It's easy being green in Whitby - Digilog at UOIT and DC - Durham ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

8 The Chronicle November 29, 2011 Campus Organizing medical equipment Tracey Fidler The Chronicle For years, Durham College Professor Richard Tidman has had a vision: to revolutionize the Ontario healthcare system. He wanted to create a system that would address the serious issues within hospitals concerning biomedical equipment use and location. Tidman has teamed up with the Office of Research Services and Innovation, along with students and outside companies, to create the Biomedical Knowledge Portal. The brainchild of Tidman, this portal is essentially a database where information regarding biomedical equipment, such as IV pumps, defibrillators and incubators, is stored. Each piece of mobile equipment within a hospital will be tagged with a tracking device, allowing a staff member to key the item into the system and locate the device in real time. “It addresses systemic issues in healthcare that have not been addressed before,” says Tidman. Currently, there is no standards-based system that allows hospital staff to track and locate devices. Some hospitals do have tracking devices on specific equipment, but many of the systems are disorganized and unreliable. There is also no way to exchange information from one hospital to another, as asset information is confined within each institution. So, if one hospital required a particular piece of equipment, there would be no way to find out what other hospital carried it. A great deal of money has been spent repurchasing duplicate items, as many hospitals are unaware of their inventory. During their shifts, nurses are forced to waste precious time searching for needed equipment. If they could quickly locate and find what they are looking for, they would be able to spend more time tending to patients, who will in turn spend less time waiting. Infectious outbreaks, such as SARS, could be better contained, as infected equipment can be easily traced. Each device’s life cycle will be tracked and monitored. Staff will know where an item has been, whom it has come into contact with and if it is clean. The project began in the fall of 2009. Tidman approached June MacDonald-Jenkins, a project manager in the Office of Research Services and Innovation, for assistance in securing funding. MacDonald-Jenkins is also the industry liaison for Colleges Ontario Network for Industry Innovation (CONII), a government-funded program that provides financial assistance to applied research projects between Ontario businesses and colleges. As a former nurse, MacDonald-Jenkins could comprehend the scope of the project, and knew the impact such a system could have on healthcare as a whole. “June understood,” says Tidman. “That was huge for me.” She was quickly able to connect Tidman with IT healthcare professionals Infonaut and software company Dapasoft for assistance with tagging the devices and creating the infrastructure. She also secured funding through CONII and the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (Fed- Dev), which was launched in 2009 to help boost economic activity and contribute to the success of businesses and postsecondary institutions. “The portal is especially important to me as a healthcare practitioner,” says MacDonald- Jenkins. “No longer will nurses waste valuable time hunting for equipment. They can find and locate the resources within minutes, ensuring they have more time to spend at [patients’] bedsides.” Earlier this year, Tidman asked second-year students from the Biomedical Engineering Technology program if any of them would be interested in assisting with the project. Dianna Hau, Jeff Rich and Richard Madill volunteered. Hau, who is hoping to become a biomedical engineering technologist, says she got involved because she wanted the experience of working in a hospital setting. “Learning how to communicate with different healthcare professionals and patients will be very beneficial to my future in healthcare,” she says. Once the team was assembled, two hospitals were approached to be part of the pilot project: Lakeridge Health Oshawa and Ross Memorial Hospital in Lindsay. Varouj Eskedjian, Ross Memorial Hospital’s vice-president, diagnostics and support, has been involved with the project firsthand, and knows the problems hospitals face without an organized system. “Frontline clinicians have difficulty locating equipment that they require across the hospital,” he says. “It consumes their time and effort. We can’t have nurses looking around for equipment when they should be dedicating their time toward direct patient care.” This past summer, Tidman and his students began speaking to hospital staff at Lakeridge and Ross to determine common problems and complaints, creating a database prototype and assessing inventory at the hospitals. Through this process, Eskedjian said the team was able to identify equipment that was in poor shape, or should have been decommissioned entirely. They also discovered what items the hospital lacked. “We really didn’t have a good sense of the life cycle of equipment, so having a database that identifies when equipment was bought, the repair history and expenses going toward repairing items is going to be very helpful,” he adds. “I think the largest benefit will be to frontline staff that will be able to locate equipment readily across the organization and, if need be, across different organizations if we don’t have a piece of equipment,” says Eskedjian. “Having that capability to locate equipment and find out what kind of shape its in gives us confidence in the equipment they are utilizing, and will ultimately have a beneficial effect on patient care.” During this initial phase of Tracy Fidler BIOMEDICAL KNOWLEDGE PORTAL: Professor Richard Tidman, along with the Office of Research Services and Innovation, students and outside companies, plans to revolutionize the Ontario healthcare system. the project, MacDonald-Jenkins began the difficult process of securing additional provincial funding to build the portal and any infrastructure needed to support it. It took 14 months, but Mac- Donald-Jenkins was recently able to gain funding and move forward with the project. The funding also provided resources for a third hospital, Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, to be part of the pilot. Tidman is optimistic there will be a basic system in place at Lakeridge Health Oshawa and Ross Memorial Hospital by April or May 2012, and at Southlake by the end of June 2012. After that, the plan is to expand to other hospitals within the Central East Local Health Integration Network, which includes Durham, Kawartha Lakes, Haliburton and parts of Northumberland County and the city of Toronto. Eventually, Tidman hopes that the Biomedical Knowledge Portal will be a standard system in every hospital in Ontario, ultimately saving time, money and lives. Internships offer practical experience Nicole Patton The Chronicle It is an experience that may make or break your future career. Internships or field placements are a chance for students to gain practical experience in their field of study before stepping out into the real world of work. Internships and field placements/practicum at Durham College are slightly different from one another. Field placements are mandatory for graduation. Students are marked on their performance with the company and/or organization and most placements begin in the spring lasting a few weeks so that students can get the real world experience they need. Some placements are paid while others are on a volunteer basis. An optional internship through Durham is paid employment for full-time students who look to gain longer-term experience. Internships are optional in most three-year programs and can last anywhere between four to 16 months prior to the student’s last year of study. However, the internship is not a field placement. “For students that do (an internship), it is invaluable,” said Louise Stiles, outreach co-ordinator for the Durham College career services. “It is like yearlong job interview.” According to the Durham Hired Portal website, students should consider an internship for many different reasons, including gaining realworld experience, applying skills learned in their program, building employability skills, earning income, networking and assessing a company for future employment. Even though the internships are not graded, the participation is noted on the student’s transcript. Applying for an internship is free, but accepting a position will incur a $400 administration fee that will go towards the running of the internship program. Students are also required to attend an internship preparation for success session. To apply for an internship, students should check out the Hired Portal to look through the jobs already posted and fill out an application form. Students can also book an appointment to speak with an internship co-ordinator at Career Services who will critique their resume and help them in their search for the perfect job. For more information on the Durham College Optional Internship Program, visit the Hired Portal.
Campus The Chronicle November 29, 2011 9 He’s not a real boy, he’s a medical toy Mike Ryckman The Chronicle “Am I going to die?” Students in the nursing and paramedic program hear these words on a regular basis when working in the simulation lab. According to the clinical simulation program adviser Marie McEwan, the simulation dummies that nursing and paramedic students work on interact and speak back to them like a real patient. Students learn how to deal with real-life situations and get hands-on experience before being thrown into their field of work. By using simulation dummies that can be programmed to show symptoms like a real person, students are able to put themselves in real-life situations with patients that are close to a real person, said McEwan. “When we create a patient they come with a social background, we create a whole life for them, “ said McEwan. “For example we have a patient we deal with all the time. She has breast cancer, she’s young with two small children and she’s married.” When students enter the simulation patient’s room, McEwan explained that they don’t see a mannequin, but an actual patient they need to treat. There will be pictures drawn by her simulated children and flowers from the husband to make the room more authentic and realistic. “Even though you know it isn’t real, it feels much more real than any other situation I’ve been put in,” said Durham College nursing student Rachel Daize. “Having to check blood pressure and listen for irregularities Mike Ryckman “SAY AH”: One of the simulation dummies at Durham College waits patiently for a student to apply a feeding tube for practice. in the heart is much more interesting than just reading what to do out of a textbook.” McEwan explained that the goal is to create a safe learning environment where students can experience situations that will help them transition from the educational stage into clinical placement while staying confident and competent. Getting students to deal with death and situations that could affect them mentally is a big part of the SIM lab said McEwan. On rare occasions professors will set a simulated dummy to die even if the student treats it properly and does everything