11 December 2014

GAPFON grows

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—The second meeting of the Global Advisory Panel on the Future of Nursing (GAPFON) is over. We spent a day and a half in Puerto Rico to review progress since our first meeting in Basel and to plan for the future. Since our last meeting, a website has been created for GAPFON where you can see a list of panelists, our purpose, and sponsors. Additional information will be posted there as work progresses.

The next step is to hold regional consultations on the work of GAPFON, starting in the Middle East­—in Jordan­—and to determine priorities for these regions. In July, the 26th International Nursing Research Congress convenes in Puerto Rico, and, before Congress, two GAPFON consultations will take place here for the Caribbean and Latin America. Did someone mention Puerto Rico? In that case, I’ll be there!

Puerto Rico
This was my first visit to Puerto Rico. It will not be my last. I am glad to see that I have space in my diary to be here in July, and I have already decided that Puerto Rico is the destination for a holiday sometime soon for Mrs. Watson and me, fuelled by air miles and hotel loyalty points. Perhaps it will make up for missing our wedding anniversary—again—today. I have, literally, never fallen in love with anywhere so quickly. 

Buildings of Old San Juan.
This place is an island paradise. It's Hispanic, yet American territory, definitely the best of both those worlds. Coming from London’s Heathrow Airport on a dark, subzero winter morning and landing in this warm and sunny place with friendly people and discovering, as I did, that Puerto Rico is the home of the piña colada only accentuated my enjoyment. For me, it has everything. I could run in the early morning, and Old San Juan is a most beautiful town to visit. It is also inexpensive. My good friends and colleagues of GAPFON helped make this a memorable two days.

Restaurant Barrachina, home of the piña colada,
according to a plaque on the wall. 
I was also delighted to find the tomb of Juan Ponce de León in the local cathedral. Juan is a bit of a hero of mine as some consider him to be the original gerontologist. The claim is a bit spurious. He did not study ageing as such; he merely came in search of the Springs of Bimini which, to drink from, allegedly give eternal youth. He may have found the fabled springs but, as his tomb testifies, eternal youth evaded him. His conquistador colleagues did not, exactly, acquit themselves with distinction. They enforced a new religion upon the populace with considerable violence and introduced local women—and presumably the men—to sexually transmitted diseases.

Flying home for Christmas
I am writing this in San Juan airport, officially known as the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport. As I await my flight to Miami and then on to London, the holidays are on my mind. I like travelling, but these are the last flights until mid-January when I visit Finland and Qatar in quick succession, and I am quite glad.

When I get home, I have a week of work involving a faculty forum, where I will speak briefly to colleagues about our research and implications of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, the results of which are published next week. I also have several supervisions with doctoral students, a writing-for-publication workshop for National Health Service colleagues in Sheffield, and a teleconference on the day before we break up. On the evening of the last day of work (December 19), my wife, two of my sons, and I are going to listen to a show by comedian Frank Skinner, one of my favourites. Then I plan to eschew the Internet for two weeks and spend some time with my family, close and extended. Normal service will be resumed after my visit to Qatar.

Happy holidays!

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

21 November 2014

China in November

JINAN, Shandong Province, China—It is Sunday, 16 November. The Beijing airport terminal is so vast that, with the haze of pollution trapped inside the building, it is hard to see from one end to the other. I have barely landed and the pollution is already stinging my eyes and coating my lips with a familiar and unpleasant metallic taste. I was led to believe that Beijing air had been cleaned up for the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit meeting attended by world leaders, including President Obama. Perhaps it had.

The taxi journey to Beijing station is gripping, and the lack of functioning rear seat belts adds to the excitement. I keep my eyes on the road ahead, as if I were driving, hoping to see hazards before the driver does and to brace myself accordingly. My blood pressure rises as the driver takes calls on her mobile phone while weaving in and out of the traffic. My student helper, Fancy, seems oblivious to this near-death experience and casually attends to text messages on her iPhone, never lifting her head to savour the excitement. I’m back in China!

This purpose of this visit is to spend a few days in Jinan at Shandong University School of Nursing, from which I reported late last year. As I write this paragraph, I am now in the vast Beijing station. Fancy has disappeared, along with my passport, in search of tickets for the train journey to Jinan. I’m assuming I’ll see her again—passport and tickets in hand—but I always feel vulnerable letting my passport out of sight.

