News archive

Associate Professor Prue Morgan (Physiotherapy) and Libby Callaway (Occupational Therapy) have worked with colleagues from the University of Sydney, James Cook University and Flinders University to secure a $374,000 NDIS Sector Development Fund Grant.

Associate Professor Prue Morgan (Physiotherapy) and Libby Callaway (Occupational Therapy) have worked with colleagues from the University of Sydney, James Cook University and Flinders University to secure a $374,000 NDIS Sector Development Fund Grant. The project aims for the Universities, partner NDIS providers and NDIS participants to collaboratively document effective greenfield allied health student placements across four states, involving the four universities and eight clinical training sites. The project will build a shared evaluation framework and business modelling for a range of innovative and collaborative clinical training models currently being piloted at each site, with the aim to build NDIS participant, sector and workforce capacity.

Congratulations to Professor Jan Coles from the Department of General Practice who was awarded a Fellowship of the Monash Education Academy.

Congratulations to Professor Jan Coles from the Department of General Practice who was awarded a Fellowship of the Monash Education Academy.  A Fellowship is a prestigious honour, bestowed upon staff who have demonstrated sustained leadership and innovation in education.  As part of this award, Jan will be working with the discipline and academic progress committees, looking at how to best respond to students who perpetrate sexual harassment and assault, who come before these committees. Jan's work with the Give Respect project and team is working on prevention, while her fellowship will look more at remediation.

A Participatory Community Placement Project from students within the Masters of occupational therapy Practice course was recently featured on the ABC’s ‘Gardening Australia’ program.

A Participatory Community Placement Project from students within the Masters of occupational therapy Practice course was recently featured on the ABC’s ‘Gardening Australia’ program.
Olivia Sun and Isabelle Aubrey did a fantastic job representing our Occupational Therapy program, implementing a community garden with one of Yooralla’s disability residential accommodations. The six-month-long project involved developing a sustainable kitchen garden with the residents to help them engage in meaningful tasks and spark positive social connections. This was done by creating an accessible garden space featuring modified long-handled gardening tools, educational resources, and a photo diary for residents to track their journey in the garden as a community. Since its completion, the garden has successfully empowered residents to take on new roles.

To watch the segment, click here. The segment starts 7 minutes in.

Although Dr Kelly-Ann Bowles from the Department of Community Emergency Health and Paramedic Practice, has spent a large amount of her research career looking at bra design features, there are still unanswered questions. Researchers know that most women do not wear a correctly fitted bra but they don’t know if a bad bra fit could be associated with neck or shoulder pain. Kelly and her research team want to better understand how your breast size can affect the posture of women.

This study will look at women’s posture of all shapes and sizes, measuring their muscle strength around their shoulder, and collect information in things like bra size and shoulder or neck pain. No one has looked at the relationship between breast size and muscle strength and Dr Bowles is hoping that their research findings might help in future treatment plans for women with chronic shoulder or neck pain.
See Kelly's Nine News article here.

A group of students from within our Faculty are setting off on a new initiative exploring interdisciplinary health care in a completely different context. Twelve students will travel to Ho Chi Min City in Vietnam during November and December 2016 to meet local health professionals and Australian Aid workers.

This 4 week international student mobility program is a pilot project of undergraduate interprofessional practice and volunteering led by Alison Francis-Cracknell from the Physiotherapy department, building upon Alison’s own healthcare volunteering experience in Vietnam in 2012/2013. It is a joint project of the Departments of Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Community Emergency Health and Paramedic Practice and the School of Nursing and Midwifery, supported by Monash Abroad, the School of Primary Health Care and external engagement with Scope Global project management.

Students will have the opportunity to explore health and health education in Vietnam, meeting with staff and students from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Ho Chi Minh City, visiting 4 hospitals and a rural community health service, undertake local language classes and meet with Australian health volunteers currently working in Vietnam. They will also work on group projects aimed at developing their international health care perspective, cultural capabilities and insight into the delivery of culturally appropriate healthcare services.

Academic Dr Melissa Petrakis has won a research award in the 2016 TheMHS Awards program for service to mental health.

Dr Petrakis won The Tom Trauer Evaluation and Research Award. It was given in recognition of Academic mentoring, collaboration and co-production in mental health services research.

It was one of eight Awards made in the Service and Program categories, three for Exceptional Contribution, three for research and four for Media.

The Award was announced last month at the Annual TheMHS Conference held this year in Auckland, New Zealand.

Kevin Allan, Mental Health Commissioner, Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner, New Zealand, presented Dr Petrakis with her award.

It acknowledges excellence in the way Dr Petrakis approached research and championed co-design, co-production and co-authorship, with an emphasis on questioning and learning together, combined with respectful mentoring.

Dr Petrakis has worked in mental health services and programs for 20 years, the first decade as a clinician and the second as a practice-based researcher. She has engaged in extensive collaborative research with people with lived experience of mental illness and their families, with interdisciplinary staff within clinical services, and with programs and staff across the community support services sector; evidenced by 37 publications (including 16 as first author).

