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Developing research collaborations and building capacity in palliative and end-of-life care in the North West Coast of England: the PalCaRe-NWC partnership
Get PDFBACKGROUND: The North West Coast area of England (Lancashire, Merseyside, Cheshire and South Cumbria) has high palliative care need (third highest prevalence in England) and historically low recorded National Institute for Health and Care Research research activity (second lowest research recruitment rate in England). To stimulate research activity, a new research partnership was formed to support and encourage palliative care research, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research from January 2022 until June 2023.
OBJECTIVES: To develop a sustainable palliative care research partnership infrastructure across the North West Coast. To work with palliative care providers, patients and the public, and research staff to further understand local barriers and facilitators to palliative and end-of-life care research, and develop and implement solutions to these barriers. To build capacity in palliative and end-of-life care research through the mentorship of emerging research leaders and share expertise across organisations. To facilitate the development of high-quality research grant applications.
ACTIVITIES: Phased activities were planned and actioned throughout the funded period to develop and embed an active palliative care research partnership across the region. These included: a survey and working groups to rapidly identify current local barriers to research and their sustainable solutions; individual and group support activities to build research capabilities and capacity; development and submission of high-quality, clinically relevant research proposals to the National Institute for Health and Care Research and other funders.
RESULTS: Survey participants (n = 293) were mainly from clinical settings (71%), with 45% being nurses. While around three-quarters of participants were not research active, most wanted to increase their involvement. Key barriers identified from both the survey and working groups (n = 20 professional participants) included: lack of organisational research culture and capacity (including prioritisation and available time); research knowledge (including skills/expertise and funding opportunities); research infrastructure (including collaborative opportunities across multiple organisations and governance challenges); and patient and public perceptions of research (including vulnerabilities and burdens). Based on these findings, the partnership is working with national stakeholders to develop user-friendly resources to facilitate hospice-based research. Three action learning sets, that met several times (n = 15 staff), and two networking events (n = 78 participants) took place to facilitate collaboration and research capacity building. Eleven research grant applications totalling £5,435,967 were submitted as a direct result of partnership activities between January 2022 and June 2023.
Limitations: Survey and working group findings and resulting activities represent the views and needs of staff within a particular United Kingdom geography and had limited public representation.
CONCLUSIONS: Funding to support partnership work has been demonstrated to be effective in pump-priming research activities, leading to successful research grant submissions and building research capacity. However, consideration is needed about how to maintain partnership work, embed in local organisations and further develop work across non-traditional stakeholders such as hospices and social care providers if ongoing funding is unavailable.
FUTURE WORK: North West Coast Clinical Research Network has provided short-term funding (July 2023-March 2024) to enable and sustain the expansion of Palliative Care Research Partnership North West Coast.This article presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Public Health Research programme as award number NIHR135334
Reviews of Enns and Bersaglio. 2024. Settler ecologies: The enduring nature of settler colonialism in Kenya and Matziaraki and Murimi (dirs.). 2024. The Battle for Laikipia
Get PDFBook and film reviewsUnfunde
The impact of neoliberalist government reform and regulatory oversight on private training providers in the UK technical education sector
Get PDF© Nick Smith and Lisa RowePurpose: Adopting the lens of ambidexterity, this paper examines decision-making within private technical education providers as they attempt to meet workforce and UK government training demands against a backdrop of unprecedented pace of global change in technology.
Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative data, drawn from semi-structured interviews of participants within a private training provider, was analysed thematically to investigate common patterns, clarify understanding and identify development areas to inform government bodies and private provider apprenticeship delivery practices.
Findings: The findings reveal the extent to which neoliberalism is potentially undermining technical education reform and increasing regulation whilst decreasing trust and reducing authentic partnerships between key stakeholders, together negatively impacting ambidextrous decision-making.
Research limitations/implications: This study is limited by the use of a monolingual, monocultural sample; therefore, a broader cross-section of respondents from a wider range, size and geographical location of training providers may result in a deeper understanding of the varying tensions and challenges associated with technical education reform.
Practical implications: This work seeks to inform policymakers of the wider consequences of neoliberalism and provide recommendations for government bodies and technical training providers to work collaboratively in seeking solutions to the barriers in delivering vocational training fit for a future-proof workforce.
Originality/value: This paper builds on a limited body of research examining the dual impact of once in a lifetime technological challenges and the consequence of neoliberalism upon ambidextrous decision-making within private providers of post-16 technical education.Unfunde
The Effects of Aqueous Mixtures of Amphiphilic Molecules in Building Hydronic Heating Systems
No full textSince 1970, emissions associated with building space heating and cooling have been declining due to improved building and heating system efficiencies. However, space heating and cooling still account for approximately 20% of the UK’s CO2 emissions. Therefore, innovative solutions are required to reduce building energy consumption and carbon emissions. A potential technology that is often overlooked, both within industry and academia is hydronic central heating additives that modify the properties of the working fluid. There are several commercial central heating system additives which claim to reduce the energy consumption of buildings by improving heat transfer and heating efficiency, but their effects are often poorly understood. This thesis focuses on the energy saving opportunities that can be brought about by changes to working fluid properties inside a hydronic central heating system. Specifically, it characterises an energy saving additive (EndoTherm), which is a proprietary blend of alkyl polyglycosides (APGs). This includes determining the intrinsic fluid properties, defining phase boundaries, and quantifying their impacts on flow and heat transfer within heating system components. The magnitude of any energy saving opportunities was determined using a bespoke dynamic room and heating system model, which was developed in a MATLAB environment and validated against a real building. It was found that dosed EndoTherm had a relatively large impact on the equilibrium surface tension, heat capacity, thermal conductivity and steady flow viscosity of the working fluid compared to that expected from a simple mixture at the concentration of APGs. The uncertainty of the measured fluid properties was less than 1% of the measured values for 95% confidence intervals (80% for heat capacity). Nevertheless, the impacts of fluid property modifications on the flow and heat transfer characteristics in a bespoke test rig lay within the measurement uncertainty. The room and heating system model demonstrated fluid properties had a non-linear impact on the energy consumption of a room. These changes were attributed to variations in excess heating and heating system responsiveness (resulting in demand shifting). Under specific conditions, the daily energy consumption of a room could be reduced by ~10% for changes to working fluid heat capacity or flow rate, whilst reductions of up to 2% were observed for changes in fluid thermal conductivity. The thermal capacitance of the building fabric somewhat buffered the long term energy saving opportunities for idealised repeating scenarios. This resulted in long term energy saving opportunities of 3.5%, 3.0% and <1% for changes to working fluid heat capacity, flow rate and thermal conductivity respectively. However, the opportunities for energy savings through fluid property modifications achievable with dilute APGs were modest compared to case studies. For a single room, following the SAP heating profile without high frequency heating disturbances (<1 hr), a daily energy saving opportunity of up to 2.9% was identified, decreasing to 0.7% for an idealised repeating scenario. However, the energy saving opportunities may be larger when considering the impacts of the inherent heating disturbances in buildings, non-equilibrium fluid properties and variable heating profiles, which should be further studied
Nationalising bodies, shifting loyalties: Exhuming the war dead in a changing Europe
No full text© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Throughout Europe, thousands of national cemeteries contain the bodies of soldiers killed in the two world wars, each carefully divided according to nationality. Yet, as this essay argues, determining the nationality of the dead was never so clear cut. Focusing on burials within Britain, it explores four categories of dead that demonstrate the fluidity of national belonging. The first group are the erroneously identified dead, who had been incorrectly identified during conflict. Second are the unwanted dead. These were the bodies of spies or people branded as traitors, who were stripped of their nationality post-war and barred from national cemeteries. Third are the contested dead; soldiers who died in the uniform of one army, but were later reclaimed by another country. Finally, there are the convenient dead, who were simply assigned a nationality in the wake of conflict. Military cemeteries, as the article concludes, were artificial creations, based not only on national identity, but also on post-war decision making.UnfundedAAM removed and archived and VoR uploaded to ChesterRep 16/12/202
Beginning mathematics teachers’ values and beliefs about pedagogy during a time of policy flux
Get PDFThe version of record of this article, first published in [Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education], is available online at Publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10857-024-09647-1This study interrogates how beginning secondary mathematics teachers align their beliefs with their practice when they justify their pedagogical choices in the context of recent English mathematics education policy which is strongly influenced by approaches to mathematics teaching in Shanghai and Singapore currently referred to as ‘mastery’ approaches. It seeks to understand beginning teachers’ perceptions and understandings of these approaches and the extent to which they recognise aspects of ‘mastery’ in practice. In setting the context, pre-service teachers’ beliefs were surveyed and found to be congruent with constructivist approaches to learning. We then draw