ANZAHPE congratulates the following winners of ANZAHPE Student Prizes in 2020. Many outstanding applications were received and the recipients listed below are just a small sample of the fantastic amount of research being completed in health professional education in Australia & New Zealand.

ANZAHPE PRE-REGISTRATION STUDENT PRIZE SPONSORED BY AUSTRALIAN MEDICINES HANDBOOK

Nikola Fraser  (University of Otago)

Project title:  "Student direction:  Creating videos to orient the surgical environment."

POST-REGISTRATION STUDENT PRIZE SPONSORED BY AUSTRALIAN MEDICINES HANDBOOK

Ruyi Tong  (Curtin University)

Project title:  "Final year pre-licensure health professional perceptions of interprofessional identity following participation in clinical placements."

THE ANZAHPE PRE-REGISTRATION STUDENT PRIZE IN CLINICAL EDUCATION (SUPPORTED BY RICHARD HAYS)

This prize was not awarded in 2020

A  high number of applications was received for the 2020 round of Research Grants.

The 2020 Research Grant recipients were announced at the ANZAHPE ONLINE launch on July 12.

Amanda Carter, Linda Sweet, Michelle Gary, Tania Fleming, Dristen Graham, Dolores Dooley 

Project title: Critical Thinking Development in Undergraduate Midwifery Students:  An Australasian validation study

Catherine Easton, Linda Wilson

Project title: Building flexibility in allied health education:  An evaluation of student competency development in a simulated telehealth clinic.

David is the Director of Academic Program for postgraduate public health and health science with the Western Sydney University. David formally joined academia some 7 years ago, and has a keen interest in curriculum evaluation, career pathways and professional development. Despite being new to the ANZAPHE community, he is keen to contribute and learn.

The ANZAHPE Fellowship Scheme provides an opportunity to network with the wider clinical education community.

Cathy Rogers has been teaching at CSU since 1998 with the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Indigenous Health (SNMIH) and has been based at the Dubbo campus since 2002 teaching on campus and online with nursing and midwifery students. Cathy commenced with the Three Rivers University Department of Rural Health (UDRH) in September 2017 as a Lecturer in Rural Health (Clinical Educator). Cathy was Head of Campus at Dubbo from 2016-2018 and enjoys engaging with the community.

Cathy has undertaken study through both the hospital and tertiary systems in on campus and online modes. Cathy has worked in both QLD and NSW with the health services, private schools and has been employed with Universities in both these states. Cathy still practices as a casual community midwife with NSW Health.

Cathy is a Registered Nurse, a Registered Midwife and holds a Graduate Certificate in Child, Adolescent Health and a Master of Health Science (Nursing) degree. She is currently enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in University Leadership and Management.

From Cathy: I applied to be an  Associate Fellow as I am passionate about furthering educational and research opportunities for health professionals in rural and remote areas of Australia. I am committed to lifelong learning for myself but also for future health professionals. My current role exposes me to many different health professionals and students enrolled in health professional courses from all universities. I would like to see a more integrative approach to curricula, and would like to see more opportunities for collaborative practice and inter-professional learning opportunities in rural clinical practice. Peer support is essential in rural and remote areas. It is important to contribute, promote, support and advance the practice of health professionals. My research interests are varied but centre on undergraduate rural health students, clinical education, clinical placements, rural and remote areas, professional identities and models of clinical placements. I have also undertaken research with nursing and international clinical placements. Here is my Orcid link  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7364-3782

Advance Care Planning Australia (ACPA) has developed a standardised, evidence-based Advance Care Planning Education Capability Framework to support the teaching of health professionals in Australian universities.

It is a flexible and adaptable resource that can be easily incorporated into existing curricula to supplement the teaching of subjects covering legal and ethical practice in healthcare, palliative care approach, emergency care, care planning, care of the older person, cancer care and more.

How is Advance Care Planning (ACP) relevant to healthcare practitioners?

Registered health practitioners in Australia have legal and ethical obligations to support advance care planning as defined by relevant legislation and health profession codes of conduct and practice standards.

All health professionals have a role in advance care planning and respecting their patients’ decision making autonomy.

A recent scoping study and feedback from our University stakeholders has informed us that there is a need for a standardised ACP education framework that can be easily integrated into existing curricula, which they tell us is increasingly crowded. 

