Elissa in Wonderland – Reflections on Research

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I feel like I’ve learnt more in the past 3 weeks in my research fellowship than I did in the preceding year of clinical work. It’s a steep learning curve, and one that’s taken me out of my comfort zone.

Doctors are generally very comfortable in their role as clinician, and far less so in other roles, such as manager or researcher. Our training prepares us to be experts in clinical management and even if we don’t know the answer, we know where to go look for it. The positive feedback in clinical work can be rapid (provide an intervention, see an improvement for the patient, repeat, hurrah!), unlike management or research roles. Continue reading →

Lighting a candle in the darkness

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“It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness” is the mantra of
Dr Bruce Robinson, a lung cancer specialist and professor at the University of Western Australia.

© Nevit Dilmen [CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

© Nevit Dilmen [CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons


Founder of The Fathering Project, Bruce has created an Australian example of a public health approach to end of life care. This approach focuses largely on ‘upstream’ social determinants of health that affect an entire population, while the ‘downstream’ focus relates more to clinical treatment of a ‘patient’ presenting to a health service.

Continue reading →

8 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting My First Research Project

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This is advice I give to people starting out in advanced training in palliative medicine (or geriatric medicine, my other training specialty) when asked about research projects*. It may also be relevant to other clinicians wanting to start out in research. The advice is based on my own experience and from talking to other trainees. One-hundred hours into your project, you do not want to discover that your study design is flawed or your results invalid. This advice may help to prevent that.

  1. Your research supervisor does not need to be the same person as your clinical supervisor. Unless your clinical supervisor is also a researcher, I would advise looking for someone else to supervise you, who has a research background. They do not need to come from your specialty or profession (although obviously some familiarity with your broad research topic is important). They may be based in a different city or country (although it may create complications with ethics approvals if your supervisor is from different institution).

Your supervisor can guide you through your study design. This improves the likelihood of producing valid results, which you can then publish and add to palliative care knowledge for the benefit of palliative care patients (because this is why we’re doing this research thing, right?)

If you’re not sure where to start looking for a supervisor, ask an academic in your field if they can recommend anyone. If you want to do palliative care research, the Palliverse researcher database is a good place to start.

  1. Librarians are very helpful. Most hospitals or health services have librarians who can assist you to use search engines, citation managers and other programs more efficiently. The library probably has resources that you don’t even know about.

Continue reading →

Special guest post – Dr Chris Sanderson on #lettertome

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Dear readers,

We are honoured to bring you a guest post, in fact two, and indeed we hope more, from the fabulous Dr Chris Sanderson, palliative care physician.  I have to say that I was so inspired by this idea, by putting patients at the centre of our communication, where they should be, that I totally stole this idea for my own Change Day pledge.

Below is part one of her description of her pledge for Change Day, #lettertome.

#lettertome : A twitter campaign to improve how we share information with patients.

Social media is such a wonderful space for spreading ideas – and sometimes the simplest ideas may convey a world of significance. Recently on twitter, there was a conversation between various doctors and patient advocates about how we speak to and about our patients, and the subject of doctors’ letters was raised. Thus was born a new hashtag, a pledge for Change Day Australia, and potentially a new way of doing things.

Continue reading →

Abstracts for Palliative Care Australia conference are open!

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And this year it’s sunny Melbourne for the PCA conference. Abstracts are open, and close 13th April.

https://www.etouches.com/ehome/112617/Abstracts/

Palliative Care: Fit for the Future
1 – 4 September 2015, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

What will the future look like?

Who is part of our future?

How do we get ready for the future in palliative care?

(E-Hanging out with the team at Palliverse is an excellent start!)

Posters will be electronic only which is neat.

I have a couple of ideas already…. planning to submit anything?

Sonia

Hospice New Zealand Palliative Care Lecture Series 2015

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Hospice NZ PC lecture series 2015

Hospice New Zealand is once again presenting a lecture series on palliative care this year. The lectures are held on the first Thursday of every month at 7:30am NZDT/NZST and are available by teleconference at various sites across New Zealand. The first lecture on nausea and vomiting was delivered last week by Dr Michael Downing.

You can also listen to lectures from the previous series by simply registering here. Awesome!

Reflections on research – a week of firsts

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This is the first in a regular series of posts by Palliverse team members about their day-to-day experiences in research roles.

This week was a week of firsts for me. For the first time as a doctor, I am in a role that is primarily non-clinical. On Monday, I commenced a 1-year research fellowship based in theDepartment of Palliative Care at Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, Western Australia. It is also the first time I will be in the same position for a whole year (training terms for junior doctors generally ranging from 10 weeks to 6 months duration in WA). It’s the first job I’ve had where it’s my responsibility to set my own schedule, without the routine of ward rounds, clinics, home visits and consult referrals. It’s my first time working at this hospital – in fact, Monday was the first day at this hospital for most of our team. It is a brand new facility. The Emergency Department saw its first ever patient on Tuesday. More patients will be transferred from another hospital over the weekend. Our palliative care team (doctors, nurses and social worker) have come together from various services, care settings and states. It’s a great opportunity for us to learn from each other and so far it’s functioning very well. There is a fantastic energy at this new hospital – all the staff I’ve encountered are enthusiastic about change (for the better) and it is a great opportunity to get things done without the burden of “that’s how we’ve always done it” thinking. Continue reading →

Palace of Care – After the moment

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Currently… you look so sad.
Currently… you look so mad.
Currently… you look so bewildered.
Currently… you look so disempowered.
Currently… you look so past your best.
Currently… you look so, ‘the worst of the rest.’
Currently… you look so useless.
Currently… you look so hopeless.
Previously…we; were friends.

James

Elsewhere in the Palliverse: Weekend Reads

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Hi and welcome to the first “Elsewhere in the Palliverse” for 2015. There is an (unintentional) geriatric flavour to this week’s links. This is possibly because today marks the end of a six-month geriatrics rotation for me, or maybe because another year has ended and birthday has passed. Regardless, I hope that Palliverse readers enjoy the following links:

Dementia researchers Muireann Irish and Rebekah Ahmed give their take on the new film adaptation of Still Alice, a novel about a 50 year old woman who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Have you read the book? Will you see the movie? (Still Alice: A rare look at how dementia steals memories from millions – The Conversation)

Professor Rod McLeod gives some background on his article in this month’s European Journal of Palliative Care, ‘Making it easier to die at home – an innovative programme in New South Wales, Australia’. (Making it easier to die at home – EAPC Blog)

Continue reading →

Social media – find of the day

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Admittedly it’s early in the day…. but here’s my find of the day.

The Palliative Review by @kpedmonds  just floated across my Twitter feed.

http://paper.li/kpedmonds/1394491140

It’s got a STACK of good reading, from utility of thickened fluids in dysphagia to a thoughtful piece on palliative research priorities. You can subscribe to receive emails of this compendium. This is an example of something I think have talked about before, “curation”, when someone does all the hard work and collects the good stuff for you.

Enjoy!  Sonia