Monday, the 17th
The train journey was uneventful; I slept for the two-hour journey to Jinan. Fancy decided to purchase my return ticket and disappeared again with my passport, but passport and I have now been reunited, and I am in University Hotel at Shandong University.

Breakfast was a déjà vu experience; the food on offer was exactly the same as dinner last night, which did not raise my hopes regarding lunch. Not a word of English is spoken by the hotel staff so, using the international language of pointing, smiling, and showing my room card, I managed to persuade them, both last night and this morning, that I wanted to eat. To me, this seemed an obvious conclusion given my presence in the dining room between the specified hours, but nothing is ever straightforward in China.

My run this morning was one of the shortest ever. I am not sure if it was the subzero temperature or the pollution that was taking my breath away but, once I circumnavigated the block, I lacked the willpower to pass the front door of the hotel and was glad to see my room again. Because of jet lag, I’ve been waking up at 1 a.m., so I had seen my room for most of the night.

My emails this morning were comprised of communications from Fancy with nine manuscripts attached. This is part of my job this week, to advise authors on these documents with a view to publication. I will also deliver a lecture this afternoon on the scientific and ethical aspects of clinical trials. This is not especially my area of expertise, and which aspect of my résumé gave my hosts the idea that it was, I cannot imagine. But, as my wife says, lack of knowledge has never stopped me from speaking about anything.

There’s a stuffed polar bear in the foyer of my hotel. As I say, this is China.

Tuesday, the 18th
There's a polar bear in the lobby of my hotel!
My session seemed to go well yesterday afternoon despite the usual lack of access to the lecture room until exactly the time I was due to start. It is incomprehensible to my Chinese hosts that you would like to see the facilities and load your PowerPoint and infrared slide changer in advance. Thus, the first five to 10 minutes of any session here are spent trying to keep your flash drive in your hand and in sight. The over-helpfulness of my Chinese hosts means that, as soon as it leaves your pocket, it is snatched from you to be inserted, clumsily, into the USB port—nobody does anything slowly or carefully here—often upside down with a lot of damaging wiggling before you can retrieve it and do it yourself.

There is also incomprehension that you need a device to change slides. After all, there are buttons on the computer! In China, you stand behind a lectern, shout into a microphone, and subject your audience to a nonstop barrage of PowerPoint slides. Not my style. I like to be seen, to walk around the stage, and even step off the stage to stand in front of the lectern. My hosts, here and in Taiwan, have warned me that one should not undermine one’s status as an authority figure by such informal behaviour. Again, not my style. I court informality, hate titles and unearned deference, and do my best to undermine these conventions, but they keep inviting me back, so it can’t be upsetting too many people.

I made a fundamental error last night by setting my alarm clock to UK time instead of local time and slept in, which meant no running, little time for breakfast, and then a “set to” with the hotel receptionist who, with translation by Fancy, informed me that, if I had laundry collected today, it should be back tomorrow. I pointed out specific details on the laundry card that clearly stated a 24-hour turnaround if it was collected by 11 a.m. It was 8:45 a.m. “Should” was not good enough, because I was leaving at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, and my supply of underpants would not last.

“Would I like the express service?” I was asked. “No!” I said, because the laundry card informed me that it was not necessary and was more expensive. There is always a solution here, but it is never “I will do what has been agreed and what you want.” Finally, adding insult to injury, I was told via Fancy that laundry had to be in the laundry bag with laundry card completed. I asked Fancy to translate to the receptionist that 1) I had travelled a lot, frequently used hotel laundries, and knew the system, and 2) I had already referred to the card, which I had duly completed. Also, as I had told her, I had hung the laundry bag for collection on the door handle outside my room. Did she think I had hung my underpants and several pairs of socks, not in a bag, but on the handle?

After the first section of my rant, I think Fancy simply apologised for my behaviour and probably said something to the effect of “Westerners, very rude, aren’t they?” I always travel with carry-on cabin luggage only, no matter how long the trip, so laundry facilities are a constant worry.

To compensate for the lack of a run this morning, I went out this evening for 3.5 miles around Jinan. Several more near-death experiences—one of which left what little hair I have standing on end—convinced me to stop running near the road and go to the local park next time. Motorcyclists here interpret the road-sidewalk distinction in their favour. They also weave in and out of the trees at the edge of the road, so you often end up facing an oncoming motorbike not knowing if it will disappear behind a tree or mow you down. I was glad to see my room again.

Dinner tonight was Chinese hot pot, and I mean hot. Health and safety regulations in the UK would never allow such a thing—a pot of boiling hot water balancing on a flaming pile of carbide. The idea is, you cook your own food in this, and I just cannot relax as I see tables where small children are engaged in dropping in and fishing out their cooked food on a table that is likely to topple and scald the diners. I survived.

Wednesday, the 19th
Hot pots make me nervous.
The past two days have mainly been spent reading, editing, and commenting on manuscripts sent me by master’s students. Despite my occasional lapses into frustration at how things are done in China, I never cease to be amazed at the industry of students here, especially these students. The manuscripts I am reading are the product of one module in their programme, and they all intend to publish in international journals. I had assumed these manuscripts were the outcome of their final dissertations, but discovered they are currently engaged in research for their final dissertations and that these manuscripts are “dress rehearsals,” based on research projects carried out earlier in the programme.

The programmes are long, at least three years. Coming from the UK, where the majority of master’s students no longer carry out empirical work and where many PhD students never publish, the work ethic here is impressive. These are not trivial studies. They are well powered, original, and of considerable clinical- and nursing-workforce relevance.

In the meantime
Back at the ranch (University of Hull), our dean has resigned to take up a clinical post, and the search for a replacement has started—to be appointed in the middle of 2015. Our associate dean for research is on long-term sick leave, and I am acting in her absence.

This week, from a distance, I have been helping to organise colleagues for an upcoming visit by the director of research and development of a major engineering company. They have an interest in health, and I think we can showcase two excellent aspects of our work, one in telehealth, the other an invention related to nasogastric tube positioning. (Patent considerations allow me to say no more.)

The deadline for submitting draft statements in advance of a dress rehearsal is the day after I return from China, so I think I will have to eschew University of Hull guidance that we take a day off following a long-haul flight, in addition to the day before. Such guidelines—I’ve encountered them before—are intended to protect the university in the event that one collapses, either in some far-off place or in one’s office at the university following a long-haul flight, and they are written by people who neither do long-haul flying nor have schedules like mine. I forgot to add that the guideline also advises us to have a day off after arriving at our destination and before leaving. If only!

I take the early train to Beijing tomorrow for the early afternoon flight to London. I leave China at midday and arrive in the UK at 3 p.m. the same day. This will be one of the longest birthdays—20 November, 59 years old—I’ve ever had. My next flight is to Dublin next week, and my next report will be from Puerto Rico in December when I meet Hester C. Klopper, president of the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International, and GAPFON colleagues.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

31 October 2014

Tense days in Hong Kong

HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT—It cannot have escaped any reader’s notice that Hong Kong has been volatile lately. My introduction to the “Umbrella Movement” was pictures of tear gas and riot police on BBC news reports. I instantly recognised Hong Kong’s administrative district, known as Central, thus the #OccupyCentral hashtag on Twitter.

Having been in Hong Kong for a week, I made sure I visited the site of the protesters, now relocated slightly to the district of Admiralty. It was a moving occasion. I was moved because I was here with my wife in 2003 when protesters first took to the streets—peacefully—and a million people marched through Admiralty and Central. I was impressed by the fact that the protesters made room for the bus we were on. We were traveling in the opposite direction, and they simply parted and let us through.

Protesters occupy Admiralty district of Hong Kong.
Umbrella Movement banner at the university.
Night view above Umbrella Movement protesters.
This time round, things have been brought to a standstill. Pictures that accompany this entry show some of the scenes I photographed. My government has been quiet about all this, except to express that Mainland China—to whom sovereignty was transferred in 1997—is showing restraint. Ironically, citizens of Hong Kong now have more democracy—albeit limited—then under British colonial rule. We did not allow them to vote at all.

Why we are here
As usual for this time of year, I have been teaching, together with Mark Hayter, PhD, RN, FAAN, my University of Hull colleague, at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPU). It was a delight to be accompanied by Theofanis Fotis, PhD, senior lecturer, School of Health Sciences, from the University of Brighton. I first met Theo in Singapore (blog passim), and it was good fun to show him our version of Hong Kong.

Mark and I taught first-year students in HKPU’s Master of Nursing programme, dividing qualitative methods (Mark) and quantitative methods (me) between us. We also consulted with second-year students about their research projects.

