Archive for the 'Health' Category

The University of New England stands to benefit from the development of strategic relationships in the international arena, following the unqualified success of its International Health Conference held in Thailand this week.

The International Conference on Health Service Delivery Management is a joint effort between UNE and Thailand’s Naresuan University, and has attracted more than 450 delegates from across three continents.

The Vice-Chancellor and CEO of UNE, Professor Alan Pettigrew, in Thailand, said the conference had pulled together knowledge from the fields of health, medicine and education to address global issues in health service delivery.

He said the conference had attracted considerable international interest from health practitioners, health providers, and educators from 16 countries including Australia, Sudan, Nepal, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Laos and Bhutan.

“All of the international experts present are committed to improving health care and to learning from each other through research and education strategies,” Professor Pettigrew said. “The international partnership between UNE and Naresuan University is evidently world-leading in its concept and practical application for improving health care in rural and regional settings.”

Professor Victor Minichiello, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of UNE’s Faculty of The Professions, said that the strategic relationships developed between UNE and institutions such as Naresuan University and the World Health Organisation would provide benefits to the global community.

“It is anticipated the conference will result in the expansion of this collaboration into a wider regional network,” Professor Minichiello said. “I commend the organisers for their vision and dedication to the wellbeing of communities, and look forward to UNE working with global partners to develop strategic relationships that not only benefit UNE, but tackle global health service problems head-on.”

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here expands to show a colourful ceremony at the conference.
This article was written by UNE’s Marketing and Public Affairs and reproduced here with their permission.

The University of New England is adopting an innovative approach to the training of health-care professionals in mental health practice.

Next year, UNE’s School of Health will introduce a new program that will address mental health from the perspectives of all the professionals who deal with it - including nurses, GPs, counsellors, teachers, social workers, and occupational therapists.

“With this holistic approach, we’ll be bringing together students from throughout the community of carers,” said the convener of the new program, Dr Sally Hunter. “This will give each of them a greater appreciation of the input of their colleagues from other health-care disciplines in dealing with mental health issues. The course will include case studies from all of those disciplines.”

This interdisciplinary approach includes the composition of the teaching staff as well as of the student cohort. “A core guiding principle has been that teaching will be by an interdisciplinary team,” Dr Hunter said.

The new program builds on UNE’s established reputation in fields such as nursing, counselling and psychology, and the success of its recently-introduced Bachelor of Medicine (Joint Medical Program) and Bachelor of Social Work degree programs. It provides for a “nested” series of awards beginning with a Graduate Certificate in Mental Health Practice and progressing to a Graduate Diploma in Counselling for Health and Social Care, and then to a Master of Counselling degree.

The entire program will be delivered by distance education, with the Graduate Certificate program comprising four units that can be completed in one semester of full-time study or one year of part-time study. The Graduate Certificate program also includes two compulsory residential schools.

“Students will be working on-line with people from other health-care disciplines, and meeting them face-to-face at residential schools,” Dr Hunter said. “This will enable them to develop an interdisciplinary perspective on mental health care. Currently, professionals in one health-care discipline are often unaware of what their colleagues in other disciplines do.

“We are very excited about the new program, and have received positive feedback about it from many of our current students.”

“There’s an acknowledged need in our community for people who can help those suffering from mental illness - and their carers,” she explained. “This is especially so in rural areas, where there is a hidden level of depression. If we catch mental illness early, people have a better chance of recovery.”

This article was written by UNE’s Marketing and Public Affairs and reproduced here with their permission.

Half-way through the inaugural year of the ground-breaking course, both students and teachers in the University of New England’s Bachelor of Social Work degree program are excited about its success.

Ninety-two students are enrolled in the new course, with more than 80 per cent of them coming from regions outside the capital cities. “We’re particularly pleased that so many of the students from rural and regional backgrounds aim to return to the regions to work,” said the program’s convener, Dr Myfanwy Maple.

Dr Maple added that, when the students begin their work-place experience in 2011, they will be placed - where possible - in the regions that they come from: “So they’ll already be starting to give back to their local communities,” she said.

She said that the students were particularly enjoying the structure of the course, with its varied units from around the campus feeding into the core social work units. The students themselves confirm this assessment: “It’s a great mixture, while being a very structured degree program,” said Bethany McInnes from Tamworth. (Bethany is pictured here.)

