Associate Professor Darryl Maybery of MUDRIH has been awarded $1,855,891 to continue his research in support services for parents with a mental illness.

His project – Developing an Australian-first recovery model for parents in Victorian mental health and family services – was one of five successful projects to be funded by the Victorian Mental Illness Research Fund.

Announcing the funding at the end of March, Minister for Mental Health, Mary Wooldridge said the funded projects were of very high scientific merit and build on Victoria’s key research strengths.

“The five projects were selected from a very strong field of 43 submissions and will build knowledge that can be applied to improve treatment and recovery outcomes for people with mental illness,” the minister said.

Associate Professor Maybery will lead the research project and work with SANE Australia, Family Life, Neami, the Bouverie Centre, the Parenting Research Centre, Raising Children Network, beyondblue, Eastern Health, Northern Health and the University of South Australia. The project will work with parents with a mental illness to develop and trial approaches that effectively engage families and children within specialist mental health services. This is expected to deliver significant mental health and wellbeing benefits to both parents and their children.

This year’s Joanna Briggs Institute convention is themed “The 2013 campaign for getting evidence into policy”. The convention will bring together Australian and international speakers and delegates in Adelaide from 21 to 23 October. Organisers are currently seeking abstracts (see the convention website for details.) Early bird discounts are also available for delegates who register by 12 July 2013.

The Joanna Briggs Institute promotes and supports the use of evidence in developing healthcare practices and policy globally. A collaboration of 70 entities across the world, it maintains a free database of evidence-based resources JBI COnNECT+, to help practitioners with clinical decision-making.

Dr Megan Brown, a former Dux of the Monash University Medical Faculty, has returned home to West Gippsland Hospital as part of the next step in her medical career.

Dr Brown, nee Megan Farmer, will spend ten weeks as a medical registrar at the West Gippsland Healthcare Group, in the area where she grew up and completed much of her medical studies.

Dr Brown is from Drouin and went to secondary school in Warragul, gaining a place at Monash University to study medicine. She took advantage of the Monash University School of Rural Health program, completing her Year 3 studies at the Warragul Campus of the Gippsland Regional Clinical School as well undertaking a number of Year 4 rotations at Traralgon, South Gippsland and Warragul.

Her ability and knowledge was recognised when she graduated as equal Dux of the Monash University medical faculty for 2010. “This is a testament to the wonderful support I had from the local community, God, my church and Gippsland Regional Clinical School,” Dr Brown said.

She added that she is enjoying her time back in Warragul.

“Working at West Gippsland really does feel like coming home,” Dr Brown said. “More than that it is a great team to work with and provides fantastic learning opportunities. I trust that in my short time here I can give something back to the community which has supported me so much over the years.”

The role of the Monash University School of Rural Health program includes providing opportunities for local people to undertake medicine and also encouraging medical students to consider their long term opportunities in regional areas.

Dr Brown is currently undertaking studies as a basic physician trainee, which will equip her to do further specialist training including hopefully becoming a hospital specialist in Internal Medicine. She has an interest in rural and regional General Medicine which she attributes largely to her study and work here in Warragul.

Dr Megan Brown (right) pictured at her graduation when she was announced Dux of Monash Medical faculty, with Warragul's Dr Jenny Eury.

 

Thanks to everyone from across the School who submitted 2012 publications by the deadline in February. 

The 2012 publications list is now available on the research website.

The School had more than 140 publications during 2012, with 71 being C1 Journal Articles.

We have had authors publish in journals such as Australian Journal of Rural Health, The American Journal of Surgery, The Lancet, International Journal of Health and Addiction, International Journal of Mental Health Nursing and BMC Medical Research Methodology. 

Conference presentations were published at conferences in Canada, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Thailand, and Japan and also across all parts of Australia. 

Articles in professional journals were also published and distributed to different health and education professional groups in Australia. 

A reminder for those with a publication during 2013: please forward the publication, as early as possible, with the appropriate forms and FOR codes to Janelle McGrail in the south-east or Sandra Paschkow in the north-west. This allows the research administration team to process publications throughout the year, rather than in the last few weeks prior to the deadline. 

Any questions regarding publication collection should be directed in the first instance to the Research Administration Manager, cathy.ward@monoash.edu, or alternatively to Janelle.mcgrail@monash.edu or sandra.paschkow@monash.edu.

Highly regarded Gippsland paediatrician Dr Austen Erasmus, who is also Senior Lecturer with the East Gippsland Regional Clinical School Year 4C program, gets a real kick out of teaching junior doctors and students.

Following are his thoughts on the benefits gained by using the simulation facility at the Sale campus.

As part of the Junior Medical Resident Officer (JMRO) Paediatric rural rotation, Loy Perryman and myself have organised a simulation evening during the resident rotation to Sale.  

We specifically present a scenario where the young doctor has to prepare for, then put into action and practically demonstrate how they would go about managing an ill baby or toddler.  

This not only tests the young doctor’s theoretical knowledge but more importantly helps us, in a friendly and non-threatening environment, to constructively give them pointers to improve on their skills. It also helps them to consider very important resuscitative principles that they may not know, possibly may have forgotten or even simply not practiced in a long time.

The Monash Sale Simulation Centre and the equipment available are fantastic and state of the art.  It’s a spacious, well set out lab and conducive to excellence and learning.  

