Tag Archives: Research

Can Flying Go Green?

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Justin Rowlatt BBC journalist in front of a plane

Can Flying Go Green? Panorama, BBC One

With BBC Panorama questioning if airlines are doing enough to go green, the University of Bristol We are Engineering blog asked Bristol’s engineers how they’re making aviation greener. We republish a shortened version below.

Viewers of BBC’s Panorama programme Can Flying Go Green? last week would have seen how our passion for flying is warming the planet. Aviation is a major contributor to global carbon dioxide emissions, burning more fossil fuels per passenger than any other form of transport. In the show, Justin Rowlatt investigates how the airlines are trying to clean up their act, but what is being done outside of the commercial sector to make aviation greener? Here’s what our engineers are doing to pave the way to a greener future for the industry. Continue reading →

The ‘5 Ts’ of policy engagement: PolicyBristol’s approach to supporting academics

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Supporting academics across the University of Bristol to achieve policy impact from their research is a diverse and fascinating job. In the process of doing this, our team at PolicyBristol is constantly learning about new topics; from the value of NHS managers to refugee rights, enhancing peace processes to the role of universities. Continue reading →

Motivated to succeed? Attitudes to education among native and immigrant pupils in England

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Perhaps the central policy question for those of us studying education is: how can we raise levels of attainment? For long, the focus was almost solely on cognitive skills, but a line of recent research has looked at the interaction between such skills and non-cognitive factors (also called psychological traits), motivations, and culture in generating higher student achievement. Continue reading →

Setting the priorities for advanced heart failure research

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by Dr Rachel Johnson
Clinical Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care

This week sees the launch of the James Lind Alliance Advanced Heart Failure Priority Setting Partnership Survey to gather research ideas from those living or working with advanced heart failure. Continue reading →

Five lessons for researchers who want to collaborate with governments and development organisations but avoid the common pitfalls

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The appeal of collaborating with a government agency, or an organisation funded by one, seems obvious. It provides researchers with much needed resources and information, while also offering practitioners and policymakers a way of generating the evidence needed to design better programmes. Continue reading →

Food and drink options in NHS settings; new questionnaire prompts changes

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Photo Credit: Christopher Gross/Released

Dr Fiona Lithander, Senior Research Associate, NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre.

Fiona explains how a new questionnaire could be used to increase healthy food and drink options in hospital retail outlets

At the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Bristol Biomedical Research Centre we are interested in the role the NHS plays in promoting good nutrition and health in children. Recent reports have shown a quarter of children in the UK are overweight or obese; a worrying statistic in itself, and the problem doesn’t appear to be getting any better.

NICE guidelines say that retail outlets in hospitals such as shops, cafes, restaurants and vending machines should offer healthy food and drink options, and that these options should be prominently displayed. They also say that nutritional information about the foods on their menus should be available. These guidelines do not refer to foods served to patients, although patients may have access to foods and drinks for sale onsite.

At NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre we developed a new questionnaire to help NHS Trusts assess how healthy their food and drink options are. This differs from other questionnaires in that it allows Trusts to compare their findings with the NICE guidelines. Trusts can use this questionnaire to measure how healthy prepared foods for sale are, and can make changes accordingly. These changes may involve, replacing sugary drinks with sugar-free options such as water, and replacing chocolate bars with more healthy options such as unsalted nuts.

Using this questionnaire, we measured how healthy the foods and drinks were in two Trusts, and how closely they followed NICE guidelines. Our findings showed a lack of healthy food and drink options for sale in vending machines. Nutritional information on menus was minimal, and there was limited promotion and advertising of healthy foods and drinks. Since the findings were published, both of the Trusts have made improvements.

Our plan is to further develop the questionnaire in conjunction with the NICE guidelines, so that it can be used more widely in NHS Trusts and in local authority settings, such as leisure centres. Making it easier for parents to direct their children to healthier choices should be a central element of our healthcare system.

Disclaimer: This study was supported by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at the University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Bristol. The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the National Institute for Health Research or the Department of Health.

This blog was originally published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)

How do we teach clinicians to talk about the end of life?

