Public engagement – Page 2 – Primary Care Research & Teaching Blog

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

A Painful Silence: bringing domestic violence into conversation

Posted on January 5, 2017January 16, 2017 by capcbristol

by Gene Feder, Professor of Primary Care
and
Lucy Potter, Academic Clinical Fellow in Social and Community Medicine
Centre for Academic Primary Care

Seek the truth, not what is comfortable. Seek the real, not the easy.
— Gerald May

Talking about domestic violence and abuse can be uncomfortable. Avoiding talking about uncomfortable subjects keeps them hidden, fails to challenge injustice and arguably colludes with perpetration. We have a responsibility to shine a light into these dark corners.

In the Centre for Academic Primary Care at the University of Bristol we conduct research on improving the health care response to domestic violence and abuse. We have measured the prevalence and impact of domestic violence in patients in general practice and sexual health services; developed and rigorously tested training for doctors and nurses in general practice to ask about DVA and link patients disclosing abuse to specialist domestic violence advocates; run programmes … Read more

Go extreme with your public engagement: try stand-up comedy

Posted on November 10, 2015March 10, 2016 by capcbristol

By Helen Cramer
Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol

An engineer, a biochemist, an architect, a clinical trialist, and a qualitative health services researcher (that’s me), walk into a room……sounds like the start of a bad joke, doesn’t it? But actually we were a multidisciplinary group taking part in comedy training in the hope that it might help with our public engagement activities.

We had all been taking part in a professional development programme for researchers and academics when someone suggested we tried some stand-up comedy training. The five of us hunkered down for two days in a University of the West of England (UWE) classroom with our patient trainer, Chris Head. We were a multidisciplinary and multilingual group – as the only native English speaker, I felt I had a distinct comedy advantage/disadvantage depending on how you view it.

Chris took us though … Read more