Wales

In this innovative and lavishly illustrated study, John Harvey examines the visual expression of religious and spiritual concepts in Nonconformist Wales. He discusses his subject within a broad cultural context which includes fine art, architecture, preaching, hymnology and such intangible manifestations as visions.

The author argues that the Bible had a strong influence on the visual ideolect of Nonconformists during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and that this permeated their perception, interpretation and representation of life. This is perhaps most apparent in the imagery of hymns and sermon illustrations and in the vocabulary and phraseology of preachers, but its effects on Welsh visual culture was also profound and far-reaching and affected both the mode and idiom of religious visions as well as the exterior and interior features of the chapel.

John Harvey explores his subject with particular reference to the intertwined concepts of religion and mining in the south Wales coalfields. He examines the tradition of biblical identity and fusion as manifest in the visionary experiences of miners and their families since the 1904 revival: the architectural similarities between chapels, collieries and Old Testament places of worship, and sermon illustrations which derived spiritual meanings and lessons from the harsh realities of coal-mining. Latterly, this tradition is evident in the paintings of Nicholas Evans. Arguably, this principle of visualization whereby heavenly realities are clothed in tangible earthly garb constitutes one of the most distinctive manifestations of Welsh visual culture.

"The Airy Tomb" is the longest poem from R. S. Thomas's first collection of verse The Stones of the Field (1946). It is a story of a lonely life of Twm, one of the many Welsh farmers who appear in Thomas's early work. The poem describes two very different approaches to the mystery of death. The first relates to death as it displays itself in nature. Since Twm is instinctively well attuned to its rhythms, he finds this kind of death normal, a natural conclusion to every individual existence. The other kind of death which he saw both his parents succumb to is death and interment as they occur within the context of a given culture, which dismays Twm by its unlikeness to the first type of death. The rite of burial in the ground is particularly disturbing for him. The main focus of this article is to compare and contrast these two stances and tease out their philosophical ramifications.

Funding models influence provision and development of palliative care services. As palliative care integrates into mainstream health care provision, opportunities to develop funding mechanisms arise. However, little has been reported on what funding models exist or how we can learn from them. To assess national models and methods for financing and reimbursing palliative care. Initial literature scoping yielded limited evidence on the subject as national policy documents are difficult to identify, access and interpret. We undertook expert consultations to appraise national models of palliative care financing in England, Germany, Hungary, Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and Wales. These represent different levels of service development and a variety of funding mechanisms. Funding mechanisms reflect country-specific context and local variations in care provision. Patterns emerging include the following: Pr...

First published in 1988, this volume redefined the anthropological study of menstrual customs. Examining cultures as diverse as long-house dwellers in North Borneo, African farmers, Welsh housewives, and postindustrial American workers, it challenged the previously widespread image of a universal "menstrual taboo" as well as the common assumption of universal female subordination that underlay it. Offering feminist perspectives on comparative gender politics and symbolism, the book has interested students and scholars in anthropology, women's studies, religion, and comparative health systems. Originally listed as a “Notable” book in Choice, it later won the first Most Enduring Edited Collection Prize, awarded by the Council for the Anthropology of Reproduction (a unit of the American Anthropological Association.). The book continues to be taught regularly around the world.

This undergraduate dissertation looked at the development of Bangor, Gwynedd from its foundation by St Deiniol in the sixth century through to the 'Age of Conquest'. The paper looks at both documentary and archaeological evidence for the development of Bangor, and its impact in the region.

This article explores the age difference of marrying and divorcing couples, calculated by subtracting the wife's age from the husband's. Age difference is of interest in the study of families and partnership behaviour. It is also important because of its link with broader socio-demographic changes, such as population ageing, delayed fertility and the provision of care. The main finding is that between 1963 and 2005, the distribution of age differences for all marriages is very similar in each year to the distribution of age differences for the subset of couples who married in that year, but have since divorced. While there is some evidence of small variations in the proportion of marriages that end in divorce by age difference, there does not seem to be evidence of a strong association.

The concepts of causation and prediction are different, and have different implications for practice. This distinction is applied here to studies of the problem of student attrition (although it is more widely applicable). Studies of attrition from nursing courses have tended to concentrate on causation, trying, largely unsuccessfully, to elicit what causes drop out. However, the problem may more fruitfully be cast in terms of predicting who is likely to drop out. One powerful method for attempting to make predictions is rule induction. This paper reports the use of the Answer Tree package from SPSS for that purpose. The main data set consisted of 3978 records on 528 nursing students, split into a training set and a test set. The source was standard university student records. The method obtained 84% sensitivity, 70% specificity, and 94% accuracy on previously unseen cases. The method requires large amounts of high quality data. When such data are available, rule induction offers a ...

