A group photo of those who attended the 20th Anniversary Dinner

What better way to celebrate the best of being rural than to taste the best of local food and wine while looking out across green Gippsland pastures to the hills!

Thirty-one willing School of Rural Health staff and some partners joined MUDRIH’s commemorative dinner at the Traralgon Winery mid-October.

From the warm welcome with wonderful wine, great canapés and conversation, the evening moved on to guest speaker, Professor Elaine Duffy.

There could be no better person to pull together the threads of MUDRIH history, as Elaine was a foundation member of the School of Rural Health along with Professor Roger Strasser.

She described the early days of working in a ‘broom cupboard’ in the old Moe Hospital but, despite the low resources, she emphasised that the School of Rural Health was established on a foundation of enthusiasm and determination. (more…)

The RETAINR team at MUDRIH, from left, Adrienne Forsyth (Research Project Assistant), Dr Margaret Stebbing (Team Leader), Marillyn Harkness (Project Administrator).

Adrienne Forsyth has joined the Retention of Allied Health Professionals at Retirement Age in Rural Victoria (RETAINR) study team at MUDRIH as Research Project Assistant.

Adrienne holds degrees in Human Nutrition and Exercise Physiology and is in the writing up stage of a PhD thesis.

The RETAINR research and action study aims to identify important beliefs and attitudes of those who decide to continue to work as an allied health professional beyond retirement age.

Allied Health Professionals aged 55 years or more, who are retired or about to retire, who live in rural Victoria or intend relocating from the city to a rural area in retirement, are all invited to participate in this study.

Further information email adrienne.forsyth@monash.edu or see the RETAINR recruiting website.

The Australian Journal of Rural Health is publishing a special edition – Psychology in the bush: Innovative use of psychological principles in rural and remote communities – and is calling for papers.

The goal of this special edition is to examine the use of psychological principles in regional, rural and remote communities and identify creative strategies and program approaches that identify and meet the needs of these communities.

Download full details.

Students from four universities attended the Mental Health Vacation School

The Gippsland Mental Health Vacation School run by MUDRIH has again proved popular with 21 students from Monash University, Melbourne University, La Trobe University and Australian Catholic University taking part.

The program is offered to third and fourth year undergraduate, honours and postgraduate entry students in psychology, social work, occupational therapy, nursing and other allied health.

Students spent three days visiting clinical mental health, non-clinical mental health, alcohol and drug, generalist counselling and other mental health services across the region.  On the first and final days of the program, students were provided with an overview of the mental health and alcohol and drug service system, an insight into current trends in treatment and support in the two fields and the opportunity to ask a panel of workers from the region about living and working in Gippsland. (more…)

Senior lecturer and pharmacist Anne Leversha, contributed to a paper recently published in Practical Diabetes that examined the self reported impact on hospital insulin management policies of an insulin alert and accompaying audit tool that were distributed to Victorian hopsitals in 2009.

Less than a third of hospitals to responded. While those who did respond reported that that insulin alert triggered them to review management policies, it was clear that the form in which the audit tool was presented discouraged its use.

The exercise highlighted that passive implementation processes, self-reporting and long, written audit tools were unlikely to result in change in the management of high-risk medicine. Instead, the authors recommend that processes need to be tailored to suit individual organisations and should engage key local clinical leaders.

‘Insulin: a commonly used high-risk medicine’ is available online.

MUDRIH has teamed up with three Victorian Integrated Cancer Services to examine  innovative models of implementing cancer supportive care screening, referral and follow-up for patients in rural and metropolitan areas.

Eli Ristevski and Melanie Regan will work with Gippsland Integrated Cancer Service, Loddon Mallee Integrated Cancer Services and North Eastern Metropolitan Integrated Cancer Services. Much like the School of Rural Health, the study stretches from Bairnsdale across central Gippsland through to Bendigo, Echuca and Mildura. Clinicians from 10 health services will be interviewed as part of the study.

The study builds on previous work by Eli and Melanie in the area of cancer supportive care screening and workforce training and education. The study also aligns with Victoria’s Cancer Action Plan (VCAP) which aims to introduce supportive care screening into routine patient care and workforce training and education.

The research project will document a wide variety of screening practices and produce recommendations for clinicians and health services on how to implement supportive care screening and follow-up.

Two University of Melbourne final year medical students undertook a two week placement at Latrobe Community Health Service in May.

Jane Taylor, Interprofessional Educator, supervised the students and scheduled them to participate in the various programs across LCHS. The students were involved in visits to clients, attended the Moe After Hours Medical Service (MAHMS), meetings, workshops, clinics and undertook an audit of several LCHS clients.

The students gave a presentation to staff at the end of their placement. Recent feedback from the University of Melbourne was that the students have found their placement rewarding and enjoyable and Melbourne now has medical students indicating that they would like to be considered for placements scheduled at LCHS for the rest of 2012.

If the walls could talk: students on placement with Latrobe Community Health Service take part in multi-disciplinary workshops.

Part of the program involving the Monash University Department of Rural and Indigenous Health (MUDRIH) and Latrobe Community Health Service (LCHS) is various workshops and clinics for students on placement at LCHS.

Mollie Burley, Jane Taylor and Sue Townsend have been conducting these for some time. Recent workshops included an Interprofessional Collaboration workshop for students from differing health disciplines including medicine, dentistry, nursing, physiotherapy, pharmacy and counselling, while another was an Integrated Student Supervised Clinic, again for students for different disciplines.

Interprofessional Collaboration Workshops are offered whenever students from three or more disciplines are on placement at LCHS at the same time. (more…)

The new research council formalises the collaboration between Latrobe Community Health Servies and MUDRIH

The launch of a Research Council has formalised the collaboration between Latrobe Community Health Service (LCHS) with Monash University Department of Rural and Indigenous Health (MUDRIH) which has been assisting LCHS in building its research capacity.

The Research Council consists of staff from MUDRIH, Monash University Senior Lecturer and LCHS. This is a new and exciting era for LCHS, where research is being embedded into the organisation with the assistance, support and guidance of Monash University.

LCHS Chairperson, Mr John Guy and CEO, Mr Ben Leigh officially launched the Research Council at a recent function. LCHS staff currently undertaking research gave short presentations of their projects which included Wound Care, Caregivers, Healthy Heart and Student Supervised Clinic. Hanan Khalil (MUDRIH) gave an overview of the Joanna Briggs Institute: Gippsland Centre for Chronic Disease Management. Mollie Burley gave a final presentation on the future of LCHS research both internally and externally.

MUDRIH has made a major contribution to a recent Medical Journal of Australia supplement dealing with parental mental illness

Monash University Department of Rural and Indigenous Health academics have made a major contribution to a recent supplement of the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA):  Parental Mental Illness is a Family Matter.

As well as co-authoring two of the 11 papers in the supplement, Associate Professor Maybery (MUDRIH) joined colleagues Dr Andrea Reupert and Dr Nick Kowalenko from Monash and Sydney University respectively to co-edit the supplement.

One of the key messages was that mental illness impacts on more than the individual. In families where a parent has a mental illness, children are affected in many and often adverse ways.

The supplement was undertaken in collaboration with the National Children of Parents with a Mental Illness (COPMI) Initiative. The supplement includes 11 papers from renowned International and Australian authors (two co-authored by Associate Professor Maybery, and notably an editorial from Australian of the year, Professor Patrick McGorry.

MJA is Australia’s leading peer-reviewed general medical journal, with an impact factor of 2.68 and in an ERA 2010 rank of A.