Meeting place: practices in the South Gippsland Year 4C cluster met at the school's new offices in Leongatha for the first time.

The Year 4C South Gippsland practice cluster, comprising GP practices from Foster, Korumburra, Leongatha and Wonthaggi, had its first meeting in the new offices of the School of Rural Health  South Gippsland.

The offices are located in the grounds of the Leongatha Hospital.

The group meets bi-monthly for a meal and to discuss any student issues, as well as to keep updated on current Monash University plans and policies.

Representatives from all five practices attended and were impressed with the increased space and facilities for both students and staff.

The new premises have a tutorial room, four offices for staff, a kitchen area, a storage room and a foyer.

Analysis: mental health academics meeting in Lismore collaborate on a paper. (Note the member joing by videoconference.)

Dr Anton Isaacs from MUDRIH attended the annual meeting of the Mental Health Academics from the University Departments of Rural Health at Lismore in NSW. Dr Isaacs represented Keith Sutton who is on study leave.

The meeting focused on preparing a paper for publication on the scope and work of the MHAs in Australia.

Faking it: Mildura-based clinical educators learn how to simulate wounds

School of Rural Health (SRH) clinical educators hosted their counterparts from Latrobe University and Mildura Base Hospital recently to learn the unique art of moulage at a training session in the SRH Mildura Clinical Simulation Centre.

Moulage involves the application of mock injuries for the purposes of simulating real-world experience. It is widely used to train health care professionals and military personnel in emergency medical responses.

Moulage achieves realistic simulations of injuries and medical conditions. Wounds, fractures, amputations, gunshot wounds, burns and various diseases can all be realistically portrayed.

The impact of work place accidents, violent crime, motor vehicle accidents, terrorism, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction and other medical emergencies are also simulated through the use of moulage.

Laerdal Australia, a renowned provider of training for lifesaving and emergency medical care, introduced the use of moulage modelling to the Mildura-based professionals.

Among some of the very realistic wounds produced by participants on the day were those created by Clinical Skills Lecturer Howard Cook who wore his proudly, for all to admire.

Participants responded positively to the training, with everyone keen to try some modelling of their own. The success of the event leaves Mildura well positioned to become a centre for future moulage training.

Recovery: Year 4C medical student Kim congratulates these budding young doctors on the miraculous recovery of a “very sick” little dog.

Sick teddies and dolls made a quick recovery much to the delight of youngsters who visited the special “toy hospital” set up by the School of Rural Health Latrobe Valley & West Gippsland as part of the Latrobe Regional Hospital Open Day.

SRH staff and students had a constant stream of young traffic, helping bandaging cuts to the toys, using stethoscopes to check their “hearts” and even getting to don a surgeon’s cap.

The simulation room proved popular however some smaller children were left wondering about the very still and compliant  “patients” lying on their beds.

School director Dr Joseph Tam said it was a great day, with young visitors in particular keen to try some of the equipment. “It also allowed us to show off our facilities to the public and give them an idea of the work we do in training medical students,” he said.

Dr Tam praised staff and students who assisted on the day.

Intestinal: Dr Bob Irungu explains the workings of the intestines using a very long sausage to students Madeline Jong, Sophie Nicholls, Jamie Chin, Piper Stubbs and Grady Blake.

A group of 17 enthusiastic grade 6 students from Gippsland Grammar School in Bairnsdale recently spent a few hours getting hands-on experience with body parts.

The day was coordinated by Laurea Atkinson, Marnie Connolly, Eleanor Mitchell and Angelo d’Amore with the aim of generating interest in science.

Four stations of body systems were set up: respiratory, the skin, digestive and cardiovascular. Students rotated through the various areas, learning how long the short intestine is, where our food goes, how to look after skin abrasions and how the heart works.

The digestive system station required getting the local butcher to make a 17 foot long sausage/intestine to illustrate the digestive system.

Dr Bob Irungu had the students fascinated explaining the various parts of the body involved in digestion of food. Read the rest of this entry »

Laurea Atkinson from School of Rural Health East Gippsland had access to the best of simulation in Australia when she attended the SimHealth/SimTec T Conference in Adelaide.

Simulation on show came from sectors including healthcare, aviation, defences and games industries.

Laurea was one of five successful recipients of the SimHeatlh/SimTec T Conference travel awards. She presented a poster “Simulation Education in the Rural Sector: Can we make a difference?”.

The conference was attended by 650 delegates from Australia, America, United Kingdom, Korea, Israel and New Zealand.’

