Life as a clinician-scientist in General Medicine: Choose your own adventure

Interested in combining research with your clinical work? This Grand Round features clinician scientists from the Department of General Medicine. You will hear about their diverse career pathways and research programs, as well as how they balance research with their clinical work and other commitments.

Learning Health Systems

The term ‘learning health systems’ is not new. But widespread consensus that learning is crucial for health system performance is not matched by shared understanding of how health systems learn. The speaker will present ideas for such shared understanding based on a recent report by the WHO’s Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research.

Clinical and genetic challenges of mitochondrial disorders. What does Maeve’s Law offer?

The primary mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation disorders are characterized by clinical and genetic heterogeneity, limited treatment options, and poor outcomes.  Part of the complexity is because both the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes may be involved.  Mitochondrial DNA is maternally inherited.  From a reproductive counselling perspective, couples with a family history of mitochondrial DNA disease often have limited reproductive options available to them.

Generation Victoria (GenV): Every baby. Every parent. Everybody.

Very large, truly population-representative pregnancy cohorts are rare internationally. Generation Victoria (GenV) is a whole-state cohort targeting all newborns (~150,000) and their parents over 2 full years. Components include (i) families recruited soon after birth, (ii) biospecimens from pregnancy onwards, (iii) extensive data linkage supplemented by (iv) minimal GenV collected data, all enabling (v) many additional integrated research studies, both observational and interventional.

Finding a way through the challenges and turmoil of the experience of sibling sexual abuse: How hope can help

Sibling sexual abuse is 3-5 times more common than father/step-father abuse. This study looked past the factors that might contribute to the occurrence of sibling sexual abuse with the aim of better understanding the experience of therapists working with families with such experience and collaboratively developing principles to guide practice in this complex area of child sexual abuse.

Launching the Paediatric Academy, one place to connect and collaborate

We are excited to launch the Department of Paediatrics Academy, a community of practice on a shared platform across University of Melbourne, RCH and MCRI, as well as collaborating organisations. 

In the digital world we live in now, communities of practice can be highly effective where the working context can be complex and ambiguous. This presentation will highlight the functions of a community of practice, learn firsthand from Boston Children’s Hospital’s Academy, as well as local experience from RCH Centre of Health Analytics. 

COVID-19: An Update: What have we learnt over the last 12 months?

Never in the field of health was so much learned by so many in so few months. This Grand Round will recap the lessons from last year, take stock of where we are in February 2022, describe the complex situation with vaccines, and look to what the year might hold for the pandemic and children in Australia and countries around the world. 

Double agents: adventures as a clinician and scientist

Through a significant contribution from the RCH Foundation, the Clinician Scientist Fellowship program supports doctors, nurses and allied health professionals to undertake research up to 2 days a week for up to 5 years. The Fellowship enables talented, clinically qualified professionals who have gained a higher research degree to pursue academic research alongside clinical practice.