Family Medical Care Education and Research Grants (FMCER)

Call for abstracts 5^th June 2017. Close of abstracts 15^th September 2017.

Phone: (07) 3368 2422 Email: ihcrc@yrd.com.au Website: click here

Dear all

Just a note to let you know that abstracts for the PHCRIS conference are due on 31 March 2017.

Kind Regards

Alyssa Horgan
ISPRN Program Assistant

Join us in Brisbane for #phcr17!

Please be advised that the RACGP has opened expressions of interest for the 2017-2018 financial year intake of the education research grants program. For information, please refer to:

http://www.racgp.org.au/becomingagp/australian-general-practice-training-program-(agpt)/education-research-grants/

Expressions of interest the 2018 calendar year intake of academic posts will open on 17 April 2017. For information about this program, please refer to:

http://www.racgp.org.au/becomingagp/australian-general-practice-training-program-(agpt)/academic-posts/

2017 Foundation Grants 

The RACGP Foundation is delighted to announce the opening of the 2017 research grants and awards.

Online applications will open on Tuesday 7 March and close Monday 8 May 2017.

Approximately 20 grants are available to general practitioners and general practice registrars.

The RACGP is dedicated to supporting essential research into primary healthcare and general practice. Providing these opportunities in general practice research is vital for the quality of health care to the local community and all Australians.

Grant & Award details are available on the RACGP website: www.racgp.org.au/foundation/grants

For further information contact the RACGP foundation team at: research@racgp.org.au or phone 03 8699 0497.

The following 2017 research grants available:

• 2 x Therapeutic Guidelines Ltd (TGL)/RACGP Research Grants (Total $ 100,000)
• 2 x HCF Research Foundation/RACGP Research Grants (Total $60,000 each)
• 1 x RACGP/Diabetes Australia Research Grant ($60,000)
• 1 x RACGP/IPN Medical Centres Grant ($20,000)
• 1 x RACGP Foundation/ANEDGP Research Grant ($20,000)
• 1 x RACGP/Australian Association of Musculoskeletal Medicine ($10,000)
• 1 x RACGP/Primary Care Collaboration Cancer Clinical Trials Group (PC4) Research Grant ($10,000)
• 1 or more RACGP Indigenous Health Awards (up to $9,000 total)
• 2 x RACGP Family Medical Care Education and Research Grants (FMCER) (up to $20,000 each)
• 1 x RACGP Chris Silagy Research Scholarship(up to $15,000)
• 1 x Rex Walpole Travelling Fellowship (up to $2,500)
• 1 x PWH Grieve Memorial Award (up to $2,500)
• 1 x Charles Bridges-Webb Memorial Award ($1,000)
• 1 x Peter Mudge Medal ($500)
• 1 x Alan Chancellor Award ($500)
• 1 x Iris and Edward Gawthorn Award ($500)
• 1 x RACGP National Best General Practice Article in the AFP Journal Award

Please forward any enquiries to the RACGP foundation team via email or telephone.

Thank you,

Kind Regards,

Helena Koutroupis
RACGP Foundation & Research Administrator
RACGP Products

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners
100 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne, VIC 3002
T 03 8699 0497

The University of Wollongong is working with COORDINARE to undertake an independent consultation of health care providers across the region to understand their thoughts about the key barriers and enablers to adopting the Patient Centred Medical Home (PCMH) model of practice.

Patient Centred Medical Homes is a team-based healthcare delivery model, led by a physician which provides comprehensive and continuous medical care to patients, with the goal of obtaining maximised health outcomes. Care coordination is an essential component of the PCMH. The patient has a single medical home whether the needs are primary, preventative, acute or chronic care. It requires additional resources such as IT and appropriately trained staff to provide coordinated care through team-based models.

The purpose of the consultation is to obtain an independent assessment of the range of views among health care providers and invite you to complete the anonymous survey.

The survey questions are designed to capture your views regarding the Patient Centred Medical Home (PCMH) model of practice.

Please only complete this survey if you are based within the COORDINARE-South Eastern NSW Region. (See the link below if you are unsure)

http://www.coordinare.org.au/about-us/our-region/ 

The survey should take less than 5 minutes to complete.

Please click the link to access the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PatientCentredMedicalHomes

If you would like further information, please contact Alyssa Horgan on (02) 4221 5819 or via email at amunkman@uow.edu.au

Sincerely,

Alyssa Horgan
ISPRN Program Assistant

There are over 125 million general practice consultations taking place annually in Australia, with 83 percent of the Australian population consulting a GP at least once a year. General practitioners (GPs) provide person centred, continuing and comprehensive medical care to individuals and families within their community.

