Welcome to the inaugural edition of GRH News! GRH News is the publication of new and relevant information about all things related to rural clinical placements, education and rural health, from the Going Rural Health team. Team members are located in Ballarat, Shepparton and Wangaratta.

It's a crazy time at the moment. But the Going Rural Health team are adapting programs and services to accommodate COVID-19 restrictions, and are continuing to support students, health professionals, and health staff at this time, to assist in maintaining their wellbeing and to ensure placements still go ahead.

• Going Rural Health student support during COVID-19
• The Going Rural Health Blog
• Going Rural Health online and virtual education
• External online education and webinars
• COVID-19 Webinar Series
• The Going Rural Health Website
• Going Rural Health virtual placements

GRH are still supporting students on rural placements during the COVID-19 pandemic, with extra support being offered to some students for accommodation expenses, to enable social isolation.

More information on the GRH Student Support Scheme is available here.

As always, we are trying to ensure that students get the best placement experience possible. Please help us to do this by directing students to complete our Student Placement Survey. It is a short online survey that should only take students 10-15 minutes to complete.

Did you know that GRH now has a blog? The blog contains posts on relevant rural, rural health, student placement, and education topics. There are also posts about self-care, particularly relevant for students on rural placement, and also while there are social isolation restrictions in place. Authors are GRH health professional staff, with the occasional guest blogger.

Our most recent blog posts can be accessed below. New blog posts are posted on our Facebook page and tweeted on Twitter.

With the current restrictions in place preventing face to face education occurring, Going Rural Health have continued to provide education to staff and students via video conference, and have also recently added to our list of online education packages that are available. Links to the available GRH online education packages are below:

• Online Introduction to Rural Health 
• Resilience, Wellbeing and Self-Care 
• Communication 
• Responding Effectively to Upset and Complaining Patients or Family 
• Social Media Posting: Implications for Health Professionals
• Giving Effective Feedback

And online education coming soon:

• Online Cultural training
• Receiving Feedback

More online packages are currently in development and will become available over the coming months. See our online education page here for details.

Please contact the education team via the GRH email address going-ruralhealth@unimelb.edu.au  for details of what education is running in the virtual space, or book a virtual session from the education list at Education topics.

The Mobile Learning Unit – e-learning courses (free):

Compassion fatigue: the cost of caring

Clinician resilience during COVID-19

Prevention United Mental Health Webinars (free):

The economic case for promoting mental wellbeing and preventing mental ill-health in the aftermath of COVID19 | Tuesday 2 June 12.30-1.30pm

Wellbeing is contagious too: Inner strength and compassion during and after COVID-19 | Wednesday 3 June 12.30 - 1.30pm

Promoting and protecting the mental health of children and young people in the era of COVID-19 | Thursday 11 June 12.30-2pm

The case for community-led action and social policy reform in the wake of COVID19 | Wednesday 16 June 12.30-1.30pm

Three Rivers UDRH supports health professionals, staff and students by offering free online courses. The following 2 courses are especially relevant:

Three Rivers UDRH Rural Clinical Placements – How to grow your own course .

Three Rivers UDRH Telehealth - Embracing Technology in Healthcare

The North East and Goulburn Valley Allied Health Group and the Hume Region Nursing and Midwifery Education Group are seeking expressions of interest from health professionals to form a steering committee to guide delivery of the Hume Region Health Conference to be held either September or October 2021- venue yet to be determined.

For more information, please contact Cathy O'Brien cathy.o'brien@unimelb.edu.au

The University of Melbourne, Department of Rural Health are excited to announce a COVID-19 Public Webinar Series:

Series 1: Rural COVID-19 in Australia: What have we learnt about the virus and ourselves?

Tuesday 2nd June 5:30pm - 6:30pm

Professor Shitij Kapur, FRCPC, PhD, FMedSci is Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences and Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Health) at the University of Melbourne. Professor Kapur is a well-respected leader on COVID-19, is co-chair of the Group of Eight (Go8) taskforce that have provided the 'Roadmap to Recovery' report to assist the Government to dealing with COVID-19: Roadmap to Recovery. He also hosts a six-part panel series 'Life Beyond Coronavirus' with an impressive panel of specialists in their field, which can be viewed here.

As Australia appears to have flattened the curve and is now easing restrictions, where does this leave us moving forward? Are people in rural and regional Australia better off than those in metropolitan locations?

If you are interested in attending please register here.

Series 2: What can we learn from educating during COVID-19?

Tuesday 2nd June 5:30pm - 6:30pm

Laureate Professor John Hattie will share his extensive knowledge on education and provide strategies that improve educational outcomes.  

If you are interested in attending please register here.

Series 3: Mental Health and dealing with COVID-19 in the rural setting.

Tuesday 16th June 5:30pm - 6:30pm

Professor Lisa Phillips will share her knowledge of young people and adults experiencing a range of mental health difficulties.

If you are interested in attending please register here.

Enquiries: Di Doyle (03) 5823 4512 or email: ddoyle@unimelb.edu.au

There have been a few recent changes to the GRH website:  

www.goingruralhealth.com.au  

• There is a new 'Aboriginal Health' menu on the GRH website. This menu contains items that have information on the University of Melbourne Department of Rural Health Aboriginal Health team, and information about cultural training, education, placements relating to Aboriginal Health, and scholarship opportunities. Find the main page here or check out the menu items from the home page.
• As discussed above, all our online education can now be found on the one page of our website, accessed via this link: online education
• The GRH team undertakes a variety of research projects. A new GRH research page can be found on our website here.
• All our resources for students and staff/supervisors can still be found in the student or staff menus. Please feel free to contact us at going-ruralhealth@unimelb.edu.au if you have any items to add or queries regarding content.

The first GRH 'virtual placements' have begun with our Wangaratta, Shepparton and Ballarat teams. 

Wangaratta have two placements occurring at the moment:

OT students working at a kindergarten association to conduct a literature review re inter-generational kindergarten programs. This will also include capacity building resources (ie screening tools, education materials and goal setting) and pilot programs for trial post COVID-19.

PT students working at a special school who have driven the development of telehealth policies and procedures (including consent) and implemented land based exercise programs for allocated clients via telehealth. They have also developed an allied health profile as a quality improvement initiative.

Ballarat also have an OT placement occurring currently with homeless people.

Shepparton's virtual placement is a Speech Pathology placement in a local primary school.

Please feel free to contact the Going Rural Health team about virtual placements by emailing

going-ruralhealth@unimelb.edu.au

Physiotherapy students from CSU attending a zoom mentoring session with Going Rural Health's Bec Oates, as part of their virtual placement.

Newsletter: To subscribe, please click here.

If you would like to contribute to GRH news please email your contribution to trish.thorpe@unimelb.edu.au

Phone: (03) 8344 6791

Email: going-ruralhealth@unimelb.edu.au

Website: www.goingruralhealth.com.au 

Blog: https://goingruralhealth.com.au/going-rural-health-blog/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoingRuralHealth/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoingRuralHlth