Virginia A Dickson-Swift

• BPH (Hons), PhD La Trobe
• Head of Department at La Trobe University

Objective This qualitative descriptive study draws on data collected from a sub‐sample of 15 women participating in a national study ( n = 60) exploring the breast cancer screening motivations and behaviours of women aged ≥75 years. The study aimed to understand why women living in rural and remote areas might continue accessing mobile breast cance...

Issue Addressed While there has been an increased focus on how local governments can support the creation of healthy food environments through healthy public policy, little is known about how this is reflected in public health policy in regional areas. The aim of this study was to understand how improvements to the food environment are prioritised,...

Background This scoping review aimed to identify and present the evidence describing key motivations for breast cancer screening among women aged ≥ 75 years. Few of the internationally available guidelines recommend continued biennial screening for this age group. Some suggest ongoing screening is unnecessary or should be determined on individual h...

Objective: To explore the water fluoridation status of rural Victorian towns over 1000 population and document the oral health profile in the local government areas (LGAs) currently with no water fluoridation. To assist/inform future LGA planning, we describe a case study of a community-based co-design approach to increase access to fluoridated wa...

Background Poor oral health due to dental caries is one of the most prevalent non-communicable diseases worldwide. It has a significant impact on individuals across the lifespan and is a leading cause of preventable hospitalizations. The impacts of COVID-19 on oral health at the practice level are well documented, but gaps in understanding the impa...

There is a dearth of research on the undergraduate research training provided to pharmacy students. We aimed to identify and provide examples of effective pedagogy in teaching research and evidence-based practice (EBP) to undergraduate pharmacy students. In conjunction with the professional competency standards for pharmacists, a review of the phar...

Purpose Undertaking qualitative research exploring experiences of trauma can be challenging for all members of a research team. The aim of this article is to document the key challenges faced by researchers and to provide an overview of the key guidelines and processes that have been developed. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on a range of emp...

Background: Poor oral health is one of the more prevalent non-communicable diseases (NCDs) worldwide and has a significant impact on individuals across the lifespan. International data indicates that dental caries is one of the most prevalent health conditions and a leading cause of preventable hospitalizations. The impacts of COVID-19 on oral heal...

Issue addressed: Dental diseases are chronic conditions that place a significant burden on the population's health, however they are mostly preventable using a range of health promotion strategies Health promotion is a core competency for all dental and oral health graduates, but little is known about what health promotion content is taught in und...

Poor oral health continues to be one of the most prevalent non-communicable diseases (NCDs) worldwide consuming one-fifth of out-of-pocket health expenditure [1-3]. In 2017, it was estimated that oral diseases affect close to 3.5 billion people worldwide, with caries (dental decay) of permanent teeth being the most common condition [4]. It is estim...

Introduction: Poor oral health among older people is a global problem impacting on health and well-being. The economic cost to the health system is significant. An ageing population is intensifying the urgency for action. However, poor oral health, particularly for those in residential aged care facilities, continues to be highly resistant to reso...

Objective The aim of this mixed methods systematic review was to: i) document the interventions that support and facilitate graduate nurse transition from university to practice in a diversity of healthcare settings and ii) to identify outcomes from graduate nurse transition interventions for the graduate, patient or client, and health service. De...

Background Developing a sustainable rural nursing workforce is key to good rural health outcomes, but nursing recruitment and retention is a significant challenge. Internationally, there is a body of literature that describes undergraduate nursing student employment models. There is, however, a lack of robust evaluation of these models as a workfor...

Background: Dental caries is a significant public health problem and one of the most common chronic conditions affecting children. The potential for the non-dental workforce to improve children's oral health is well documented. For well over a decade, there have been calls for pediatricians to address children's oral health, but the incorporation...

Background: The increasing number of people who experience mental disorders is a global problem. People with mental disorders have high rates of co-morbidity and significantly poorer oral health outcomes than the general public. However, their oral health remains largely a hidden and neglected issue. A complex range of factors impact the oral heal...

Health inequalities between metropolitan and rural areas persist despite a range of interventions over recent years. Social inclusion is often linked to health outcomes, yet few studies examine social inclusion across different geographic areas. In this study, a set of indicators of social inclusion were drawn together and sourced data were aligned...