I made a point of asking each group about the Umbrella Movement, and the reactions and responses were interesting. In typical Hong Kong fashion—modest, quiet, and unobtrusive, especially with “seniors”—they were reluctant to talk, but when I said I had visited the protesters, they opened up. Most had joined in at some point. Uncertain about the future, they were hopeful that nothing violent would take place. It is not my “fight,” but I am not hopeful. I cannot envisage China bending at all, and I worry, if it continues, how it will end.

Frequent flyers
Mark and I entertained Linda Sim, the head of Cathay Pacific’s frequent flyer Marco Polo Club—to dinner. We make this a regular feature of our visits to Hong Kong, to thank her and her team for excellent individualised service and to raise any concerns and questions we have. Frequent flying is serious business. We went to another of Hong Kong’s high-rise restaurants, Wooloomooloo Prime in Tsim Tsa Tsui. The view was stunning.

Buildings in Hong Kong are, for the most part, confusing to navigate—even after many years. Mark and I both had the experience of leaving our offices to attend a meeting, with a destination office number written on a slip of paper, only to realise after wandering about for a while that the meetings were being held in our own offices. If I told you Mark knocked on his own door, you would not believe me, but he did.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

17 October 2014

Australian Capital Territory: Like DC, only different

CANBERRA, Australia—Canberra, Australia’s capital city, divides opinion; there are those who love it and those who hate it. This is a planned city, designed by Walter Burley Griffin, an American, and the similarities to America’s capital city are striking.

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT), is more modern than Washington, District of Columbia (DC), and has some splendid art deco buildings—my favourite architecture. It also has more post-art deco structures, some of which, frankly, look like they came from the notebook of Albert Speer. Wide boulevards and the fact that the site of the Australian Parliament is called Capital Hill complete the effect. (In Washington, it’s spelled Capitol Hill.)

Walter Burley Griffin is again very much in the public eye here. Fifty years have passed since they named a nearby body of water Lake Burley Griffin. But Burley was Griffin’s middle name, not part of a double-barrelled surname, thus the campaign to rename Lake Burley Griffin simply Lake Griffin.

I get the impression that not much happens here in Canberra. All the political action on Capital Hill is reported in the national press, and The Canberra Times conveys a picture of rural idyllic living. That said, I’m putting my cards on the table and stating that—from my very limited experience of the place—I like Canberra. Being accommodated by ACT Health in the five-star luxury of Hyatt Hotel Canberra helps. Steeped in history, this hotel has been, for decades, the haunt of Australian politicians, many who resided here.

Fantastic art deco stairway in Hyatt Hotel Canberra. 
With its large, comfortable rooms, the hotel is a triumph of art deco style. My bathroom has French windows and is larger than many hotel rooms I have stayed in. The weather has been uncommonly cold—wet on my arrival—so I open the windows only to place my training shoes outside after returning from a run and to retrieve them before my next run, thus preventing the “what’s that smell?” smell my hotel rooms often get after a week or so. Running here is superb, and a loop, approximately four miles in length, goes from my hotel over two bridges that stand at either end of a section of the aforementioned Lake Burley Griffin. I was out at 6 a.m. this morning, and, along the south side of the lake, fitness classes were well underway with group and personal trainers.

ACT Nursing and Midwifery Research Centre Conference
I am here at the generous invitation of Australian Capital Region Health to give a keynote at the 3rd Biennial ACT Nursing and Midwifery Research Centre Conference. I gave that keynote yesterday and titled it “The path to publication.” On the previous day, I presented two workshops on social networking, including blogging, at the University of Canberra and Canberra Hospital.

This morning’s keynote address was presented by Christine Duffield, PhD, RN, who has an excellent track record in conducting nursing workforce research. Today’s address, probably the most authoritative lecture I have heard on the subject, ranged from the place of “assistants in nursing” (Duffield’s generic term for the unqualified, unlicensed “nursing” workforce) to advanced nurse practitioners. She provided a thorough look at nurse-patient ratios in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.

At dinner last night, we were entertained by speaker Matina Jewell. This outstandingly intelligent and articulate lady has an incredible story about her time in Lebanon as an unarmed United Nations treaty monitor, the horrific injuries she received in a military vehicle, and the death of all her comrades. Although she tells the story most nights, she is still moved to tears in retelling it. Her message is about recovering from hitting rock bottom with depression over the loss of her military career and survivor guilt over the loss of comrades she had been leading. She is on Twitter @matinajewell—as I write, I see she has just tweeted me a message—and she deserves more followers than she has.

