Pictured at the Summit are (from left) Jenny Moloney, Katie Yeomans and Jane Taylor.

The MUDRIH interprofessional team was represented at the recent People in Health Summit. Jenny Moloney, Project Manager of Gippsland Regional  Interprofessional Program in Simulation (GRIPS), Katie Yeomans (Indigenous Lecturer) and Jane Taylor (Adjunct Lecturer/interprofessional) all attended the health summit, representing Senior Lecturer Mollie Burley who was on leave.

Three papers were presented at the Summit which showcased a range of work by the team.  These sessions were well attended despite the late time slot.

Jane’s presentation outlined the four years of multifaceted capacity building MUDRIH has undertaken in partnership with Latrobe Community Health Service.  Jane said the highlight for her was seeing Katie, as a proud Aboriginal woman, talk about the inspirational work she is doing with her own community in delivering Indigenous coaching sessions for non-Indigenous health workers in Gippsland.  The enthusiasm and questions from the audience underlined the interest aroused by this innovative approach to cultural safety.

According to Jenny, the Summit was a good opportunity to meet face-to-face with key Department of Health personnel. She said it was also inspiring to hear about other groups’ programs.

16^th Ottawa Conference, Transforming Healthcare Through Excellence in Assessment and Evaluation

David Birks (Senior Lecturer at SRH Latrobe Valley & West Gippsland) joined around 2,000 other medical educationalists from around the world at this year’s Ottawa conference.

David presented a paper (co-authored by Dr Cathy Haigh and Professor Brian Jolly of the University of Newcastle) about their nine-year experience of MiniCase Records (MCRs) as an assessment tool for Monash medical students. The MCR is a variant of the miniCEX (mini Clinical Evaluation Exercise) which is used widely for trainee physicians around the world. The paper he presented was included in a session of six papers, four of which focussed on the miniCEX. (more…)

Dr Melinda Goodyear is project manager of the Mental Illness Research Fund (MIRF) project led by Associate Professor Darryl Maybery. Her work and the MIRF project focus on families with a parent with a mental illness. She presented at the COPMI/FaPMI [title: children of parents with a mental illness/families where a parent has a mental illness] International Conference and Research Meeting in Prato, Italy, in December 2013.

The top 30 international researchers in the field attended the meeting so Dr Goodyear was able to profile MUDRIH as a leader in this area of research. Her presentation resulted in the establishment of an international collaboration to write a conceptual paper on family resilience, and another to work on an ARC grant application on the transition to parenthood.

Dr Goodyear was also able to set up mentorships with Professor Joanne Nicholson (Professor of Psychiatry at the Darmouth Psychiatric Research Centre, USA) and Dr Brenda Gladstone (Center for Critial Qualitative Health Research, Canada).

Dr Penny Buykx attended the 8th Health Services and Policy Research Conference, 2-4 December 2013, Wellington NZ and presented a paper.

Conference report

The conference was an exceptionally valuable networking opportunity. I have track record in the area of medication overdose and for some time have been developing a project concept involving the use of ambulance data to examine ambulance attendances at both overdose and other mental health events. I met with the research manager from Ambulance Victoria (who is responsible for negotiating research partnerships) and other paramedics and received considerable encouragement to pursue this idea.

The conference also provided useful networking in another area of interest: I have recently completed a working paper on spatial accessibility to alcohol and drug services in rural and remote Australia. I not only met the authors of some of the articles included in my review, but was able to discuss with them in greater depth the analysis methods used. These conversations have significantly informed my thinking on this topic and will make a useful contribution to a peer-review paper I am now preparing as part of the CRE work plan. (more…)

Professor Geoff Solarsh and Dr Natalie Radomski attended the Consortium for Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships (CLIC), International Conference, Big Sky Montana 29 September – 2 October, 2013. Geoff gives his impressions of the conference and an outline of his PeArLS session.

Conference report

Given our interest and involvement in longitudinal models for community-based health professions education, the annual CLIC conference was a particularly relevant forum to present and compare our educational programs and research interests with international peers. Since 2007, when David Hirsh’s paper on ‘Continuity in Medical Education’ appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, many medical schools have latched onto this idea as a theoretical framework to reconceptualise existing education programs or to design new ones.