International policy mandates that mental health consumers and carers are involved in the continuing professional development of nurses. However, within the literature, continuing professional development of mental health nurses continues to be delivered in didactic formats, with few examples of mental health nurses and consumers engaging together...

Background Citizen participation in health service co-production is increasingly enacted. A reason for engaging community members is to co-design services that are locally-appropriate and harness local assets. To date, much literature examines processes of involving participants, with little consideration of innovative services are designed, how in...

Background: Occupational therapists’ are increasingly working with communities and providing services at the community level. There is, however, a lack of conceptual frameworks to guide this work. Aim: The aim of this article is to present a new conceptual framework for community-centered practice in occupational therapy. Material and Method: The c...

Objective: In this article we report the findings of a scoping review that aimed to identify and summarise the range of programs and guidelines available for toothbrushing programs in schools and early childhood settings. Dental caries is one of the most common preventable diseases affecting children worldwide. Untreated caries can impact on child...

Digital storytelling is an art-based research method that has potential to engage mental health consumers and clinicians in dialogue about their lived experiences. However, few studies have examined the process of digital storytelling and people’s perspectives about making digital stories. In this article, a process evaluation framework is used to...

There is increasing opportunity and support for occupational therapists to expand their scope of practice in community settings. However, evidence is needed to increase occupational therapists' knowledge, confidence, and capacity with building community participation and adopting community-centered practice roles. The purpose of this study is to im...

In this paper, we consider factors significant in the success of community participation in the implementation of new oral health services. Our analysis draws on data from the Rural Engaging Communities in Oral Health (Rural ECOH) study (2014-2016). We aimed to assess the Australian relevance of a Scottish community participation framework for heal...

Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) has been proposed as an equitable, empowering partnership approach to collaborative research. International literature about the ethical implications of CBPR suggests a continuing strong interest in the topic. However, there is a notable lack of research that captures the experience of ethical challenge...

Ethical challenges in community-based participatory research (CBPR) are of increasing interest to researchers; however, it is not known how widespread these challenges are or how extensively the topic has been explored. Using Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review method, studies on ethical challenges in CBPR were mapped. Findings indicate that resea...

Much has been written about the composition of health service boards and the importance of recruiting people with skills appropriate for effective and accountable governance of health services. Governance training aims to educate directors on their governance responsibilities; however, the way in which these responsibilities are discharged is infor...

Community participation in health service decision making is entrenched in health policy, with a strong directive to develop sustainable, effective, locally responsive services. However, it is recognised that community participation is challenging to achieve. The aim of the present study was to explore how a rural health service in Victoria enacts...

Healthy aging includes a healthy sexuality. In this article we argue for sexual health policy to support aging sexuality. Government sexual health policies focus on reproduction, not sexuality, and exclude older adults. There is a stereotype that older people are not sexual. This is not supported by scholarly and anecdotal evidence or a growing pop...

The creative arts can be used to support stakeholders of mental health services to communicate and share their lived experience. Digital storytelling is one method that has been used to capture people's lived experience. In this scoping review, we were interested in mapping how digital storytelling has been used in mental health, and to identify ga...

A brief reflection about challenges encountered in the process of conducting community based participatory research in rural Australia. Contribution invited by the Canadian Rural Health Research Society.

The global increase in and prevalence of social media is stimulating interest in the utilisation of blogs for research purposes. There is, however, a significant lack of information about the manner and scope of blog use in health research. In this scoping review, we aimed to identify how blogs are being used in health research to date and whether...

People in midlife are having sexual relationships outside hetero-monogamy and marriage which contribute positively to their wellbeing. For rural people who are in a non-traditional relationship, confidentiality, access to sexual health services, and stigma are concerns. In this qualitative research project we investigate the experience and wellbein...

Presentation slides from the OT4OT Virtual Exchange, November 3rd 2015.

Background and aims: This paper is drawn from PhD research into the experience of rural baby boomers in friends-with-benefits relationships (FWBR). A FWBR is defined as one where the participants have a friendship, an ongoing sexual relationship, yet do not consider themselves to be a couple. Midlife adults are initiating new relationships and many...

The concept of receptivity is a new way of understanding the personal and social factors that affect a person living with and beyond cancer, and how these factors influence access to formal supportive care service provision and planning. This article contributes to new knowledge through applying the concept of receptivity to informal supportive can...

