Pre-Conference Workshops - Wednesday 13 September 2006

Half Day Workshop, 9am – 1pm
Measuring what counts: Remote allied health evaluation
Heather Jensen
Location: Nowik 3 Room, Albury Campus, Charles Sturt University

The aim of this workshop was to further develop an evaluation framework for health outcome tools to measure the impact of Allied Health Services in remote areas of Australia.

A workshop was held at the Centre for Remote Health in September 2005 to establish a process to develop more relevant and effective evaluative measures of the work of allied health professional (AHP) teams working in remote Australia. The workshop was supported by the SARRAH, North West Queensland Primary Health Care Service, and the Centre for Remote Health. Participants were remote allied health professionals, managers of remote allied health services, representatives of funding bodies and experts in evaluation.

After many presentations and much discussion, the workshop developed the following set of principles to guide the evaluation of remote allied health services:

• Informs practice
• Reflect what the service, the community and the funding bodies want to measure
• Be both formative and summative and funded where possible
• Link with and build upon existing quality improvement/ accreditation processes – that is participatory
• Be culturally appropriate
• Incorporate consumer feedback
• Apply to the realities of remote AH Practice
• Build upon what exists
• Be simple and easy to use as possible
• Use language that informs funding bodies
• Evaluate the benefit of the services
• Adequately resourced
• Uses qualitative and quantitative measure
• Includes disciplines specific needs as well a allied health
• Uses information technology and systems to collect data
• Demonstrate the impact of the complexity of primary health care practice
• Be participatory at all levels of government services and with community

A set of seven goals were also developed that easily collapsed into four sections:

• workforce,
• health outcomes,
• building capacity
• allied health services

One of the recommendations to further develop these principles, so that they could be applied to a variety of remote allied health services, was to conduct another workshop with a variety of interested rural and remote allied health professionals. The SARRAH conference is an obvious venue to continue this work. Details of the workshop aims and activities are still under development by a group of the original workshop participants and will be available closer to the date of the workshop.

Half Day Workshop, 12 noon – 4pm
Mentoring! Supervision
Cas Ingham and Dale Howe
Location: Nowik 4 Room, Albury Campus, Charles Sturt University

Confused by the terminology? Have you been a mentor or a supervisor? Have you been mentored or supervised? Have you been asked to participate in the Rural Allied Health Undergraduate Scholarship (RAHUS) Scheme Rural Allied Health Mentor Program?
                                  
Research has found:

• New graduates across the allied health professionals benefit from a mentoring relationship when commencing practice.
• Regardless of when an allied health practitioner may take up a rural or remote career, mentoring is considered essential.
• Whilst undertaking their course of undergraduate or graduate entry allied health study, a student in a mentoring relationship with an experienced rural or remote allied health professional can be encouraged to take up a rural career on graduation.

This workshop is explored the terminology, the differing skills and outcomes of undergoing mentorship and supervision. Participants in the workshop had the opportunity to develop the skills required to become a rural allied health mentor.

Mentorship: Mentoring is a tool used to nurture and grow people. It can be an informal practice or a formal program and does not need to be discipline specific. Mentees observe, question, and explore. Mentors demonstrate, explain and model. The mentor also benefits from the relationship by sharing their experience and knowledge, overcoming the challenge and seeing the mentee develop.

Supervision: "Supervision focuses on progressing clinical practice and skill acquisition through reflection and the provision of professional guidance and support" (Mills, Francis and Bonner, 2005). Most definitions agree that supervision is usually discipline specific.

Expected outcomes will be:

• Participants have an understanding of the difference between supervision and mentoring
• Provide mentoring tools to provide structure/assistance to a mentoring relationship
• Understanding/develop mentoring skills

Post-Conference Workshops - Sunday 17 September 2006

Full Day Workshop, 9am – 4.30pm
Indigenous Diabetes Foot Workshop
Jason Warnock
Location: Nowik 3 Room, Albury Campus, Charles Sturt University

This was a multi-disciplinary hands-on workshop for all health professionals.

Participants learnt the 12 steps to ‘looking after your feet’ enabling them to have the knowledge and resources to support and encourage people with diabetes to develop good self-care footcare practices.

Participants developed the skills to confidently screen diabetic feet; to feel for foot pulses, to test for sensation using a 5.07 monofilament, to identify active foot conditions, to identify amputations and ulcerations, to identify self-care abilities.

Participants developed the skills to complete the DART [Diabetic foot Assessment of Risk Test] screening form. This included; recording findings of the foot screen, risk rating each section of the foot screen, and then developing a referral to the most appropriate and available health professional.

A resource kit from the Indigenous Diabetic Foot [IDF] Program was included in the registration fee. This included the IDF CD ROM, two posters, two videos, one DART screening form, one Educational Card Set, one Workshop Activity Workbook, one bumper sticker, and one fridge magnet [value $120].

The IDF resources were developed for Indigenous Health Workers, Podiatrists, and all other Health Professionals to assist with the management of the Indigenous diabetic foot.