THC Conference Presentations January - June, 2024

Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine (AFRM), Queensland Branch: Advanced Trainee Welcome Event

March 14, 2024, Brisbane

Professor Tim Geraghty gave a presentation at the Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine (AFRM), Queensland Branch: Advanced Trainee Welcome Event (Royal Australasian College of Physicians Brisbane Offices, Herston, March 14, 2024). His presentation was entitled: “Moving from research interest to research engagement: Building research capacity and capability in rehabilitation medicine and rehabilitation services." 

 View the presentation here. 

Prof. Geraghtyy also presented an award to Ben Low, for Best Registrar Research Project at the event. 

 

Australasian Society for the Study of Brain Impairment (ASSBI) Conference

May 2-3, 2024, Sydney

Hopkins researchers attended the ASSBI Conference in Sydney during May, presenting a broad cross-section of work from The Centre. Researchers enjoyed the conference opening, which included a panel of people with lived experience of brain injury who shared their personal experiences and hopes and aspirations for the future, including where innovation is needed to improve people’s experiences after brain injury. They enjoyed seeing the enthusiasm of clinicians and funding providers in attendance for the research being conducted and hearing about how research findings might be implemented into practice to better improve services delivered to people who have experienced brain injury.

THC researchers in attendance: 

• Profressor Tamara Ownsworth, Research Director, The Hopkins Centre
• Dr Jessie Mitchell, Research Fellow, The Hopkins Centre
• Dr Tenelle Hodson, Lecturer in Occupational Therapy and Member of The Hopkins Centre, Griffith University
• Dr Mike Norwood, Research Fellow, The Hopkins Centre
• Rebecca Seeny, Occupational Therapist, Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit, Princess Alexandra Hospital

 

Presentations: 

Tamara Ownsworth, Research Director of The Hopkins Centre presented a keynote presentation entitled "The Making Sense of Brain Tumour Program: Path from conception to translation in practice". She also presented a workshop for delegates, titled "Psychotherapy for people with life-limiting neurological conditions: Implementation of the Making Sense of Brain Tumour program." 

 

 Read more about Tamara's Tele-MAST project here and here.

 

Dr Jessie Mitchell presented a datablitz of findings from a qualitative study exploring what effective self-advocacy after an acquired brain injury is and how to support self-advocacy skill development early. The findings are from the first phase of a multi-phase collaborative project between clinicians from the Metro South Health Brain Injury Rehabilitation Service Continuum and Hopkins Centre researchers led by Dr Annerley Bates and Professor Tamara Ownsworth.

 Jessie and Annerley also presented these findings in a recent event. Click here to view Hopkins Hour: Championing self-advocacy and dignity for improved outcomes in healthcare and beyond.

 View the slices from the DataBlitz here. 

 View the poster from the Self-Advocacy project HERE. 

 

Tenelle Hodson presented an oral data-blitz on the co-design process of a technological solution to assist with the transition from hospital to home for people with acquired brain injury. The co-design process brought together people with acquired brain injury, their support people, health professionals, and technology designers through a series of workshops to develop a prototype of a technological solution that could meet the needs of all key stakeholders. The project represents a collaboration between researchers from the Hopkins Centre and Metro South Hospital and Health Service.

 View Tenelle's poster HERE. 

 

Dr Mike Norwood also presented an oral data blitz, on the Attention Atlas - part of a new generation of translational neuroscience using the latest advances in technology and brain science, including technology repurposed from the consumer gaming market. Mike shared how this approach has the potential to bring highly accurate, highly engaging, personalised care to the rehabilitation journey. 

 

Rebecca Seeney an Occupational Therapist from the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit, Princess Alexandra Hospital attended with a poster displaying preliminary findings from a longitudinal study that aims to better understand the current practices and role of technology in an outpatient brain injury rehabilitation setting.  The findings are from a collaborative project between clinicians from the Princess Alexandra Hospital Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit and Hopkins Centre researchers led by Janelle Griffin and Professor Tamara Ownsworth.

Ongoing data collection will broaden the understanding of the role of technology in outpatient brain injury rehabilitation and provide insight into ways to support sustained use of assistive technology use following brain injury.

 View Rebecca's poster here. 

 

 

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13th World Congress for Neurorehabilitation (WCNR)

22-25th May, Vancouver, Canada

 

From 22-25th May, Centre Director, Professor Tim Geraghty attended the 13th World Congress for Neurorehabilitation (WCNR) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The WCNR is the biennial congress of the World Federation for Neurorehabilitation whose aim is advance research, education and clinical practice in neurorehabilitation throughout the world. The Congress was a large event with up to 10 concurrent sessions with a particular focus on stroke recovery and rehabilitation, traumatic brain injury and other areas of neurorehabilitation. There was a particularly interesting plenary presentation regarding the influence of the gut microbiome on neurological conditions such as stroke and dementia.

Tim presented an oral presentation and a poster related to the Australian arm of International Spinal Cord Injury (Aus-InSCI) Community Survey. The oral presentation was titled “Employment outcomes and predictors following spinal cord injury in Australia: a population-based cross-sectional study”. The main findings were that 1 in 3 participants were involved in paid work at the time of the survey. The average time to resuming or commencing work was 2.3 years after the injury. Those who were working worked, on average, 30 hours per week, 17% of working individuals wanted more hours of work and a third reported issues in the accessibility of their workplace.

 The poster was titled Health service use and unmet healthcare needs in spinal cord injury: an Australian cross-sectional study. Samantha Borg, David Borg, Mohit Arora, James Middleton, Ruth Marshall, Andrew Nunn, Timothy Geraghty and can be found here. 

 

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18th World Congress of the International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (ISPRM)

2nd – 5th June, Sydney, Australia

 

From 2nd – 5th June Hopkins Centre Director, Tim Geraghty attended the 18th World Congress of the International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (ISPRM) held in Sydney, which was held in conjunction with the 7th Annual Meeting of the Rehabilitation Medicine Society of Australia and New Zealand (RMSANZ). It was the first time the World Congress has been held in Australia. The theme was Trauma, Technology, Timing.

Prof. Geraghty was invited to present as part of the “Cochrane Rehabilitation evidence-based course 2024” which was held in conjunction with the Congress. The overall course provided participants with the basics of Cochrane and Cochrane Rehabilitation and the most recent contributions to evidence development in our field, as well as an introduction to the WHO Package of Interventions for Rehabilitation (PIR) which was published in 2023. Clinicians from around Australia were asked to present on “from evidence to practice” in a range of areas of rehabilitation including Low Back Pain, Sarcopenia, Spinal Cord Injury, Stroke, and Traumatic Brain Injury. Tim presented “From evidence to practice - spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation” focussing on bowel and skin management on Wednesday, 5th June. The presentation and the session was very well received.