She has delivered over 60 national and international conference presentations. Her strengths-based mental health research contributed to a Silver Award at TheMHS (2011) and 'Highly Commended' at the Victorian Public Healthcare Awards (2011); and the co-production approach received a 'Special Judges' Commendation' at TheMHS (2013).

The MHS Awards are presented every year by TheMHS Learning Network to recognise and encourage best practice, excellence and innovation in mental health service delivery. The Awards have been made annually since 1992.

The MHS Conference is the largest mental health and addiction services conference in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. TheMHS aims to promote positive attitudes about mental health and mental illness, and to stimulate debate that challenges the boundaries of knowledge and ideas about mental health care.

MORE than 75 emergency responders from multiple agencies  descended on central Frankston recently for a mock training exercise.

Department of Community Emergency Health and Paramedic Practice students,  teamed with Frankston Police, Bayside Shopping Centre, Frankston CFA and  Frankston Council for the drill designed to test the organisations’  co-ordinated responses.

A car fire simulation and two serious assaults were set up at  Bayside Shopping Centre.
The drill went very well and the teams worked well together. It  is great to see relationships with external partners being built to maintain  community safety.

Kelly-Ann Bowles (DCEHPP), A/Prof Brett Williams (DCEHPP),  Nathan Stam (DCEHPP), Prof Terry Haines (Physiotherapy), Dr Cylie Williams  (Peninsula Health) and A/Prof Stephen Maloney (Physiotherapy) have recently  been awarded $15,000 under the 2017 Supervisor Development Grant funding round.

Their project will be looking at strengthening supervisory  partnerships with our Health partners.
The proposal outlines a measured approach to engaging external  supervisors and developing skills commensurate with Monash University  expectations. As Monash continues to develop relations with more industry  partners, the approaches adopted by this team to close skills and expectations  gaps between Monash supervisors and their industry colleagues will have the  potential to be highly instructive for other academic units.

Libby Callaway from the Department of Occupational Therapy has  also received funding success under the Monash Graduate Education Supervisors  Grant. Her project is titled “Building social impact and industry partnerships  within Australia’s National Disability and Injury Insurance Schemes: Scoping  graduate research needs in housing, assistive technology and support design for  people with disability.” The grant will enable further work with key disability  industry partners to identify and map current research activity relating to  housing, technology and support design for people with disability, and identify  gaps that may be addressed via graduate education programs, as well as  supervisor capacity building in this area.

Professor Margaret Alston recently attended the National Climate Adaptation Conference hosted by CSIRO and the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) at the national convention centre in Adelaide.

The conference brought together scientists, social scientists and various other disciplines to discuss the latest research on climate change. There were approximately 2000 attendees and Margaret's contribution was to give the plenary keynote on social implications of climate changes.

Congratulations to Associate Professor Jan Coles who was recently nominated for a Monash University Australian citation and teaching excellence award

Associate Professor Craig Hassed was recently invited to speak at the House of Commons by Welsh MP, Chris Ruane, who co-chairs the UK Government's Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group, which was established in 2014 to review the scientific evidence and current best practice in mindfulness training; develop policy recommendations for government, based on these findings; and provide a forum for discussion for the role of mindfulness and its implementation in public policy.

Associate Professor Hassed's address included "a rationale for why mindfulness is so important not just for health but for workplace settings" and an overview of the world-leading work Monash is doing around mindfulness.
While in the UK, Associate Professor Hassed also gave the keynote address at the inaugural Mindfulness in Medicine Conference hosted by the University of Buckingham and facilitated the conference's day-long masterclass where he shared the lessons he has learned from the "Monash experience."

Associate Professor Hassed is now preparing for the 2016 launch of the Future Learn Mindfulness for Wellbeing and Peak Performance online course on 19 September developed in conjunction with the team at Monash Learning and Teaching.  The six-week course is free and is co-hosted with clinical psychologist and Monash mindfulness consultant Dr Richard Chambers.

Congratulations to Dr Karen Price who was awarded an RACGP Family Medical Care Education and Research Grant (FMCER) worth  $10,000 for her project titled "The role of peer connection in general practice: what is the role of peer connection and its association to empathy and prevention of burnout in general practitioners?"

Congratulations to Dr Ray Chan and A/Prof Peter Schattner on having 3 posters accepted for the Global Addiction Conference in Venice, Italy, 2 - 4 October 2016. The posters are all on the topic of the appropriate use of the CIAW-Ar tool which measures alcohol withdrawal, but is often used in patients who also have illicit drug and psychiatric co-morbidities. Dr Chan will be attending the conference.

Celebrating Success

Professor Danielle Mazza, Department of General Practice, has undertaken research aiming to uncover why there are differences in lung cancer outcomes for Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD). This research has been awarded Cancer Council funding through a national priority research scheme for $430,000 over three years.

The grant, awarded through the Priority Driven Research Scheme administered by the Government agency Cancer Australia, will be utilised to compare the treatment pathways of CALD and Anglo-Australian patients. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality. It is responsible for almost one in five cancer deaths in the country.

Professor Mazza said that traditionally some groups had poorer outcomes and the research aimed to shed light on reasons for this.

"We hope to fill in the gaps in our knowledge by comparing how long it takes a patient from a CALD background to receive treatment after symptoms first develop compared to anglo-patients, by tracking differences in their treatment pathways."

