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Zieria nubicola (Rutaceae), a highly restricted and newly described species from New South Wales, Australia
No full textZieria nubicola H.K.Orel & Duretto sp. nov. (Rutaceae), a highly restricted species from Cambewarra Mountain on the south-central coast of New South Wales, is formally described and illustrated. Notes on the species distribution, habitat and conservation status are also provided
Haunted Atlantic Waters: The Historic Traumas of Impressment, Slavery, and Whaling in Elizabeth Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers
Full text linkKeywords: Elizabeth Gaskell, Sylvia's Lovers, whaling, impressment, slavery, American Civil War
Gaskell’s choice of the important Yorkshire whaling port of Whitby (the novel’s Monkshaven) as the setting of Sylvia’s Lovers has a deep resonance. The Atlantic Ocean itself, so pervasively described in the novel as the primary element of Monkshaven’s atmosphere, is crucial to interpreting Sylvia’s Lovers as a novel of social protest. In Gaskell’s narrative, the Atlantic’s waters carry off impressed sailors during the early years of the Napoleonic Wars and are the killing grounds for whales in a brutal extraction ecology. The years in which Gaskell wrote her novel—during the American Civil War—evoke a third history throughout Sylvia’s Lovers: the horrific Atlantic slave trade and ongoing American slavery. Gaskell’s choice of Yorkshire as her setting, influenced by her recent writing of The Life of Charlotte Brontë, also suggests that Gaskell was thinking of British West Indian enslavement as well, a consistent background to the Brontë sisters’ novels from Emily’s Wuthering Heights to Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The pervading Atlantic waters in Sylvia’s Lovers are haunted with these brutal histories of violent displacement and bloody carnage. The novel is thus not only the “saddest story I ever wrote,” as Gaskell stated, but also the most harrowing, with its insistent representation or allusion to three interwoven historic traumas against which the individual tragedies of Sylvia’s Lovers are enacted. Gaskell’s Atlantic imaginary is imbued with these histories of violent displacement from family, community, and natural environment, whether impressed sailor, enslaved black American, or harpooned and dismembered whale, its skeletal “great ghastly whale jaws, bleached bare and white . . . the arches over the gateposts to many a field or moorland stretch” disfiguring the landscape and haunting the narrative. Sylvia’s Lovers is an expansive and trenchant novel of social protest against all of these oppressions
Low SES communities and climate change: A call for social work action
Full text linkClimate change is having profound effects on natural and built environments, creating unstable living conditions for both flora and fauna. It holds implications for all humankind, however, is disparately impacting people living in Low Socioeconomic Status (SES) communities. This paper seeks to discuss what current literature finds to be the most prevalent themes of climate change related disadvantage experienced by these communities. It will then discuss the relevance of these findings in relation to the social work profession and its role to challenge policies and practices that are oppressive and fail to meet standards of environmental sustainability and human rights. Furthermore, it highlights critical social work theory and strengths-based approaches as key considerations for working alongside low SES communities. This paper was written as part of a final capstone unit of study for a Bachelor of Social Work degree
From the Fire into the Frying Pan: Reflections on Enhancing Resilience and Adaptive Capacity in Bush Fire Recovery
Full text linkThe repeated occurrence of natural disasters is impacting communities globally and these effects are expected to worsen as the global temperatures continue to rise. In Australia, communities on the East Coast are now bracing for another dry hot summer along with the accompanying threat of bushfire. In this context, many governments have promoted the idea of building resilient communities in order to try to mitigate the danger and threat to communities. The idea of enhancing resilience is both appealing and problematic: appealing, because it signifies the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity: problematic, because such a term can easily be exploited to support ideological beliefs about independence and self-sufficiency. This paper explores the notion of enhancing resilience in smaller rural communities, specifically in the context of recovery from the fires in 2019/2020. By adopting a case study approach, we argue first, that whilst the idea of resilience has value, it needs to be equalised by a robust understanding of the contextual factors that may increase vulnerability (Solangaarachchi Griffin & Doherty, 2012); with this in mind, we suggest that developing adaptive capacity is more fitting because of the way it draws our attention to the changes that are necessary for responding to the changes in climate. Second, we argue that if communities are to be assisted to adapt in order to survive the effects of climate change, this work will require an increased focus on community development in the medium and long-term stages of recovery, so that communities are assisted, supported and empowered to engage preparedness projects in the event of disasters occurring in the future
The Commercialisation Journey for a Mobile Health Application – from mobile pulmonary rehabilitation (m-PR) prototype to Perx-R
No full textBackground: In 2020, a mobile health platform that provides comprehensive, evidence-based pulmonary rehabilitation called m-PR was developed following collaboration between the University of Sydney, Northern Sydney Local Health District, The Australian eHealth Research Centre (CSIRO), Lung Foundation Australia and the Better Breathing Foundation. This m-PR prototype, co-designed with consumers, has undergone user testing in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and it’s effectiveness on clinical outcomes and health economics is currently being evaluated in a RCT. In 2021, a decision was made to partner with Perx Health, an established digital care company, to commercialise m-PR.
Aims: To outline the approach taken from developing and evaluating the m-PR prototype to commercialisation.
Methods: A reflection of a 4 year journey from ideation of m-PR to commercialisation as Perx-R.
Results: Perx Health consists of a daily engagement platform to improve the health of high risk, polychronic patients by promoting medication adherence, exercise programs, text-based health coaching, remote monitoring, education resources, and completion of surveys. The “know-how” in developing m-PR has been merged to the Perx Platform providing COPD specific exercise, education and medication videos, COPD-specific text notifications, and digitalisation of symptom and health status surveys. Perx Health is supporting the Perx-R platform with their in-house product, software engineering and implementation specialists who are dedicated to using their digital industry experience to advance virtual care for respiratory disease in Australia.
