Greetings from the researcher exchange to Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Research in Melbourne, AU

 

Deakin Uni Sign

I am delighted and grateful to #Saastamoisen_Säätiö sr – Saastamoinen Foundation for the funding which facilitated my researcher exchange to #Deakin_University in Victoria, #Melbourne, #Australia for five weeks in October-November 2022.

 

My visiting destination was the Institute of Health Transformation and the Centre for Quality and Patient Safety research (QPS). The visit preparations started before Covid-19 pandemic. I came across with Deakin Professor Julie Considine and Professor Judy Currey while they were lecturing in Finland. We had a chat on a coffee break and I found out that they were colleagues of Professor Elizabeth Manias who I was already previously keen to meet one day;  We have a common study focus of “medication related communication”. Julie and Judy kindly advised me how to apply for an exchange period into Deakin Uni and they conveyed my message to Professor Manias. This distant dream finally came true after two years’ delay due to the pandemic. Thus, it was worth writing down this “unlikely dream” to my original study plan in the first place!

My principal hosts during the visit were experienced patient safety researchers Professor Elizabeth Manias and Professor Tracey Bucknall. The exchange collaboration included co-authorship of one scientific article with the professors and Professor Vehviläinen-Julkunen and Associate Professor Härkänen from UEF.

Elizabeth and Tracey kindly organized an interesting program for the exchange period. I had an amazing opportunity to network with several highly skilled patient safety and communication researchers. QPS has over 80 researchers plus doctoral students, who deliver around 250 scientific articles per year (QPS annual report, 2021). I managed to arrange personal meetings with many researchers, but also enjoyed several collective researchers’ events with a variety of researchers. For example, Associate Professor Debra Kerr has been studying if communication training for nurses should be standardized (Kerr, Martin, Furber, Winterburn, Milnes, Nielsen and Strachan, 2022).  

I was offered to attend LUMA institute’s “Shared decision-making methods” training, which continues now via Zoom. 

 

 

I participated in a 4-days researcher conference of SoNM (School of Nursing and Midwifery) where there were over 40 scientific presentations by PhD- and Master’s students, Doctors, and Professors. I had the privilege to present my own doctoral study also at the conference, which was a great learning experience in a friendly atmosphere.

 

The SoNM conference included training about systematic literature review by Professor Brigid Gillespie from Griffith University and NVivo workshop by Professor Linda Sweet from Deakin University. The discussions about research with several academic colleagues helped me to map post doc research ideas and possibilities for future collaboration between the Departments of Nursing Science in Deakin and UEF. I was able to initiate patient-safety-researcher networks to universities in AU, but also to Danmark, Iran, Ethiopia, and Mexico. In addition, the Deakin networking helped me to find potential collaboration links to Netherlands and Canada.

Professor Julie Concidine, Chair In Nursing Eastern Health and Director of research unit, kindly arranged an interesting visit to Box Hill Hospital for a Danish doctoral exchange student Helen and me. We met members of Julie’s research group and visited a couple of units and discussed with their directors and staff regarding medication management practices, digital solutions, staff retention challenges and solutions during pandemic times. The challenges have been similar type to Finland and Denmark.

However, the differences in solutions seemed to be the higher compensations to nurses taking care of Covid patients, free meals during the working shift plus offers of free continuing professional development courses in higher education. This is meaningful, as AU nurses need to gain a certain number of training credits per certain period of time to keep their nursing license effective.

 

In Melbourne, according to my understanding, many of the professors are mainly working as directors of the research units within hospitals or hospital districts and having a smaller percentage of contract in UNI than in hospital – contrary to Finland, where we have the opposite proportions of working hours for professors, or professors work full time in UNI. In Melbourne the research units are interprofessional and they are often responding straight to the local clinical evidence needs. Thus, remarkable part of the scientific research is aiming to give answers straight to clinicians.

The research results improve front line clinical work by giving evidence base for decision making for local managers and directors – They are studying for example “How effective it is to use ultrasound cannulation method compared to traditional cannulation?”(Schoch, Bennett, Currey, Smith, Orellana and Hutchinson, 2022) or “How effective is nurses’ training intervention for recognizing and reporting patients’ deterioration in their organization?” (Bucknall, Considine, Harvey, Graham, Rycroft-Malone,Mitchell, Saultry, Watts, Mohebbi, Bohingamu Mudiyanselage, Lotfaliany and Hutchinson, 2022) or “How interprofessional and intraprofessional communication occures  when managing older patients’ medications during care transitions” (Manias, Bucknall, Woodward-Kron, Hughes, Jorm, Ozavci and Joseph, 2021) or “How do the family members perceived ICU care and communication during the pandemic” (Digby, Manias, Haines, Orosz, Ihle and Bucknall, 2022). 