Suicide rates in prisons are high. Our aim was to investigate the contribution of imitative suicide to the prison suicide rate. We used Knox tests for space-time clustering in a case register of natural and self-inflicted deaths in prisons in England and Wales and model simulations to estimate the effect size. We found significant space-time clustering among 657 self-inflicted deaths in 90 prisons over 10 years but no space-time clustering among 430 deaths from natural causes in 87 prisons over this period. Model simulations with an imitation rate of 5.8% (CI 1%-11%) reproduced the observed space-time clustering.

The Chief Nurse National Health Service Wales initiated a national survey of acute and community hospital patients in Wales to identify the prevalence of pressure ulcers and incontinence-associated dermatitis. Teams of two nurses working independently assessed the skin of each inpatient who consented to having their skin observed. Over 28 September 2015 to 2nd October 2015, 8365 patients were assessed across 66 hospitals with 748 (8.9%) found to have pressure ulcers. Not all patients had their skin inspected with all mental health patients exempt from this part of the audit along with others who did not consent or were too ill. Of the patients with pressure ulcers, 593 (79.3%) had their skin inspected with 158 new pressure ulcers encountered that were not known to ward staff, while 152 pressure ulcers were incorrectly categorised by the ward teams. Incontinence-associated dermatitis was encountered in 360 patients (4.3%), while medical device-related pressure ulcers were rare (n=33)...

In January 1999, an outbreak of viral gastroenteritis affected more than 300 people who attended a metropolitan concert hall over a 5-day period. Norwalk-like virus (NLV) was confirmed in faecal samples by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction assay. The index case was a concert attendee who vomited in the auditorium and adjacent male toilet. Gastrointestinal illness occurred among members of 8/15 school parties who attended the following day. Children who sat on the same level of the auditorium as the index case were much more likely to be ill than those seated elsewhere (relative risk 7.1, 95% confidence interval 5.4–9.2, P<0.001). The majority of other reported cases had not been present on the evening of the vomiting incident. Disinfection procedure was poor and the disinfectant used contained no sodium hypochlorite. Transmission most likely occurred through direct contact with contaminated fomites. The outbreak has implications for disinfection procedures following...

In highly immunised populations viruses contribute to a substantially higher proportion of meningo-encephalitis cases. This national study aimed to describe population trends in laboratory-confirmed, viral meningo-encephalitis reports in England and Wales over a ten-year period. Laboratory-confirmed, viral meningo-encephalitis cases submitted by National Health Service hospitals in England and Wales during 2004-13 were analysed. There were 9941 laboratory-confirmed reports of viral meningo-encephalitis in England and Wales over the 10-year period. Number of reports increased across all age-groups and for all viruses from 311 (incidence, 0.6/100,000) in 2004 to 2168 in 2013 (incidence, 3.9/100,000). Median age at diagnosis was 30.6 (IQR, 1.3-51.5) years, with a third of cases diagnosed in children. In 2013, infants aged <3 months accounted for 27% (588/2168) of cases, but had the highest incidence (329/100,000). Enteroviruses were responsible for 52% (5133/9941) of all cases and 9...

Aim.  This paper reports on the second phase of a national study in Wales. The research aimed to assess the level of Welsh language awareness amongst healthcare professionals across Wales, and to identify the factors that enhance language choice within service delivery.Background.  The literature suggests that language sensitive healthcare practice is central to ensuring high quality care. However, it is evident that language barriers continue to compromise the quality of care within nursing and other health services. One issue that has received little attention is the level of language awareness that healthcare professionals currently demonstrate. Furthermore the factors that influence language choice for bilingual/multilingual speakers are not well explored in the literature.Methods.  The study involved semi-structured interviews with a range of healthcare professionals in acute and community settings across Wales. Using a systematic sampling matrix, a purposeful sample of 83 professionals was selected to participate. Twenty-seven of the respondents were nurses, health visitors and midwives. The interviews focussed on the factors that facilitate or impede language sensitive healthcare practice. All interviews were audiotaped and, using a framework analysis approach, conceptual codes were developed and defined and categories and sub-categories were constructed to create thematic charts.Findings.  Three main themes were identified: care enhancement, which focussed on the process and outcome of offering language choice to bilingual patients; organizational issues, which reflected issues relating to the infrastructure of service provision; and training implications, which focused on Welsh language learning in health care.Conclusions.  Complex dynamics of language use are in operation within bilingual healthcare settings and organizational as well as individual factors are important in facilitating appropriate language use. Many of the issues highlighted are not peculiar to the Welsh context, but apply to healthcare settings across the world, where other minority languages are in use.

