To be continued

The Star Wards blog is now part of the main Star Wards site. For Marion’s latest musings, the latest news, from Star Wards and many other Star Wards resources go to:

www.starwards.org.uk

Relational proximity

Not a great phrase, but it does describe what it’s about – how to build and sustain close relationships. It’s a model produced by the Relationships Foundation www.relationshipsfoundation.org and helpfully and unusually identifies core characteristics of good relationships. These are:

* directness – the value in having direct and immediate contact, eg wandering across the room to talk to a colleague rather than emailing them

* continuity – the longer the (good) relationship, the more likely it is to be solid

* multiplexity – not how often we go with someone else to a cinema with loads of screens, but how well we know people in their different roles -eg as a colleague, parent, golfer…

* parity – the extent to which there is equality of power in a relationship

* commonality – interestingly, not just a shared outlook or mutual interests, but also a positive appreciation of the differences between people

This is a valuable model for considering relationships on an acute wards – relationships between staff (including across different disciplines), between patients and, perhaps most problematically at the moment, between patients and staff.

Having a good laugh in hospital

Star Wards’ idea #14 is regular comedy evenings and it’s great that at least one hospital, Hartlepool, has introduced these. One of the fascinating things I learnt from the Maori contributors to the Delivering Race Equality conference was that patients in Chinese mental health services can join in a type of ‘laughter therapy’ that combines humour with the Chinese health exercises of Qigong. This makes so much sense, as Qigong is about helpful breathing patterns and what could be more helpful than a good belly laugh? There’s masses of information about the health benefits of humour and laughter, eg:

 

http://www.crystalinks.com/laughter.html

 

Frustratingly, there doesn’t seem to be much information easily available about this brilliant practice – and the one article I found refers to the practitioner who is ‘nearing retirement’. We’re going to try to get laughing qigong introduced to English acute wards – if you’ve got any contacts or suggestions, please do let me know.

 

http://english.www.gov.tw/TaiwanHeadlines/index.jsp?recordid=92567&categid=11&viewdate=0