And which were the key take home messages from my exchange? 

Nursing research is highly respected, well-funded, effectively led and collaborated in Melbourne, Australia, and it concentrates strongly on intervention and effectiveness research. One of the main aims is to translate research results into practice. The research areas are discussed openly, results shared, awarded, and celebrated actively and projects developed in wide researcher and clinician collaboration. Diverse level students, Post Docs and professors have common local conferences, where they can network and learn from each other as a researcher community. 

People in Australia are truly kind and helpful. Infrastructure is very modern but green aspects are taken into consideration even around skyscrapers. Air B & B accommodation within a family was a pragmatic and cost-efficient solution but also a great way to get to know local culture, warm-hearted people, lovely garden, wild and pet animals and beautiful houses in family housing areas! 

The Deakin visit was full of amazing new experiences and contacts. I can warmly recommend exchange periods to Melbourne, and to encourage different level researchers and students to build exchange dreams – the dreams might come true! 

Best Regards,
Tiina

Tiina Syyrilä, Doctoral researcher, University Teacher, MSc, RN
Department of Nursing Science, UEF

 

Genomics – an Emerging Trend in Nursing Science – Genomiikka – nouseva suuntaus hoitotyössä

By: Anndra Parviainen, doctoral researcher, UEF

(Scroll down for the Finnish text)

Photo: Professor Katri Vehviläinen-Julkunen UEF and Doctoral researcher Anndra Parviainen UEF.

Genomics-Informed Nurses (GIN) played an important role in integrating genomics sciences, precision medicine and precision health into clinical practice (Laaksonen et al., 2022; National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, 2021; Tonkin et al., 2020). The ultimate goal of genomics is to improve patients’ outcomes (World Health Organization, 2020).

In this blog, I am going to share the reason why I took the courage to pursue my doctorate study in the topic of genomics. Genomics may be seen as hard science and may sounds foreign to nurses. As other healthcare fields are progressing so fast and embracing genomics, the nursing discipline seems to be stagnant and reluctant. The adaptation of genomics innovation in nursing discipline is slow. There are many reasons why we nurses are hesitant to embrace genomics. The main reasons are existing knowledge gaps, lack of training, and heavy workload (Buaki-Sogo & Percival, 2022; Bueser et al., 2022; Calzone et al., 2018; Zureigat et al., 2022).

For the sake of improving our craft (nursing science)– I personally believe that despite the many challenges in our nursing profession, we can be part in the genomics revolution. Or should I say that “we should be part and not be left behind”.

The story of my genomics journey

Eight years ago, a very close relative of mine called me and informed me the sad news that healthcare professionals are considering the possibility that my relative is having a certain type of cancer. This personal experience in life had given me motivation to search for knowledge about cancer.

During my first year as master’s degree student in University of Eastern Finland, Department of Nursing Science, I took that opportunity to learn and discover what do we mean by cancer. I have taken courses related to cancer and one of these courses is Cancer Genomics taught by Prof. Carsten Carlberg from UEF, Biomedicine Institute. I feel fascinated with the topic and the take home message from this course was “the more we know cancer in a genomic way, the more we are prepared”.

When I am on my second year of my master’s degree, we had this course “Evaluation of Nursing Knowledge” and Prof. Katri Vehviläinen-Julkunen presented the broad scope of the nursing disciple from macro-level to genomic-level. I feel happy to know that genomics is still within the scope of nursing discipline. I was sure to myself that I want to pursue my doctorate degree (started 2017) to continue to search and discover new things.

I was reflecting with my own personal life experiences and my passion to contribute to advancing the nursing science as a discipline. I was thinking during that time that I want to explore the possibility of genomics be integrated in the nursing profession while learning the methodology of performing interventional studies like randomized-controlled trial as a research method. I took the doctoral degree as an opportunity to learn from the experts and great mentors.

Addressing the knowledge gaps among nurses and introducing the genomics concepts is a practical way for the nursing science progress smoothly in the nursing education, clinical application, and research. I hope that this humble study would spark interest among nurses.

Figure. Conceptual framework of genomic nursing care. Three overlapping disciplines — nursing science, biomedicine science, and biobank—build a career in Genomic Nursing Care, which is central to the circles representing the complex concepts and skills necessary to nursing career development – © Dumo et al., 2020.