Following the opening welcome and a discussion on differences in the use of simulation within industries, there was a spectacular change of pace. The centre stage was transformed into a motor vehicle accident rescue, complete with emergency workers sliding down ropes from the rafters to a transformer designed vehicle utilised in training exercises for emergency services.

The poster hub showcased projects such as the development of a portable and sustainable simulation-based program for health professionals in rural and remote areas.

Laurea attended many and varied sessions over the three days of the conference including an oral presentation on “Camp Simulation – a Rural Initiative”. This session, which drew on involvement by the Ambulance Community Officers (ACOs) in rural and remote Victoria, was presented by Terry Houge.

Coordination of the training sessions for the ACOs is a joint effort in which Laurea is involved as the Simulated Learning Environment Project Officer for East Gippsland. It was a proud moment for Laurea to hear Terry present this report around such important training and learning initiatives.

Professor Debra Nestel's work in the use of simulation in healthcare education has been recognised by the presitgious Ray Page Lifetime Simulation Achievement Award.

Professor Debra Nestal received the Ray Page Lifetime Simulation Achievement Award at the SimHealth conference in late August. The award recognises an outstanding contribution to the development of modelling and simulation in science, technology, policy or industry in Australia. It is only presented if a candidate who meets the criteria is nominated.

As Professsor of Simulation Education in Healthcare for the School of Rural Health, her research interests include the role of simulation in supporting learning, particularly in procedural and operative skills.

Debra pioneered the concept of patient-focused simulation (PFS) with her colleague Roger Kneebone. In PFS, a simulated patient and simulator model (urinary catheterization, suture pad etc) are ‘combined’ in a simulated environment in order to provide a learner-centred experience. The approach has been adopted internationally for teaching, learning and assessing procedural skills in undergraduate medical education.

The Simulation Achievement Award is recognition of her significant contribution to the use of simulation in healthcare education.

September’s Journal Club will look at a mixed methods study of the impacts of bushfires on mental health and social connectedness. PhD candidate, Rouve Jan Forbes, will facilitate the session.

When: Wednesday 17 September 12.00 noon to 1.00 pm
Article: Gibbs et al, Beyond Bushfires: Community, Resilience and Recovery – a longitudinal mixed method study of the medium to long term impacts of bushfires on mental health and social connectedness, BMC Public Health 2013 13:1036

Download  the article from BioMed Central.

How to join the session

This month’s Journal Club will use Zoom which allows you to join from a desktop or laptop computer, tablet, smartphone, destop phone or videoconference facility. No matter where you are, if you’re near just about any kind of communications device you can join the session.

Keep an eye out for a follow-up email with details you need to join the session. In the meantime, see how to join a Zoom meeting and download the application to your device.

The Ed Tech Inservice series presents two sessions in September. The first will be delivered from Clayton campus as part of the e-Solutions technology fair.

Presenting in the Cloud – Tuesday 30 September 11 am – 12 pm

Prezi is an online presentation tool that enables you to create dynamic presentations and share them with an audience anywhere on any device.What’s it got over PowerPoint? Presenter, Julie Willems, will demonstrate.

Register to receive the link to join the session.

Word tips and tricks – Tuesday 30 September 1 – 2 pm

Learn some quick ways to make Word work for you. Presenters Melissa McNicol and Helen Cronin share some simple ways to supercharge your documents.

Register to receive the link to join the session.

Joining a session

Ed Tech Inservice sessions are now presented using Zoom. See here for instructions on how to join a Zoom meeting.

You can also catch up on previous sessions at the Technolgy in Education site.

Retention of NSW rural and remote GPs differs markedly according to both geographical remoteness and community population size, as well as according to a range of other factors including Visiting Medical Officer status, procedural activities, country of primary medical degree, conditional registration and coastal location.

These are some of the finding presented by Dr Deb Russell School of Rural Health Research from her research on the retention of rural and remote NSW general practitioners at the Primary Health Care Research conference in Canberra in July.

The conference theme was: Integrating knowledge exchange to improve primary health care outcomes. Deb’s presentation related to recently published research undertaken by herself, and John Humphreys and Matthew McGrail, at SRH and the Centre of Research Excellence in Rural and Remote Primary Health Care, as well as with key stakeholders from the NSW Rural Doctors Network. The research presented forms part of Deb’s PhD and fits closely with one of SRH’s strategic research direction themes: health services and workforce. Presenting this work strengthens the national profile of the School of Rural Health, according to Deb. Read the rest of this entry »