correctly. Because many of the professors have been in these kinds of situations in reality they are able to talk to students after and debrief them on how they are mentally and how they feel about the patient dying, explained McEwan. According to primary care paramedic for the Durham Region Andrew Jenkins, participating in the SIM program at Durham was a huge part of the type of paramedic he is now. “As a graduate of the Durham College Paramedic program I was fortunate enough to get to practice clinical skills on the SimMan patient simulator,” said Jenkins. “Taking blood pressures, checking for lung sounds such as wheezes and crackles on the patient simulators played a key roll in preparing me to be the paramedic I am today.” Dr. Berg writes book on the finite planet Matt McPhee The Chronicle How long can the earth sustain with limited resources? Dr. Peter Berg, UOIT’s Associate Professor of Physics, examines this and other related subjects in his new selfpublished book The Finite Planet: How Resource Scarcity will affect our Environment, Economy and Energy Supply. In the preface of The Finite Planet, Berg explains that the book is about the limits of our planet and how physical constraints are increasingly setting boundaries for the future development of the human race. He describes in his book how energy supply and consumption are the driving factors of human development, standard of living and economic growth. “As the rule of thumb, the more energy consumed, the higher your standard of living. If energy became scarce, then the question would be would we still be an advanced civilized society,” said Berg. His inspiration for writing the book stemmed from when the financial crisis started. “About three years ago, I was thinking is it really just the financial crisis? And then I came to the conclusion that it may be more than that,” Berg said. “One indication that got me thinking was extremely high oil prices.” When Berg came to Canada 10 years ago, he had read in the Vancouver Sun that the average household income was somewhere around $54,000. He had also noticed that the majority were driving in new cars and living in extremely expensive homes. “I couldn’t make sense of this. I just thought ‘how is this possible?’ My natural conclusion was that it is all based on debt, everything is financed. You finance your house and your car. Debt is the only way to support that kind of grand old lifestyle. On a grand scale, almost everyone is in debt.” said Berg. “There has been a major concern on climate change for the past 20 years and lots of money has flown into research and development. One thing I am saying in this book is maybe this isn’t the only thing we should focus on, that the sustainability or the survival of our species just depends on planet change,” said Berg Having taught at UOIT for seven years, Berg is also the director of the Energy and Environment program. It is part of the physics curriculum where a student takes a set of specialized courses learning about environmental issues from a scientific or physics perspective while still developing an honours degree in physics. Berg said students learn about how energy is being used in this world and what the sources of energy are, what the technologies are and what the latest trends are in technology, including batteries and fuels cells. “While you teach all these classes you become aware of issues that you wouldn’t be aware of if you just followed the mass media,” he said. “I don’t know many physicists who would write on such a topic, which is a bit outside. I guess it’s not purely scientific issues. “It’s not that I was just concerned about the environmental issues. It made me wonder: How does this whole thing work? All these good manufacturing jobs are being outsourced. Who’s actually still working and who is still making stuff? And if no one does it, how can we all live this well? Many of us can live so well without actually manufacturing anything, it’s actually an amazing thing, isn’t it? So all of these things sort of came together. And I thought, one day I have to sit down and make sense of it all, and I wrote a book,” If there was a particular group the book is written for, Berg said it’s written mainly for the younger generation because the world will change dramatically in their lifetime. But it’s also targeted to stakeholders who make decisions that affect where money flows in our society and where it is being invested. Matt McPhee BOOKS BY BERG: Dr. Peter Berg stands by the library holding his new book The Finite Planet. Berg’s main goal is not that he is trying to teach a lesson, but to make the readers think about issues they have never thought about before. He encourages the reader to think critically about the subjects explored in his book. As critical as the subject matter of the book is, Berg managed to make the reading enjoyable for readers in a colloquial and amusing manner. Berg’s The Finite Planet is available at the Durham College/UOIT Library on campus, the Oshawa Public Library branches and the e-book is available on Amazon.
Page 1 and 2: Legendary Canadian rock band. See 5
Page 3 and 4: Campus The Chronicle November 29, 2
Page 5 and 6: Opinion The Chronicle November 29,
Page 7: Campus The Chronicle November 29, 2
Page 11 and 12: The Chronicle November 29, 2011 11
Page 39 and 40: Entertainment Miles Faber helps H.E
Page 41 and 42: Entertainment The Chronicle Novembe
Page 43 and 44: Entertainment The Chronicle Novembe
Page 47 and 48: Sports The Chronicle November 29, 2
Page 49 and 50: Sports The Chronicle November 29, 2

It's easy being green in Whitby - Digilog at UOIT and DC - Durham ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?