Save the date: 1st Genomics-Informed Nursing Symposium on March 15-16, 2023 in Kuopio, Finland

Let me take this opportunity to invite you to the 1st Genomics-Informed Nursing Symposium that will be organized in collaboration with University of Eastern Finland, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nursing Science and Tampere University of Applied Sciences and GenoNurse Project on March 15-16, 2023 in Kuopio, Finland. More information of the event https://sites.uef.fi/gin-symposium2023/

The event is suitable for healthcare professionals, students, teachers, researchers and anyone interested in the topic. Register here: https://link.webropolsurveys.com/S/0F17693FCE2B8873

I wish you all happy holidays and Hyvää Itsenäisyyspäivää! Happy 105th years of Independence Day Finland 

Anndra Parviainen (Dumo)

Department of Nursing Science
University of Eastern Finland

Genomiikka – nouseva suuntaus hoitotyössä

Tekijä: Anndra Parviainen, tohtoritutkija, UEF

Kuva: Professori Katri Vehviläinen-Julkunen (UEF) ja Väitöskirjatutkija Anndra Parviainen (UEF).

Genomics-Informed Nurses (GIN) oli tärkeä rooli genomiikkatieteiden, täsmälääketieteen ja täsmäterveyden integroinnissa kliiniseen käytäntöön (Laaksonen ym., 2022; National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, 2021; Tonkin ym., 2020). Genomiikan perimmäinen tavoite on parantaa potilaiden tuloksia (World Health Organization, 2020).

Tässä blogissa aion jakaa syyn, miksi uskalsin jatkaa tohtoriopintojani genomiikan aiheesta. Genomiikka voidaan nähdä kovana tieteenä ja saattaa kuulostaa vieraalta sairaanhoitajille. Kun muut terveydenhuollon alat edistyvät niin nopeasti ja kattavat genomiikan, hoitotyön kurinalaisuus näyttää olevan pysähtynyt ja vastahakoinen. Genomiikan innovaatioiden sopeutuminen hoitotyön alalla on hidasta. On monia syitä, miksi me sairaanhoitajat epäröimme omaksua genomiikkaa. Tärkeimmät syyt ovat olemassa olevat tiedon puutteet, koulutuksen puute ja raskas työtaakka (Buaki-Sogo & Percival, 2022; Bueser et al., 2022; Calzone ym., 2018; Zureigat et al., 2022).

Ammattimme (sairaanhoitajatieteen) kehittämisen vuoksi uskon henkilökohtaisesti, että sairaanhoitajan ammattimme monista haasteista huolimatta voimme olla mukana genomiikan vallankumouksessa. Vai pitäisikö minun sanoa, että “meidän tulee olla osa eikä jäädä jälkeen”.

Tarina genomiikan matkastani

Kahdeksan vuotta sitten eräs hyvin läheinen sukulaiseni soitti minulle ja ilmoitti suru-uutisen, että terveydenhuollon ammattilaiset harkitsevat mahdollisuutta, että sukulaisellani on tietyntyyppinen syöpä. Tämä henkilökohtainen elämänkokemus oli antanut minulle motivaatiota etsiä tietoa syövästä.

Ensimmäisen vuoden aikana Itä-Suomen yliopiston Hoitotieteen laitoksen maisteriopiskelijana käytin tilaisuutta hyväkseni oppiakseni ja selvittämään, mitä syövällä tarkoitetaan. Olen käynyt syöpään liittyviä kursseja ja yksi näistä kursseista on Cancer Genomics, jota opettaa Prof. Carsten Carlberg UEF:stä, Biomedicine Institutesta. Aihe kiehtoo minua ja tämän kurssin kotiviesti oli “mitä enemmän tunnemme syövän genomisella tavalla, sitä paremmin olemme valmiita”.

Kun olen toista vuotta opiskellessani, meillä oli tämä kurssi “Hoitotyön tietämyksen arviointi” ja Prof. Katri Vehviläinen-Julkunen esitteli hoitotyön oppilaan laajaa ulottuvuutta makrotasolta genomitasolle. Olen iloinen saadessani tietää, että genomiikka kuuluu edelleen hoitotyön alaan. Olin itselleni varma, että haluan jatkaa tohtorin tutkintoa (alkoi 2017) jatkaakseni uusien asioiden etsimistä ja löytämistä.

