Kent Health News and Events

Almost half of all adults with learning disabilities and autism surveyed in new research led by the University’s Tizard Centre said they had suffered some form of disability hate related incident when they were out in the community.

The Kent-based, three-year research project, titled Living in Fear: Better Outcomes for People with Learning Disabilities and Autism, found that a third of those surveyed living in the Medway area said they had been attacked and victimised. Others surveyed reported verbal abuse, damage to their property and name calling. The situation became so bad in some cases that people were forced to move out of their home and make other significant changes in their lives.

The research team from the Tizard Centre worked closely with Autism London (part of charity MCCH Society Ltd), who received funding from the Big Lottery Fund, and Kent Police to survey people with learning disabilities and autism, as well as carers and police officers.

Following the research report, MCCH, Kent Police and Medway Council will carry out a pilot project aimed at reducing assaults, bullying, verbal harassment and other forms of victimisation of people with learning disabilities and autism.

The researchers analysed 255 responses from people with learning disabilities and autism, and their carers, and had access to the records of 999 and non-emergency calls to Kent Police reporting the victimisation of those with learning disabilities and autism.

Dr Julie Beadle-Brown, Reader in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities at the Tizard Centre, led the research team in what is believed to be the most comprehensive study of hate crime against adults with learning disabilities and autism to date.

She said: ‘Although many people live in the community without experiencing hate crime or victimisation, it is shocking that nearly half of those we surveyed reported they had been attached or otherwise victimised.

‘The impact of these types of hate crime can be severe and long lasting. Indeed, the most common response is for people suffering victimisation is to change their lives in some way – including moving home – to try and avoid further incidents.

‘There is now a clear need for the government to refresh its hate crime action plan to reflect the findings from this study and add actions specifically related to victims with autism and learning disabilities.’

Colin Guest, project manager from MCCH, said: ‘While we had heard of the fears and bad experiences of some people living in Kent and Medway, the partners carried out this extensive research because there was no reliable evidence about the extent of the problem, the impact on victims, whether they were reporting incidents and what responses they got if they did tell somebody.

‘The government believes that across the UK, disability hate crime is hugely under-reported and that many people with learning disabilities face daily harassment and hate crime. Now we’ve now got the research findings necessary to make some valuable recommendations for agencies to work together to prevent victimisation – and provide effective support for when it does happen.

‘We are very pleased that as the research project closes MCCH will be able to work with Kent Police and Medway Council in piloting a number of the key recommendations’.

In November, the University was awarded a prestigious Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for the work of the Tizard Centre, which for more than 30 years has worked to improve the lives of people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and their families, focusing on the relationship between policy, management and practice to bring about improvements in the quality of their lives.

Within the NHS there is a legal requirement that all clinical information is recorded in clinical notes as part of formal information governance procedures. Yet the recording of some patient information in everyday clinical practice remains outside the domain of ‘formal’ and takes the form of more ‘informal’ recording, through the documentation of information within so-called ‘handover lists’ for shift changes. Anecdotally, it is suggested that this practice occurs mainly among junior doctors and ward nurses, where patient information is documented and communicated to staff through either electronic means or on hand-written sheets, and then disposed of. Very little empirical knowledge exists about this practice and given the growing importance of the legalities surrounding clinical information, there is an urgent need to gain a better understanding of the behaviour surrounding its occurrence, in order to align it to governance and ethico-legal requirements.

This nine month study aims to explore perceptions of how, why and when doctors and nurses use this method of information recording within acute adult services, examine how they perceive it differs from formal clinical note entries, determine how behaviour would change should this practice be formalised, and gain an understanding of their knowledge of information governance procedures. In addition, an anonymised sample of handover notes will be examined to ascertain the nature and quality of information recorded. The aim will be to develop recommendations for practice improvement, and to submit a further proposal to investigate these issues more widely.

The School of Engineering and Digital Arts is pleased to announce that a joint Kent Physics Centre/EDA Lecture entitled Bio-Inspired Semiconductors for Healthcare, will be given by Dr Pantelis Georgiou on Tuesday 28th January 2014 from 19:30 to 20:30 in Rutherford LT1. 

