jbsh

When you write a journal article you are trying to do a number of things. You are;

1. Disseminating the information you have gathered
2. Keeping the literature up to date
3. Telling your story and defending your position
4. Putting your head above the parapet

Having written your article and had it accepted you feel very pleased with yourself. Even though you have written it for all the above reasons you never really think that anybody is going to read it and take you seriously. But then two things happen:

1. Someone emails you and asks you for a copy of your article
2. You get an email from the journal saying that someone has written to them about your article and asking if you would like to respond

The first feels like flattery, and sometimes leads to conversations and the development of new projects. The second feels like an attack. As such I find it best to read the letter and then sleep on it. Any response that you write needs to be as carefully written as the original article. As with most academic writing it should be reporting of the facts, a justification of the methodology, and a defense of your interpretation of the findings.

Having written your response and sent it back to the journal you still have to wait to see if the editor will accept it for publication and then go through the whole proof reading process.

This is our (jbsh) current position following the publication of: The Ameliorating Effects of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBO2) on Quality Of Life in Patients with Maxillofacial Soft Tissue- and Osteo-Radionecrosis.

What happens next? We wait to see if further letters follow, or if future publications support or refute our position. Academia is not a quiet pond of thought and introspection, it is a tempest of investigation driven by desire.

I have had the pleasure of working at the ‘Diving Diseases Research Centre’ for more than 9 years.

One of the things that I have been involved in numerous times over that period is staffing the stand at the national dive shows. DDRC’s introduction to the world reads ‘DDRC - Is a charity providing support and education for divers and research into the effects of altered pressure environments on humans. It is one of the UK’s busiest recompression facility, and has seen over fifty diving casualties in the past 12 months. DDRC is able to offer internationally recognised training from diving first aid and oxygen administration to hyperbaric medicine and recompression chamber operation. We will have a team (including me) of helpful and informative staff onsite at the dive show to answer any questions you may have about training, research or the work we do.’

On the day we will have some interesting bits of research for you to get involved in.  Graham Samson will be introducing some of his research, which is going towards a PhD.

I’ll be asking people to judge wither they think a number of factors might cause decompression illness.  It is a simple card sorting task with no hard and fast right or wrong responses just subjective judgements.  If you have the chance to visit us at the NEC that would be great.  If you can’t make it then I know all the researchers at DDRC would love your input, and I know I would appreciate you completing my online survey.

See you on the 1st or 2nd of November at the NEC

or please complete my online survey!

(Opens new window and takes you to SurveyGizmo)

Image by Sarge-Jack

Sometimes you can be working on projects for years and you can feel that no substantial outputs are ever going to come from them. Then all of a sudden stuff happens! Sometimes the stuff is further funding, sometimes it is conference abstracts, posters or oral presentations and sometimes you get publications. That is the case here; projects I have been involved with since 2001 have finally got to the point that academic peer review journals are accepting articles for publication.

I have had the good fortune to have four articles accepted so far this year. I have written about the first three and the abstracts can be read in earlier blogs (1 - QoL & Maxillofacial Cancer Patients: 2 - Educational Impact of Pulmonary Rehabilitation: 3 - Personality as a predisposing factor for DCI) on this site and references found on the research page.

The latest article (No. 4) has been accepted for publication in the ‘Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation and Prevention’ is and entitled:

The prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder in patients undergoing pulmonary rehabilitation and changes in PTSD symptoms following rehabilitation

Authors: Jones, RCM., Harding, SA., Chung, M., & Campbell, J.

Abstract: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a common serious condition which, although treatable, is often undetected. We aimed to investigate the prevalence of PTSD in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) referred to pulmonary rehabilitation and the impact of rehabilitation on PTSD symptoms. Design: cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys. Participants: Patients with COPD attending pulmonary rehabilitation programmes in South West England. Outcome measures:The Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale (PDS), Impact of Events scale (IES-R), the incremental shuttle walking test, Medical Outcomes Short Form 12 (SF-12), Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS) and Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire (CRQ-SR). Questionnaires were completed at face to face interviews with participants one week prior to commencing pulmonary rehabilitation and at the end of the programme. 100 participants took part, mean age 68yrs; 65 male. 70% completed the pulmonary rehabilitation programme. Seventy four out of one hundred participants reported traumatic experiences, 37 of which were related to their lung disease. Eight out of 100 participants met diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Participants with PTSD reported worse health status than those without PTSD. After pulmonary rehabilitation, exercise capacity and quality of life scores improved significantly, but PTSD symptom severity did not change. PTSD was present in 8% of COPD patients referred for pulmonary rehabilitation. After rehabilitation, participants with PTSD improved more in respect of anxiety and disease specific health status than those without PTSD. PTSD symptoms did not improve following rehabilitation, despite its positive effects on HADS scores, exercise and health status in this cohort.

Once again I hope you find this of interest and as always please get in touch if you want to discuss or comment about anything in the article.

As you may have read in my short biography (home page), I have had a long interest in the psychology of SCUBA diving. I have undertaken a couple of projects in this area and this is one of those. The work was part of my MSc in Psychological Research Methods, undertaken at the University of Plymouth, and sponsered by the Diving Diseases Research Centre (DDRC).

Krug Chamber at DDRC (www.ddrc.org)

At the time I did not intend to write it up for publication in a peer review journal, but following some positive feedback from Academics, Specalist Diving Physicians and Researchers, and the Editor of a Journal, I grasped the thistle.

Below is the abstract from the article accepted for publication by ‘Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine‘, which is ‘The combined journal of the South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society’ and the ‘European Underwater and Baromedical Society’. The paper will be available in the next edition of the journal (October 2008). I hope you find it of interest and I look forward to discussing the work with anyone who wants to get in touch.

Personality as a predisposing factor for DCI: A pilot study

Authors: Sam Harding & Phil Gee

This study aimed to identify differences in personality characteristics related to Decompression Illness (DCI) in recreational SCUBA divers. A matched control group of 9 divers (without DCI) and research group of 9 divers (with DCI) were recruited. Following a chamber dive (control group), or post-treatment for DCI (research group), three psychometric scales; Locus of Control (LoC), Sensation Seeking Scale, and Eysenck’s Personality Questionnaire – Revised (EPQ-R) were administered together with a Diving History Questionnaire and questions on motoring. One significant difference was identified and lay between engine sizes, with those experiencing DCI having cars with larger engines (p < .01). The data were inconsistent with previous research that suggested a relationship between sensation seeking and risk taking. Further research is needed to elucidate the relationship between diving injury and personality.