Many health professionals in the workforce report a lack of confidence with advance care planning. Typically they tell us that they did not receive any education in ACP as part of their training and that they would benefit from it.

What are the core elements of this teaching resource?

The framework and supporting educational resources are designed to enable teaching staff to self-select relevant ACP content covering:

o             critical  communication skills

o             ethical considerations involved in ACP

o             legal and professional obligations

How can the Advance Care Planning Education Capability Framework be accessed?

The framework can be found on the ACPA website with supplementary material and case studies to support teaching. ACPA welcomes feedback on this resource via acpa@austin.org.au

Advance Care Planning Australia is funded by the Australian Government.

Open Access and Scholarly Work 101

It's 2020 and already April!  How many of us got all the writing done that we planned on over the holidays?  The summer break often offers some extra time to devote to getting some papers submitted and published. On this note, most of us will have heard of ‘Open Access’ publishing by now. Although it has been around for over 15 years, it seems like a relatively recent trend. Formal definitions and regulatory documents to guide its growth originated in Europe, and it now has worldwide acceptance as an approach to publication. So what is Open Access and what does it mean for academics publishing their scholarly work?

Here is a stock definition: Open Access makes peer reviewed manuscripts freely available via the Internet, permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full text of these articles, or use them for any lawful purpose, without financial, legal or technical barriers.  The only constraint on reproduction and distribution is to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

Historically, journals sat behind some sort of paywall; a personal or institutional subscription being required. Open Access makes articles available to all for free. But, the costs of publication don’t disappear, even with online journals. Instead, the costs are often moved from the reader to the researcher; with authors paying a fee to publish. The academic world is slowly catching up, recognising that access costs are being lifted, but that authors need to be supported to publish. One downside of Open Access is that those researchers who are less well-resourced may struggle to publish.
So how does this positively affect the average hard working Academic, who wants their article seen and cited?  Research data shows that papers published in Open Access journals have a clear citation advantage over closed access articles.

Therefore, the consensus is that Open Access is a good thing for scientific publishing. In fact, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in Open Access journals. This is already happening in most countries including Australia and New Zealand.

If you would like to know more about Open Access have a look at the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group website. https://aoasg.org.au/

FoHPE is looking at Open Access options, with the primary aims of encouraging positive citation rates and limiting the financial impact on authors.

NEW FoHPE FORMAT

Issue 20.3 of FoHPE features the inaugural article in a new format, focus on methodology. Overseen by Professor Liz Molloy, this format will explore introductory and more advanced research methodologies and theoretical frameworks. Initial articles will be by invitation only and in future will be open to general submissions. In the first article, Associate Professor Margaret Bearman describes how to write semi-structured interview schedules to elicit rich data.

Educational Response to Covid-19

In this time of uncertainty, ANZAHPE aims to facilitate the sharing of information and also health professional educational practice in response to covid-19.   We have developed a COVID tab on the front page of the ANZAHPE web-site, accessible here.

This site includes useful information and also a discussion forum.  There are currently two forums:

Sharing of practice and resources

Specifically, we want to know how you are adapting to the impact of social distancing and reduced capacity by health workers in respect to Health Professional Education – the education of nursing, physiotherapist, medical, dietetic students etc.   On this page, you are welcome to share a brief description of the problem/challenges you have faced, the strategies/solutions you are trying in order to remediate the issue, and the impact it is having.  There is also the option of up-loading material that might be shared. Two or three key words would also be useful so we can theme and curate the problems/issues and strategies/solutions and any associated material and post these back on to the web site under a designated repository.

General Chat

Use this forum to raise issue, concerns, or observations about the COVID situation in your context.  

While anyone can access the page, you will need to be logged in with your ANZAHPE membership details to join the discussion and post replies.

We hope you will find this a useful resource.

Joy Rudland

Professional Development Representative

Dear Colleagues,

These are extraordinary times. Unprecedented global events are unfolding around us. Every aspect of our lives is being impacted by public health policies that we would never have considered even remotely likely in our society. The health and education sectors are bearing the brunt of both the evolving pandemic and the containment measures. As health professional educators we feel the pain from all angles.

As I write this message, I struggle with the need to acknowledge the gravity of the situation, and the need to play whatever small role that I can, to try and find some positivity within this grim reality. I may not succeed in achieving this balance, but I assure you that I write this with the best of intentions.