Hanging smart
I have done little climbing this year and, for the first year since a horrific accident that took place eight years ago, none outdoors. But my genes have been climbing. My oldest daughter, Hannah, recently spent a week in the Pre-Pyrenees in Spain, and her sister Emily has just returned from the Bavarian Alps. I seem to find little time to climb these days, and two trips each to Hong Kong and China, together with trips to Puerto Rico, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia before the first quarter of 2015, will probably further limit climbing. However, the spirit is willing even if the flesh is usually in an airport.

The extent to which my family travels is now becoming a standing joke. At dinner last weekend, my oldest daughter asked where I was flying to this week, and I responded “Dubai,” which was my first stop on the way to Australia. I asked her the same and she said, “Dubai!” We were in Dubai airport within 12 hours of each other.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

03 October 2014

Still in the UK

I returned to the United Kingdom from Italy, via London, on Friday, 26 September, and spent one night in the Waldorf Hilton in central London, courtesy of the Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau. On Saturday morning, the 27th, I gave a talk to several hundred Saudi Arabian students about challenges faced in building a research career and being an editor. This was the inaugural conference of the Scientific Society for Saudi Students in the UK—the next one will convene at the end of January—and the conference was addressed by Saudi Cultural Attaché Faisal Abalkhail. Later, I was interviewed for a film clip that will be used in future publicity.

It was interesting to share with the students that I had visited Saudi Arabia before, during the First Gulf War as a member of the British Forces Middle East, and that I had visited their country since and was planning to again visit in April 2015. Two days later, I was back in London for a meeting of the Lancet Commission on UK Nursing, and two days after that I was back for my first meeting of the Army Nursing Research Professoriate.

Some members of the Lancet Commission on UK Nursing hard at work.
The Lancet Commission is taking shape. We hope to have a substantial amount of writing done by the end of the year and to spend 2015 finalising our report and filling in any gaps in our background information. The proceedings will remain confidential until we publish the report. Once the Research Excellence Framework meetings are finished—and I will be in London next week for the final one—the Lancet Commission moves to the top of my agenda.

Members of the Army Nursing Research Professoriate, notably: Col. Alan Finnegan, front left; Hugh McKenna, chair, 2014 Research Excellence Framework, second row, right; and Col. Breckenridge-Sproat, front, second right.
The Army Nursing Research Professoriate exists to bring together military and civilian people who have an interest in military nursing research. The group was initiated and is led by Col. Alan Finnegan, PhD, QARANC, who is also an honorary professor at the University of Chester in the UK and a member of the Lancet Commission. We were very lucky to have a member of U.S. military personnel present, Col. Sara Breckenridge-Sproat, PhD, RN, regional nurse executive, Europe Regional Medical Command, the Army Surgeon General’s consultant for nursing research.

In the evening, we were invited to the annual cocktail party of Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps (the QAs), which was held at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, home of the famous Chelsea pensioners. Col. Finnegan had the pleasure of meeting my daughter Lucy, an officer in the QAs, at the hospital in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, while on a visit there during her tour of duty. The professoriate has ambitious plans for research and publication, and, already, there are several very interesting projects underway with publications beginning to appear.

One more week in the United Kingdom, and my travels start again with a short visit to Canberra, Australia, from where I will post my next entry.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

23 September 2014

At 'Oxbridge' and other seats of learning

GENOA, Italy—Despite the location of this entry, I have been mainly in the United Kingdom since my last post, which was from Australia. I made one brief visit to Dublin, Ireland, but otherwise have been in Cambridge and Oxford—two major seats of learning known collectively as “Oxbridge”—and Birmingham, the UK’s second-largest city and, arguably, also a major seat of learning. If you are not familiar with the very British TV comedy “Blackadder,” this YouTube clip will provide a sample and explain, at the expense of my own University of Hull, where Oxbridge is positioned in the UK educational hierarchy.

My visit to Cambridge was to attend part of the NET2014 conference and to present with Karen Holland, editor of Nurse Education in Practice, a workshop on writing for publication. The NET conference, formerly named the Nurse Education Tomorrow conference, evolved out of the journal Nurse Education Today. The conference was the idea of Jean Walker, a former colleague of mine from the University of Edinburgh, and one of its earliest proponents was Elisabeth ‘Liz’ Clarke, PhD, formerly of the Royal College of Nursing of the United Kingdom and now of the Open University. In her keynote address, Clarke, who is not a nurse but a psychologist by background, reflected on the conference’s 25 years and challenged nurse educationists with these questions:
  • What are the greatest achievements in health care education of the past 25 years?
  • What are the big issues we must tackle?
  • What do we need to do to demonstrate our positive contribution to health care services, higher education, and society as a whole?
  • What are the priorities for our future scholarship agenda?
The conference was held in Churchill College, named after our great Second World War prime minister, whose papers are lodged there in a special archive. The college is relatively modern, built in the 1960s, and accommodations seem to have changed little since those days. I must be getting old and soft, but an unsprung student bed with a thin mattress is not what I am used to.

