My Faith in Practice

I guess the most common—and accurate—metaphor for the religious life is that of a journey, and that is the word that lots of people use nowadays in giving an account of their religious development. Today, I want to choose a different word to express my theme, which is ‘fulfilment’. Throughout my life, rather than strike out adventurously into new and unknown seas, I have tried to sound the depths of the one I find myself in, and seek to possess as fully as possible the heritage of the Christian faith into which I was born. I want to talk about three things, each of which is related to the other. They represent distinct stages in my life, but at the same time, they represent the unfolding of what was there at the beginning. Change there has certainly been, but it is of the nature of orderly development. I begin with a short account of my childhood religion which laid the foundations of my faith. I move on to the period between adolescence and parenthood, when I came to terms with certain fundamental questions raised by the Christian tradition. And, I close with an account of the faith that I have tried to practise in a consistent way for the past thirty years

Some Reflections on Quakers and the Evangelical Spirit

I suppose that Arthur Roberts was the first evangelical Friend I ever met. On what was probably the third day of my very first visit to the United States, I flew out to Oregon to meet him and visit George Fox College. I had been teaching at Woodbrooke, the English Quaker study center, for a couple of years, and I was beginning to get an inkling that there were many Friends in the world who were not like us. I wanted to get as far away from London Yearly Meeting as I possibly could, and Northwest Yearly Meeting seemed to be the place

Modelling the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Specialist Nurse Workforce standards by determination of optimum caseloads in the United Kingdom.

Background and Aims Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are the most common forms of inflammatory bowel disease affecting 1 in 250 of the population in the UK. It is accepted that access to a specialist nurse service improves patient experience and outcome. National Standards for inflammatory bowel disease care (2013) defined the number of nurse specialists required at 1.5 full time equivalent per 250,000 population. The aim of this study was to determine if these standards were being met and to publish a new, robust validated standard optimising the UK nursing workforce model. Methods Existing national data and specific workload and service data was collected from 164 IBD specialist nurses who completed a questionnaire designed to collect information on activity and complexity of work both done and undone. Results Data was received from all of the UK. Thirty-six percent of respondents were specialist nurses in the field for 3 years or less. A higher caseload than the recommended level was reported by 63% of respondents. Unpaid overtime was regularly carried out by 84%of respondents. The IBD specialist nurse was involved in all areas of the patient pathway. Areas of work left undone were psychological interventions, prescribing medicines and physical assessments. Conclusions Compared to other specialties IBD specialist nurses are less experienced. It is recommended that the current standard be increased to 2.5 full time equivalent specialist nurses per 250,000. patients to mitigate for the increasing complexity of the role, care and the “rookie” factor. Keywords: Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Specialist Nurse, Workforce Modellin