“Hanging Smart: The Movie” and Slovenia

VIENNA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Austria—Many wonder about the title of this blog. Maybe you're one of them. It’s a climbing term, and I have made a short video titled “Hanging Smart: The Movie” to help explain. Warning: This is not for the fainthearted. Yours Truly in mortal danger may be more than you can cope with.

Slovenia

I have just been in Slovenia—essentially—for the first time. I say that because Mrs. Watson and I crossed the Italian-Slovenian border at Trieste several years ago to have dinner with an Italian colleague, but we were there and back in the same evening. This time, I spent a week at the University of Maribor in the Faculty of Health Sciences providing workshops on writing for publication. I am prone to falling in love with the last new place I visit, and it has happened again. Slovenia is a wonderful place.

This was the first country to break away about 25 years ago from the former Yugoslavia, and it did so peacefully with only a few border skirmishes and a handful of unfortunate deaths. They continue to have border disputes with neighbouring Croatia, but, to date, these have been conducted without gunfire. 

View over the river in the small historical town of Ptuj,
pronouned pa-tuey.

Some here still hanker back to the days of communism when everyone had a job, but they need to look around them. With the exception of North Korea, the military-industrial complex that was the basis of the Soviet bloc economy has proved untenable. Even where the ideology remains—in Russia, China, and Cuba, for example—the economic benefits of personal choice, financial reward, and movement across borders have prevailed.

The scenery is superb, the food a delight, and the hospitality overwhelming. Nursing at Maribor, under the leadership of Dean Majda Panjkihar, PhD, RN, is impressive. They have just established the first PhD programme for nurses in Slovenia and have an intake of five students. While I was there, Brendan McCormack, PhD, RN, FRCN, head of nursing at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, gave his inaugural professorial lecture on his field of person-centred care. It was an inspiring event. Over the course of the week, he and I sampled a wide range of local alcoholic beverages—colleagues, someone has to make these sacrifices—and found we had almost identical likes and dislikes about modern nursing in the UK.

McCormack is appointed professor
at the University of Maribor

McCormack and I have often found ourselves on opposite sides of many arguments, and I am sure that will not change. We come from very different academic backgrounds and philosophical positions. Where he may refer to releasing creative energy, I am more likely to regard that as thermodynamically impossible. It’s a case of flamboyant creativity versus plodding objectivity, but we have decided to inflict our collective view on the public. Watch this space for a link to our collective and—potentially—career-ending editorial.

Homeward bound

I write this at Vienna International Airport, for me a first, as I have never been in Austria before. The drive from Maribor is two and a half hours at speeds unimaginable—legally—in the United Kingdom or United States. I am home for the weekend and then go to Rotterdam to attend a conference, about which I will report in these pages.

I have managed to buy two tickets for a home game over the weekend between Hull City Football Club and Chelsea Football Club—football as in soccer. My home team is again part of the English Premier League, so far with mixed results, some of which I have witnessed. We have never beaten Chelsea, and I don’t expect we will this time, but, as the saying goes, it gets me out of the house.

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.

How many shopping days?

HULL, United Kingdom—This entry finds me after significant breaks from blogging—at least in “Hanging Smart”—and travel. I take the title of this post from the UK obsession this time of year, when summer is ending and people are looking forward to their next major holiday, Christmas—especially the constant reminders from the retail sector of how many shopping days and weekends we have left in our spending spree.

Over summer, the long-suffering Mrs. Watson insisted we take a break, and that led to a few days in London doing things we never did when we lived there many years ago. On the scholarly side of things, two major research-grant proposals have been submitted to potential funders, and several manuscripts have been revised and resubmitted to journals.

We are now at that time in the academic year when our modules have to be revised for the coming semester and dissertations from final-year students marked. People often ask if, with all my travelling, I actually teach and mark students’ work. The answer is yes. I must admit that my incredible colleagues at Hull carry a heavier load than I of these things and, without their support, I could not maintain my international work. However, I like to think I am still engaged with students at all programme levels.

Since my last entry, I have been to Oxford, UK, to attend the management team meeting of Journal of Advanced Nursing. This is the best two days of the year in terms of discussion and decision-making, and I keep reminding myself how lucky I am to work with a superb publishing team at Wiley—I have known and worked with at least one of its members for 25 years—and a highly professional team of editors.

Immediately prior to that meeting, I attended the 2016 meeting of INANE (International Academy of Nursing Editors) at the headquarters of the Royal College of Nursing in London. There I had the privilege of listening to Ben Goldacre, MB, BS, MA, author of Bad Science (the book and the blog), Bad Pharma, and now I Think You’ll Find it’s a Bit More Complicated Than That. He signed a copy for me. Goldacre initiated the AllTrials campaign, which aims for total transparency in reporting clinical trials. I reflect on this meeting and what he had to say in a post titled “Being Ben Goldacre” in my blog “Publishing Standards.”

Eric Chan addresses colleagues at
Napier University on global health.

The break from travel ended last week. I have just returned from Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland, which has launched a new School of Health and Social Care. The launch event took place over two days and was attended by colleagues from Hong Kong and Singapore. Of those colleagues, I was especially pleased to see my good friend Eric Chan, MSc, RN, dean of Caritas Institute of Higher Education in Hong Kong, former deputy chief nurse of the Hong Kong Health Authority, and one of the founding members of GAPFON (Global Advisory Panel on the Future of Nursing & Midwifery).

I suppose I ought to be counting the time to Christmas by air miles and how many weekends I will actually spend at home. This week, I’m spending three days at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, at the 2016 NET (Nurse Education Tomorrow) conference where I am providing early-morning consultation sessions on writing for publication.

Looking further ahead, between now and the end of the year, in addition to another visit to Edinburgh and at least three to London, I will make two visits to Spain (Madrid and Pamplona); one to Maribor, Slovenia; one to Rotterdam, Netherlands; and one to Istanbul, Turkey. I will also visit Washington, D.C. for the annual meeting of the American Academy of Nursing. A visit to Egypt is also being arranged but is not yet finalised. I am sure these visits will have their high points and their low points. Either way, you’ll read all about them here.

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.