ANZCA Foundation update - September 2023
15 September 2023
Updates include: PPRN webinar; Foundation supporter evening; 2024 research grants; global health challenges
Upcoming webinar: Professional Practice Research Network
The foundation and Professional Practice Research Network (PPRN)’s special free webinar on ‘Leadership and High-Performance Teams’ will be on Wednesday, 20 September from 4-5pm AEST. It’s not too late to register! If interested, please click here.
PPRN Executive chair Professor Kirsty Forrest will open with an overview of the PPRN and the importance of delivering research insights to help healthcare teams as they pursue ways of working better together. Then guest speaker Professor Victoria Brazil, an emergency physician, medical educator, and Director of Simulation at Bond University on the Gold Coast, will share such insights from her research and expertise in education and simulation for healthcare improvement and high-performance teamwork.
Victoria also leads the Bond University Translational Simulation Collaborative, and her mantra is ‘doing our work better, together’. Her discussion will cover the importance of professional practice research and draw on practical examples from her recent work looking supervisor and trainee relationships.
ANZCA Foundation Supporter Evening - October
We're pleased to announce that the ANZCA Foundation Supporter Evening, a donor recognition and social networking event, will be held from 6-8pm on Wednesday 18 October, at ANZCA House in Melbourne. All our valued donors and other friends of the foundation are cordially invited.
This cocktail-style event will be an opportunity for foundation supporters to mingle and network over drinks and canapes, and hear short talks from some of our exciting emerging research investigators and leading advocates of the foundation, and the work it supports. The short talks will commence with foundation grant recipient, anaesthetist, intensivist, and frailty and persistent critical illness researcher, Associate Professor Jai Darvall, from Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Attendance will be by donation. Please join us for an enjoyable evening while helping increase support for Fellows’ voluntary work, enhancing care for patients in our specialties and perioperative medicine – especially, those facing higher risk or scarce resources. If successful, we hope it will be possible to replicate this event in other selected centres. Please register by simply emailing the Foundation team. Donations can be made here on the foundation’s donation page.
Research Committee Decides 2024 Grants
The Research Committee completed its all-day meeting on Friday 8 September, reviewing all research grant applications for funding in 2024. After two applications were withdrawn, 43 were assessed. All applicants will have been advised of the outcomes by early October.
Once again, the process was highly competitive with many high-quality applications received. Although the annual grant success rate is usually between 40 and 50 percent, one of the highest in the sector, typically many applications are unsuccessful although often only by a very small margin. However, for 2024, the success rate was just over 50 percent. Nevertheless, the committee always encourages applicants who have not yet been successful to continue to apply – and in particular, to maximise the use of previous reviewer feedback provided when preparing new grant applications.
The foundation and the committee are again hugely grateful for the significant efforts of all our expert voluntary reviewers, who contribute hundreds of hours to our robust and impartial peer-review. Without them, neither our annual grant program nor the high standard of ANZCA Foundation supported research would be possible. And without our committed regular donors we could not maintain our current level of funding for high-quality globally influential research.
This commitment to supporting quality contributes to the international standing of the college as a leader in medical research in anaesthesia, pain medicine and perioperative medicine. In addition, it assures all our generous foundation donors of the quality, importance, and potential impact of the work and people they are supporting.
Past president presents global health challenges
Past ANZCA President Dr Genevieve Goulding recently delivered a comprehensive and well-referenced presentation at the 2023 Anaesthesia Continuing Education (ACE) meeting in Cairns, on the need to improve perioperative services in the developing world, and ANZCA and the Foundation’s contributions through global development project funding.
Her presentation included a wealth of information and statistics. One of the most compelling was that the average maternal death rate in the European Union is eight maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, while in Sierra Leone, as an example, there are an estimated 1120 deaths per 100,000 live births. In that country a woman is 300 to 400 times more likely to die with each pregnancy, and around 1-in-80 pregnancies ends in the death of the mother. The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery 2015 found five billion people globally lacked access to safe surgical care, and 2.2 million more anaesthetists, obstetricians and surgeons were needed.
These large numbers are strong reasons for doing more to reduce the gap. Important contributions are being made through ANZCA, the foundation and our donors. Dr Goulding pointed to recent projects including the Essential Pain Management (EPM) program rolled out in 60 countries, and the ‘VAST (Vital Anaesthesia Simulation Training program) using simulation to improve training in developing countries. The foundation donor-supported Global Safer Surgery and Global Health Equity programs are annually providing grants for research, scholarships, and professional development for anaesthetists, pain medicine physicians and trainees working in resource-limited countries and contexts in Papua New Guinea, the Pacific, and beyond, and the Global Development and Indigenous Health Committees continue to create and offer other training and education opportunities for these specialists and trainees.
Contact and support
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