Few studies have considered the impact of rural migration on rural community engagement. The objective of this research was to undertake a scoping review about the inclusion and exclusion of newcomers in rural community participation to inform design of inclusive participation processes. The scoping review used the six stages of Arksey and O'Malley...

In this article we aim to demonstrate how Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics may provide a sound methodological framework for researchers using the Delphi Technique (Delphi) in studies exploring health and well-being. Reporting of the use of Delphi in health and well-being research is increasing, but less attention has been given to covering its...

Dental diseases are a major burden on health; however, they are largely preventable. Dental treatment alone will not eradicate dental disease with a shift to prevention required. Prevention of dental diseases is a role of dental professionals, with most countries having formalized health promotion competencies for dental and oral health graduates....

Sex and relationship research tends to focus on heterosexual and monogamous relationships. Population studies cannot clarify understanding or capture the nuance of relationships in the way qualitative research does. Using queer theory to plan and conduct qualitative sex and relationship research allows for inclusion, acknowledgement and documentati...

Background: Defining health literacy from a public health perspective places greater emphasis on the knowledge and skills required to prevent disease and for promoting health in everyday life. Addressing health literacy at the community level provides great potential for improving health knowledge, skills and behaviours resulting in better health...

People in midlife are having sexual relationships outside hetero-monogamy and marriage which contribute positively to their wellbeing. For rural people who are in a non-traditional relationship, confidentiality, access to sexual health services, and stigma are concerns. In this qualitative research project, the authors investigate the experience an...

Background: This article presents findings from a scoping review of tools used to measure oral health literacy. Internationally, interest in oral health literacy is driven by oral health disparities, particularly for disadvantaged groups, with conditions such as dental caries and periodontal disease contributing substantially to the global burden...

Internationally, community participation is highlighted in health policy reform as good for rural communities. Implicit in this policy is the message that the complexities of the rural environment are too difficult for easy solutions and that community participation will somehow build resilient, self-determining communities capable of dealing with...

There is limited research exploring how domestic water restrictions imposed as a result of drought conditions impact upon the lives of independently living older people. Within this age group (60 years plus), the domestic garden frequently forms an intrinsic component of ongoing health and well-being. Gardening practice offers components of both me...

ABSTRACT: In Australia, as elsewhere, there is an increasing focus in health policy on community participation. As a useful community participation tool, Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is considered an equitable, empowering partnership approach to researching vulnerable communities requiring greater attention to ethical consideration...

Purpose – Factors for successful workplace health promotion (WHP) are well described in the literature, but often sourced from evaluations of wellness programmes. Less well understood are the features of an organisation that contribute to employee health which are not part of a health promotion programme. The purpose of this paper is to inform poli...

The purpose of this research was to highlight gaps in formal psychosocial care for cancer survivors in rural communities. The study was conducted in rural Victoria, Australia, and involved interviews with people with various stages of cancer progression, cancer diagnoses and survival times, who were interviewed about their experiences of psychosoci...

Introduction Community participation is an international health priority, and current policy in several countries calls for community engagement with health systems. Values unpinning the profession of occupational therapy align with participation and health, and for an increasing number of therapists our ‘client’ is a community or population, rathe...

Community based participatory research (CBPR) projects that seek to involve community members in the decision making processes relevant to their own lives are becoming increasingly popular in the health and social sciences. There is wide acceptance in the literature that this type of research based on qualitative approaches poses some unique ethica...

Despite on-going debate about credibility, and reported limitations in comparison to other approaches, case study is an increasingly popular approach among qualitative researchers. We critically analysed the methodological descriptions of published case studies. Three high-impact qualitative methods journals were searched to locate case studies pub...

Rural Australians generally experience poorer health than their city counterparts. Rural Australia is a vast geographical region, with significant diversity, where there is good health and prosperity, as well as disadvantage. The purpose of this issue brief is to provide evidence on how the health of rural Australians can be improved through commun...

Major health inequities between urban and rural populations have resulted in rural health as a reform priority across a number of countries. However, while there is some commonality between rural areas, there is increasing recognition that a one size fits all approach to rural health is ineffective as it fails to align healthcare with local populat...

