A reminder that registrations are due now to attend all or any of the Research Bootcamp being held in January in Bendigo.

In the last couple of weeks, we have been able to confirm the following speakers:

• Simon Barrett from the Monash Research Office will be presenting an interactive seminar on “Working in a team to produce publications and authorship”
• Professor David Perkins, Editor of the Australian Journal of Rural Health, will be joined by other editorial panel members to lead a panel session “Meet with an editorial panel”.
• HDR students will have the opportunity to meet with the Monash Postgraduate Association whilst the HDR supervisors have a meeting to discuss the School’s HDR program
• Nicola Johnson from Monash University will present a session “Publishing from your PhD”
• Kaye Lassere from the Monash University Library will run a library workshop covering indexes, journal rankings, Google Scholar, EndNote tips and citations
• Luke McAvaney from the Monash University Research Office will be joined by colleagues from the La Trobe research office to discuss the best ways to find funding for your research project or fellowship or HDR scholarship
• Professor Michael Kingsley will be running a research speed dating session to hone your presentation skills
• The “Thesis Whisperer” will be running a session on what makes a good publication

Plans will continue to be finalised for each session so keep a watch on the website for new speakers. Don’t forget there will be writing workshops, research seminars from both senior academics and HDR students and journal clubs happening throughout the bootcamp.

The past couple of months have seen quite a few milestones achieved by some of our PhD students. October 31 saw four students presenting at MUDRIH and November 21 saw another two students present at the Education Faculty in Clayton. They were followed by two education students who had also reached a milestone. All students have been successful in achieving their milestone.

Those successful in achieving confirmation of candidature are Rouve Jan Forbes and Michael Naughton, both of whom have their main supervisors located at MUDRIH.

Those who achieved their mid-candidature review are Annette Woodhouse, Sue Barker Anne Grant and Kate Templeman; again, all have their main supervisor located at MUDRIH.

Anne Grant had the dubious pleasure of presenting from Ireland via Adobe Connect. This is a new type of video conferencing technology currently being trialled by the Education Faculty at Clayton  and worked very well.

Both days were very well attended by students, supervisors and examiners. One supervisor came all the way from Nauru to support her student and one examiner flew over from Tasmania to maintain consistency in panel members.

Pictured from left to right are: The Hon. David Davis, MLC (Minister for Ageing and Minister for Health) Helen Chambers (Database Manager/Research Officer, MUDRIH), Nicole Steers(Executive Directory Ambulatory Care (past), LCHS), Marianne Cullen ( Project Leader and Regional Wound Consultant, LCHS), Ben Leigh (Chief Executive Officer, LCHS), Rachel Strauss (Executive Directory Ambulatory Care (acting), LCHS) John Guy (Chairperson Board of Directors, LCHS)

A big congratulations to the Mobile Wound Care Team.

At the 2013 Victoria Public Healthcare awards, the collaboration of  MUDRIH and Latrobe Community Health Service (LCHS) received a Gold award in the category of “Optimising healthcare through e-health and communications technology”. The topic of our research: “Mobile Wound Care (MWC)”.

E-health and communications technology can improve the way the health system and the community access or receive relevant information, when it is needed and in an understandable and useable form. E-health and communications technology can improve knowledge management and provide ongoing benefits to health services, clinicians and consumers, their carers and families and the broader community. This award recognises innovative use of e-heath and communication technologies that improve knowledge management resulting in better practice, management, patient outcomes or experience.

MWC enables nurses to enter the clinical details of their patients’ wounds, including digital photos into a web-based program. If specialist support is required, referral can be made to the regional nurse consultant (RNC). The RNC can then access the electronic record, reply and make clinical recommendations almost immediately.

MWC represents a unique effort to provide remote consultancy to regional clientele while monitoring treatment and cost outcomes for health services and patients. It has resulted in I improved care and expertise in collecting data and will inform future discussions about a national wound care minimum dataset. The research has facilitated skill development in all participating organisations and enhanced collaboration across the region, including between LCHS and Monash University – a partnership which will lead to future research collaborations.

Well done to all and particularly to LCHS for another great collaboration.

The following grants/scholarships have been notified through Research Professional as having a rural and remote health aspect.

If any of these grants interest you, please access further information through Research Professional.
If you need any assistance contact Cathy Ward or Helen Chambers.

Rural pharmacy scholarships Pharmacy Guild of Australia, AU
$40,000
closing date: 14 Jan 14

Targeted research grants Government of Western Australia, AU
$400,000
Closing date: 13 Feb 14

NSW metropolitan allied health clinical placement grants NSW Ministry of Health, AU
$750
Closing Date: 06 Mar 14

Clinical placement scholarships Australian Department of Health and Ageing, AU
$11,000
Closing date: 08 Apr 14

Information society innovation awards Information Society Innovation Fund, AU
$3,000
Closing Date: 24 May 14

Dr Rebecca Kippen, focusing on her work as a demographer, led an internal seminar and discussion that reached staff across Central and East Victoria. The title of the seminar was ‘Where to from here? Population and health projections for Victoria, Australia and the world.’

Demographers project populations by making assumptions about future levels of age-specific fertility, mortality and migration. The United Nations projects that if fertility rates globally continue to fall, world population will level off at around 11 billion by the end of this century. Currently world population is increasing by 1 billion every 12 years. The Australian bureau of Statistics projects Australia’s population may increase to 36 million by 2056.

The proportion of the population aged 65 years and over is projected to rise to 24% (from 14% in 2012). This population ageing has significant implications for the provision of health services into the future.

The Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing have engaged consultants to undertake a national evaluation of Phase 3 of the Primary Health Care Research, Evaluation and Development (PHCRED) Strategy.

