Australian new graduate experiences during their transition program in a rural/regional acute care setting

The transition process from student to Registered Nurse has been recognised as an important yet challenging time for newly graduated nurses. Knowledge about this experience from the nurse’s perspective, particularly in a rural setting, is limited. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study of the experiences of newly graduated nurses working in a rural acute care facility in New South Wales. The study examined, from the perspective of the new nurse, the orientation and support which can help to facilitate the transition from student to registered nurse. Four themes emerged which were being supported, being challenged, reflections on being a new graduate, and reflections on a rural new graduate program. These findings contribute to what is know about the transition of new graduates in a rural facility and have implications for program improvements, specifically within the rural acute care environment. The findings are also relevant to students considering rural employment on graduation and for the recruitment and retention of New Graduate Registered Nurses in rural areas

Localised data sources for community health indicators: Ipswich Local Governance Area

The Healthy Communities Research Centre (HCRC) undertook a small-scale innovative project to locate and identify data collected within the Ipswich region that has the potential to contribute to health and wellbeing in the area. The data of interest were information gathered on a routine basis by organisations and groups outside the mainstream of public health. That is, grassroots data collection that currently 'flies under the radar' either because the information is not public, the potential for data use is not recognised or for some other reason. The goal of the project was to find data sources that are valid, reoccurring and geographically bound, which can be used over time to help improve health in a local area. Thus, this project started at the bottom with what could be called a 'field investigation' or exploration of data collection in the Ipswich area

Fieldwork in a digital age: Questions of privacy and copyright

Maximising research impact and promoting knowledge sharing require researchers to pay greater attention to the ways in which data are collected, processed and stored for systematic access at a later date. This also means that questions of privacy and copyright would emerge naturally. In this post, Jenny Ostini explains how she has dealt with the issues of licensing, privacy and communication with research participants while she was building up a database of digital literacy narratives based on her research project to study people’s everyday digital literacies

How do we 'get at' people's everyday practices of digital technology?

I’m interested in what sticks in the mind, what makes something memorable. And almost everyone can remember their first encounter with a computer. This may not last. Children born in the last five years will likely have always been around a digital device, in the same way that people born in the nineteen eighties don’t remember time before television. People’s feelings, experiences and memories are fertile ground for understanding their everyday practices; for understanding their ownership and use of digital technology and how it has become integral to our lives. My work-in-progress is a collection of digital literacy narratives drawing on people’s interactions with computers from their earliest to most recent experiences. It examines the rules surrounding personal, work and school usage of computers and how this has changed over time. People’s comfort levels with computers and new technology are also examined. The overarching question for this research is what digital literacy looks like in people’s lives or what digital literacies look like in everyday practice. It takes a thick description approach instead of a survey or testing of digital literacy

A psychometric evaluation of three pain rating scales for people with moderate to severe dementia

Little comparative information exists regarding the reliability and validity of pain rating scales for nurses to assess pain in people with moderate to severe dementia in residential aged care facilities. The objective of this study was to evaluate the relative psychometric merits of the Abbey Pain Scale, the DOLOPLUS-2 Scale, and the Checklist of Nonverbal Pain Indicators Scale, three well-known pain rating scales that have previously been used to assess pain in nonverbal people with dementia. An observational study design was used. Nurses (n = 26) independently rated a cross-section of people with moderate to severe dementia (n = 126) on two occasions. The Abbey Pain Scale and the DOLOPLUS-2 Scale showed good psychometric qualities in terms of reliability and validity, including resistance to the influence of rater characteristics. The Checklist of Nonverbal Pain Indicators Scale also had reasonable results but was not as psychometrically strong as the Abbey Pain Scale and DOLOPLUS-2 Scale. This study has provided comparative evidence for the reliability and validity of three pain rating scales in a single sample. These scales are strong, objective adjuncts in making comprehensive assessments of pain in people who are unable to self-report pain due to moderate to severe dementia, with each having their own strengths and weaknesses. The DOLOPLUS-2 Scale provides more reliable measurement, and the Abbey Pain Scale may be better suited than the other two scales for use by nurse raters who only occasionally use pain rating scales or who have lower level nursing qualifications

Mercury Rising, an evaluation: building capacity for mental health self-help groups in Queensland

The aim of Self Help Queensland's (SHQ) Mercury Rising project is to 'build the capacity of current mental health support groups across Queensland and to assist the development of new and emerging groups.' (SHQ, 2008). As part of the capacity‐building process, the Healthy Communities Research Centre at the University of Queensland was invited to provide an independent evaluation of the programme. The evaluation process included discussion of capacity building based on the social science literature; documentation gathered by SHQ in the course of its project; information gathered from key personnel, observational data of network meetings; interviews and written commentary gathered from network meeting participants

Domestic violence and Facebook: harassment takes new forms in the social media age

Domestic violence is now widely recognised as a national crisis. However, there are significant gaps in responses to the intimate violence enabled by social media platforms like Facebook