A NIGHT OF
CELEBRATION
The WACTN announced the winners of the biennial
WA Clinical Supervision Awards at Fraser’s State
Reception Centre on 4 August. Many outstanding
individuals and projects were showcased on the night,
representing the hard work, commitment and
contribution of Western Australia’s clinical supervisors
and facilitators.
The Regional Manager of WACHS Goldfields,
Geraldine Ennis, accepts the Lifetime Achievement
Award on behalf of Mary Passmore.
Excellence in Clinical Supervision
Awarded to: Kathryn Viljoen – Clinical
Educator and Co-ordinator of the Curtin
University Stuttering Treatment Clinic
Kathryn coordinates specialised clinical placements
for more than 100 undergraduate and masters
students at the Curtin University Stuttering Clinic
each year.
Students are able to participate in innovative treatment
programs that are highly responsive to community
needs, and peer review is actively encouraged to help
promote the notion of lifelong learning.
While most client management is delivered through
individual sessions, Kathryn groups the sessions to
provide extended management options to people who
present with a persistent stutter. Benefits to student
development have been numerous, arising from the
challenging and complex demands the students
experience in delivering intervention in groups.
Lifetime Achievement in Clinical
Supervision
Excellence in Clinical
Facilitation
Awarded to: Mary Passmore
Awarded to: Marilyn Zelesco –
Coordinator, Sonographer Training
Program, ImagingWest
In her 30-year career, Mary has demonstrated all
that nurses strive to achieve in their profession:
dedication, professionalism, flexibility,
knowledge, enthusiasm, support for her
colleagues, compassion and empathy.
She has readily volunteered as a preceptor to
students and advocated that changes in practice
presented by students be acknowledged in a
positive manner. While never one to seek accolades
for her commitment to nursing or clinical supervision,
it is anecdotally known that her contribution to
student education has been phenomenal.
Mary has extended her own practice by becoming
an Advanced Skilled EN (ASEN) and is an active
participant in the transition from EN to ASEN
program within the Goldfields. She is also a
founding member of the local Falls Focus Group
and has dedicated her skills to improving patient
safety, including the roll-out of initiatives such as
the Red Dot Mobility System where she has
visited regional sites to educate and raise
awareness amongst patients and staff. As a
mentor and teacher, Mary is second to none.
Commendation: Paul Abbott – Winthrop
Professor of Clinical Dentistry, University of
Western Australia, School of Dentistry
Finalists:
Janice Butt – Head of Department, Nursing and
Midwifery Education and Research, King Edward
Memorial Hospital; Adjunct Teaching Fellow,
School of Nursing and Midwifery, Curtin University
Carol Douglas – A/Nurse Practitioner, Sir Charles
Gairdner Hospital Residential Care Line Outreach
Service
Donald Payne – Associate Professor in
Adolescent Medicine, School of Paediatrics and
Child Health, UWA; Consultant Adolescent
Physician, Princess Margaret Hospital
Robert Whitehead – Medical Coordinator, UWA
Rural Clinical School of Medicine
Margaret West – Clinical Nurse, Baptistcare Inc.
As the sonographer training program
coordinator, Marilyn consults with tutors at
participating hospital sites to coordinate the
recruitment and clinical rotation of trainees
across specialty areas to meet professional case
mix and volume requirements (i.e. to fulfil
Australian Sonographer Accreditation Registry
and university requirements for the graduate
diploma in ultrasound).
She conducts regular educational seminars for
trainees, audits trainee examinations
undertaken across participating sites and
monitors the currency of the sites’ ultrasound
practice. She has also developed and maintains
an ultrasound examination protocol booklet.
Marilyn’s commitment to the trainees and to the
program has seen a strong graduate retention
rate, with the first graduates all successfully
employed as sonographers within WA Health.
Finalists:
Marielle Sloss – Clinical Facilitator, University of
Notre Dame
Hazel Neale – Lecturer, Nursing and Health
Sciences, West Coast Institute
Greg Chidlow – Clinical Supervisor, Curtin
University
Award winner Marilyn Zelesco.
WA Health’s
Director
General, David
Russell-Weisz,
presents
Kathryn Viljoen
with her award.
Commendation: Catherine Alford – Head of Unit
Special Dental Service, WA Dental Health Service
Finalists:
Vafa Naderi – Anaesthetic District Medical Officer and
Director of Clinical Training, WA Country Health
Service
Joondalup Anaesthetic Department – Ramsay Health
Care, Joondalup Health Campus
Malcolm Clark – Consultant General Physician, WA
Country Health Service
Roley Myers accepts the award for the
Juniper Simulation Centre team.
Innovation in Clinical Supervision
Awarded to: Juniper Simulation Centre team
Leading aged care and community services provider
Juniper is taking innovative steps in responding to
the needs of Western Australia’s growing population
of older people. Its Juniper Simulation Centre is a
forward-thinking training and education facility
located at the Juniper Rowethorpe campus in
Bentley.
Featuring the latest technology embedded in an authentic
residential/home care environment, the Juniper Simulation
Centre delivers a clinical training facility that is a highly
functional re-creation of an older person’s living spaces,
where activities of daily living and care can be enacted
and analysed in adjacent training rooms, in real time.
Juniper’s workforce is benefitting from the Centre as a site
for practical training for care staff in both a residential aged
care setting and for care workers delivering support in
older people’s private residences. By bringing together
experienced care professionals, educators and students,
the Juniper Simulation Centre is facilitating excellence in
clinical care, development of new models of care and
shared learnings that will translate into great benefits for
residents and clients.
Commendation: Curtin University Physiotherapy Clinical
Simulation Team
Finalists:
Abigail Lewis – Lecturer and Clinical Co-ordinator in
Speech Pathology, Edith Cowan University
Brightwater Interprofessional Education Program team
Murdoch University and St John of God Murdoch Hospital
Simulation Team
Member Profile: Anne Green
As the regional training manager for Ramsay
Health Care WA and the training manager at
Hollywood Private Hospital, Anne Green
oversees the continuing education needs of
around 4,000 employees across a range of
disciplines.
A UK-trained nurse with 13 years’ experience in
critical care, she moved into senior management in
1994 following the completion of a First Class
Honours Degree in Nursing, taking on the task of
implementing Nurse Practitioner roles in an acute
National Health Service Trust hospital. After gaining
a Postgraduate Diploma in Education, she
immigrated to Australia in 1997.
As well as managing the training department at
Hollywood, Anne contributes to the development of
education strategies at a state level for Ramsay
Health Care and liaises with the larger Ramsay
Australia group on training matters. This includes
supporting the Ramsay UndergradPlus clinical
placement model in Western Australia – a
comprehensive clinical placement program offered
on a fee-for-service basis to the group’s preferred
education providers. All five of Ramsay’s hospitals
in Western Australia are part of this program.
“The UndergradPlus Program is the result of a
national student placement review that Ramsay
conducted in 2010 with the view to strengthening its
reputation for providing quality clinical placements
while maintaining a high standard of patient care,”
Anne explains.
“It provides one point of contact in each state for
education providers to liaise with for placement
requests and it standardises processes to ensure
our placement capacity is effectively used.”
Back at Hollywood Private Hospital, clinical
placements are provided each year for around 600
students spanning a range of disciplines, including
medicine, nursing, the allied health disciplines,
enrolled nursing and other vocational education
based programs offered by the institutes of
technology. It hosts academic positions from both
the medical schools and has accredited specialist
training positions in the disciplines of adult
psychiatry, psychotherapies psychiatry, general
medicine, palliative care, anaesthetics and medical
administration.
The WACTN held its third annual Simulation
Network Event in early August at CTEC,
University of Western Australia, attracting
around 40 educators, researchers and
leaders of the Western Australian simulation
community.
According to Anne, the biggest challenge for
placement planning in a private hospital is
managing student volumes around times of
fluctuating patient activity.
