Hearts in Healthcare Website yesterday - I am not sure anyone had read it BUT I did have a bit of an epiphany as I wrote it and when I read the article!!

http://www.heartsinhealthcare.com/welcome

As a Diabetes Specialist Nurse I spent more time in the waiting area in OutPatients (OP) than in my designated space. The OP nurses were not happy with me as they thought I ought to be behind closed doors like the Doctors and Dietitian but I had a hunch that the waiting area was the better place to be. I did not want to be hidden. This piece by John Launer helps make sense of what I was doing with my time all those years ago!!

As the waiting room is the first point of contact with Health Care systems then maybe we ought to make them better spaces to be in!! I don't mean just physically but emotionally - I now realize that what I was doing in the waiting area was creating a bridge between the person with diabetes and their doctor - closing the gaps in communication. It is why I did my PhD research - just a shame I never wrote it up - as it all begins to make sense now!!

http://pmj.bmj.com/content/88/1040/361.full


 

Impotent Rage

Waiting at the Dentist is bad enough (even if it is just a check-up - my daughter's) without having to look at this on the TV!!
Not sure what it was about as volume not up enough - I am sure it was about HCA's not nurses!!!

Wake up call

I do wonder why it has take so long for folk to realise that if you pay staff peanuts and do not support or develop them in their role you may end up with them delivering sub-optimal care. I often wonder what motivates people to provide poor care on low wage when they could get a job without much interaction with human beings. Recruitment and retainment issues need to be reviewed as well as providing ongoing learning opportunities for staff. Let's not call it training let's call it development - some HCAs become great staff nurses and also rise up the ranks to Matron - bet the Tabloids don't headline that one!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9654037/NHS-patients-get-unacceptable-care-from-nursing-assistants.html

A change or the same old, same old

A new vision for District Nursing?

As " the quirk on the hill" I blogged about District nursing and how the lack of imagination and vision (mainly due to being shackled to the GP) made innovation and change rhetoric not reality. Will anything change in the next 10 years and are the right people steering this forward?

New Year New Blog

This blog is going to be where I explore the last 30 years and try to make sense of

• nursing,
• health care experiences,
• being a wife and mother
• poetry and creative writing
• the world I live in
• making the future bearable