I applaud the staff who work tirelessly behind the scene and give up their own personal time, and accommodate all personnel and students.

The best ‘kick’ I get from this program is that, by teaching junior doctors and imparting knowledge that can be life-saving, they are taught good habits that will stay with them and help them to be safe, capable physicians who are more confident in their abilities.  

If inspired they have the opportunity to come back and practise more intubations, look through equipment, even practise drawing up drugs or “play” with the defibrillator – all under supervision of course!

– Dr Austen Erasmus, Paediatrician, Central Gippsland Health Service, Senior Lecturer, EGRCS Year 4C Program, Sale campus

Dr Austen Erasmus is pictured with an intern during a training session in the simulation lab at Sale.

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

Local Elder, Uncle Willy, shows how his bowl has many uses, including as part of his musical repertoire.

A number of bush-tucker based items provided suitable fare for a morning tea hosted by Mildura Regional Clinical School in support of the Oxfam Australia ‘Close the Gap’ campaign, which raises awareness of Aboriginal Health issues.

Attendees came from the Aboriginal community, local health organisations and other community groups, together with medical students and Mildura staff to learn about the Close the Gap campaign and the appalling statistics involved in aboriginal health.  The Mildura Regional Clinical School collected 32 signatures for the pledge as part of the event.

It proved an entertaining as well as educational event.

Following the Welcome To Country the audience was enthralled by the guest speaker, a local elder known as Uncle Willy.  Uncle Willy is a storyteller of the highest order who kept everyone well and truly entertained and fascinated by the tension between traditional and westernised upbringing for Aboriginal children. 

He outlined the multiple uses of such various implements. For example, the boomerang is as much a map as it is a weapon!

Then there is what Uncle Willy dubbed the Aboriginal version of a Swiss Army Knife – his wooden bowl. It can be used as a bowl, a baby carrier, a shelter from the rain, a paddle, and to aid the sound production in his didgeridoo playing. 

Uncle Willy is an accomplished didgeridoo player and makes his own instruments; sadly there was only a brief opportunity for his music.  To conclude the presentations, an Aboriginal children’s dance troupe from a local primary school performed a traditional welcome dance.

Another highlight was provided by local Aboriginal health workers, who contributed bush tucker-based items for the morning tea table. The menu included lemon myrtle cheesecake with quandong jam, wattle seed madeleines, kangaroo pizza and crocodile with wild herbs and rice – although the last items were snapped up so quickly (pun intended) that not everyone had a chance to taste them!

Local dancers and officials gathered with a strong overarching message

Opening titles of the Canadian series, Hard Rock Medical

It was lights, camera and action in Gippsland in late February, with a film crew from Canada in the area to gather information and some visuals for a documentary on rural clinical schools.

The documentary, tentatively titled ‘Rural, Remote and Revolutionary: The real story behind Hard Rock Medical’, is designed to accompany a 13-part dramatic TV series loosely based on the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) in Canada, where Professor Roger Strasser, one of the main drivers in development of the School of Rural Health model, is now based.

The series, ‘Hard Rock Medical’ is a joint Canada-Australia production and will include an Australian dimension, so it made sense that the production team comes to Gippsland where the rural health model was originally developed.

The first series of the program will be shown on NITV (SBS 3) beginning in June/July.

The aim of the trip , according to Thunderstone Pictures Inc producer Dave Clement, was to “help flush out the story of the pre-NOSM Australian work that informed the innovative approaches he [Roger Strasser] implemented in Northern Ontario.”

The film crew spent a couple of days in Gippsland with Professor Strasser, with some filming at the Gippsland Regional Clinical School and at MUDRIH in the old Latrobe Valley Hospital in Moe, where the Centre for Rural Health which later became the School of Rural Health was based.

While in Australia the team also visited Alice Springs to gain information on training of rural physicians for remote Australia.  They will spend time at NOSM in Canada, where Professor Strasser is the Dean, to develop the documentary.

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…)

Scholarship recipients, from left Fiona Tipping (Sunraysia Community Health Service, Mildura), Diane Roberts (Kyabram and District Health Service, Kyabram) and Carole Meade (Brooke Street Medical Centre, Woodend) during their research workshop at Bendigo.

The recipients of scholarships accessed through a capacity building program spent several days in Bendigo recently working on their research projects.

The Centre of Research Excellence in Rural and Remote Primary Health Care Research Capacity Building Program aims to build both individual and organisational capacity to undertake research that will benefit primary health care services in rural and remote Australia.

As part of the program, two-year scholarships were awarded to eight health services across the country. Three from Victoria were awarded through the School of Rural Health, to Carole Meade (Brooke Street Medical Centre, Woodend), Diane Roberts (Kyabram & District Health Service, Kyabram) and Fiona Tipping (Sunraysia Community Health Service, Mildura).

Carole, Diane and Fiona spent several days in Bendigo working closely with Dr Bernadette Ward, the Victorian Research Capacity Building Program Coordinator, on their research projects.  They attended a workshop aimed specifically at developing research skills, including academic writing for publication, quantitative analysis and data collection. They also participated in NVIVO training organised by the Office of Research in Bendigo.

The workshops will assist them as they plan the next stages of their research project.

Their visit to Bendigo also provided an opportunity for them to learn more about the CRE and the Office of Research and to be part of a rural health research environment.