Category: Effective Practice

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Tackling opioid prescribing for treating pain in people with cancer

Picture of opioid drugs

Despite being commonly prescribed, opioids account for more reported drug errors than any other high-risk medication (Alanazi et al, 2016). They represent a significant patient safety and public health issue.

A new free online course from Newcastle University will help healthcare professionals increase their knowledge of the basic pharmacology of opioids so they are better able to prescribe opioids safely and effectively in the treatment of cancer-related pain.

Opioid Analgesics: Treating Pain in People with Cancerstarts on 29 July and is designed to  increase safe prescribing and monitoring practice for this patient group. This three week course covers the pharmacology of opioids, principles for safe prescribing, the rationale for prescribing opioids to treat cancer pain and the proactive management of  adverse events.

This course is for qualified healthcare professionals who prescribe opioid drugs and/or care for patients who are taking opioids anywhere in the world. It will be of particular use to general practitioners, palliative care specialists, acute hospital practitioners (surgical and medical disciplines), pharmacists and those with an interest in pain management, including medical and non-medical prescribers and those professionals involved in monitoring and supervision of opioid prescribing.

Dr Victoria Hewitt
Dr Victoria Hewitt
Photo of Dr Paul Coulter
Dr Paul Coulter

Opioid Analgesics: Treating Pain in People with Cancer is led by Dr Victoria Hewitt and Dr Paul Coulter. Vicky is a Specialist Palliative Care Physician and Curriculum Director for Masters programmes in Oncology and Palliative Care at Newcastle University, and has a special interest in safe medicines management at end of life. She has been blogging about the course here. Paul is a Consultant in Palliative Medicine, based at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead.

“I believe strongly that we have a moral obligation to use open courses to widen access to medical education and improve patient outcomes.   Lack of education for prescribers has been recognised as contributing to the so-called “opioid crisis” and was highlighted by the Gosport War Memorial inquiry.  Despite this, few courses about opioids are currently available outside the field of specialist addiction services.

This MOOC has been designed to address this unmet educational need and expands Newcastle Unversity’s profile within the global cancer and palliative care communities, positioning it as a key influencer of national and international opioid-prescribing agendas”. Dr Victoria Hewitt

Sign up now at: www.futurelearn.com/courses/opioid-analgesics

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OLAF Service Capacity

Due to the success of the OLAF service and the capacity to support online exams across LTDS, Exams and Awards and NUIT, the service is currently not available to support new online exams for fewer than 30 students during the assessment periods.  New exams for more than 30 students will go onto a waiting list and be considered based on student numbers, with exams with highest numbers of students being prioritised.

Outside the formal exam period there is no capacity for additional in semester assessments, however The OLAF Service will continue to support all online exams that have previously used the service.

Resit exams  cannot be supported through the OLAF service if there are less than 15 students, the OLAF service will not be available for these exams. The exams could still be run through Blackboard, although this would be without the use of the locked down browser or the University invigilators. Staff can utilise self-help resources well in advance of the resit assessment periods if they wish to run the exam online themselves.

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the parent HUB

Newcastle University Peer Mentoring is proud to launch the parent HUB.

This hub is aimed for all students who are parents, foster carers, adoptive parents, or about to become parents, regardless of age, gender or sexuality.

The free online hub allows you to share experiences, ask questions and be part of a parenting community within the university. There will be trained university wide peer mentors as part of the network to offer one-to-one support and guidance, as well as answer any question in the discussion board.

The hub will be based on Microsoft Teams and is an excellent source of advice and support from like-minded, empathetic and patient peers.

There will be a schedule of face-to-face activities for you to meet up with other parents, ask questions, have a chat, share your experiences and support you through the balance of being a student and a parent. And for those of you unable to attend these, there will also be a range of ZOOM online conference activities to allow you to meet new parents and be able to engage in conversation as though you were in the same room from the comfort of your own home.

The parent hub will also allow you to share, lend, borrow, give, donate, sell, and buy those much needed pieces of equipment and clothing via the online discussion group.

The files section of the hub will allow the University to share useful information and documents with you – as well as members of the network being able to upload documents as well.

There will be the opportunity to share your experiences of child-friendly shops, restaurants, taxi companies, as well as provide some top tips of baby-changing facilities in the University and city, and baby feeding friendly places.

To join the parent HUB please email Tony Chapman-Wilson at peer.mentoring@newcastle.ac.uk now.

There will be the official launch of the parent HUB at an activity event on Wednesday 17 April 2019 between 11am and 2pm. This will take place in the Lindisfarne Room in the Hadrian’s Building opposite the Bedson Building and Boiler Room.

There will be refreshments and activities for the children, as well as the opportunity for you to meet other parents. There will be a child feeding room available, as well as the opportunity to speak to members of the University Peer Mentoring scheme and Student Health and Wellbeing Services.

Come along at any point during the event and sign up for the parent HUB on the day as well.

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Expanding and diversifying online exam provision

Student working on a computer

In 2017/18 academic year the University launched a project that aims to make online summative assessment possible for a wide range of assessment types and in non-cluster environments, which is one of the objectives in the TEL Roadmap.