Mietin omia henkilökohtaisia elämänkokemuksiani ja intohimoani olla mukana edistämässä hoitotieteen alaa. Ajattelin tuolloin, että halusin tutkia mahdollisuutta integroida genomiikka sairaanhoitajan ammattiin samalla kun opin interventiotutkimusten, kuten satunnaistetun kontrolloidun kokeen, suorittamisen metodologiaa tutkimusmenetelmänä. Otin tohtorin tutkinnon tilaisuuteni oppia genomiikan asiantuntijoilta kansainvälisesti ja mahtavilta mentorilta.

Sairaanhoitajien tietopuutteiden korjaaminen ja genomiikan käsitteiden esittely on käytännöllinen tapa hoitotieteen sujuvaan etenemiseen hoitotyön koulutuksessa, kliinisissä sovelluksissa ja tutkimuksessa. Toivon, että tämä vaatimaton tutkimus herättäisi kiinnostusta sairaanhoitajien keskuudessa.

Kuva. Genomisen hoitotyön käsitteellinen viitekehys. Kolme päällekkäistä tieteenalaa – hoitotiede, biolääketiede ja biopankki – rakentavat uraa Genomic Nursing Care -alalla, joka on keskeinen piireissä, jotka edustavat sairaanhoitajan urakehitykseen tarvittavia monimutkaisia käsitteitä ja taitoja – © Dumo et al., 2020.

Tallenna päivämäärä: 1. Genomics-Informed Nursing Symposium 15.-16.3.2023 Kuopiossa

Käytän tilaisuutta hyväkseni ja kutsun sinut 1. Genomics-Informed Nursing Symposiumiin, joka järjestetään yhteistyössä Itä-Suomen yliopiston Terveystieteiden tiedekunnan Hoitotieteen laitoksen ja Tampereen ammattikorkeakoulun sekä GenoNurse Project kanssa 15. maaliskuuta. 16.2023 Kuopiossa. Lisätietoja tapahtumasta https://sites.uef.fi/gin-symposium2023/

Tilaisuus sopii terveydenhuollon ammattilaisille, opiskelijoille, opettajille, tutkijoille ja kaikille aiheesta kiinnostuneille. Rekisteröidy täällä: https://link.webropolsurveys.com/S/0F17693FCE2B8873

Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää 105 vuotta Suomi!

Anndra Parviainen (Dumo),

Hoitotieteen laitos
Itä-Suomen yliopisto

 

References:

Buaki-Sogo, M., & Percival, N. (2022). Genomic medicine: The role of the nursing workforce. Nursing Times [Online], 118(8), 1–3. https://cdn.ps.emap.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2022/07/220713-Genomic-medicine-the-role-of-the-nursing-workforce.pdf

Bueser, T., Skinner, A., Skinner, T. B. A., Saghdaoui, L. B., & Moorley, C. (2022). Genomic research : The landscape for nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 78(July), e99–e100. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.15396

Calzone, K. A., Kirk, M., Tonkin, E., Badzek, L., Benjamin, C., & Middleton, A. (2018). The global landscape of nursing and genomics. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 50(3), 249–256. https://doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12380

Dumo, A. M., Laing, B., Lim, A. G., Palaganas, E., Abad, P. J., Valdehueza, O., Palovaara, M., Saunders, H., Estola, M., Mandysova, P., Maguire, J., Ward, L. D., Carlberg, C., & Vehviläinen-Julkunen, K. (2020). Randomized controlled trial on the effectiveness of web-based genomics nursing education intervention for undergraduate nursing students: A study protocol. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 76(11), 3136–3146. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.14477

Laaksonen, M., Airikkala, E., & Halkoaho, A. (2022). The development of education of public health nurses for applying genomics in preventive health care. Frontiers in Genetics, 13(April), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2022.849232

National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine. (2021). The future of nursing 2020-2030: Charting a path to achieve health equity. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25982

Tonkin, E., Calzone, K. A., Badzek, L., Benjamin, C., Middleton, A., Patch, C., & Kirk, M. (2020). A roadmap for global acceleration of genomics integration across nursing. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 52(3), 329–338. https://doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12552

World Health Organization. (2020). Human Genomics in Global Health. WHO. https://www.who.int/genomics/geneticsVSgenomics/en/

Zureigat, B., Gould, D., & Seven, M. (2022). Educational interventions to improve nurses’ competency in genetics and genomics: A scoring review. Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 53(1), 13–20. https://doi.org/10.3928/00220124-20211210-06