Conclusions: Perx-R is now commercially available to provide a comprehensive pulmonary rehabilitation program and support self-management behaviours for people with chronic lung diseases
Measuring the success of a learning health system: development of an evaluation framework for the Sydney Kid’s Learning Health Initiative
No full textBackground: Accessibility of electronic patient data should enable more hospitals to become ‘learning health systems’ (LHS).
Aims: We developed an evaluation framework for measuring the success of the Sydney Kid’s Learning Health Initiative, a strategic program at the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (SCHN), Australia, which aims to implement a LHS for better use of clinical data and therefore improved patient care.
Methods: We developed a logic model evaluation framework by conducting a series of electronic surveys and a final workshop with a working group of key stakeholders at SCHN. Stakeholders comprised representatives from the program’s operations team, clinicians, executive board, clinical governance, research ethics and governance, consumer involvement and academics in implementation science, and clinical research.
Results: The logic model describes the key inputs, activities, outputs and impacts of the early phase of the program. Key impacts included: 1) children’s health, the number of children reached; 2) social, the number of clinicians trained; 3) economic, the societal costs for improving models of care; and 4) knowledge, changes to local or wider models of care. We will develop several proof-of-concept projects which aim to test our logic model and demonstrate the potential value of implementing a LHS at SCHN. In this presentation, we summarise key considerations for implementing a LHS within an Australian context.
Conclusions: Learning health systems interact with and impact many components across the health system. We have identified several key categories for measuring success of our program that may assist other institutions to develop similar evaluation frameworks
A tale of two hospitals: How teams utilise an antimicrobial surveillance tool
No full textBackground: Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) teams utilise digital technologies to improve antimicrobial prescribing practices in hospitals. The majority of digital tools are implemented in NSW hospitals at a district level, however, the work processes of antimicrobial stewardship teams often differ at a hospital level.
Aims: To explore how AMS teams at two hospitals in one NSW local health district (LHD) utilise a digital antimicrobial surveillance tool (Live AMS) and identify factors that promote uptake.
Methods: Observations and interviews were conducted with AMS teams at two public teaching hospitals in Sydney to understand work processes and explore end-user perceptions.
Results: Observations (27 hours) and interviews (n=15) revealed use and level of familiarity with the tool differed between the two hospitals. Despite AMS teams at both hospitals performing similar tasks, Live AMS was utilised more at the hospital where more participants were reportedly involved in the tool’s development. Participants at both hospitals perceived Live AMS to be easy to use. At the hospital where the tool was utilised less, some participants reported that they received the same information through different channels or did not require Live AMS for their role.
Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of user engagement to promote uptake of digital health tools. Despite reduced utilisation of Live AMS at one hospital, AMS staff appeared to complete similar AMS tasks successfully. An understanding of workflows and user needs prior to implementation is likely to reveal whether a digital tool will in fact be useful and used
Methods used to evaluate clinicians’ acceptance and use of clinical decision support systems over time: a systematic review
No full textBackground: Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) can enhance the safety and quality of patient care, but their benefits are often limited by low acceptance and use by clinicians in practice. While clinicians’ needs may change as they gain experience and familiarity with new systems, limited work has focused on appropriate methods to evaluate early and ongoing acceptance and use of CDSS post implementation.
Aims: To identify and summarise the methods used to capture clinicians’ acceptance and use of CDSS at different time points following implementation in hospital settings and identify gaps to inform future work.
Methods: A systematic review was conducted to identify studies that reported clinicians’ perceptions, attitudes, or interactions with integrated CDSS in live hospital settings. Methods used to evaluate clinicians’ acceptance and use of CDSS, and when they were employed following implementation, were extracted from identified studies.
Results: Of 2966 citations screened, 129 studies met full inclusion criteria. Studies primarily employed quantitative or mixed methods to assess acceptance and use. Qualitative methods were seldom used during the early phases of implementation and few studies captured progression of use over time.
Conclusions: User experiences of CDSS are rarely explored in depth during the early phases of implementation, providing us with limited evidence on user needs at this critical time point. Further work is needed to examine initial acceptance of CDSS and changes in use over time
Who’s Keeping It Real: Social Media Use, Authenticity and Online Self-Expression and the association with Eysenck’s Personality Superfactors
No full textBackground: People frequently utilise social media platforms in order to express themselves online and do so in a way that that is reflective of the real “authentic” self, yet flexible enough to test different aspects of the self. For those who do experiment with different forms of self-expression, individual characteristics such as personality traits have been thought to play an important role. In addition, the nature of content shared appears to also share a relationship with personality and authenticity of online self-expression.
Aims: This study seeks to explore the role of individual characteristics in driving certain approaches to self-expression on social media platforms, specifically through examining how Eysenck’s structure of personality relates to self-expression in the context of social media.
Methods: A total of 489 participants completed a number of online surveys, measuring overall social media use, authenticity of self-presentation on social media (real, ideal, false), self-expression styles (depth, breadth, positivity & authenticity) and Eysenck’s revised short scale personality questionnaire.
Results: Findings demonstrated that extroversion predicts the sharing of one’s authentic self, as well as the sharing of a greater breadth and depth of content on social media. Neuroticism is negatively correlated with sharing an authentic self on SM and with sharing positively-valenced content. Neuroticism positively correlates with the depiction of a false or ideal self on SM.
Conclusions: Overall, the greater authenticity of content shared predicts increased display of SM users’ real self, and a decrease in content intended to impress or portray ones idealised or false self