Tag Archives: research

Cairns Nursing and Midwifery Awards 2020

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To celebrate the World Health Organisation declaring 2020 as the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service (CHHHS) established an inaugural award celebration which is proudly sponsored by the Far North Queensland Hospital Foundation (FNQHF)

The awards were established to formally recognise the excellence in nursing and midwifery across CHHHS.

There were more than 100 very competitive nominations across all five categories which were short-listed by a committee, and then were assessed against the criteria by a judging panel that included:
Debra Cutler, Executive Director Nursing & Midwifery Services, CHHHS
Tony Williamson, Chief Executive Officer, FNQHF
Andrea O’Shea, Director of Nursing and Midwifery, Cairns Services
Tracey Morgan, Director of Nursing and Midwifery, Rural and Remote Services

Award winners were announced on 12th May 2020 to coincide with International Nurses Day via an online event – the physical distancing/social distancing requirements of the COVID-19 pandemic did not allow a face-to-face presentation at the time. On Monday 3rd of August we finally had the opportunity to present winners of the Nursing and Midwifery awards with their trophies in person.

The five award winners are:

Excellence in Workforce – Alison Weatherstone

Alison is the Midwifery Unit Manager at Innisfail’s Maternity Department. Alison’s nomination outlined an outstanding commitment to improving work environments to ensure a safe, collaborative and collegial workplace.

Excellence in Clinical Practice – Therese Howard

Therese is a Sexual Health Nurse with Tropical Public Health Services and was nominated for her commitment and advocacy in her work with the Queensland Health Syphilis Register. Therese has dedicated the last 10+ years of her career doing this work and has done so in a respectful, friendly, supportive and efficient manner.

Excellence in Education – Paul McNamara

Paul is the Clinical Nurse Consultant with Consultation Liaison Psychiatry Services and demonstrates an outstanding commitment to teaching and learning. A familiar face on the CHHHS Facebook page with his “Clean hands, clear head” initiative, Paul dedicates a lot of his time educating and supervising colleagues whilst also keeping up with his Instagram/Twitter/Facebook page meta4RN.

Excellence in Leadership – Kelly Pollock

Kelly is the Nurse Unit Manager at Tablelands Community Health. Since Kelly has started in her role, she has inspired the team to develop their skills in the area of patient centred care so they can offer the best practice for patients and community clients.

Excellence in Research – Bronwyn Hayes

Bronwyn is the Clinical Nurse Consultant Transplant Coordinator for CHHHS and integrates knowledge and evidence into practice to improve patient outcomes. In 2016, Bronwyn completed her PhD with her thesis focused on workforce issues in Australian and New Zealand haemodialysis units.

L-R: Kelly Pollock, Paul McNamara, Bronwyn Hayes, Alison Weatherstone, Debra Cutler, Tony Williamson and Therese Howard

Four Notes

  1. Many thanks to those who generously took the time to nominate me and my colleagues – it was genuinely surprising to be nominated, and was very humbling and gratifying to be recognised. Thank you.
  2. A huge thank you too to the Far North Queensland Hospital Foundation who supplied the trophies and the prize of enrolment, flights and accommodation at next year’s Australian College of Nursing’s National Nursing Forum.
  3. The text above is a slightly altered copy and paste of emails that were sent in May following the online presentation and August after the in-person presentation. I’m plonking it here on the blog so that it is searchable/able to be found in future… after all, if it’s not googleable, did it really happen?
  4. Would have I created this blog post if I wasn’t amongst the award winners? I don’t know – maybe. It’s ‘on-brand’ to promote nurses/nursing recognition via this blog: I have made a habit of celebrating Nurses on the Australia Day Honours list in recent years (see here). That said, it does feel like a bit of a brag, but it is something I’m proud of, not ashamed of.

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That’s it. Thanks for reading – as always, you are welcome to leave feedback in the comments section below.