General practitioners are not limited by age, gender, body system, disease process or service site. The scope of clinical practice is challenging, spanning prevention, health promotion, early intervention for those at risk, and the management of acute, chronic and complex conditions within the practice population whether in the home, practice, health service, outreach clinic, hospital or community. General practitioners utilise best practice evidence in the light of individual patient circumstances, to understanding, plan and manage their patients’ health needs.

There are many guidelines providing best practice and evidence for managing different conditions for GPs. The aim of this grant is to support guidelines research that investigates use and implementation of guidelines in general practice. Specifically, research topics focusing on:
1. Guideline: content and format – presentation, useability, navigation, access and functionality of guidelines. How do GPs want information presented and implemented?
2. Behavioural aspects of guideline use: how do people use guidelines, how often, what is looked up, when, why and how can this be improved.
3. Consequence (outcome): benefits of using particular guidelines to improve health outcomes.
4. Evidence-practice gaps: do Australian GPs follow specific guidelines well, and if not, why not?

While research falling under any of these areas will be considered, studies focusing on (1) guideline content and format and (2) behavioural aspects of guideline use are encouraged as areas of particular interest. Both pilot studies and proposals for full-scale research studies will be considered.

The organisers of the Family Medicine Forum 2017 are keen to have international research presentations at the  Forum to be held from Nov 8-11, 2017 in Montreal, Quebec It is the  annual scientific meeting of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and is Canada’s largest and most comprehensive primary care conference. The first day is research and teaching specific, and the remaining 3 days has a clinical

They are encouraging primary care researchers outside of Canada for research submissions, the deadline to submit oral presentations and posters is April 8th 2017

To read more information please go to the  website http://fmf.cfpc.ca/, although a detailed program is not available yet.

The top 4 submitted oral presentations (as independently ranked by 3 primary care researchers and clinicians) are chosen for distinguished plenary presentation on Nov 8. An international distinguished plenary presentation would be valuable to most early career investigators and might make it worth the consideration of members of your department submitting to Family Medicine Forum.

Dear all,

Dr Carl Mahfouz will be speaking on ABC Illawarra (97.3) tomorrow (Thursday 9 February) at 8.30am with Nick Rheinberger about his research that has just been published.

http://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2017/januaryfebruary/an-australian-discharge-summary-quality-assessment-tool-a-pilot-study/

MEDIA RELEASE                         8 FEBRUARY 2017

Graduate Medicine identifies areas of improvement for post-hospital patient care

hospital discharge summary the key focus of new research

A study undertaken by researchers from the University of Wollongong (UOW) could vastly improve the health outcomes of patients following their discharge from hospital.

Dr Carl Mahfouz from UOW’s Graduate Medicine (GM), commenced working on an 18-month study into how hospital discharge summaries could be improved to better suit the needs of the GPs and the discharge information they require to optimally address the health care needs of their patients.

“I noticed inconsistencies on the discharge summaries of some of my patients, which prompted me to investigate whether this was a common problem,” he said.

The aim of the study was to establish the essential elements required in a hospital discharge summary to enable successful post-hospital continuity of care.

“Often a discharge summary is the only piece of information I receive when I take over a patient’s care. To be able to provide the patient with the best care it’s of the utmost importance that this document is accurate and reflects the true state of the patient,” Dr Mahfouz said.

The study, which drew from a national sample of General Practitioners (GPs), found that many hospital discharge summaries were missing key information such as diagnostic test results.

“GPs want an accurate, comprehensive discharge summary in a timely fashion that contains only relevant information relating to the most recent admission,” Dr Mahfouz said.

“Discharge summaries should be written by someone who has actually seen the patient, not just a copy and paste of a whole record and irrelevant information.”

The literature has demonstrated that a delay in a GP receiving a timely discharge summary has a strong correlation to a patient having to be readmitted to hospital.

Previous research shows that almost half (49 per cent) of patients discharged from hospital experienced at least one adverse event in their continuing care as a result of incorrect information contained in their hospital discharge summary.

“We hope this study will lead to more changes being made in the format, delivery and content of discharge summaries to be able to provide more comprehensive, timely and accurate care to patients,” Dr Mahfouz said.

Following the release of the research this month, the Pharmacy Department at Wollongong Hospital has incorporated several key changes, including the addition of medication changes and reasons for medication changes to discharge summaries.

The project was funded by the Illawarra Shoalhaven Medicare Local over an 18-month period.

The study was undertaken by Dr Carl Mahfouz, Professor Andrew Bonney, Associate Professor Judy Mullan and Dr Warren Rich.