Faculty of Health, Medicine, Nursing and Behavioural Sciences
Deakin University
Here is an exciting opportunity to gain an internationally recognized postgraduate degree while studying with four of Victoria’s leading universities. For more information please open attachment below.
Congratulations to Alison Carver, from the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, who was recently awarded the Neil Archbold Memorial Travel Award.
Neil Archbold Memorial Travel Awards are awarded to Deakin University higher degree by research candidates who produce the best peer-reviewed journal articles. The $2500 travel awards are to be used during PhD candidature for research-related travel.
The research Alison conducted during her PhD candidature (under the supervision of co-authors Dr Anna Timperio and Professor David Crawford) was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Urban Health, which is the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. Alison’s research focussed on the ground-breaking application of a Geographical Information System (GIS) to objectively measure attributes of the local road environment related to road safety and to assess their associations with physical activity among youth.
Congratulations Alison!
Two Deakin University students are Olympic athletes! Jeff Riseley will compete in the 1500 metre running, and Maddy Hogan will compete in the javelin in the Para-olympics in early September.
Twenty-one-year-old Deakin University student Jeff Riseley will be making his Olympic debut in a matter of days. A promising middle-distance runner, Jeff will compete in the men’s 1500 metres event on Friday 15 August.
After initially not qualifying for the 800 metre event by Athletics Australia’s cut-off date of 4 July, Jeff was given the green light by the Australian Olympic Committee after recording an A-qualifying time in the 1500 metre event in Rome a short time later.
Jeff’s Olympic quest follows an outstanding domestic season in 2007, during which he finished in the top two in every 800 metre race he competed in. Though his early 2008 season has been fraught with injury, Jeff’s strong performances at recent European summer meets set him in good stead for his first Olympic foray.
Good luck Jeff and Maddy!
Click on the link below to view Jeff’s biography on the official Olympic website.
The Deakin University Leadership in Nursing Awards in partnership with Health Super will be held on Thursday 16 October at the Park Hyatt at the conclusion of the one-day Deakin University 2008 Nursing conference ‘Clinical Leadership in Nursing: Evolving Change in Climate’.
The awards night will be an annual event that recognises nurses who have contributed to the profession and benefited the public by improving health service delivery, capacity and/or policy. These awards aim to recognise leadership in nursing, setting a standard to which future leaders in nursing may aspire by creating awareness of the achievements of leaders.
The one-day conference ‘Clinical Leadership in Nursing: Evolving Change in Climate’ will showcase knowledge development and knowledge translation research and explore notions of clinical leadership.
Accolade for Professor Boyd Swinburn
The work of Professor Boyd Swinburn (School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences) has recently been ranked seventh in a list of the fifteen greatest nutrition discoveries since 1976.
Professor Swinburn’s discovery—that obesity is a normal response to an abnormal environment—was the only research in the top fifteen that came from either Australia or New Zealand.
His research represented the first investigation into the role played by the environment in understanding obesity. Previous research had centred on genetic or metabolic abnormalities.
The fifteen discoveries were nominated and ranked at a one-day symposium of nutrition experts held in the Netherlands, and the results were recently published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Professor Swinburn is one of Australia’s leading public health and obesity prevention researchers and is internationally renowned for his work in preventing obesity in children and adolescents.
He is Chair in Population Health, and Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention within the Faculty of Health, Medicine, Nursing and Behavioural Sciences.
Prior to this, Professor Swinburn was the Medical Director of the National Heart Foundation in New Zealand and an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland.
The Deakin Medical School was officially opened on 1 May 2008 by the Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon Kevin Rudd.
Website containing more information on Medical School Officially OpenedBe part of a growing community who are actively improving the quality of life and the world around us.
The World Health Organisation estimates that climate change may already cause over 150,000 deaths world
wide every year.
Your prescription for a healthier planet:
• Change your current energy and consumption habits.
• Turn it off and switch off stand by power.
• Install roof insulation.
• Efficiently heat and cool your house.
• Choose solar water heating.
