The ethical protocol provides principles and guidance on how to respect the elders, cultural knowledge, and lands and seas of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. It provides a tool to frame and design an ethical approach to apply throughout all stages of monitoring and evaluation tasks and processes.
— Read on www.betterevaluation.org/en/themes/indigenous_evaluation/ethical_protocol
Peer reviewers need a code of conduct too
Learning to accept criticism is part of surviving the fierce competition in research. But an invitation to review the work of a peer, usually anonymously, is not a licence to patronize, intimidate or otherwise act in a way that would be unprofessional in the workplace. Such reviews are unnecessarily discouraging, particularly to an early-career researcher with limited experience of the system.
— Read on www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02492-w
Hell yes to this. Reviewer 2 types need to be much more accountable for their conduct and general incivility.
Political Scenarios for Climate Disaster
There is no realistic scenario for addressing climate change that does not involve a comprehensive reorganization of human societies in the reasonably near term. Yet we emphasize reorganization, not collapse or apocalypse. As a species, humanity will almost certainly survive the coming centuries. But who will survive, and how they will live, is genuinely uncertain. The distribution of the burdens of substantial adaptation—which is now inevitable, whatever the extent of future carbon mitigation—and the political-economic means by which distribution is implemented: these are urgent issues facing us all.
— Read on www.dissentmagazine.org/article/political-scenarios-for-climate-disaster
“…remarkably similar to alcohol industry rhetoric…”
Very interesting reading in FARE’s analysis of the drafts of the National Alcohol Strategy:
The strategy has been modified to re-frame alcohol consumption as a positive part of Australian culture. This is closely in line with alcohol industry rhetoric, but is at odds with the objective of the strategy which is to minimise harm from alcohol.
DRAFT STRATEGY:
“Australia is regularly reported or casually referred to as having an “alcohol culture” where not consuming alcohol can be viewed as being “unAustralian”. There are many Australians for whom this perception of the cultural norm contributes to increased risk of serious harm and the development of harmful drinking patterns. Examples of alcohol being embedded in the Australian culture include drinking to intoxication being seen as a rite of passage to adulthood, the perception that celebration and consuming alcohol are intrinsically linked, public figures are glorified for drinking alcohol, widespread alcohol availability and accessibility of cheap alcohol products, social and peer pressure/expectation to consume alcohol and exposure to alcohol advertising and promotion.”REVISED STRATEGY:
“Alcohol is an intrinsic part of Australian culture and it plays a central role in most people’s social lives. Research clearly illustrates that whether people are celebrating, socialising, networking, relaxing, commiserating, or rewarding themselves—alcohol plays an integral role.”
Alcohol industry fingerprints: analysis of the modifications to the National Alcohol Strategy
On the risks of general practice by smartphone, and who’s excluded by (and through) mHealth initiatives
Answers to some questions about GP at Hand come from a recent independent evaluation.2
The evaluation confirms that GP at Hand caters principally to a healthy, affluent, young, and working population: 98.5% of patients are aged 20-64,3 two thirds live in affluent areas, and only 0.1% are cared for by the service’s “chronic care team.”
Registered patients found GP at Hand convenient and used the service more often than they did their previous practice, also reducing their previous high use of other urgent NHS services. However, a quarter of GP at Hand’s newly registered patients move back to a conventional NHS practice, many within two weeks.
— Read on www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l4713
Lowitja Institute International Indigenous Health Conference Conference Statement
1. Nation state governments must reform the way health resources are shared. Community health initiatives and programs that are built on place-based knowledge must be supported and recognised for the leadership and expertise they contain.
2. Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing are norms and should not be marginalised. They are not alternatives; they are not perspectives: they are our lived truth.
3. Our health is connected to our land and our seas. As Indigenous peoples of the world we are the protectors of these sacred lands and waters. It is our responsibility to connect our knowledges for positive change.
4. We have the right to our own institutions where we mentor our emerging thinkers, where we speak our truths, where we celebrate our ways of being
— Read the full statement at www.conference2019.lowitja.org.au/2019-conference-statement
Quality in general practice
…PIP QI [Practice Incentive Payment Quality Improvement] is a top-down quality improvement strategy. Funding is based on data extraction for 10 quantitative measures that are shared with the local Primary Health Networks (PHNs). The practice then must engage in a quality improvement project, with vague descriptors of qualifying activities. The secretive nature of negotiations about the content of PIP QI has excluded the medical profession and the people we are trying to treat. The 10 measures are relatively crude, including percentage of patients who smoke, patients with diabetes with recent glycated haemoglobin recording, and patient weight recordings.
These limited measures are far too narrow to assess a complex system such as general practice. Rather than driving quality improvement, the focus becomes one of coding for the purposes of data extraction.
Source: We need to talk about quality in general practice
Interesting post from members of the GPs Down Under Facebook group.
Factors influencing interprofessional collaboration between community pharmacists and general practitioners—A systematic review
The review findings highlight a range of approaches that may positively influence interprofessional collaboration between GPs and CPS such as co‐location, co‐education to understand the professional capabilities of each group, and utilising compatible technologies to facilitate communication between the two professions.
Australian climate extremes in the 21st century according to a regional climate model ensemble: Implications for health and agriculture
Estimated increases in daily excess mortality due to daytime temperatures above 30 °C are highest for Sydney and Brisbane under a far future climate (76.8 and 32.5 more deaths, respectively). For Sydney this is largely a result of the population’s sensitivity to high temperatures, whereas for Brisbane it is largely due to the increase in the number of hot days.
The Creation of an Alternative to the DSM: An Interview with Dr. Lucy Johnstone
The aim is to move, in simple terms, away from the “What is wrong with you?” towards the “What has happened to you?” question… One of the things we wanted to do was to really make very clear the link between personal distress and social context, social inequality, and social injustices. In other words, to put power on the map. Power is not only missing from psychiatric thinking, but it’s also missing from a lot of psychological thinking, and it’s missing from much psychotherapeutic thinking.
Source: The Creation of an Alternative to the DSM: An Interview with Dr. Lucy Johnstone