Creating a community network to tackle inequities in end-of-life care and bereavement support

Posted on January 26, 2023January 27, 2023 by capcbristol

By Lucy Selman, Associate Professor of Palliative and End of Life Care, Palliative and End of Life Care Research Group and Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol

Serious illness and bereavement affect us all, but our experiences of them are not equal. People living in the poorest areas of the UK are less likely to get the care and support they need if they become seriously ill or a loved one dies. They are also more likely to be socially isolated and lonely – which can be made even worse by serious illness or bereavement.

The Weston-super-Mare community network for health inequities is a new collaborative research project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by the University of Bristol, which aims to tackle these issues, focusing on Weston-super-Mare, a seaside town in the South West that is socioeconomically … Read more

‘Our First Year Heard’ – curating the experiences of first-year medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic

Posted on December 8, 2021 by capcbristol

By Louis Davenport, Medical Student, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol

My name is Louis Davenport, and I am a second-year medical student at the University of Bristol. I am the organiser of ‘Our First Year Heard’, a student art collection showcasing the effects of COVID-19 on first-year medical students.

The seed of the idea came from an extremely intense, one might say uncomfortable, experience that I had in the dissection room in my first year at medical school. While I am not particularly artistic myself, I made use of poetry to help process the experience and wrote several drafts of what would become What’s in front of you. From there I thought, why not collect the experiences of first-year medical students who might similarly wish to share them with other medical students and the wider public? Capturing the unique experiences of people who … Read more

How can involvement in research support survivors of domestic abuse?

Posted on November 25, 2021 by capcbristol

by Will Hunter, Communications Executive, National Institute for Health Research Bristol Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR Bristol BRC)

Hard Evidence is a theatre piece written and performed by Shass Blake and Alison Prince. It follows the story of two friends, Jan and Christine, who both have experience of domestic abuse, but are at different points in their journey to finding support. It shines light on how involvement in research influenced their individual journeys and empowered them to start helping others.

Alison and Shass met whilst taking part in the COMforT study. COMforT developed and pilot tested a trauma-specific mindfulness course for women with experience of domestic abuse and post-traumatic stress. The study, led by Dr Natalia Lewis, worked with an advisory group of six women with lived experience of domestic abuse who supported to plan, deliver, analyse, and disseminate study findings.

The play was the brainchild of … Read more

Meet the stars of Hard Evidence – a new production about public involvement in research

Posted on October 11, 2021October 11, 2021 by capcbristol

by Will Hunter, Communications Executive, National Institute for Health Research Bristol Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR Bristol BRC)

Hard Evidence, a new production developed through collaboration between public contributors to research, academics and creatives from acta community theatre in Bedminster, Bristol, highlights how getting involved with research can empower women who have experienced domestic abuse to support others in a similar situation.

Will Hunter, Communications Executive at the National Institute for Health Research Bristol Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR Bristol BRC), caught up with Shass Blake and Alison Prince who wrote the script with Ingrid Jones (acta) and will perform in the production in November. They came to the project after being involved in the CoMForT study, led by Dr Natalia Lewis at the Centre for Academic Primary Care, which developed and pilot tested a trauma-specific mindfulness course for women with experience of domestic abuse and post-traumatic stress.

Thanks … Read more

Conference reflections from a basement

Posted on July 5, 2021July 5, 2021 by capcbristol

by Dr Rupert Payne, Consultant Senior Lecturer in Primary Health Care, Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol

Dr Rupert Payne reflects on the highlights of the two-day Society for Academic Primary Care (SAPC) Annual Scientific Meeting, which was held virtually this year from 30 June to 1 July. This blog was first published on the SAPC website.

Another year, another conference! The last time I attended a SAPC conference was the regional South-West one that we hosted in Bristol – about a week before the first lockdown kicked in, and normality abruptly ended. Indeed, I suspect it was actually the last big face-to-face meeting many of us attended. This time, Leeds beckoned. But rather than jumping on the train to the “grim north”, I descended the stairs to my rather grimmer basement (yes, my wife has kicked me out the dining room), for … Read more

Taking part in a Fun Palace – what we did and was it worth it?

Posted on November 15, 2018November 15, 2018 by capcbristol

by Dr Mairead Murphy
Senior Research Associate
and
Dr Cindy Mann
Senior Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care

The Living Well Fun Palace

Fun Palaces are annual, UK-wide, science, art and culture events run within community spaces. The ethos of the annual events is that rather than simply sharing information, they should fully engage communities in arts and science and they can be run by researchers, professionals or members of the public. For researchers, they offer an opportunity for a reciprocal exchange with members of the public to share and inform research.

We were invited by the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute to take part in a ‘Living Well’ Fun Palace at Bristol Central Library, on the weekend of 6/7 October. The theme this year was ‘Patterns’ and the aim was to bring researchers and communities together in the same space to share ideas about health and wellbeing in a … Read more

‘Medical education with a global perspective’

Posted on August 1, 2018August 1, 2018 by capcbristol

A first-time view of the Association for the Study of Medical Education Conference

by Dr Juliet Brown
Teaching Fellow in Primary Care
Centre for Academic Primary Care

Conferences are a microcosm of collaboration, critique and niche scholarship, which can sometimes seem a world away from ‘real life’. Yet I always come away from them feeling enthused, energised, and with a new sense of purpose.

This year I attended the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) annual conference for the first time, and I’m happy to say, it lived up to expectations.

I was one of a team of five, along with others from the wider Bristol Medical School (and Academies). With so many sessions to choose from, we deployed ourselves at different plenary, parallel and poster sessions. The theme was ‘Medical Education with a Global Perspective’.

It was great to hear and learn from international … Read more

How we learned to love doing workshops

Posted on October 25, 2017July 26, 2018 by capcbristol

by Jessica Roy
Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@DV_Bristol

The prospect of running a three-hour conference workshop can provoke anxiety even for the most seasoned conference-goer. Last month, I was a member of the IRIS+ research team, led by Dr Eszter Szilassy, that attended and presented a workshop at the Second European Conference of Domestic Violence in Porto, Portugal.

The conference brings together researchers, practitioners and policy makers from all corners of the globe to discuss, debate and exchange knowledge regarding domestic violence and abuse (DVA).

For context, the IRIS+ project is a training and intervention programme to support clinicians (GPs and nurses) to identify, document and refer female and male victims and perpetrators of DVA, as well as their children, to our dedicated specialist support service.

Before presenting, we had concerns that our workshop might not attract an audience, partly because we thought our topic … Read more

Pre-grant public and patient involvement and engagement (PPIE)

Posted on August 7, 2017July 26, 2018 by capcbristol

A partnership and panel event to support NIHR School for Primary Care Research (SPCR) FR15/16 applications

by Catherine Jameson
Senior Research Associate and Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement Coordinator
Centre for Academic Primary Care

Pre-grant public involvement is vital to relevant and successful research. It is considered the gold-standard approach. In practice, the issue is that before the grant is awarded, there are often no resources available to conduct high quality public and patient involvement (PPI).

With SPCR funding for pre-grant PPI supporting FR15/16 applications, we developed an event to carry out and promote early PPI at the Centre for Academic Primary Care. This served to achieve PPI for these rounds of SPCR applications, foster links between members of the public and researchers and establish early PPI as achievable and accepted culture.

The event comprised a public panel and parallel sessions of Partneropoly – an interactive game … Read more

Translating research into an art performance

Posted on January 16, 2017 by capcbristol

by Dr Johanna Spiers
Senior Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care

I am a qualitative health psychologist. That’s who I’ve been for about eight years.

However, before I even knew what that term meant, I was several other things: a writer, a performer, a poet. I am drawn to words, and to the stories that they form. This is why I am passionate about qualitative research. I also love performance, and believe it is a fantastic mechanism for powerfully communicating important messages about humanity.

On my arrival at the University of Bristol, I was therefore thrilled to learn that the project I would be working on with Principal Investigator Ruth Riley included a collaboration with a performance artist, who would be communicating our findings about GPs’ mental health to an audience. This performance was to happen as part of the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute’s (EBI) Feel It Festival. … Read more