A photographic essay on landslides across southeastern New South Wales triggered by the rainfall events of 2022

Eastern Australia has experienced a significant magnitude rainfall event of extended duration in the first 7 months of 2022. Across the east coast of New South Wales (NSW) a series of troughs and East Coast Lows occurred during a La Nina weather cycle bringing above average rainfall to the region. As this first half of 2022 La Nina event was drawing to a close the Indian Ocean Dipole entered a negative phase which coincided with another intense East Coast Low in early July 2022 impacting the Illawarra region of NSW. These events caused widespread flooding and significant landslide damage to road and rail infrastructure across the state networks and local government infrastructure across NSW. During this extended wet period in the first 7 months of 2022 more than 200 landslides have been recorded across the Illawarra, Southern Highlands and Blue Mountains regions of NSW whilst many more have occurred across the north coast region. This paper presents a brief and albeit preliminary summary of the rainfall and provides a series of photographs with very brief descriptions of some of these landslide events within southeastern NSW. The intent of the paper is to provide early guidance to AGS members of the nature and form of landslides that have occurred across the Illawarra region. This paper does not discuss the dual fatality resulting from the Wentworth Falls area rockfall of the 5th April

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: The ability to accurately predict operative duration has the potential to optimise theatre efficiency and utilisation, thus reducing costs and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With laparoscopic cholecystectomy being one of the most commonly performed procedures worldwide, a tool to predict operative duration could be extremely beneficial to healthcare organisations. Methods: Data collected from the CholeS study on patients undergoing cholecystectomy in UK and Irish hospitals between 04/2014 and 05/2014 were used to study operative duration. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was produced in order to identify significant independent predictors of long (> 90 min) operations. The resulting model was converted to a risk score, which was subsequently validated on second cohort of patients using ROC curves. Results: After exclusions, data were available for 7227 patients in the derivation (CholeS) cohort. The median operative duration was 60 min (interquartile range 45–85), with 17.7% of operations lasting longer than 90 min. Ten factors were found to be significant independent predictors of operative durations > 90 min, including ASA, age, previous surgical admissions, BMI, gallbladder wall thickness and CBD diameter. A risk score was then produced from these factors, and applied to a cohort of 2405 patients from a tertiary centre for external validation. This returned an area under the ROC curve of 0.708 (SE = 0.013, p  90 min increasing more than eightfold from 5.1 to 41.8% in the extremes of the score. Conclusion: The scoring tool produced in this study was found to be significantly predictive of long operative durations on validation in an external cohort. As such, the tool may have the potential to enable organisations to better organise theatre lists and deliver greater efficiencies in care

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Connecting indigenous stories with geology: Inquiry-based learning in a middle years classroom

One way to integrate indigenous perspectives in junior science is through links between indigenous stories of the local area and science concepts. Using local indigenous stories about landforms, a teacher of year 8 students designed a unit on geology that catered for the diverse student population in his class. This paper reports on the inquiry-based approach structured around the requirements of the Australian Curriculum highlighting the learning and engagement of students during the unit

An eye for talent: The recruiters' role in the Australian Football talent pathway

Talent identification and recruitment (TIR) in elite sport is a complex process with performance and career longevity implications for athletes, sports organisations, and scouts (hereafter referred to as recruiters). Although there is an established body of published research on TIR the critical roles that recruiters perform has only recently gained attention from researchers. In this study, we report on the practices that 12 full time Australian Football recruiters use to inform their TIR decisions. Inductive qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted using open-ended questions. Thematic analysis resulted in the identification of four primary themes (the recruiter, processes and practices, assessment and selection). The results and discussion provide insights and an occupational 'road map' into the important role recruiters perform in sporting organisations

Seed Funds Leverage External Awards for Research in Natural Resources and Agricultural Systems

In the United States, “seed fund” programs in biomedical fields have been reported to enhance faculty success in securing federal awards. Seed funds are relatively small internal grants that are allocated by universities to their faculty to invigorate research, in anticipation that they will lead to larger benefits—these benefits could be the creation of stronger teams that lead to larger external grants and/or more impactful publications. We hypothesized that a seed funding approach for research on natural resources and agricultural systems, including forest systems, may have similar benefits. Here, we report that seed funding supported faculty development in numerous ways, including leveraging to generate external competitive awards. For each dollar of institutional investment in each of the three seed funding programs, faculty acquired 6, >50, and $4.50, respectively, in external funding that was leveraged within three years of the seed fund award date. Notably, the majority of the leveraged funding was from federal granting agencies through competitive programs. Federal competitive awards are important elements of tenure and promotion dossiers, as they reflect success in acquiring grants that are difficult to obtain, thus providing evidence of research excellence. We speculate that the seed fund proposal review process prepared faculty for competitive awards. Finally, we suggest best management practices for the implementation of seed funding to support teams of faculty

Conclusion

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