• Leave the car at home.
For more information about Global Warming please click on the link below
In February Ms Vanessa Brotto and Mr Julian Pearce, from the School of Nursing, were inducted into the College of Distinguished Deakin Educators in recognition of their contribution to outstanding teaching with the Faculty of Health, Medicine, Nursing and Behavioural Sciences. Congratulations to both Vanessa and Julian on this great achievement.
The 120 new students were given an orientation to the medical course and the Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds—where they will spend the first two years of the program—before classes start on Monday 11 February.
The Head of the School of Medicine, Professor Brendan Crotty, said he was delighted to welcome the first cohort of students to the University.
“This is a very exciting and historic time for the Deakin Medical School,” Professor Crotty said. “A lot of hard work has taken place over the past two years to get to this point of opening the doors to our first medical students.
“We are very proud of the excellent medical education facilities we have built here at Waurn Ponds. The students will commence their studies in one of the most advanced teaching facilities in the country.
“When these students graduate in 2011, they will be well trained to enter general practice and specialist training programs and begin to redress the acute medical shortages in rural and regional areas.”
Deakin University’s School of Medicine is Victoria's first rural and regional medical school and aims to train a cohort of new doctors who are skilled and motivated to pursue a career in rural and regional areas, either as specialists or general practitioners. The course will give special attention to preventing and managing chronic diseases, working in teams, and developing procedural skills which are so important in areas away from the main hospital centres.
The School has enrolled 120 students in 2008 and will build up to 180 students per year from 2013.
Deakin Medical School students will spend the first two years of the program studying in a purpose-built, state of the art building on Deakin's Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds. The last two years of the course will be completed in a range of hospitals, general practices and healthcare facilities attached to Deakin’s Clinical Schools in Geelong, Warrnambool, Ballarat and Box Hill.
Australia’s first teaching nursing home will be established in Melbourne this year. Teaching nursing homes developed internationally, largely in the USA from 1985, to improve the experience of student nurses on clinical placements in aged care; and to encourage graduates into the sector by close affiliations between universities and aged care facilities.
The two year project, supported by a $307,000 ANZ trustees grant, is a partnership between Deakin University and Southern Health Nursing Research Centre in Australia. The project is broader and expands on the teaching nursing home
concept, Deakin University professor and project lead professor Bev O’Connell said.
While the teaching nursing home concept is largely based on improving nursing students’ experiences in aged care, the Australian project will also focus on the development and support of existing staff in aged care facilities and develop materials on best standards of practice.
Professor O’Connell said the project aims to raise the profile of aged care and provide professional development for staff in the sector who have been neglected. “Adequate education and training of staff has not been occurring in aged care and it is becoming an isolated sector. It is an
important and complex area that requires development. “Not only do some students have a poor experience on clinical placement in residential aged care, but often we cannot send them to some facilities as we know they will not have a positive learning experience. The staff themselves are not
supported or developed. We cannot just blame the aged care sector we have to invest long term in its development.”
The teaching nursing home will be based at a new 100-bed high and low residential aged care facility in Doveton, Melbourne. In the first eight months materials such as workshop manuals, best practice guides, clinical leadership models and change champions will be developed, followed
by teaching of staff at other aged care facilities and evaluation of resident outcomes. “We will deliver standards of care, exemplars of practice, an easy to use best practice guide resource and develop leaders,” professor O’Connell said.
Aged care staff will be consulted as to areas of weakness in their facilities and for exemplar models of care.
The Bachelor of Nursing offered on the Melbourne Campus at Burwood remains in the Top 10 courses - for 1st preferences and in the Top 10 courses for the 1- 4th preference through the VTAC system.
If you are a past graduate of the Bachelor of Food Science and Nutrition or B.App. Sci (Food Science and Nutrition) you may be interested in joining our Alumni. A function to celebrate "10 years of Food Science and Nutrition" is planned for early in 2008. Watch this space.....
Please go to the Food Science and Nutrition Alumni Chapter if you would like to be notified about future events