Semiconductor technology is disrupting the healthcare sector by providing innovative solutions to combat chronic disease. Dr Georgiou's  talk will explain how bio-inspired techniques and semiconductors can be used for building novel systems for early detection and therapy of disease. Specifically we can present recent developments on the bio-inspired artificial pancreas for the treatment of diabetes and semiconductor genetics for DNA sequencing.

Dr Pantelis Georgiou received his MEng. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 2004 and his PhD. degree in 2008 both from Imperial College London. He then moved to the Institute of Biomedical Engineering where he was appointed as a Research Fellow until joining academic faculty in 2011. He is currently a lecturer within the Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering and is also the head of the Bio-inspired Metabolic Technology Laboratory in the Centre for Bio-Inspired Technology and part of the Medical Engineering Solutions in Osteoarthritis Centre of Excellence.  His research includes bio-inspired circuits and systems, CMOS based lab-on-chip technologies and application of micro-electronic technology to create novel medical devices. He conducted pioneering work on the silicon beta cell and is now leading the project forward to the development of the first bio-inspired artificial pancreas for Type I diabetes. 

Dr Georgiou is a member of the IEEE and IET. He has been elected a member of the BioCAS and Sensory Systems Technical Committee of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society.  

Dr Cyril Isenberg will chair the seminar. All members of academic, technical and administrative staff are welcome to the seminar. RAs and postgraduates (PhD candidates and MSc students) are particularly encouraged to attend the event. For any further enquiries, please contact Dr Cyril Isenberg  c.Isenberg@kent.ac.uk).

Medway School of Pharmacy lecturer, and community locum pharmacist, Trudy Thomas is the first pharmacist to have been awarded a bursary from the International League Against Epilepsy (ILEA). The funding is to support her to study an epilepsy module being run jointly by the Epilepsy Society and South Bank University. The module, which covers the pathophysiology of the epilepsies and investigation and diagnosis, has been run for epilepsy specialist nurses for a number of years. This year, for the first time, it is being offered to GPs and pharmacists who wish to be accredited as Practitioners with Specialist Interest in Epilepsy.

Trudy has worked with Kent GPwSI, Greg Rogers, who is the Royal College of General Practitioners’ epilepsy champion, to train pharmacists to undertake Medicine Use Reviews with people with epilepsy. Trudy and Greg originally ran training for a small group of pharmacists in Thanet, Kent, which then led to Trudy this year collaborating with the Welsh CPPE to train around another 180 pharmacists.

Trudy is currently working on projects with both the Epilepsy Society and the other main UK epilepsy charity, Epilepsy Action, to help pharmacists in primary care support people with epilepsy. Trudy would love to hear from any other pharmacists involved in supporting people with epilepsy, particularly in primary care. Her email is t.thomas@gre.ac.uk

University health experts have made a major contribution to a conference on quality and innovation in the NHS.

The conference on 20 November, entitled Joining the Jigsaw, was hosted by Kent at its Medway campus. It attracted more than 50 delegates, including clinicians and administrators, to discuss various aspects of service delivery, clinical audit and research development.

Among those speaking were Nichola Tyler, a PhD student from the University’s School of Psychology, who presented an evaluation of research on programmes for mentally disordered fire-setting offenders, and Rasa Mikelyte, an alumnus of the same school, who presented a paper on her research into dementia care.

Professor Peter Jeffries, Director of KentHealth – the University department for health and social care expertise in research, training, and innovation – said: ‘This successful conference demonstrated once again that the University of Kent has a major role to play in co-ordinating the debate over healthcare provision and research in the region.

‘The conference attracted delegates from all sections of healthcare, including clinicians and administrators, as well as those conducting research.’

Dr Lona Lockerbie, of the Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust (KMPT), said: ‘KMPT are pleased to be part of a growing partnership with KentHealth.

‘We hope the existing collaboration will grow and include service user involvement in order to develop high calibre research that improves mental health care and treatment across Kent and nationally.’

Joining the Jigsaw was organised by KentHealth, KMPT and the Comprehensive Local Research Network.