The grim reality is that we face a health crisis of an unimaginable magnitude. On a global scale, we collectively face morbidity and mortality that our generation has never experienced. Health systems will be tested to their limits and beyond. Health professionals will be stretched to breaking point, and we hope that the commitment that brought us into these professions will suffice to see us through the difficult times ahead. I salute those of you who are already on the front lines and expect that many of us will be playing our part as the workforce requirements increase over the next few weeks.

The impact on the higher education sector is on a scale that is still difficult to grasp. The impact on students and staff has been significant. It has been amazing to see the resilience and resolve of our colleagues as they adapt to this new environment. I have personally experienced this and am in awe of the capacity of colleagues to step up and venture into unknown territory with amazing courage and boldness. The strength of our student body has been heartening, and once again, I have personally experienced the amazing outcomes that we can achieve when we work in partnership with the student body.

Can we find a silver lining around these dark clouds? Is this the catalyst that might drive a wave of change that was so desperately needed in healthcare and education? Is this the time to re-visit our deeply held beliefs and practices in health professional education? We have seen how the crisis has changed models that would usually take years of negotiation, with the rapid expansion of remote consulting being a key example. This may be the time for us to reconsider all that we did in the name of health professional education and ask ourselves whether some radical change may be needed. Can we look at redundancies of content and skills within our programs, and replace these with the skills that the next generation of health professionals will need? Could we look at resource intensive practices that use up precious global resources, including our daily commutes to work, and ask whether there are better ways to achieve our aims? Academic conferences would be another area that deserves close attention. We see many conferences around the world cancelling or converting to virtual formats. With great sadness we have also decided that a face-to-face format will not be possible for ANZAHPE 2020. But we remain open to other options. We are presently exploring options to utilise the resources developed for the conference to deliver a program of professional development that will be meaningful to our members. I would welcome suggestions from you on innovative options that we might use.

I will end by drawing your attention to the discussion forum that is now available on our revamped ANZAHPE website. We would love to hear about innovative educational approaches that you may have adopted in response to this evolving crisis. We are all grappling with similar problems across institutions and it would be wonderful to engage in some practice-sharing. The discussion forum also encourages open discussion of topics of relevance to health professional education. Please feel free to use these fora to share your thoughts and stay connected as a caring community during these uncertain times.

Wishing each and every one of you the very best.

Chinthaka Balasooriya
President, ANZAHPE

Bulletin Issue 1, 2020

We are excited to welcome you to the first edition of our new web-based Bulletin. The news items of the Bulletin are now integrated into the ANZAHPE Website.

You can read the news in any order by selecting any of the Read More or Find Out More buttons in the Bulletin.

 You can also read the news items by visiting ANZAHPE Website and going to the ANZAHPE News page at any time. You will find the ANZAPHE News page under the Bulletin tab on the home page of our website.

Please give us feedback about your experience of the new Bulletin, we are keen to communicate with you clearly and in creative ways. 

Megan Anakin
Editor, ANZAHPE Bulletin

Dear Colleagues,

In light of the evolving COVID 19 pandemic, we would like to inform you that the ANZAHPE 2020 conference, 2020 Vision for Learning Cultures, will no longer proceed in its original face-to-face format.

While July is several months away, the ANZAHPE Committee of Management and the Local Organising Committee are aware of the forecasts from the WHO about the potential spread of the disease. We are also mindful of the unprecedented restrictions on travel and gatherings of groups, which are clearly necessary to limit further spread. With this in mind, we wish to convey a clear decision at an early stage to give certainty to all stakeholders. 

The conference registration portal will be closed. For those who have already registered, information about refunds will be available shortly. We remain committed to serving our members and are exploring options to disseminate health professions education research and enhance the professional development of our members. Further updates will be issued in the coming weeks.

Irrespective of the above decision regarding the conference, we wish to inform authors of abstract acceptance decisions to acknowledge the hard work of people who submitted and reviewed abstracts. Information about abstract decisions has been communicated to presenting authors. 

We appreciate your understanding and would like to thank all who have engaged with and supported us around ANZAHPE 2020. We wish you the very best.

Chinthaka Balasooriya, President, ANZAHPE

Elizabeth Molloy, Chair, Local Organising Committee, ANZAHPE 2020