Spirituality in nursing practice

Spirituality is an important aspect of holistic care which is frequently overlooked owing to difficulty conceptualising spirituality and confusion about how to integrate it into nursing care. This article seeks to understand what is meant by spirituality and spiritually competent practice, it explores some of the attitudes towards spirituality and describes some of issues affecting integration of spirituality into nursing care

Checking the Threads of an IUCD

In 2014/15, slightly more than a third of women using sexual and reproductive health services for contraception (excluding those who were only seeking advice) were using some type of long-acting reversible contraceptive or LARC (Health and Social Care Information Centre, 2015). In general practice, despite an initiative to encourage prescription of LARCs, the proportion of women using these methods may well be lower (Arrowsmith et al., 2014). Many of the women using LARCs will have been fitted with an intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD): either a levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system or a copper intrauterine device

Taking female genital swabs

Just over 8 per cent of young people aged 15 to 24 years, out of 1.7 million tested in 2013, tested positive for genital Chlamydia trachomatis (Public Health England, 2014a). This sexually transmitted bacterial infection is asymptomatic in 70 per cent of women, although it may cause vaginal discharge, post-coital bleeding, dysuria, lower abdominal pain, deep dyspareunia and cervicitis (Lazero, 2013). More than 50 per cent of men with chlamydia are asymptomatic when tested in community settings. Two-thirds of the sexual partners of people diagnosed with chlamydia also have this infection. If untreated, chlamydia infection can persist for years (Public Health England, 2014b). Complications of untreated chlamydia, such as infertility and pelvic inflammatory disease, are estimated to cost more than £100 million a year (Lazero, 2013)

Creativity in practice… What not to do…

This paper describes research carried out in two UK primary training providers as part of the ‘Creative Teachers for Creative Learners’ project, funded by a Research and Development Award from the Teacher Training Agency. Over the past two years a study of trainees has been undertaken at Manchester Metropolitan University and Goldsmiths College, University of London, as part of a larger collaboration with Bath Spa University College. During the first year this looked at undergraduates who were training to teach in primary schools. They expressed their own notion of the ‘creative person’ using cartoons and further data was collected using a questionnaire. This year, a task that had originally been piloted by Bath Spa to gain an insight into where postgraduate trainees located creativity within their practice, was used to further explore the undergraduates’ understanding of creativity while they were on school experience placements. This paper draws on data collected from two cohorts of undergraduate trainees in each institution. Comparisons will be drawn between the two sets of data collected to establish how one varies from the other and possible reasons for this will be mooted. Initial findings indicate that the Goldsmiths and MMU trainees expect to find opportunities for creativity in most areas of the curriculum with assumptions that certain subjects offer more opportunities than others. However, as the Goldsmiths and MMU trainees reflected on the reality of teaching on their school experience placements the data gathered offered some interesting insights, which are particularly pertinent in this time of further curriculum change in primary education, including inhibitors of creativity

Creative activity, health and wellbeing: Developing research priorities and questions with key stakeholders

A report on two participatory workshop events held in 2016 at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the University of Huddersfield. We hosted two workshops, run as World Café style events and attended by a variety of broadly defined stakeholders (service users and carers; creative professionals; health and social care professionals; total =81 attendees). The purpose of the events was to reflect on the impact of creativity on health and well-being, and to establish key research priorities and questions from attendees’ varying perspectives. In addition to providing useful guidance to develop future work, findings reported here themselves begin to evidence the successes already achieved by those working to use creative activity to improve health and well-being in our locality. The workshops produced a large amount of rich, interesting data and were well received by those attending. The approach and methods used worked well to reduce communicative barriers and encourage sharing of perspectives between different stakeholder types

A Study on Administrators' Perceptions of the Optional Flexible Year Program: School Improvement Effort in a Rural Texas School District

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine how administrators from a single, rural school district in southeast Texas experienced the implementation of a reform policy, the Optional Flexible Year Program (OFYP), during 2007 through 2012. Detailed interviews were conducted with six district administrators responsible for OFYP implementation in both the elementary and junior-senior high schools, as well as the central office within the district. The research was guided by a single question: what were the perceptions and recollections of the Springhill ISD school leaders responsible for implementation of the Optional Flexible Year Program (OFYP)? Through purposeful selection, participants completed in-depth interviews aimed at studying the real-life contexts of their experiences. Analysis of participant responses revealed four major themes: (a) engagement, (b) communication, (c) collaboration, and (d) relationships. The findings of this study suggest that effective education reform implementation requires a data-driven approach taking into consideration the unique needs of the local district and accompanying stakeholders. Implications for leadership, policy, and additional research are discussed as state and national leaders continue to improve policy aimed at reforming our nation’s schools