The PHCRED Strategy was established by the Australian Government in 2000 to focus on improvement to patient outcomes through better primary health care systems, services and practice.

Building on the foundations of the PHCRED Strategy’s previous phases, Phase 3 of the PHCRED Strategy has moved towards a priority-driven approach with a particular focus on primary health care systems research and aims to continue to improve Australia’s capacity in the primary health care research sector, add to the body of knowledge and evidence of primary health care research, and actively promulgate primary health care research to engender effective knowledge exchange.

The evaluation aims to determine the effectiveness and efficiency, appropriateness, and opportunities for possible future improvements to the Strategy, and/or alternative options to the Strategy.  Researchers, policy makers and people involved in service delivery in primary health care in Australia will be asked to participate in the evaluation. International experts in primary health care research will also be asked to participate.

The Centre of Research Excellence in Rural and Remote Primary Health Care (CRE) is one of nine CREs funded through the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute (APHCRI) and the PHCRED Strategy Phase 3, and the entire CRE team has been asked to participate in the evaluation.

The first part of our evaluation took place 14-16 October 2013 in Alice Springs with the evaluators interviewing CRE team members from the Centre for Remote Health.  The evaluators then visited the Bendigo campus on 21-22 October 2013 to meet with CRE team members from Bendigo and Gippsland.  Evaluators will be meeting the Broken Hill CRE team and all other APHCRI CREs over the next few months.

Following these visits, we have received very positive feedback about the activities of the CRE.  The evaluation team commented that they were impressed with its governance; in particular the outstanding project management of our CRE, and the visitors were grateful for the time CRE members took in speaking to them.  The interviews also provided an opportunity for the evaluators to gain a fuller understanding of our CRE research program and primary health care research in general.

It is expected that the final report of Phase 3 of the PHCRED Strategy will be available in May 2014.

Dr Rebecca Kippen’s public seminar titled “The Mad, The Bad & The Sad”: Life courses of women transported to Tasmania, attracted many community members, staff and other interested people.  Rebecca was interviewed on ABC breakfast radio, which stimulated public interest.

Rebecca graduated with a PhD in Demography from the Australian National University in 2002 and currently holds an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship in the Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne. Her two main research projects are ‘Epidemics, mortality and longevity in Tasmania, 1838-1930’ and ‘Convicts and Diggers: a demography of life courses, families and generations’.

Her study of convict women in Tasmania from 1803 to 1930 follows their life courses, families and subsequent generations. Of particular interest was the life of one Anne Beckett.  Meticulous details were recorded about each convict including description, character, marriage, birth and death, which made it possible to trace genealogy through the generations. Convicts were classed into the respectable and the rough, that is, those who behaved and those who didn’t. The rough may have been prostitutes, alcoholics, or thieves and likely to be of Scottish origin. Of interest is that a majority of the convicts were already known to police before transportation. Members of the public interested in following up their genealogy had plenty of questions for Rebecca at the end of her lecture.

‘Founders & Survivors is a partnership between historians, genealogists, demographers and population health researchers. It seeks to record and study the founding population of 73,000 men women and children who were transported to Tasmania.’

The Founders & Survivors newsletter is called ‘Chainletter’, which can be downloaded from the above site.

It is important that Monash University correctly identify and classify research outputs for submission both to external research assessment exercises and for internal reporting purposes, such as assessment of researchers’ performance and academic promotion.

All publications must meet the definition of research. Refer to on-line Policy.

Further to the publication information provided in the October issue, we bring to your attention publications that are classed as Non-HERDC.  (Conference publications, abstracts, posters, letters to the editor, research reports, other etc.) At a University Academic Board meeting, it was decided that Non-HERDC publications need not be entered onto the system.  However, this means that they won’t show up on your ROPES profile.

Non-HERDC publications are at present entered onto the system after category 1 publications (A1, B1, C1), which have priority. After discussion between the Research Administration Manager and the Research Performance Quality and Reporting portfolio members it has been decided to continue entering Non-HERDC publications as before. It will, therefore, be up to individual authors to choose whether to submit or not.

If you decide to submit Non-HERDC publications please get them in for processing as soon as possible, ensuring that you provide all relevant information. Your Publication folder has all the information and the forms required to facilitate the process. The procedure is located at the front of the folder and accompanying forms are listed with each category. Once the publication has been entered onto the system it will appear in your ROPES profile.

As with all publications, the author is responsible for completing the FOR codes and providing all the information requested on the Publication Form (in your folder). Please ensure that all requested information on the Publication Form (eg. E1/4 – Conference publications/abstracts, KO, O, etc) is sent with a copy of the article/booklet/poster to Janelle McGrail (janelle.mcgrail@monash.edu) in the south-east or Sandra Paschkow (sandra.paschkow@monash.edu) in the north-west.

The current FOR codes (for Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences) are available on-line.

Further information about publication categories can be obtained on-line .

Professor Mike Jones from Macquarie University will be visiting the School from 2-6 December 2013 and will be based in Bendigo.  Professor Jones will be presenting a research seminar on Wednesday 4 December from 2-4pm.  A flier with more details will be distributed in the next week. Please direct any questions regarding Professor Jones’ visit to either Leigh Kinsman or Cathy Ward.

Research Bootcamp – Monday 20 January to Friday 24 January

Don’t forget to register to attend any or all of the Research Bootcamp being held in January in Bendigo.  Please send your registration details to Cathy Ward and remember there is no charge to attend the bootcamp.

Confirmed speakers so far include Luke McAvaney from the Monash University Research Office who will be part of panel discussing funding opportunities, Kaye Lassere from Monash University Library who will be running an information session on indexes, journal rankings and Google Scholar, Simon Barrett, from the Monash University Research Office who will be leading a session on Working in a team to produce publications and authorship issues in a team.