As the waste industry continues to move from a disposal-based system to one based on a combination of recovery options, the need for information on the composition of waste increases and this is reflected by the amount of information on the physical composition of municipal solid wastes that is now available. However, there is far less information on the chemical composition of municipal solid waste. The results from a number of chemical surveys from Europe are compared and show a reasonable degree of agreement, but several problems were identified with the data. Chemical and physical compositional data are combined in a case study example to investigate the flow of key potential pollutants in an integrated solid waste management system that uses materials recycling, composting, incineration and landfilling. This case study has shown that an integrated waste management strategy diverts lead and cadmium away from composting and recycling to incineration, which effectively isolates these elements from the environment through efficient capture of the pollutants followed by secure landfilling or recycling of the residues. However, further work is needed to determine the distribution of mercury in incineration residues and its fate when the residues are landfilled.

Brochure descriptive du Master international "Langues et cultures celtiques en contact" / "Celtic Languages and Cultures in Contact" - Mention "Langues et sociétés" proposé à l'université de Bretagne Occidentale (Brest).
Deux options sont proposées:
- Celtique médiéval : apprentissage notamment du moyen-gallois, moyen-breton et vieil irlandais couplé à celui de l'ancien français et/ou du latin médiéval
- Celtique moderne: apprentissage notamment du breton, du gallois et de l'irlandais modernes

The authors conducted an all-Wales survey of community mental health nurses (CMHNs) to determine their levels of stress, coping and burnout. A total of 301 CMHNs were surveyed in 10 NHS Trusts in Wales. A range of measures were used. These included the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (SES), Community Psychiatric Nursing (CPN) Stress Questionnaire, and PsychNurse Methods of Coping Questionnaire. The findings from the Rosenberg SES are reported here. Community mental health nurses in Wales scored as having average self-esteem. When the data were divided into high and low self-esteem, a large group of CMHNs (40%) were found to have low self-esteem. Factors that are associated with low and high self-esteem were identified. Alcohol consumption and being on lower nursing grades (D, E, F) were associated with low self-esteem, whilst amount of experience working as a CMHN was associated with high self-esteem.

Aims.  The aim of this study was to establish the degree to which clinical supervision might influence levels of reported burnout in community mental health nurses in Wales, UK.Methods.  The research instruments used were the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Manchester Clinical Supervision Scale. At the time of the survey 817 community mental health nurses were reported to work within Wales. Two hundred and sixty (32%) community mental heath nurses working in 11 NHS Trusts responded to the survey.Results.  One hundred and eighty-nine (73%) community mental heath nurses had experience of clinical supervision in their present posts and 105 (40%) in their previous posts. The findings from the Maslach Burnout Inventory indicated high levels of emotional exhaustion for 36%, high levels of depersonalization for 12% and low levels of personal accomplishment for 10% of the community mental heath nurses surveyed. Univariate analysis showed that those community mental heath nurses who were younger, male and who had not experienced six or more sessions of clinical supervision were more likely to report cold negative attitudes towards their clients as indicated by higher scores on the depersonalization subscale of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. One hundred and sixty-six community mental heath nurses had experienced six or more sessions of clinical supervision and had completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Higher scores on the Manchester Clinical Supervision Scale were also associated with lower levels of measured burnout, with significant negative correlations between the total Manchester Clinical Supervision Scale score and the emotional exhaustion subscale (r = −0·148, P = 0·050) and the depersonalization subscale (r = −0·220, P = 0·003) of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. These findings suggest that if clinical supervision is effective then community mental heath nurses are likely to report lower levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization.Conclusions.  The findings from this study suggest that if clinical supervision is effective then community mental heath nurses report lower levels of burnout. Further research is required to determine the long-term benefits of implementing clinical supervision and to determine which other factors have an influence on levels of burnout for this group of nurses.Relevance to clinical practice.  Health service organizations have a responsibility for ensuring that all individual practitioners have access to effective clinical supervision and the Nursing and Midwifery Council could extend the registered nurses personal accountability to include – to seek clinical supervision as and when necessary.

Sustainability is to be at the heart of the strategic vision for the newly transformed institution, created as a result of the merger between University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Swansea Metropolitan University and University of Wales. This will be a unique and defining feature, around which all governance and activity is framed. Details regarding these plans are given in the document “Delivering for a Sustainable Wales; INSPIRE (The Institute for Sustainable Practice, Innovation and Resource Effectiveness)” (Davidson, J. 2011).

To inform the plans for embedding sustainability throughout the organisation, a sustainability skills survey of all academic and non-academic staff was conducted.  It was recognised that there is sustainability expertise across the entire university community, hence the inclusion of all staff. It also demonstrated the parity of esteem that the University aspires to between all members of staff.

The survey fulfilled the original aim of developing an evidence base of existing expertise, experience and interest in sustainability. The work identified opportunities for new curricula and research and engaged all staff on what it means to have sustainability as a core value and strategic priority.

Although papers are going to be published detailing the findings and opportunities resulting from the project, there has been significant interest from higher education institutions throughout the UK wanting to replicate the survey. Therefore, this document provides the questions that were used, in order to help other institutions take their sustainability agenda forwards. It is also recommended that institutions refer to “The Future Fit Framework” (Sterling, 2011), which provides an invaluable resource to help encourage and embed sustainability into curricula.

The authors are keen to hear from any institutions that implement this or similar surveys and would be interested to compare findings. It is kindly requested that this document is appropriately acknowledged in any replication and subsequent reporting.

It has long been known that psychiatric disorders are highly prevalent among prisoners (Coid, 1984; Gunn et al., 1991; Maden et al., 1995; Joukamaa, 1995; Bland et al., 1998; Lamb and Weinberger, 1998). However, the Survey of Psychiatric Morbidity Among Prisoners in England and Wales (Singleton et al., 1998) represents a considerable advance on earlier surveys. By using the same standardized psychiatric assessment procedures, and similar questions on medication, service use and social functioning, its findings can be compared with previous national surveys of adults living in private households (Meltzer et al., 1995), residents in institutions (Meltzer et al., 1996), homeless persons (Gill et al., 1996), and with the forthcoming household survey in England, Wales and Scotland. It should also inform the future organisation of healthcare for prisoners, following recent recommendations from a joint Home Office/Department of Health Working Party that Health Authorities must work with pr...

In this submission to the consultation on the RVE guidance, I argue that clarity is required in respect of the following seven issues:  (1) The place of RVE within the Humanities AoLE given that it is a statutory requirement
(2) The position of the opt out for teachers
(3) The nature of RVE in schools with a religious character where it is taught in accordance with trust deeds or ethos
(4) The definition of RVE
(5) The definition of religion
(6) The definition of philosophical convictions
(7) The position of sixthformers

This paper discusses the depiction of ambushes in chronicles of the High Middle Ages. Identifying ambushes in this period is particularly difficult, as the Latin term 'insidia' could also be used more generically to refer to stratagems, snares and cunning ploys. This paper combines evidence from contemporary chronicles, Patristic and medieval theological writing and Anglo-Norman epic verse to examine the variety of situations in which ambushes were used by medieval combatants and the different lessons that historians drew from tales of warriors ambushed (or ambushing) unawares.

ABSTRACT
This article provides the reader with a literature review with the aim of finding out about the origin and  system of  police  accountability  in  England  and  Wales.  It  is  hoped  that  the  article  will  help  to
identify  some  important  conceptual  considerations  that  ought  to  betaken  into  account  by  any professional  and  responsible  police  departments  seeking  to  embrace  accountability  in  its  policing procedures.

This  article  explores  the  sensitive  issue  of  police  accountability  to  civilian  oversight  bodies  in
controlling  police  excesses.  At  the  centre  of  the  discourse  lies  the  tacit  acknowledgement  that  the enormous  power  and  authority  invested  in  the  police  does  lead  to  corruption  and  excesses  unless adequate checks and balances are installed. 

Keywords:  Police  Accountability,  Police  Ethics,  Police  Integrity,  Policing  the  Police,  Civilian
oversight bodies of Police.