During March the Gippsland Clinical Placement Network (CPN) provided fully funded workshops in three sites across Gippsland open to any health practitioners who wanted to develop skills as interprofessional facilitators.

The coordinator, Glenda McPherson from the CPN, said she was pleased to offer the workshops at Bairnsdale and Leongatha as well as Morwell, as it provided easier access for rural practitioners who frequently find themselves travelling long distances for any professional development activities.

The workshops were delivered in two sections on each day, starting with a basic interprofessional facilitation segment. Experienced educators were invited to stay for a second ‘train the trainer’ segment.

The workshops are the brainchild of Mollie Burley, senior lecturer at MUDRIH, whose passion is to develop practitioners’ skills to enhance the interprofessional supervision of students and to champion the benefits of collaborative practice for staff to improve patient care.

The workshops were delivered collaboratively by Jane Taylor working with other MUDRIH staff, Michelle Butler, Jenny Moloney and Fiona McCook.

Jane said, “We always walk the walk as well as talk the talk, by having two different disciplines co-presenting. It adds to the richness of the examples as well as modelling collaboration at the same time.

“As a result there are now a number of trained interprofessional facilitators across Gippsland ready and able to deliver this workshop package to more of their own staff to encourage different professions to work more collaboratively.”

For more information contact Jane Taylor: jane.taylor@monash.edu

Clare and Hilton are pictured cutting their cake.

Festivities were held at MUDRIH recently for a 90^th birthday – combined birthday, that is.

With two staff members celebrating milestone birthdays – Hilton Gruis turned 50 and Clare van den Dolder turned 40 – other staff decided it was a great excuse for a light-hearted catch-up over a sinful chocolate mud cake.

After the combined 90^th morning tea, all are looking forward to their 100^th!

The audience was attentive to every word delivered by Associate Professor Darryl Maybery.

Associate Professor Darryl Maybery,  Director of MUDRIH, has delivered the first of Mildura’s 2013 lecture series to a wide audience of medical and local community members.

Darryl’s topic was ’Breaking the generational cycle of mental illness’, and coincided with the launch and promotion of a new DVD titled Family Focus.

One in five children has a parent with a mental illness; the aim of the Family Focus program is to empower families to start a conversation about the problems, with the intended outcome to reduce the risk of children getting the same illness as their parent.  The chance to talk about these illnesses helps children realise that the depression and anxiety they see in their parents is not their fault.

Information about the event was circulated through flyers to health organisations and individuals, radio announcements, and advertisements in local newspapers.  Consequently 70 registrations were received from a mixture of health clinicians and public, which packed the lecture room to capacity. (more…)

Dr Julie Willems of MUDRIH has been elected Vice President of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia (ODLAA).

ODLAA is a professional association of educators, instructional designers, educational researchers, education consultants and administrators from across Australia and overseas that is dedicated to advancement of research, practice, and support of education across time and space.

See the ODLAA website for more information about the organisation.

Congratulations to Julie!

MUDRIH is hosting an Australian Psychological Society workshop entitled Understanding Attachment: The Connecting Thread Through the Lifestyle on Saturday 2 March 2013 between 1.30 and 5.30 pm.

This presentation will describe the theory and process of attachment within the broader context of development. It will demonstrate how attachment as a relational construct extends over the lifespan and provides continuity between infant and early childhood experience and later development and adult life. Presenter, Ruth Schmidt Neven PhD, is a psychologist and child psychotherapist who trained at the Tavistock Clinic in London.

If you’d like to attend, you can register online on the APS website.

For nearly four gruelling weeks, eight of MUDRIH’s hardiest (known collectively as “Rural Health Rocks”) marched, strolled, danced, staggered, limped and crawled their way from Cape Otway  in Victoria to Lake Macquarie in New South Wales (at least virtually) a distance of 1664km or more than two million steps. The team managed to register a very creditable 9^th placing among the 25 Monash Gippsland teams competing. (more…)

Marlene is pictured with Elaine Duffy (left) and Dot Angel at the morning tea in her honour.

The contribution of Professor Marlene Drysdale to the School of Rural Health will continue to be acknowledged through the development and naming of a garden in her honour.

A proud and strong Aboriginal woman who is currently Adjunct Professor for the School for Indigenous Health Clayton, Marlene was employed at Monash University from 2002 until 2012 as the Head of the Indigenous Health Unit and occasional Acting Deputy Director for the Department of Rural and Indigenous Health within the School of Rural Health and Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. (more…)

The Monash University Centre for Chronic Disease Management, coordinated through MUDRIH, has received a major international award.

Dr Hanan Khalil accepted the award, the Evidence Transfer International Award for Development of the Node, on behalf of the Centre of Chronic Disease Management at the Joanna Briggs Institute Colloquium in Thailand.

It was presented for 39 new evidence summaries contributed in November 2012, and was one of only four awards at the ceremony.

The Centre for Chronic Disease Management is a collaboration between Monash Gippsland’s School of Nursing and Midwifery and the School of Rural Health through MUDRIH, partnering with Latrobe Regional Hospital and Latrobe Community Health Service. As well as evidence summaries, the centre’s work included establishing the executive members committee, the expert reference group and the corresponding reference group.

Representatives from more than 70 international centres were present at the colloquium for presentation of the awards.

The Joanna Briggs Institute is based at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Adelaide and works with more than 70 entities across the world. The institute supports the synthesis, transfer and use of evidence through identifying feasible, appropriate, meaningful and effective healthcare practices to assist in improving global healthcare.

It maintains a free database of evidence-based resources, JBI COnNECT+, to help practitioners with clinical decision-making.

The next in-service will be on e-learning options for teaching and learning presented by Marianne Hicks and Rowan Brookes.

Marianne and Rowan will discuss the Monash approach to blended learning and explore e-learning possibilities for teaching and learning.

The session is scheduled for Wednesday 5 December from 10:30am to12:45pm at MUDRIH (Moe).  Please contact Julie Willems (5128 1030) if you would like to video conference into the session.

The achievements of Marlene Drysdale during her 20 years working with MUDRIH and in a range of other roles will be celebrated again this month.

A special ceremony will be held at MUDRIH in Moe on Friday 16 November, when the MUDRIH Courtyard Garden will be officially named in Marlene’s honour.  Appropriately, given her time with MUDRIH, the event is also part of the 20^th anniversary celebrations.

The event will also include an official ‘Welcome to Country’ presentation.

Marlene has now retired from MUDRIH but her strong legacy lives on and will be commemorated in the garden naming.

Anyone who would like to attend should RSVP to julie.irvine@monash.edu or phone 03 51281000 by this Friday (9 November). Arrivals are from 10am with the event to start at 10.30am.