"It's not just about the patient, it's the families too.": End of life care in the home environment

Introduction: Most people when asked say they would prefer to die at home. However, ‘Death in Usual Place of Residence’ (DiUPR) does not give any real insight into the quality and experiences of care received. Additionally, DiUPR involves other family members resident in the home environment and their needs, preferences and experiences also need consideration. Aim(s) and Method(s): The aim of this work was to explore the experiences of patients and informal caregivers receiving at-home care from a specialist palliative care service. We undertook individual interviews with 11 patients and 10 significant others. We used the Pictor technique, a novel interview tool used to sensitively explore networks of support and experiences of palliative care. Interviews were analysed thematically. Results: Caring for a loved one at home was acknowledged as draining, but participants were effusive about the excellent at-home professional support they received from the specialist service. The care provided evidently recognised the needs of both patients and their families. Effective co-ordination of care, including liaison with other services was especially appreciated. Conclusion(s): With increasing trends towards DiUPR, it is vital that there are sufficient well-resourced palliative care services available in the community to support both patients and their families at the end of life. Pictor is a useful means to obtain detailed insight into individual experiences of end of life care. Care co-ordination emerged as key concern for patients receiving End of Life Care and their families

Review of Pedagogy for Technology Education in Secondary Schools

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How do we do race in design and technology?

This chapter deliberately takes a different format to others within this book. The authors and contributors have come together to co-author and collaborate on this work, which we think breaks new ground within design and technology. For the contributors, we are drawing on the teacher as researcher and teacher as reflexive practitioner; the authors are drawing on their lived experiences to explore the question, how do we do race in design and technology, and begin the road to exploring some possible answers. We also wondering: Who are the voices that have shaped the design & technology curriculum around raceissues of decolonisation, definitions and clarifications? The chapter starts with an overview of decolonisation and diversity in design and technology, and then broadens out into understanding the language around race and diversity. The design discourse takes us to globalisation and cultural values and the monolithic space taken by only structuring the current design and technology curriculum with a Eurocentric modelling of design history. The narrative voices of teachers then provide the backdrop to rest of the chapter, their voices speak of the differing experiences, their perspectives asreflective practitioners are there to offer thoughts and reflections, they do not yet provide answers. The chapter ends with a call to reclaim the curriculum and bring the marginalised voices in from the margins

Comparison of experimental and predicted TCP solvus temperatures in Ni-base superalloys

The use of thermodynamic predictions of alloy stability to assist with the alloy design process is widespread. Therefore, it is important to understand how accurate these predictions are currently. To this end, a series of model alloys with systematically varying Mo contents have been designed to be unstable with respect to the precipitation of the topologically close-packed phase, sigma. Increasing the Mo content was found to increase the quantity of sigma phase precipitation and alter the precipitate morphology from a plate-like to a more blocky morphology following the same thermal exposure conditions. Differential Scanning Calorimetry has been used to measure the sigma solvus temperatures of these alloys and the results compared with thermodynamic predictions made using Thermocalc software. It was found that the observed trend of increasing solvus temperature with increasing Mo content is reproduced by the predictions, but that the temperatures are significantly under- predicted. This has implications for how we use these values to influence the design of new alloy compositions.This work was supported by the Rolls-Royce EPSRC Strategic Partnership under EP/M005607/1, EP/ H022309/1 and EP/H500375/1

Drawing for Science, Invention and Discovery: Even if you can't draw

Drawing for Science, Invention and Discovery: even if you can’t draw  Carney, P. (2018). Drawing for Science, Invention and Discovery: even if you can’t draw. Leicestershire: Loughborough Design Press.  ISBN: [paperback] 978-909671-19-5 £9.99  eISBN: [mobi] 978-1-909671-20-1 £3.99&nbsp

A DEVELOPING PROJECT: INVESTIGATING FUTURE FORMS OF DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION

It is regularly reported at previous PATT conferences that design and technology (D&T) in England is in decline. Despite initiatives, new curricula and government lobbying, the D&T juggernaut seems to be on the brink of collapse (according to some), with lowering numbers of pupils studying D&T, fewer teachers, less resources, and low status in schools. Pulling the D&T juggernaut back from the brink requires more than one approach and most of the recent ones have been led by national organisations. This paper reports on the first phase of a new project, led by practising teachers, that takes a new approach. In simple terms, the aim of the project is to redesign D&T, not so much the content but the curriculum delivery and framework. We have started by identifying the unresolved issues that are causing curriculum tensions and incoherence in the D&T community. In this paper we are reporting on the first phase of our design project, where we used a Delphi Study to identify the controversial D&T curriculum issues that need resolving before we can design a D&T curriculum. Nineteen teachers completed the first survey. Analysing of the survey data reduced the number of questions to 24. These were circulated to a self-selecting expert group (participants who completed the first survey). A second round of analysis has clarified that there are 18 unresolved questions and contentions issues that need to be debated. The next step is to invite teachers to respond to these issues; these responses will then be shared in a publication, debated, and shaped into a curriculum design specification. Finally, teachers will be invited to share at a future workshop or conference their curriculum design ideas that meet this specification