This year, the students are taking units in Psychology, Sociology and Indigenous Studies as well as in Social Work, and in first semester they also took a unit in Politics. “At first we were all a bit hesitant about Politics,” Bethany said, “but then we realised how important it was.”

“The best thing about the course,” said Anna Richards (who also comes from Tamworth), “is that so much of the work we do is related to real life - looking at case studies through a problem-based learning approach. It asks us to think as if we really were working in the field, and where we would go to find the resources we need. It’s not just reading from textbooks.”

The program has a rural focus, with emphasis on Indigenous people and child protection, and is ideally suited to students who have a commitment to assisting families from disadvantaged backgrounds. Anna said she had transferred from Social Science to the four-year Social Work degree program because it offered a specific qualification for employment as a social worker. She added that she aims to work in a rural area.

“I wanted a career where I could work with people,” Bethany said, “and this degree offers so many options.”

Dr Maple said that the student cohort was a mixture of school-leavers and people with a range of experience in related fields. “It’s a nice balance of backgrounds,” she said.

The UNE degree program is one of the few social work degree programs offered by distance education. At least 70 per cent of the initial cohort is studying off campus.

Professor Victor Minichiello, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of UNE’s Faculty of The Professions, said that he was “extremely pleased with the initial response to the Bachelor of Social Work degree program”, which was “attracting great interest from both school leavers and mature-aged students who are committed to addressing the social inclusion agenda so strongly reflected in government policies at both State and Commonwealth level”.

He said the response fulfilled the prediction of the NSW Minister for Regional Development, Phillip Costa, who, in officially launching the program in March this year, said that it would attract students from both rural and urban locations in large numbers.

“UNE Social Work graduates will soon be joining the workforce and making significant contributions to addressing the shortage of social workers in regional communities in Australia,” Professor Minichiello said.

For more information about the UNE social work course please see

http://www.une.edu.au/study/social-work/
This article was written by UNE’s Marketing and Public Affairs and reproduced here with their permission.

Link to The Guyra Argus (5 June 2009) for the full article about first-year Nursing student from The University of New England, Kerry Rologas, and his stint at Guyra. This is the first of many practical placements he will undertake while studying for his nursing degree…

The University of New England and Naresuan University have marked five years of collaboration with an intensive research workshop at Naresuan University in Phitsanulok, Thailand.

The workshop involved doctoral public health students from the Faculty of Public Health at Naresuan University, who investigated maternal and child health services as possible topics for their PhD research. They were assisted by visits to the Din Thong Health Care Centre, Wangthong District hospital, and the Buddhachinaraj Hospital, where the students met with senior maternal and child health staff to discuss existing services.

These visits were followed by a series of lectures by Prof Mary Cruickshank from UNE on research methodology and sessions to develop the students’ research projects. The students then presented their draft proposals to the research team and to Dr Thavatchai Kamoltham of the Ministry of Public Health and Dr Veerachai Sittipiyasakul, the Director of Regional Health Promotion, Phitsanulok Province, Ministry of Public Health. Feedback from this session will allow the students to further refine their research proposal for their PhD studies.

Dr Prawit Taytiwat, dean of the Faculty of Public Health at Naresuan University, said the week-long workshop had been “an invaluable experience for students and academics alike to work closely with international colleagues.”

Dr Taytiwat, who is also an adjunct associate professor in the schools of Health and Rural Medicine at UNE went on: “This approach demonstrates the commitment of Naresuan University to develop the capacity of both its academics and students in research methods and to access international perspectives about health care delivery.”

Speaking on behalf of the UNE research team, Dr David Briggs noted that the Thai health system had made significant progress towards achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals in Maternal and Child Health.

“This provides the public health doctoral students and the research team with the opportunity to explore the organisation and management of health services with a view to how the system might be strengthened,” Dr Briggs said.

“This approach allowed students to consider how the concepts of health management delivery knowledge might be applied to traditional public health perspectives of these students and academic staff.”

Staff from the two universities will next meet at an international conference on health management service delivery in Phitsanulok in October 2009.
Published with permission from UNE’s Marketing and Public Affairs.

The University of New England’s Bachelor of Social Work degree program will be officially launched next Monday by the Hon. Phillip Costa MP, NSW Minister for Regional Development.