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Image of Doctor and patient

Image credit: Doctor and patient – Government of Alberta. Creative Commons License 2.0 (Non-commercial No Derivatives). Source: Flickr

By Dr Lucy Selman Research Fellow (Qualitative Research in Randomised Trials) Centre for Academic Primary Care  University of Bristol

In a systematic review published this month, we identified 153 communication skills training interventions for generalists in end of life care. In randomised controlled trials, training improved showing empathy and discussing emotions in simulated interactions (i.e. with actor patients) but evidence of effect on clinician behaviours during real patient interactions, and on patient-reported outcomes, was inconclusive.

The global increase in the proportion of older people and length of life means providing end of life care is now increasingly the responsibility of generalist as well as specialist palliative care providers. But many clinicians find communicating about end of life issues challenging: how do you best discuss imminent mortality, limited treatment options, what to expect when you’re dying, or a patient’s preferences for end of life care?

When this communication is done poorly, or not done at all, patients are confused and less satisfied with their care, experience inadequate symptom relief, and have worse quality of life. Staff who feel insufficiently trained in communication skills are more likely to provide depersonalised care and suffer from burnout.

While research in clinical communication has grown in recent years, there is little consensus on optimal training strategies and the most effective teaching methods. Continue reading →

Using administrative data for labour market research: getting the balance right

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Isabel Stockton, PhD Student, School of Economics, Finance and Management, and panel participant in Research without Borders 2017

Administrative data: it’s one of those phrases that can generate much excitement among economists and some other social scientists, but will never make for scintillating party conversation in any other setting.

However, the possibilities and limits on the use of administrative data for research can have a big impact on the policymaking process and raise tricky ethical questions, so it is important that the conversation is as broad as it can possibly be.

What is administrative data?

Administrative data is collected by the government for a non-research purpose.

For example, as part of my doctoral research I analyse national insurance data on jobs, wages and commuting distances in Germany.

Whenever someone starts or leaves a job, starts to claim unemployment benefits, is assigned to a jobseekers’ training programme or goes on parental or sick leave, this leaves a paper trail.

Economists in particular are very interested in this information: Many of us still subscribe to the traditional credo “Believe what people do, not what they say”. Continue reading →

Why healthcare services have a problem with gambling

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Image of electronic gambling machines.

“I have a problem with gambling. There’s not enough of it.”

Dr  Sean Cowlishaw, Research Fellow at the Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol

That was the admission from billionaire Steve Wynn, a major figure in the casino industry, speaking at a recent gambling research conference in (where else?) Las Vegas. And sure, it made for a good quote. But it’s also a rather glib dismissal of a serious issue that affects many thousands of people across the world.

The UK certainly has a problem with gambling. At least it has since 2007, when laws were changed to allow for huge growth in gambling opportunities and exposure. It has been hard to ignore the subsequent explosion in industry advertising, which increased by around 500% between 2007 and 2013. By contrast, you may have missed the increased numbers of high intensity electronic gambling machines, called Fixed-Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs), which now occupy the high street (within betting shops) and allow punters to wager up to £100 every 20 seconds.

Yet Britain doesn’t have much insight into its problem with gambling. Compared to most other addictive behaviours, involving drugs or alcohol for example, gambling is largely ignored by health services and public health agencies. This is partly because gambling is a hidden concern. It does not manifest with physical warning signs. Indicators are usually visible in extreme cases only, and generally following major life crises such as extreme debt or relationship breakdown. Continue reading →

Scientific Ecosystems and Research Reproducibility

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Marcus Munafo, Professor of Biological Psychology, University of Bristol

In 2005 a seminal article by John Ioannidis argued that various biases in how science is conducted, such as the use of small sample sizes and emphasising on novel, eye-catching findings, conspire to reduce the likelihood that a piece of published research is in fact correct. Since then, there has been growing interest in what has become known as the reproducibility crisis, stimulated in part by growing empirical evidence that many published research findings cannot be replicated. For example, in 2011 scientists from the pharmaceutical company Bayer reported that they were only able to replicate ~20-25% of results published in academic journals. Interest in the question of what proportion of published research findings are actually true, and whether we can do better, has grown – in 2015 the Academy of Medical Sciences in the UK held a symposium on the topic, while the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee is currently undertaking an inquiry on these issues. Continue reading →