The purpose of my visit to Oxford was to meet with fellow Journal of Advanced Nursing (JAN) editors and the management team from Wiley headquarters. This time, I can report excellent accommodation in a large hotel that incorporates a former Knights Templar hospital. I concluded these knights were not very tall, as I bumped my head several times on massive ceiling beams upon entering—and usually when leaving—the bathroom.

The JAN management-team meetings are one of the most enjoyable events of the year for me. Wiley looks after us very well, and the JAN editors are the best team in the world to work with. During two intensive days, every aspect of the journal is analysed, and our performance in terms of impact factor, downloads, and international outreach is scrutinised. Change always follows these meetings, but this is always positive and agreed to by the whole team. Our vision for the journal is ambitious, and we hope that this becomes obvious in the year ahead. Amongst other things, we hope to increase traffic to our blog, which has been renamed JAN interactive.

Birmingham was the venue for the penultimate meeting of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) subpanel for dentistry, allied health professions, nursing, and pharmacy, to which I have referred previously. I love working with this team, too, but I don’t think many of us will miss these events, as membership on these panels involves very hard work. The eyes of the UK academic community are on the REF panels and subpanels with the outcome—scores awarded to UK universities for excellence in research—eagerly awaited. The world is also watching and waiting, because this exercise was the first to include research impact. There will be international scrutiny to see how we did it and what we found, and it is my expectation that research impact will form part of research assessment in several of the countries I visit regularly.

I’m in Genoa—also known as Genova—for the usual reasons (blog passim): to meet research students at the University of Genoa and to collaborate with colleagues here. In the middle of the week, my dean, Steven Ersser, PhD, RN, makes a visit. I had better be on my best behavior.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

14 August 2014

'And this is winter?'

My daughter’s first words on stepping outside at the Sydney airport form the title to this entry. It gets “cold” here, and there is even snow on the mountains, but what the average Australian considers cold would be an above-average summer day back home in the UK. I have lost count of my visits to Australia, but this is the first time my wife has been here, and I love to see old places through new eyes.

Two of my sons and another of my daughters have already been here, so my wife decided to see what all the fuss was about. In my view, part of the “fuss” is the unique combination of early morning frost in the suburbs of Sydney against the background of a deep blue sky that seems uniquely Australian. By midday, it’s officially warm—by UK standards—yet the locals are in coats and scarves, and, because I am mainly in shirtsleeves, I’m always being asked, “Aren’t you cold?”

View from my hotel.
University of Western Sydney
As mentioned in previous entries from Australia, I’ve been based at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). As the name suggests, the university serves the western side of Sydney but, in fact, it is not really in Sydney at all. It has campuses in Campbelltown, Paramatta and Hawkesbury, with an outpost in Liverpool, the Centre for Applied Nursing Research. During my recent two weeks in Sydney, I visited all the campuses where nursing is provided.

These visits often involve drives that would take you from one side of the UK to another. As with my sense of what is hot and cold here in terms of weather, I have to adjust my sense of distance in this vast country. I told someone I used to drive 60 miles to work and back, trying to instil a sense of horror at this daily feat. They looked at me with a “so what?” expression.

I was really pleased recently to notice that UWS had made the Times Higher Education list of the top 100 universities less than 50 years old (ranked 87th), alongside a very interesting list of younger universities across the world. While here, I have held scholar-in-residence consultations, given two seminars, and I had time to post online slide presentations about open access publishing and the uses and abuses of impact factorThis evening, in the presence of Rhonda Griffiths, dean of nursing and midwifery at the University of Western Sydney, and Scott Holmes, deputy vice chancellor for research and development at the school, I address a function at the university for senior people from local hospitals and health authorities. My topic is “The Francis Report: You simply could not make it up.”

Australia and onwards
This is the first of two visits to Australia this year. In October, I return to Canberra to speak at the 2014 Australian Capital Region Nursing and Midwifery Research Conference.