Teaching in this innovative, four-year undergraduate degree program began last month, with 63 students enrolled in its inaugural year. The course coordinator, Dr Myfanwy Maple (pictured here), a Senior Lecturer in UNE’s School of Health, said that 42 of the students were studying full-time, and that about half of those were studying on-campus.

The Bachelor of Social Work program builds on UNE’s strengths in providing rurally-focused professional training in related and complementary areas (including medicine, nursing and criminology), grounded on the philosophy that those who are trained “in the bush” often stay “in the bush”. The program includes 980 hours of fieldwork practice.

The Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) officially endorsed the program last September. The independent report to the AASW Board, on which it based its endorsement, noted that local social work practitioners had had “considerable input into the detail of the program”. “There is evidence of a wide range of social work practitioners in central and northern NSW committed to UNE social work conceptualisation, and to the integration of social work practice and education,” the report continued.

Monday’s launch will be in the courtyard adjacent to UNE’s Pat O’Shane Building (or in the building’s upstairs foyer in the event of wet weather), beginning at 10.15 am. The launch by Mr Costa will be followed by responses from the Chancellor of UNE, the Hon. Richard Torbay MP, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alan Pettigrew, and the Head of Hunter New England Health’s Social Work Discipline, Ms Susan Gould.

Published with permission from UNE Marketing and Public Affairs.

Leading researchers and practitioners from around the world are coming together for the very first time to assess the evidence supporting the use of complementary medicine.

The first International Evidence-based Complementary Medicine Conference is to be held at the University of New England, NSW, from the 13^th to the 15^th of March.

The participants will include international authorities on complementary therapies such as Professor Alexander Panossian, Director of Scientific Projects at the Swedish Herbal Institute in Gothenburg, and Simon Mills from the UK, who established the world’s first university centre in complementary medicine.

They will also include eminent researchers and practitioners of orthodox medicine, such as Professor Frank Rosenfeldt, Head of the Cardiac Surgical Research Unit at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, and Professor Kerryn Phelps, the first woman president of the Australian Medical Association. Professor Rosenfeldt will present the results of his research into improving the success of procedures such as cardiac bypass operations by using nutrients including fish oils and antioxidants.

The conference will thus provide ground-breaking insights into the interactions between orthodox and complementary therapies. One of its organisers, Associate Professor Graham Lloyd Jones from UNE’s School of Science and Technology, said one aim of the conference was to identify and explain both positive and negative interactions, so that positive interactions can be encouraged and any negative interactions avoided.

“Over 40 per cent of the Australian population now admits to using some sort of complementary medicine or therapy,” Dr Lloyd Jones said, “and this number is increasing. It’s vitally important, therefore, to assess the evidence supporting the use of these therapies - especially their use in conjunction with orthodox medicine.”

For example, Kerry Bone, an Associate Professor in UNE’s School of Health and Director of Research at MediHerb, will review the clinical evidence relating to the use of complementary medicines in cancer care - especially in the context of concurrent orthodox medical treatment.

“This conference will be highly relevant to the professional development and clinical practice of medical doctors, nurses, pharmacists and natural therapists, providing them with new insights about the efficacy and safety of natural treatments,” Mr Bone said.

A session on “complementary medicine and the brain” will include talks titled “Natural products as cognitive enhancers” and “Herbal and nutritional treatments for depression and anxiety”. Other topics for discussion at the conference will include clinical evidence supporting the use of herbal medicines such as gingko, black cohosh and pine bark, the function of compounds such as omega-3 oils, and the role of complementary medicine in facilitating healthy longevity, improving aged care, and managing conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. Dr Lloyd Jones and his postgraduate students at UNE will present the results of their ground-breaking research on the bioactive components of plants used in traditional Aboriginal medicine.

For more information - and registration details - go to: http://www.conferencecompany.com.au/compmed/

THE PHOTOGRAPH of Associate Professor Graham Lloyd Jones displayed here expands to show him working with research student Nicholas Sadgrove.
Article reproduced with permission from UNE’s news list.

Leading researchers and policy makers in oral health have confirmed that living in a rural area is one of the two greatest risk factors – along with economic disadvantage – for poor oral health in Australia.

Attending a national Rural Oral Health Symposium at Shepparton in Victoria late last year, they drafted a declaration (the “Shepparton Declaration on Improving Oral Health for Rural Australians”) that calls on governments to increase the number of oral health professionals in rural and regional areas.