The project focuses on two key areas:

  • Expanding the types of online exams that we can deliver here at Newcastle
  • Exploring the possibility of students using their own laptops to take secure online exams

Continue reading “Expanding and diversifying online exam provision”

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Make your learning and teaching resources more inclusive – two free online courses

Home Office poster on inclusive design.
Inclusive design is better for everyone.

Following on from the interest shown in a session, run by Ruth Graham and Sandy Alden, at the 2018 Learning and Teaching Conference, on designing inclusive learning, you can now sign up for two free online courses.

Inclusive Learning and Teaching Environments and Digital Accessibility: Enabling Participation in the Information Society are both from the University of Southampton.

Inclusive Learning and Teaching Environments runs from Sept 3rd for three weeks and is specifically for those working in Higher Education and interested in making elearning accessible to all.

Explore the barriers experienced by disabled students and learn how to overcome these barriers through inclusive practices.

Digital Accessibility: Enabling Participation in the Information Society runs from Oct 8th for five weeks, and has 8 universities discussing different aspects of digital technologies and accessibility from the developer and user’s point of view. It features case studies, new technologies and the latest news about legal standards and guidelines for web, mobile, documents, IoT etc. When there is:

“a better understanding of users’ needs, technologies can be developed to be accessible & provide a more inclusive environment”

Both courses are free, and offer practical hints and tips you can use straight away to make your own resources more inclusive.

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Student views on feedback forms

Group of students

To find out more a student intern, working with staff in LTDS,  evaluated existing feedback forms and gathered opinions from students to identify what works and what could be improved. The project considered a total of 66 forms from 19 different schools and included focus groups and interviews with individual students.

What did they find?

These are a few key findings and you can find full details in the project report.

Form Design

Have clear, separate sections showing:

  • Strengths and areas for improvement
  • Clear advice for future work

Only use tick boxes for objective areas of the marking criteria, such as grammar. When tick boxes were used for subjective areas, such as argument, students found this unhelpful.

Look at your feedback forms and consider whether these should be redesigned. Consult with the students in your school as part of the process.

Utilising the form

Type feedback, wherever possible.

Introduce structured opportunities to help students understand:

  • expectations of the marking criteria
  • the ways in which this is reflected in the feedback sheet

Discuss how you use marking sheets with your colleagues. Try to develop a consistent approach to:

  • the volume of feedback
  • the use of notes in margins

For more information get in touch with LTDS@ncl.ac.uk

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Module Evaluation Results

How and when are results of Module Evaluations received by Academic Staff?

Each module should be evaluated every time it is delivered using the University’s module evaluation system, EvaSys. The results are usually sent to Academic staff via email in the form of PDF attachments, and this is done in one of two ways;

  1.  The survey is set up by local Professional Services staff to automatically send the PDF results upon closure of the survey. This option can be selected during the creation of the survey.
  2.  Local Professional Services staff manually send the results in PDF format from within the EvaSys system at an agreed time. This option can be used if the automatic dispatch is not selected during survey setup.

In both instances the timing of the surveys and the receipt of results should be agreed within the academic unit, paying particular attention to survey close times to allow for discussion of results with senior colleagues if required.

More information regarding Module and Stage Evaluations is available on our webpages

The Policy on Surveying and Responding to Student Opinion details who is entitled to see results of Module Evaluations.

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Transforming Assessment Webinars

Dr Mathew Hillier, Monash Education Academy, Monash University, Australia and Professor Geoffrey Crisp, PVC-Education, University of New South Wales, Australia will be hosting a series of webinars over the coming months focusing on transforming assessment with  topics such as digital literacy, written and audio feedback and blended simulation-based learning. Take a look at the further details below. Continue reading “Transforming Assessment Webinars”

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Case Study: Class generated content: Student Perspective

Picture of Sarah Atkinson

By Sarah Atkinson former Speech and Language Sciences student and current MSc student in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences

“Professional Issues… Sounds fascinating.” Thus my (admittedly extremely sarcastic) thought  upon hearing a module of this name would comprise the greater part of my workload during semester one of my final year becoming a speech and language therapist.

Despite hearing great things about it from my forebears in the year above, the prospect of this module did not fill me with delight. I certainly could not have guessed it would turn out to be one of the most enjoyable modules I have had the happy chance to participate in. Continue reading “Case Study: Class generated content: Student Perspective”

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Downtime on Hadrian’s Wall @VindolandaTrust

As we move into the weekend and we start to think about how we are going to spend our downtime, and pursue leisure activities, we’d like to share a video with you which gives a lovely insight into leisure time on Hadrian’s Wall.

Meet Dr Andrew Birley, one of our guest contributors to Hadrian’s Wall: Life on the Roman Frontier. We asked Andrew to talk about his one of his favourite objects at Vindolanda where he is Director of Excavations.

Hadrian’s Wall: Life on the Roman Frontier is a Newcastle University free online course lasting 6 weeks which starts on Monday 19 February (www.futurelearn.com/courses/hadrians-wall)

We can’t wait for Monday! Can you?