Aunt Jean, at age 90, the oldest member of the party,
meets the youngest, Rebecca, age 15.
In addition to the professional aspects of my trips here, the past few years of regular visits have enabled me to connect with my extended family of cousins and one remaining aunt. I was especially pleased that my wife and daughter (Rebecca) were able to meet my Aunt Jean, who turned 90 in February.

Tomorrow, we leave Australia for Hong Kong and, after two days, we return to the United Kingdom. August is relatively quiet, but September and October will be intensive with final scores and report writing for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, after which I must turn my attention to the slightly neglected Lancet Commission on UK Nursing.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be published.

08 July 2014

Working on the Italian Riviera

HULL, United Kingdom—Last week, I made my third visit to Italy and my second to Genova this year. It is a pleasure to visit that historic and beautifully situated city. The weather was superb and, despite a classic running injury—plantar fasciitis—I managed two 10K runs along the two-mile esplanade called the Corso Italia. I had to make several loops but, because the sea was clear and blue and the sun was shining, this was no hardship.

You do not have to go far to experience a different culture, and this became evident in three incidents in which I was a customer—in two restaurants and a shop.

In the first incident, I took a table, asked the waiter for a beer, and, just as I began to say, “and could I see the menu?” was berated for my ignorance. This was not a bar, he informed me, but a restaurant. If I wanted a beer, I should go next door to the bar. I stood up, shrugged my shoulders, and walked out.

I then tried to buy some gelato and liked the look of the yogurt-flavoured variety. My idea of the perfect ice cream is one with no “bits” in it, or any other kind of adulteration. The vendor—who sensed I was not local—simply looked at me and told the person next to me in the queue that I ought to be trying something more typical of Italy or Sicily, from where he originated. So I pointed to some brightly coloured bitty concoction at the back of the display, which he seemed happy to serve me. I left muttering loudly, “So why do you have the yogurt-flavoured gelato?” And the one I bought was truly terrible. I made a mental note that, within a short time of my arrival, at least one restaurant and one shop were out of bounds in the future.

The final incident involved me buying coffee—which I did not want—after dinner, albeit I was able to have decaf. The coffee was “special,” explained the proprietor. It was made with limoncello, a highly alcoholic lemon drink. The coffee was terrible, too! But the restaurant was very good and an interesting place—a former, and I emphasise “former,” house of ill repute. (I can see the tweet now: Travelling professor visits a brothel.) I’ll say no more than that because, although the establishment’s mission had drifted, the decor remained what I imagine—I emphasise imagine—what one of those places may have looked like.

The University of Genova
I was not in Genova to report on local hostelries but to work for a few days at the University of Genova. I met PhD students to teach and discuss various aspects of research, including writing for publication. This time, I gave three sessions—open access publishing, impact factor, and the process of proceeding from data to published paper. While there, I also spent time with colleagues, advising on their research and publication strategies and looking for areas of common interest with our research at Hull.

One specific area of interest in health promotion is related to avoidance of melanoma, and the vast layers of seminaked bodies on the beaches of Genova suggest they may have a significant melanoma problem in Italy. In Australia, to cite one example, sunbathing, though not eliminated, has become almost a thing of the past. People there are very “sun-safe,” using clothing and protective creams to good effect. Italians have not yet gotten the message. Why we have such an interest in melanoma at Hull, where the sun rarely shines, is a mystery. But we do, and I hope my colleagues can begin to visit Genova and establish some collaboration.

There is one final incident to report, and that was running into a street demonstration while en route from Genova to the airport. The protestors—trade unionists—were blocking the road, and we had to stop. They had also blocked side roads leading to the main road. My anxiety level rose slightly, but we took an impromptu tour of the back streets of Genova, which was fascinating, and we arrived at the airport via a route I had never taken and from a direction I considered impossible. I have no complaints about Genovese taxi drivers, possibly the fastest and most intrepid in the world.

In case anyone wonders if I actually ever work at Hull, I was here the week before I went to Italy, and I am here this week. I am in the process of preparing a new online module in quantitative research methods for our Master’s of Research (MRes) students. MRes is something possibly unique to the UK. It is a genuine master’s degree, which can be taken as an exit point or, after graduation, for the first year of a PhD. Other master’s degrees, if the student graduates, oblige the student to start in the first year of a PhD. This module will be entirely online and asynchronous, a model that works very well, I think, for master’s students.