An innovative new braille fridge ‘map' for the blind has been unveiled at Insight Education Centre in Berwick to help blind and vision impaired children become more confident in the kitchen.

Developed by two Master of Occupational Therapy Practice students, the fridge map can be affixed to a fridge door, and aims to help blind and vision impaired children become more confident with food preparation and cooking. The map was developed in response to the current low educational outcomes and poor employment prospects for blind people, and is aimed to encourage independence so blind people have the ability to know exactly where food is in the fridge.

"You would be amazed at the changes in the kids when they learn to do something for themselves," Judy Stampton, who was involved in the project said.

Kate Garam, also involved in the project, said she hoped the map would encourage children to cook or help others cook and hoped the idea could be adapted for blind and vision impaired people's homes to help them navigate their tool sheds, closets and other areas of the house. She said the idea took six months to develop and agreed it was surprising that such a thing was not already available.

"The kids say they really love it, they say it's really nice to be able to read it, and they love the fact that for the first part of the lesson they can read the recipe, work out what ingredients it needs and find them in the fridge," she said.
Insight Principal Timothy Hemphil said the food-finder map would help enhance a range of like skills for the students, as well as build core education abilities.

"Presently, 70 per cent of blind adults are unemployed. The former ‘integration' schools model has not provided the framework for life skills or future employment. We see Insight as providing a pathway to both of these, as well as meaningful independence and full participation in life."

What a fantastic innovation!

An Occupational Therapy student enrolled in the postgraduate unit OCC5111 - Advanced Hand Therapy Theory, Principles and Practice, was recently awarded the 2015 Best Research paper for an article originally submitted as a university assignment.

Frances Thomsen (nee Black) won a year's membership of the Australian Hand Therapy Association (AHTA) for her paper titled "Post-operative mobilization following volar plate fixation of distal radius fractures" which was published in the association's newsletter. She was encouraged to submit her assignment by Melissa Hirth, one of Monash's tutors in this course. Several graduates of this unit have now published their work in this newsletter, which is a great demonstration of the calibre of academic work completed by students.

Mask study with Physio students

You could be forgiven for thinking you had walked into a hospital ward if you were wandering through the physiotherapy practical rooms recently. Third year physiotherapy students are donning masks and costumes to take part in an exciting new research project funded by a 2016 SPHC Learning and Teaching Grant and there have been lots of elderly ‘patients' being put through their paces!

The research team, headed by Narelle Dalwood and involving Prue Morgan, Stephen Maloney, Cameron Gosling and Ruben Hopmans, are investigating low cost, low fidelity simulation as a method of preparing students for clinical placement and the realities of patient interaction. During the nine week pre-clinical programme students participate in peer simulation for four hours every Thursday morning.  Clinical scenarios based on authentic patient presentations are used, and students take turns in playing the part of a ‘patient' and a ‘physiotherapist.' Tutors circulate the room and interact with the students as ‘clinical supervisors'. The study is investigating whether the use of masks and costumes for the ‘patients' increases the realism and educational benefits of the interaction. In the words of one student ‘I felt more emotion towards patient, more empathy' and another ‘thoroughly enjoyed the clinical simulation as it puts in perspective the real difficulties and problems that real life physiotherapists have to deal with'. The data from the randomised, controlled trial is currently being analysed and will provide important insights into the utility, feasibility and benefits of this exciting educational innovation.

New non-invasive brain stimulation technique for pain management

Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy 10 year celebration

Congratulations to SAPCRU led by Grant Russell for securing a NHMRC Partnership grant of $1.1million for the OPTIMISE project to improve primary health care delivery to refugees living in Australia. The work will be supported by a further $1.1 million in cash and in-kind contributions from partner organisations. The team have received wide spread media coverage for this including a recent interview on ABC which you can listen to here.

Social Work resource library

New Cardiac Monitors for Paramedics

The Department of Community Emergency Health and Paramedic Practice (DCEHPP) was the successful tenderer to re-write a new Health Education, Care and Medical Applications (HECMA) program for the Institute of Applied Technology (IAT) in Abu Dhabi. The 18-month project is worth more than $800,000 and Rod Mason will be responsible for the project management of the program. The goals of the program are to increase health literacy, improve self-efficacy, enhance social responsibility, promote advocacy, handle emergencies safely and introduce students to the health sector. The program will be implemented in a number of schools in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and delivered to students in G10, 11 and 12.
The intention is for the program to also achieve national recognition by the National Qualifications Authority in the United Arab Emirates. This will lead to students being eligible to receive a formal qualification according the Qualifications Framework Emirates, upon successful completion of the program.

The South Asia Women's Resilience Index

Dr Stephen Maloney form the Department of Physiotherapy has been recognised at the Monash Teacher Accelerator Programme’s inaugural awards. The Monash Teacher Accelerator Programme, an initiative of the Office of the Vice-Provost (Learning and Teaching) (OVPLT), aims to recognise and reward Level B and C staff, accelerate the career development of high performing current early to mid-career academic staff and provide motivation for educational leadership and innovation.

Congratulations Stephen!