The Declaration also urges governments to increase support for universities to provide dental students with rural experience and training.

One of the speakers at the Shepparton symposium, Professor Victor Minichiello, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Faculty of The Professions at the University of New England, said that a recent proposal by UNE to recruit and retain dentists in rural communities was “something that deserves attention by both State and Federal governments”.

Professor Minichiello, an advocate for rural health, presented statistics revealing that there were 55 dentists per 100,000 people in metropolitan NSW while only 17 dentists per 100,000 people in rural and regional NSW. These average figures mean that there is one dentist per 1,818 people in the cities while only one dentist per 5,588 people in country areas.

“New and collaborative modes of networked practice among professionals are required,” Professor Minichiello said. “These include better use of communication technologies, new methods of education, and the development of a critical mass of academic teaching staff closely engaged with rural professionals.”

The convener of the symposium, Associate Professor Rodrigo Mariño from the University of Melbourne, said that many delegates had been deeply concerned about growing disadvantages in oral health in rural and regional areas and the unmet needs of these communities, and had called for new approaches to address the grave oral health disparities between rural and metropolitan Australia.

He said government support was urgently needed for initiatives such as allowing dental therapists to practise some dental procedures, expanding fluoridation into more rural areas, and encouraging dental graduates to practise in rural and regional areas.

The 120 delegates to the symposium, held on the Shepparton campus of the University of Melbourne, heard that hospital admissions of children for preventable dental conditions were, in some rural communities, nearly seven times more than in some metropolitan areas. The Declaration calls on governments to address the urgent need to improve access to dental services for Indigenous communities, and implement long-term funding for programs in those communities. It also urges governments to include oral health as an intrinsic part of overall health reform strategies.

A copy of the Shepparton Declaration can be obtained at: http://www.crcoralhealthscience.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=337&Itemid=383

For more information, contact Professor Victor Minichiello on 02 67 73 3862 or 0400 421 352, or Associate Professor Rodrigo Mariño on 03 9341 1558.

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
Article reproduced with permission from UNE’s news list.

Students wanting to study nursing at the University of New England now have more options. From this year, students studying a Bachelor of Nursing degree at UNE will be able to obtain an Advanced Diploma and become an Enrolled Nurse after the first two years of the course. In addition, those who are already Endorsed Enrolled Nurses can enter straight into the beginning of second year and study for 2 years to become a Registered Nurse.The course will also have more blended learning in second and third years. Students will have the chance to study entirely on campus or to instead learn mainly on-line, and attend a number of short intensive schools and clinical practice blocks each semester.

‘The new changes mean the degree is more flexible and better suited to students who don’t want to relocate to Armidale or who can’t afford not to work’ said Dr Penny Paliadelis, Senior Lecturer and Course Coordinator for Nursing at UNE’s School of Health.‘We now have multiple entry and exit points for our students. After two years of the course, students will be allowed to leave with an Advanced Diploma and become Enrolled Nurses or they can choose to stay for the full three years and become Registered Nurses’ Dr Paliadelis added.

Armidale’s Todd Naylor has wanted to become a nurse since leaving school more than a decade ago. ‘With a young family to think of, my wife and I needed financial stability and were never really in a position to live off only one wage in order for me to study’ he said. ‘However we were drawn to the course’s increased flexibility and the fact I can study part time and on-line’ he said.

UNE is also leading the way with its new entry criteria. ‘Those who don’t meet the usual entry standards, but feel they have the capacity to become nurses, can enter UNE’s nursing course via interview’ explained Dr Paliadelis. ‘Students new to UNE need to make an initial application to UAC and fill in the request form to book in for the final round of panel interviews to be held on the 22^nd of January in the School of Health’.

‘I was accepted into the course via interview’ said Mr Naylor. ‘I think it is a great way of finding students who are passionate about nursing. I don’t think people who are perhaps lacking in dedication to their study, would really put themselves through the rigorous task of sitting in front of a panel’ he said.

‘I am really excited about beginning my nursing degree. I have wanted to do this for a long time and I now just want to achieve a really good result and have a happy balance between work, study and family’ Mr Naylor added.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here expands to show Todd Naylor and Dr Penny Paliadelis in UNE’s simulation lab in the School of Health.

( Marketing and Public Affairs office, January 2009)
Article reproduced with permission from UNE’s news list.