The rest of the month is taken up with a week in Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare, at a Research Excellence Framework subpanel meeting. Then I head to Hong Kong for the 25th International Nursing Research Congress, sponsored by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Of course, you’ll be hearing about my time there. Maybe you’ll even be in my next blog.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

16 June 2014

Middle East to UK to Far East

HONG KONG, SAR, China—I am always happy to visit a new country, and, last week, I was in Oman for the first time. I was examining at the College of Nursing at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat. Muscat, located on the northeast coast of Oman, faces the Gulf of Oman, which separates the Persian Gulf to the north from the Arabian Sea to the south.

I have to stoop to superlatives to describe the weather. The temperature was over 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), with humidity that exceeded anything I have experienced in the Far East and Southeast Asia. Leaving any air-conditioned building was like being hit in the face with a wet, warm sponge. One evening, at an outdoor cocktail party, I decided to check my phone for messages, and the phone, which had been in my air-conditioned room for hours, simply started dripping with water. I survived and even managed to run, at 0530, but my GPS watch was a victim of the humidity and stopped working—permanently.

The view from my hotel in Oman.

Sultan Qaboos
Sultan Qaboos University is enormous and located on the same campus as Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH). Together, they serve as a major centre of medical and nursing education for the region. My own University of Hull has a long-standing relationship with both the College of Nursing and the hospital. One of my colleagues at Hull was a recent examiner at SQUH; colleagues from SQUH visit Hull and our local hospitals—my daughter has looked after them on the local cardiothoracic intensive care unit; and, over the next few years, we plan to take several cohorts of staff members into our post-registration, undergraduate degree program me.

In Oman, I met members of a recent delegation to Hull, who enthused about the personal and detailed care they received while at Hull. Although they visited many centres in the UK, they chose us because of our hospitality—crucial in Arab culture—and we have my colleague, Jeremy Jolley, PhD, RN, international coordinator, to thank for this. Jeremy preceded me as examiner at the Sultan Qaboos University College of Nursing, and his legendary sense of humour and easy way with international colleagues meant I had a lot to live up to. I don’t yet know if I passed the test, but will conclude I did if I am invited back.

New friends
I was not examining alone; I was reunited with my colleague from Bahrain, Seamus Cowman, PhD, RN, FAAN, head of nursing at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland–Medical University of Bahrain. Also, I was delighted to meet, for the first time, Marilyn Lotas, PhD, RN, FAAN, associate professor, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and Shadia Yousuf, PhD, RN, assistant professor, King Abdulaziz University Faculty of Nursing, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, who gave me news about two of my previous PhD students, now working in Jeddah.

We examined the students in the clinical areas, presenting patient cases and interacting with patients, and following up with a series of very demanding oral examinations. We do nothing like this in the United Kingdom and, while I questioned the value and sustainability of some of the examination procedures (suitable for small numbers but probably unworkable for large numbers), I also wondered if we were not a bit “soft” on our own students.

Professor Cowman and I with male nursing students in Oman.

Hong Kong … again
I returned to the UK for a day to remind my wife and family what I look like and then left for Hong Kong. This week, I am working for the University Grants Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR). Specifically, I am serving on the humanities and social sciences committee, reviewing research grant proposals related to health.

The view from my hotel in Hong Kong.
I know Hong Kong well and have many friends and colleagues to see. Last night, I went to one of the best places here to get a haircut, the YMCA Salisbury Hotel. If your image of the YMCA is one of old sports halls with table tennis, pool, and a song by Village People, think again. The YMCA has two very good hotels here, and I often use them. In a few weeks, on the way back from Australia, I will be staying at one of them with my 15-year-old daughter.

The haircut at the YMCA reminds me of one of my funniest moments in Hong Kong. The first time I decided to have my hair cut there, I went in and an older Hong Kong lady was sweeping the hair from the floor. Nobody else was there. I asked about a haircut and, with no English, she pointed to me to sit down and proceeded to cut my hair—very well. I asked about the cost, and she said “one hundred dolla’,” meaning HK$100, which I gave her. She put the note in her pocket, and I thought no more about it until my next visit a few weeks later. The lady was still sweeping the floor, but there was also a young man there, who proceeded to cut my hair. At the end, I took out a HK$100 note and handed it to him. “No,” he said. ‘You must pay at the shop,” and handed me a bill for HK$110. I stole a glance at the hair-sweeping lady on the way out. I think I saw her smiling!

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.