This plethora was on full display at the opening poster session at which longitudinal models of different length, involving a wide range of disciplines and based in varied geographical and health care settings were presented. It soon emerged that many of these short and long programs were based on quite different interpretations of ‘continuity’ and what passed for longitudinal educational models. While there was richness in this diversity, there was also a palpable level of ‘dis-ease’ for some participants interested in channelling this work into international comparisons based on shared definitions and pooled educational outcome measures.

I attended all the plenaries and many of the PeArLS sessions. Some of the highlights were: (more…)

Dr Natalie Radomski and Professor Geoff Solarsh attended the Consortium for Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships (CLIC), International Conference, Big Sky Montana 29 September – 2 October, 2013. Natalie gives her impressions and an outline of her oral presentation.

Conference report

The theme of the CLIC conference was exploring ideas in medical education as they relate to longitudinal integrated clinical clerkship (LIC) programs. Approximately 190 delegates attended.

There is noticeable shift in emphasis from descriptive or exploratory research about LIC programs to a deeper level of research. Many research presentations aimed to compare educational outcomes achieved in LIC placements with mainstream ‘block style’ placements in hospital settings. (more…)

Dr Matthew McGrail attended (and presented a paper on the Index of Access at) the 8^th Health Services and Policy Research Conference, 2-4 December 2013, Wellington NZ

Conference report

This was the first time that I had attended the conference of the Health Services Research Association of Australia and New Zealand. In the past I was somewhat apprehensive of this conference as it had a strong reputation of being dominated by health economics. While I did find there was a strong gathering of health economists, it was only a small component of the overall conference and their contribution blended well with the remainder of the conference. (more…)

Anton Isaacs (lecturer at MUDRIH) and Berwyn Lampitt (senior mental health nurse at Latrobe Regional Hospital) presented a paper at the 5th Australian Rural and Remote Mental Health Symposium at Geelong on 14 October. Title of the paper is: Working together to develop an innovative model for the early detection of mental illness among rural Aboriginal men.

Dr Hanan Khalil, the Chronic Disease Management director with the Evidence Transfer Award

At the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) 2013 International Convention in October, special recognition awards and certificates of recognition were presented to four international centres/nodes, including the Chronic Disease Management Node. Dr Hanan Khalil, Director of the Chronic Disease Management Node (CDM), received the Evidence Transfer Award for the significant development and maintenance of the CDM.

The Joanna Briggs Institute is an international organisation, operating more than 50 collaborating centres and groups around the world. JBI is a global collaboration of health scientists and clinicians that operate as an independent, not-for-profit organisation that seeks to improve global health, focusing on researching evidence-based healthcare.  JBI is based in University of Adelaide, South Australia.

The Chronic Disease Management Node (CDM) is a collaboration between the Monash University School of Rural Health and the School of Nursing and Midwifery with Latrobe Community Health Services (Inc.) and Latrobe Regional Hospital. The CDM is based at Monash University and is an affiliate centre of the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI).

The CDM centre focuses on promoting the development and implementation of evidence-based health care in chronic disease. To date the CDM centre has developed over 70 evidence summaries related to chronic diseases to help clinicians make decisions ‘at-the-bedside’. The centre conducts five executive committee meetings throughout the year, publishes two newsletters, has an internationally recognised expert reference group and a corresponding reference group that contributes to peer reviewing of the materials published by the centre. The CDM also focuses on offering electives for students interested in evidence-based health care research and publications. In the near future, the centre will focus on training clinicians, academics and students to undertake quantitative, qualitative and economic evaluation systematic reviews.

Drs Elizabeth Farrell and Deirdre Bentley, guest speakers at the Women’s Health Conference held in Foster recently

Early in October a full day Women’s Health Conference was held at the South Gippsland Community Health Centre in Foster.  Year 4C students were fortunate enough to hear from a number of speakers including  Drs Elizabeth Farrell and Deirdre Bentley who presented case studies on breast cancer support, endometriosis and menopause. The day was particularly beneficial to the students  given their exams are fast approaching and it is hoped that such conferences become a regular event of the academic year for them.