End of Summer, January to April 2019 (first 3 and half months of year 2 of the fellowship)

I am finding it hard to make a diary of this time. Perhaps it’s the struggle with the end of summer. Though Autumn is also beautiful.

Let’s start with research progress…

First, a new cabinet study.

I completed scoping review, research protocol and plans for a study of automated dispensing cabinets in ICUs. Submitted to Ethics (both in Australia and UK) and to hospital research governance … received Ethics approvals, final permission not granted yet, so still waiting… And in the meantime, the cabinets have been put to use, so we have missed the baseline. Ops.

But also, focus!

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These months have been a time of reading, writing and analysis. Quite productive in the writing – with four conference submissions and three journal papers submissions – but only one of the conference papers was accepted (lots of Rejected-Reviewer2 type of comments…), one of the journal papers had to be resubmitted to another journal, and we are still waiting to hear about the others. But yes, the good news is that I can present my work at the conference in August and the reviews were quite positive.

The collective mindfulness in oncology study has also progressed. All interviews recordings have been transcribed and I began writing up preliminary findings… Lots of ideas about lots to say around many papers, but this is really what I want to focus on as April comes to an end and the next one begins. Before we will get eventually distracted by the cabinets study!

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And I had the great pleasure of presenting my work in progress to CHI Enrico Coiera’s team, at one of their meetings

Events and seminars

Despite the summer months, we also had interesting seminars and meetings with international visitors, including these:

• Anna Wiedemann, HNU (Germany) PhD student, presenting her research on DevOps [1] (22/01/2019)

• Dr Tarcisio Abreu Saurin (Associate Professor Department Industrial Engineering
  Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), Coping with complexity in healthcare: guidelines and innovative methods (14/02/2019)

• Dr Diane Watson (Chief Executive NSW Bureau of Health Information), NSW Bureau of Health Information: Opportunities for Research and Collaboration (21/02/2019)

• Carolyn Adams, The use of Big Data for health research: building and maintaining Social Licence (5/03/2019)

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Summer is never long enough

It’s been summer too, January, February … a focus on work makes easy to forget how much I love summers. And after a year in Australia, I can now swim in the ocean and not feel cold. We were happy to travel hours on the bus to get to a Northern beach for a quick swim, Sunday after Sunday, when we could.  And we had a visit to the Royal National Park, southern Sydney, and a couple of hours on the train and then about three hours walk from train station to a beach … and then found we had no strength or time to walk back! a couple (seniors) with their hut in the Park offered us a lift to the train station and we were so lucky and grateful. And the beach had crystalline waters and lots of tourists, but you could forget the tourists and just love the water…

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And the summer included a visit to family in Wellington, NZ, and it was beautiful and warm and full of flowers. No words to say how much I miss everyone.

NZ is the land where a river have been granted rights. A river, an indivisible and living whole.

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I am the river and the river is me. 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/04/maori-river-in-new-zealand-is-a-legal-person/

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[1] Software engineering practice of development and operations teams working together to deliver software, e.g. more timely. For an explanation of DevOps, see for example: https://theagileadmin.com/what-is-devops/