The Curtin University Centre for Health Promotion Research, in conjunction with the Australian Association of Health Promotion Professionals (AAHPP), the National Heart Foundation of Australia and the Health Department of Western Australia, co-ordinated a project to ascertain competencies required for personnel working in health promotion.

No abstract

During the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreaks in Toronto, Canada, families of residents of long-term care settings were significantly restricted in their visiting. Social workers and other staff had to be creative in order to support families, to keep them informed and involved. The research described here was conducted in order to understand families' experiences and evaluate the effectiveness of social work interventions during the SARS visiting restrictions. Focus groups were conducted with spouses and adult children of residents of a large long-term care facility, to examine how they experienced the visiting restrictions and the facility's attempts to mitigate distress caused by the restrictions, including interventions by social workers and others. Participants described the impact on themselves and their worries about the well-being of their relatives during the time when families, friends, and privately paid caregivers could not visit the facility.

Unfair hiring practices in the form of differential treatment are forbidden by law (e.g., in the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964). Our experimental research examines whether differential treatment occurs based on the wearing of religious identifiers. Mainly, this study explores whether applicants who wear Muslim and Jewish religious identifiers are considered less employable than applicants who do not wear religious identifiers, and whether the job status and gender of the evaluator influence these ratings. Our findings revealed that applicants who wore Muslim religious identifiers were rated the most employable for low status jobs and least employable for high status jobs. Additionally, female applicants who wore Muslim religious identifiers received the highest employability ratings of all groups, but male applicants who wore Muslim religious identifiers received the lowest employability ratings of all groups. The implications of these findings for discrimination in the workplace are discussed.

We investigated the incidence of timing problems with insulin-related processes in a subacute inpatient unit in Melbourne and found that nursing staff often conduct blood glucose level (BGL) testing longer than 30 minutes before insulin administration (between 22% and 41%). Nurses are better at administering rapid-acting insulin doses within the recommended time before food intake (94%) than conventional insulin analogue doses (43%). BGL testing is carried out too early due to established ward practices and busy mornings, as well as poor guidance from an outdated policy. The timing of conventional insulin analogue administration is by nature more complex than that of rapidacting analogues. Current timing places inpatients at risk of harm from hypoglycaemia. The high level of care demand in our subacute unit contributed to timing problems, and this is likely to be a problem in other units. Process redesign, policy revision and staff education could be used to reduce the risk of hypoglycaemia in this subacute inpatient unit.