“The high volume of students placed across
Ramsay facilities nationally has prompted a
review focusing on what technology can best
support each State Coordinator, our 70
hospitals, our students and education
providers,” she elaborates.
“A decision was recently supported by
Ramsay to purchase software to improve
efficiencies in this area and this will be
demonstrated to our education partners once
it has been established.”
As a recent addition to the WACTN
management committee, Anne is looking
forward to sharing her industry-based training
perspectives with others in the group.
“My knowledge and experience of student
placements spans high school, vocational
and professional groups and the delights and
challenges each of these groups bring. It will
be interesting to share experiences with
others on this subject,” she says.
“We need open, positive and transparent
sharing of information about the variety of
models available for the effective
management of clinical placements in this
state.”
IPL video resources adapted
for online use
In 2012, the Australian Government funded
WA Health to develop Interprofessional
Learning (IPL) resources. These materials
were collaboratively developed by the
WACTN, the Department of Health, Edith
Cowan University and the School of Dentistry,
University of Western Australia. Six highquality filmed resources, featuring realistic
health scenarios, were developed for the use
of students and clinicians from a wide variety
of backgrounds and with variable levels of
knowledge.
These video resources and supporting facilitator
manuals have now been adapted into a single
online training course that will enable learners to
complete the course at work or at home via the
web. The resources provide clinicians and
students within the Health Department and at
tertiary institutions with high-quality educational
material covering:
SIMULATION
COMMUNITY
GATHERS AGAIN
 an acute incident requiring interdisciplinary
care planning
 handling an emergency in the workplace
 misunderstanding and misinterpretation in
multicultural health service provision
 community-based care and communication
within teams
 end-of-life care and indigenous health care,
and
 assessment of clinical competency and
managing the assessment process.
Modules include:
Module 1: Duty of Care
Module 2: Managing Upwards
Module 3: Racism and Islamophobia
Module 4: Community-based Dementia Care
Module 5: End-of-Life Care
Module 6: Supervision and Feedback
Stay tuned for the official launch date.
The evening was coordinated by Jen Hancy and
Richard Riley and opened with a welcome from
Professor Lou Landau, followed by evidencebuilding research presentations. The research
topics and presenters included:
Clinical placement before and after
simulation-based learning environments? A
naturalistic study of clinical skills
acquisition amongst early stage
paramedicine students
(Brennen Mills, Edith Cowan University);
Student satisfaction and confidence
measures vs instructor assessments of
clinical competency: including validity
implications for simulation-based course
evaluations
(Owen Carter, Edith Cowan University);
An experiential investigation into the extent
social evaluation anxiety impairs
performance in simulation-based learning
environments (Brennen Mills);
Investigation of baseline manual dexterity
and perceptions of the Simodont Haptic
Dental Trainer by entry level dental
clinicians
(Dr Owen Chin, University of Western
Australia).
Following the presentations, attendees divided
into four discussion groups to explore the future
of simulation in health care in Western Australia.
Points considered included:
 what courses, equipment or infrastructure are
missing
 infrastructure required for increasing
simulation educators
 the need to build and disseminate the
evidence base for simulation
 service commitments
 scepticism towards simulation
 commitment for funding to be contingent upon
collaboration
 how can programs which have technology,
infrastructure and staffing needs continue
without funding.
Professor Landau concluded the evening by
acknowledging both the challenges still to be
faced in advancing continued SLE activity, and
the achievements to date in increasing capacity
and adoption of simulation education techniques
in Western Australia.
This was a highly successful event, showcasing
local simulation research and providing
opportunities for simulationists from health and
educational sectors to interact at a local and
strategic level. The WACTN looks forward to
hosting the event again next year.
Contact us
WA Clinical Training Network
Level 1, B Block
189 Royal Street
EAST PERTH WA 6004
Web: http://www.health.wa.gov.au/wactn
Email: wactn@health.wa.gov.au
Telephone: (08) 9222 2166 or
(08) 9222 2278