Paul McNamara, 28 August 2020

Short URL meta4RN.com/awards

How to do Dodgy Research: A Case Study

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Please let me present an excellent example of dodgy research, which in this instance is an online survey being touted as “public consultation”. I’m being a bit chicken by intentionally avoiding using an example from nursing/health, and using an example from an industry that I am not involved in*.  The example I have come across is by the Far North Queensland Ports Corporation Limited, trading as Ports North (a Queensland government-owned corporation); more info about Ports North here: www.portsnorth.com.au.

In Cairns consideration is being given to dredging the shipping channel to allow larger ships to access the port. However, because Cairns is synonymous with the Great Barrier Reef there are concerns about the impact of dredging on the living coral. This has been reported in the local newspaper (The Cairns Post), on the radio (ABC Far North Queensland) and via local university researchers (Coral CoE @ James Cook University). Ports North is preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and are seeking community feedback as part of the EIS process. All of that sounds good, until we look at the questions.

Let’s take a step-by-step look at the online survey together (eight screenshots follow):

1. Survey Introduction

1This is pretty good: it gives an explanation of the rationale for the survey, assures confidentiality, and is friendly and inviting: “Your feedback is important to us…” It is interesting to note the choice of words “expand the shipping channel” rather than “dredging the shipping channel”. Nevertheless, the survey is inviting community feedback to inform the environment impact statement, so it would be reasonable to expect there to be questions regarding this.

2. Awareness Question2

The options in the drop-down menu are “Yes” and “No”. A simple question that again uses the word “expand” rather than “dredge”. For your consideration: what influence does choice of words/language make in surveys?

3. Support Question

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The options in the drop-down menu are “Yes”, “No” and “Don’t Know”. Again, an interesting choice of words: I wonder if there would be a difference in responses if the question was changed from “Do you support this proposed community project?” to “Do you support dredging the shipping channel?”

4. The Push-Poll Question

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Despite the previous question allowing for alternative responses, this question prompts the participant towards an affirmative response. An excellent example of push-polling.

5. The Abstract Question

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We’re more than half way through the survey inviting community feedback to inform the environment impact statement. Still no mention of the environment in the survey, but at least this question does provide an opportunity for the participant to make mention of that, I guess. However, the question is a bit abstract – a random trawl for information that seems unlikely to yield much meaningful data to inform the environment impact statement.

6. Mailing List Question Number One

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This question has nothing to do with the environment impact statement, but offers a “Yes” or “No” choice to joining the Ports North mailing list.

7. Mailing List Question Number Two

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It does not matter what the response to the previous question is, the survey asks for contact details anyway.

8. The Demographic Question (Maybe)

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I guess this question aims to capture whether the research participants are part of the Cairns community or not. It is the final in the survey.

Summary

Ports North have created an online survey that claims to seek community feedback as part of the process of preparing an environmental impact statement. However, none of the questions address environmental issues.

This is an excellent example of how to do dodgy research.

So What?

How does this relate to the meta4RN blog related to nursing/health? Well, there is an argument to be made that links health to the environment and economy, but that’s not the prompt for me. My reason for using this case study is twofold: [1] it relates to something happening in my backyard, and [2] because this survey reminded me of some of the surveys that I have been exposed to in my nursing career. There have quite a few examples of “research”, “evaluation” or “satisfaction” surveys that predetermine the answers by limiting/skewing the questions.

In a related tangent, there are plenty of examples of quackery that are passed-off as health research/interventions that can confuse us and our patients. It is fitting for nurses, midwives and other health professionals to be vigilant to signs of dodgy research, as described in the sci-ence.org comic “The Red Flags of Quackery v2.0”:

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As always, comments are welcome.

Paul McNamara, 20th July 2014

P.S.

*Explanation re choosing an example to mock that is not directly related to health/nursing: I have a mortgage and don’t feel very secure. Call me “chicken”, but that’s they way it is at the moment. Cluck! Cluck!