Suggests that attempts to promote more effective approaches to personal transferable skills development throughout the UK higher education sector have met with variable but generally limited success. Considers why this has been the case. Argues that the problem is not simply one of a lack of understanding of what constitutes good practice in this area of teaching and learning ‐ the difficulties inherent in operationalising established good practice models are equally if not more significant. Identifies and discusses some of the commonly experienced barriers to the effective management of change in this area and begins to outline an agenda for addressing them.

Study Objectives: This study aims to evaluate the extent to which sleep quality impacts amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI)-related brain regions in a cognitively normal cohort of individuals. Methods: Seventy-four participants were rigorously evaluated using a battery of cognitive tests and a detailed clinical assessment to verify normal cognitive status. We then screened for sleep quality using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and depressive symptoms using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). Five subjects were excluded due to mild depression. Overall 38 individuals with mean age 70.7 ± 7 were classified as poor sleepers and 31 with mean age of 69.6 ± 6 years as normal sleepers. Structural MRI and Freesurfer brain parcellation were used to measure aMCI-related brain regions. Results: Relative to normal sleepers, poor sleepers exhibited significant reductions in cortical and subcortical volumes bilaterally in the hippocampi, as well as in the superior parietal lobules and left amygdala. The effects were strongest in the left superior parietal lobule (p < .015), followed by the hippocampi. Diffuse patterns of cortical thinning were observed in the frontal lobes, but significant effects were concentrated in the right mesial frontal cortex. Lower sleep duration was most correlated with cortical volume and thickness reductions among all subjects. Conclusions: Atrophy related to poor sleep quality impacted a number of regions implicated in aMCI and Alzheimer's disease (AD). As such, interventions targeted towards improving sleep quality amongst the elderly may prove an effective tool for modulating the course of aMCI and AD.

This paper examines the current use of the terms 'story', 'narrative' and 'voice' within health care. It argues that the focus on narrative forms is related to nursing's professional development of an alternative epistemology to science, and to nursing theorists' mistrust of 'Enlightenment' modes. However, in order for this project to be productively developed it is necessary to distinguish story from narrative: the former is an informal activity, the latter is meditative and theoretical. Both have therapeutic dimensions.

This theoretical paper has arisen out of a national study of the end of shift nursing handover. It draws upon and offers a postmodern reformulation of the psychodynamic concepts of anxiety and defence as articulated by Menzies Lyth in her study of nursing work in the 1950s. It outlines Kristeva's concept of abjection and draws upon Bion's formulation of the concept of containing to offer an account of how, in the current context of hospital nursing, the handover can function to contain abjection.

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