on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews secondary mathematics teachers in their first year post-qualification. The interviews were designed to interrogate and capture understanding of the features of mastery within their own classrooms. By using vignettes to capture participants’ beliefs, our aim was to present a ‘more nuanced understanding of the phenomena’ (Skilling and Stylianides in Int J Res Method Educ 43(5):541–556, 2019, 10.1080/1743727x.2019.1704243). The analytical framework developed draws on Guskey’s (In: Wright J (ed) International encyclopedia of the social & behavioural sciences, 2015, vol 14, 2nd edn, Elsevier, pp 752–759) interpretation of Bloom’s theory of mastery learning together with features of mastery learning in mathematics articulated by Drury (How to teach mathematics for mastery, 2018, Oxford University Press) and Boylan et al. (Edu Sci 8(4):202, 2018, 10.3390/educsci8040202). This posed a research design challenge given the variation in interpretation of mastery learning as it is understood in practice. The data exposes differences in the interpretation of mastery approaches in the settings where they learn to teach, as well as the tensions that arise between beginning teachers’ beliefs, practice, professional knowledge and agency in their developing classroom roles.unfunde
Student Belonging in Action: Practical Case Studies to Foster a Sense of Belonging Across the Higher Education Student Journey
No full textThis is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge [Student Belonging in Action: Practical Case Studies to Foster a Sense of Belonging Across the Higher Education Student Journey] on [05/11/2025], available online: http://www.routledge.com/Student-Belonging-in-Action-Practical-Case-Studies-to-Foster-a-Sense-o/Edmunds-Gilani/p/book/9781041007760Over the past two decades, students with parental responsibility (“student-parents”) in the UK have been encouraged into university by successive governments’ Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning agendas. However, they have remained largely invisible once they arrive at university (Moreau & Kerner, 2015). Very little attention has been paid to ensuring that student-parents are made to feel that they belong within their institution, or indeed within higher education more generally. This chapter provides a research-informed insight into what we can do to foster a sense of belonging for student-parents. It introduces interventions designed to provide tailored pastoral, academic, and practical support for this committed and motivated group and provides reflections from three student-parents on how a personalised approach supported their sense of belonging during their studies at the University of Chester Law School.Unfunde
SBO ACTION: Conservative Small Bowel Obstruction management in the absence of standard ConTrast agents ON outcomes
Get PDF© The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of BJS Foundation Ltd.Bowel obstruction is a common condition, accounting for 12–16% of acute surgical admissions1. Small bowel obstruction (SBO) is the most frequent site, comprising half of all emergency laparotomies performed in England and Wales between 2019 and 20202. The leading cause of SBO is intra-abdominal adhesions, with adhesional small bowel obstruction (aSBO) accounting for approximately 60% of cases3. Optimal management of aSBO remains a subject of ongoing debate.Unfunde
Partially-elementary end extensions of countable models of set theory
Get PDF© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Association for Symbolic LogicLet KP denote Kripke–Platek Set Theory and let M be the weak set theory obtained from ZF by removing the collection scheme, restricting separation to -formulae and adding an axiom asserting that every set is contained in a transitive set ( ). A result due to Kaufmann [9] shows that every countable model, M of KP+\Pi _n\textsf {-Collection}\Sigma _{n+1}n \geq 1L_\alpha L_\alpha \alpha ^{\textrm {th}}\Pi _n\textsf {-Collection}\Sigma _{n+1}\Pi _n\textsf {-Collection}\Pi _{n+3}\textsf {-Foundation}\mathcal {M}\mathcal {M} and T is a recursive theory that holds in , then there exists a proper -elementary end extension of that satisfies T . We use this result to show that the theory proves .Unfunde
Alternative provision: The surge in demand and the role of remote online learning in creating capacity
Get PDF© Sharon Smith.Purpose: The surge in demand for alternative provision (AP) necessitates that school leaders and educational practitioners overcome considerable challenges to secure high-quality, high-impact provision for a vulnerable and complex cohort of school-aged learners. The purpose of this study is to examine the national context based on secondary data analysis, before exploring the perspectives of leaders and practitioners on the use of remote online learning as a model for meeting demand. Design/methodology/approach: Having examined the national data available, grass-roots perspectives were gleaned through an exploratory research model. Survey and focus group data was thematically analysed to distil perspectives on the uses and challenges of remote online learning to create capacity. Findings: The findings of this study indicate considerable scope and potential for remote online learning as model for suitable and sustainable AP. However, there are challenges that mirror face-to-face provisions and should not be overlooked. Remote online learning does not offer a universal solution, but a viable option that can be deployed using professional judgement and an understanding of individual student needs. Originality/value: This exploratory paper contributes secondary analysis of the national data available, offers insights on the reasons for the demand for AP and highlights the challenges faced by those working within the sector. This study offers practitioner perspectives from those pioneering the use of remote online learning in AP.Unfunde
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