Illawarra and Southern Practice Research Network (ISPRN) would like to invite all practice managers of  practices involved in the research network to lunch.

The lunch will be held on Tuesday 15 October 11.30am-1.30pm at The University of Wollongong in the IHMRI building and will be a fantastic opportunity for the ISPRN team to meet with you in person and to answer any questions that you may have about practice based research.

Practice managers are key to ensuring that practice based research projects continue in their success and this lunch will be an opportunity for us to thank you for your facilitation so far.

Please RSVP to Alyssa Munkman amunkman@uow.edu.au

Project Wrap Up
What is the effect on weight by regularly weighing 20-70 year old attendees in general practice?

Dr Duncan Mackinnon, a GP from Bega, has been conducting a study to assess whether the weighing of patients at every consultation (over an eight-month period), followed by usual care, has an impact on healthy weight maintenance of 20-70 year old general practice attendees. The pilot study has involved 285 patients from six practices and will be winding up in November this year (Congratulations Duncan!).

What’s happening next?
Data Analysis
Following the intervention study the mean weight gain of the intervention sample will then be compared with the average population weight gain to determine if the intervention had an effect on intervention patients’ weight maintenance.

Evaluation of the Study
An evaluation of the study will also be conducted and aims to interviews key participants including the patients, GP’s, reception staff and practice managers to at exploring their experiences of the weight management study.

We are looking forward to the next stages of the project and wish to thank all the practices who have been involved in this study.  We would also welcome those practices to let us know if they would like to be involved in further analysis of the study. Please contact ISPRN on, email: isprn-enquiries@uow.edu.au OR phone: (02) 42215958.

 Project Update- Electronic Medical Data Interest Group

What is the EMD?
The EMD is a group of practitioners interested in the use of Electronic Data from medical  records for research and practice improvement.

What are we doing?
Up until recently, the group has been focussing on looking at the how what and why of data collection, particularly in relation to answering some practical questions. The first of these is “What happens if we stop statins in the over 75 age group”? This project has now become the starting point of a Masters research project for Dr Adam Hodgkins- well done and good luck!

A big thank you for the effort so far from Prof Andrew Bonney, Dean Denman from Best Practice, Darren Mayne from NSW Health Dr Jeff Pinkstone and Dr Lucie Stanford.

Future Directions
The main focus of the group now is engaging a group of interested practices to build a network of eGP data. Involved practices will help to focus the direction. Options include doing local data searches to help reflect on clinical practice for a single GP or single practice, through to developing tools to aggregate this data to form a bigger dataset for answering clinical questions of interest of practitioners.

I will be visiting the UK in September for a conference and will be meeting with the UK Big Data group to see if we can apply any of their experience in our local area.

Getting Involved
If you’d like to know more, get involved and start maximising the value of the data in your practices and particularly if you have questions that you think could be answered by this approach over time, please contact Alyssa Munkman isprn-enquiries@uow.edu.au.

Dr Stephen Barnett

Professor Andrew Bonney and the ISPRN team would like to congratulate Dr Lucie Stanford and Ms Dianna Fornasier on having their abstracts accepted as a poster presentation at the 2013 Primary Health Care and Research Information Service (PHCRIS). PHCRIS is a national primary health care organisation that contributes to improved health care policy and practice by increasing the exchange of information and knowledge about Australian primary health care research, evaluation and development.

Congratulations on all of your hard work!

If you would like to read Lucie and Dianna’s abstract or would like more information about the PHCRIS conference you can click here:

http://www.phcris.org.au/conference/2013/program.php

Dear ISPRN Members,

ISPRN would like to invite expressions of interest to participate in a project which will look at developing a decision aid for the treatment of major depression.

The aid will assist patients and doctors to make a shared decision regarding treatment, based on facts provided in the aid.

A decision aid in the form of a booklet will be developed which will explain all treatment options available to a patient. The aim is to then trial this decision aid in two GP focus groups & two patient focus groups.

We will be using the attached booklet as a basis framework to develop our own aid.

If you are interested in contributing to this project as part of the research team email us isprn-enquiries@uow.edu.au or phone 02 42215958.

http://decisionaid.ohri.ca/docs/develop/develop_da.pdf

Kind Regards,

Professor Andrew Bonney

Project:  Engaging general practitioners to improve health service delivery to older patients: an action-based research project

Researchers: Dr Andrew Dalley¹, Assoc. Prof Karen Charlton², Clinical Professor Jan Potter³, Dr Karen Walton², Professor Andrew Bonney^1,2, Dr George Albert¹, Dr Adam Hodgkins¹, Dr Marianna Milosavljevic³,  Mr Abhijeet Ghosh⁴ and Ms Aliza Haslinda Hamirudin²

¹Illawarra and Southern Practice Research Network, NSW
²University of Wollongong, NSW
³Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District, NSW
⁴Illawarra-Shoalhaven Medicare Local, NSW

This participatory research project aims to introduce change in general practice that will improve health service delivery to older adults living in the community, focusing on early identification and management of malnutrition. This project is funded by Illawarra and Health Medical Research Institute (IHMRI) Clinical Grant and consists of three phases:

Phase 1: Situational analysis and action-based research (Ethics number: HE11/232)

I am very pleased to report outcomes of Phase 1 research completed in 2012 at three general practices of the Illawarra and Southern Practice Research Network (ISPRN). The three participating general practices are Shellharbour Medical Centre, Junction Street Family Practice and Culburra Beach General Practice. Barriers to, and opportunities for the introduction of a nutrition screening tool within routine practice were investigated through individual open-ended interviews with practice nurses and general practitioners. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically using qualitative analysis software. An observational component was also performed to identify opportunities to conduct nutrition screening within the current workflow of participating practices. Lack of time was identified as the major barrier, which was further validated by observational data. Mean consultation time was 13.9 minutes, which would prohibit additional activities within a usual 15 minute consultation. The main opportunity identified was to include a validated nutrition screening tool within the current Medicare funded Health Assessment for  adults aged 75+years (75+ HA).

Phase 1 research outcomes are as below:

1. Peer-reviewed journal publication (Australian Family Physician in May 2013)

HAMIRUDIN, A.H., CHARLTON, K., WALTON, K., BONNEY, A., ALBERT, G., HODGKINS, A., POTTER, J., MILOSAVLJEVIC, M. & DALLEY, A. 2013. ‘We are all time poor’ Is routine nutrition screening of older patients feasible? Australian Family Physician, 42,321-326

1.    Conference presentations

• Oral presentation at 16^th International Congress of Dietetics, in Sydney (5- 8 September 2012)
• Poster presentation at 36^th Nutrition Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting, in Wollongong (27- 30 November 2012)
• Oral presentation at the upcoming 20^th IAGG World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics in Seoul, South Korea (23- 27 June 2013)

Phase 2: Development of model of care to include nutrition screening and management protocols (Ethics number: HE12/381)

Phase 2 research is currently underway at the same three participating general practices, the purpose of which is:

1. To introduce a resource kit to encourage use of the validated nutrition screening instrument (MNA-SF) within the Health Assessment for older persons aged over 75 years.

2. To improve the skills of general practice staff in identification and management of nutritional risk in older patients

3. To assess the feasibility of widespread uptake of the resource kit and MNA-SF within general practice settings.

Phase 3: Implementation and pilot-testing of a novel model of nutritional care

The third and final part of this project will be to investigate patient-related outcomes associated with routine screening for malnutrition and early identification of a need for referral to services. Results of Phase 2 research will inform study design and development of Phase 3. Phase 3 research is anticipated to be completed by end of 2013.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Illawarra and Health Medical Research Institute (IHMRI) for the funding; Illawarra and Southern Practice Research Network (ISPRN) and general practices staff as well as our research partners; Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District (ISLHD) and Illawarra-Shoalhaven Medicare Local (ISML) for your valuable contribution to this project. I look forward to great outcomes for Phases 2 and 3 of this project.

– Aliza Haslinda Hamirudin

Invitation
Illawarra and Southern Practice Research Network
Research Development Conference
4 May 2013
Time: 8:45am-4.30pm
Venue: The Sebel Harbourside Kiama,
31 Shoalhaven Street, Kiama

What is the ISPRN Research Development Conference?
The ISPRN Research Development Conference is an annual event where staff of ISPRN practices have an opportunity to meet other members, present research ideas and decide as a group which projects we will support in the coming year. It also provides an opportunity to build research capacity by developing your knowledge of how to develop a research protocol as well as providing opportunities for you to network with others interested in primary care research.

Who?
Members of ISPRN including: GPs, practice nurses and practice managers, Graduate School of Medicine Clinical Academics, members of the Illawarra Shoalhaven Medicare Local (ISML) and GP Registrars/GP supervisors of the Coast City Country General Practice Training (CCCGPT).

Cost?
The Network will pay for the forum registration costs for all delegates (including meals), for two staff members from each practice.

Where?

Directions
For detailed instructions visit www.whereis.com.au and select get directions to The Sebel Harbourside (31 Shoalhaven Street, Kiama).

Parking
The Sebel Harbouside Kiama has 2 complimentary undercover car parks situated at 31 Shoalhaven Street and 2 Minnamurra Street (boom gates will remain up). There is also additional street parking located on Minnamurra and Shoalhaven Street.

If you require accommodation please contact Bridget Dijkmans-Hadley by the 24^th of April (bdh@uow.edu.au) or 42215958 and she will be able to help arrange it for you.

Hosted By
The Illawarra and Southern Practice Research Network working in partnership with the Graduate School of Medicine and the Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute.

Call for Research Ideas
You are invited to do a brief presentation (a maximum of 5 minutes) on a research idea that you think might be a suitable ISPRN project.  The presentations will then be used for delegates to select research ideas to workshop.

Presentation Template
Here are some things for you to think about when preparing your research idea presentation:

What is the research topic of interest?
Who do you think will be involved?
How or why is it relevant to general practice?

If you have a research idea that may be suitable please email a brief summary (maximum of 300 words) to: isprn-enquiries@uow.edu.au.
The closing date for submission is 29th April 2013.

Note: CPD points will be applied for but are yet to be confirmed.