A tribute to nurses

As Christmas approaches, people like to reflect and think about what is important in their lives, be it family, friends, careers, jobs or hobbies.

Increasingly, we get the appreciative, flattering, sentimental, or mawkish round-robin messages via social media, encouraging us to ‘share’.

It’s a great (if unfair) world

Publicity about the newest and most astonishing health care development of our time vied for attention recently with a disease that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of ‘untouchables’ in underdeveloped countries.

FGM CRUSADE: WITH FEMINISTS LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS MISOGYNISTS?

My latest piece on the Anti-FGM campaign explains why the crusade is doing violence to women's rights.

It traces feminists' journey from state opposition in pursuit of freedom and equality to their active support for state intervention around the issue by not challenging the restriction of people’s freedom of movement, the removal of passports, racist finger-pointing to identify ‘at risk’ children, girls and young women, and mandatory examination of girls’ genitals.

The emperor's new clothes? The dangers of the anti-FGM campaign

My Battle in Print essay, written in preparation for the Battle of Ideas discussion on the FGM controversy, can be accessed here.

It covers a history of the practice, types and prevalence, movers and shakers, discusses abuse, the law in regard to it, official responses, as well as why anti-FGM moral crusaders should be challenged.

The dangers of the anti-FGM campaign

On Saturday, Oct 18th, I will debate The FGM Controversy at the Battle of Ideas festival. In preparation, I wrote an essay The Emperor's New Clothes? The dangers of the anti-FGM campaign, which can be accessed here.

http://www.battleofideas.org.uk/BiP_2014/BiP_FGM_Brid_Hehir.pdf

The motivation for the debate reads as follows: 

Over the past year, female genital mutilation (FGM) has rarely been out of the headlines, from Channel 4’s Cruel Cut video, to high-profile campaigns by the Evening Standard and the Guardian. In December 2013, the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee set up an inquiry into FGM; the former education secretary Michael Gove wrote to schools urging them to protect girls from ‘this very serious form of child abuse’. The Association of Teachers and Lecturers has called on school staff to watch for signs of FGM and to scrutinise holiday requests from members of communities that practise FGM. In May, police and border officials ran an awareness-raising campaign at airports, intercepting families suspected of going abroad to inflict FGM on their daughters. What has prompted all this? While FGM is practised in some African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries, there is no evidence that it is widespread in Britain. It has been prohibited in the UK since 1985, and it is also illegal for British citizens abroad. Nevertheless, it has only recently become the focus of widespread political concern. The first criminal charges for performing FGM came only in March 2014.

Does charity giving begin at home or on Facebook?

Social media and online giving are playing increasingly important and influential roles in determining how the public gets involved in fundraising for and donating to charities, and in how fundraisers like me raise money.

A new vaccine that will make a big difference to the people of Africa – and practice nurses in the UK

Ebola is in the headlines and scare stories abound. The virus is transmitted through contact with the bodily fluid of an infected person.  But what transforms it into such a devastating problem are social and economic conditions – and the panic that surrounds it. And though my work-related fundraising efforts at the moment are entirely focussed on supporting colleagues through the current ebola crisis, it would be easy to forget that this is not West Africa’s biggest killer; that dubious honour goes to malaria.

E-Cigarettes

One of my oldest friends is a dedicated smoker. Despite having a cough that would rattle the house, and the accompanying breathlessness associated with emphysema, she persisted with the 20-plus cigarettes a day that she has smoked for the past 40 years.

A crisis of compassion: Who cares?

The Report A crisis of compassion: Who cares? is a transcript of a discussion held at the Battle of Ideas, 20–21 October 2012, London, UK.

It was published in Nursing Ethics in Feb 2013:

http://nej.sagepub.com/content/20/1/109.full.pdf+html

The online discussion at the Battle of Ideas can be accessed here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22maGLQyFko&index=12&list=PLUJGOCM8cUJlhCo12wDp6F6MTMDAkWC8j

Book review: Parenting Culture Studies

Book review:
Parenting Culture Studies
Ellie Lee, Jennie Bristow, Charlotte Faircloth and Jan Macvarish
School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
ISBN 978-1-137-30463-6

Community practitioners will recognise that there have been major and controversial changes in child rearing practices over the last 30–40 years. You might say the terrain has become a minefield. The starting point for this insightful and topical book was research conducted a decade ago by author Ellie Lee, which explored an issue practitioners may still struggle to comprehend – why and how infant feeding has become such a controversial and morally charged area of social life.

Simple as science fiction

Human ingenuity and modern technology can make a huge difference to the lives of children and adults with disabilities.

Nursing Times Comments

• Comment on: Hospitals’ duty of care in smoking cessation

• Brid Hehir's comment 19-Jan-2014 4:25 pm
  NICE guidance is all about supporting people to quit which is fine for those who want to. But what about people who don't want to quit -be they patients, visitors or carers? How will their choice be supported? I wrote the attached in an attempt to draw attention to the way in which their rights and choices are being overlooked and/or denied. http://bridhehir.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/this-was-first-published-here-13-nice.html#more

Heart disease halved

NHS communications colleagues struggle to get the media interested in positive health stories. That’s replicated at a national and even international level. It seems the only time the press expresses an interest is when there’s a whiff of a scandal. Bad news sells. That we’re living longer and healthier lives doesn’t.

A mission statement with a difference

On March 3, NHS Change Day, thousands of people in and outside the NHS made a pledge to improve the care given to patients. Roy Lilley, a former NHS chair, listed with pride many of the changes staff had pledged that would make a difference to their working lives and the care they deliver to patients and their families, or act as simple reminders that they were valued. These pledges included: introducing themselves by name, a clothes sale with proceeds being invested in patient care,creating a ‘Harlem shake’ video to break barriers between patients and staff, and many, many more.

Female Genital Mutilation

FGM is declining globally. That’s probably not a headline you’ve seen much of recently, but according to a 2013 UNICEF report ‘the dangerous centuries-old tradition is now on a slow but steady decline in key areas around the world’. What great news that is. But it’s not what we heard on International Day of Zero Tolerance, an annual UN sponsored awareness day, when the European Parliament’s Gender Equality Committee proposed that Europe should toughen its stance against FGM and that ‘cutting’ practitioners should be prosecuted.

Polio-free India. A fantastic achievement

A lasting memory from my recent holiday in India is recalling the pride that people took in telling me that a polio-free subcontinent was expected to be declared by the WHO in February 2014. The world’s largest democracy had gone from being one of the most affected countries in the world – with the last polio case in 2011 – to achieving this monumental feat through public support and conviction, political will and an ambitious public health campaign.

Spiked-online pieces

I've written a number of pieces for Spiked, the on-line, ballsy, current affairs magazine. They range from cot death to a compassion crisis, from smoking bans to snooping and policing ... .... 

Abortion: an automatic right?

Abortion is rarely out of the news these days. Although legal in most of the UK (it is not legal in Northern Ireland) since the 1967 Abortion Act, its availability remains contentious.

Infant determinism

An ‘enforced caesarean’ and adoption story recently dominated media headlines.  But the grounds for allowing the child to be placed for adopted are based on contestable theory – infant determinism.