ABSTRACT Background. Dental caries has a significant impact on children's wellbeing and overall health. Research has demonstrated mothers' overall attitudes and attitudes towards their child's oral health can impact on the child's oral hygiene status. Objectives. This paper explores mothers' perceptions around dental diseases and the impact on thei...

1 " You actually believe in yourself " : The Diploma of Health Sciences as a pathway for disadvantaged rural and regional students. Refereed Paper " You actually believe in yourself " : The Diploma of Health Science as a pathway for disadvantaged rural and regional students Abstract Access to higher education is a key driver of economic and social...

Objectives: Qualitative research designs are being used increasingly in dental research. This paper describes the extent and range of dental research in which qualitative methods have been employed as well as the techniques of data collection and analysis preferred by dental researchers. Methods: A scoping review was conducted to locate studies...

Coeliac disease (CD) is an under-diagnosed and often misunderstood disease, yet is one of the most common food intolerance disorders. The only treatment available to prevent the health impacts of CD is a lifelong, strict gluten-free diet (GFD). There are few studies that explore the experiences of diagnosis and the everyday experiences of living wi...

Adults are less likely to access health services for substance use disorders, than any other psychiatric disorder, despite high prevalence, morbidity and mortality. Comorbid substance use and psychiatric disorders cause moderate to severe illness and disability, yet only half of people diagnosed perceive the need for and then access health care. Of...

Teaching undergraduate and graduate students how to do qualitative data analysis is no easy task. Often overwhelmed by the range of different methodologies, data collection strategies and approaches to analysis many students struggle with the theory and practice of data analysis. Exposing students to a range of different techniques for analysing qu...

Questionnaire. Copy of the questionnaire adapted from the NPS for use in this study.

Complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) are being used increasingly across the world. In Australia, community pharmacists are a major supplier of these products but knowledge of the products and interactions with other medicines is poor. Information regarding the use of CAMs by metropolitan pharmacists has been documented by the National Pre...

This paper reports on a study that explored the experiences, perceptions and motivations of a new type of autonomous volunteer emerging in modern society, in particular, those working to assist in the rural resettlement of refugees in Australia. The volunteers filled a gap left by under resourced government and community services. In‐depth semi str...

While the first 3 years of formal schooling have obvious importance for the transition to literacy, it must be remembered that learning to read is a linguistically-based task that draws heavily on mastery of key oral-language skills such as phonemic and morphological awareness, vocabulary development, and early syntax. In order to support the trans...

Changes in the higher education sector over the past decade have led to increasing demands on academics and resulted in increasing workloads, longer work hours and increased workplace stress. Declining government commitment to university funding has placed increasing pressure on academics to attract research funding and to publish. In addition, an...

There is a growing awareness that undertaking qualitative research is an embodied experience and that researchers may be emotionally affected by the work that they do. Despite the interest in the emotional nature of qualitative research, there is very little empirical evidence about the researchers' experiences of undertaking qualitative research....

Objective The aim of the current study was to explore young women's perceptions of breast cancer. Design This study used a qualitative descriptive paradigm. Participants were required to participate in a one-hour, tape-recorded, semi-structured interview. Data obtained were then coded and analysed using thematic analysis. Method A convenience sampl...

Traditionally, risk assessments in research have been limited to examining the risks to the research participants. Although doing so is appropriate and important, there is growing recognition that undertaking research can pose risks to researchers as well. A grounded theory study involving a range of researchers who had undertaken qualitative healt...

There is a dearth of research on the undergraduate research training provided to pharmacy students. We aimed to identify and provide examples of effective pedagogy in teaching research and evidence-based practice (EBP) to undergraduate pharmacy students. In conjunction with the professional competency standards for pharmacists, a review of the phar...

Undertaking qualitative research on sensitive topics often raises a variety of ethical problems. Based on empirical research, this book documents experiences throughout the entire research process: From conceptualization, ethics approval, fieldwork, to analysis and publication. It presents readers with stories from the researcher's perspective and...

As health researchers we need to investigate a wide range of topics to enhance our understanding of the many issues that affect health and well-being in today's society. Much of the health research undertaken today involves face-to-face encounters with participants using qualitative methodologies. There is a growing recognition that undertaking qua...

For financial reasons, an increasing number of tertiary students in Australia are forced to work long hours each week, and they are becoming more likely to be living in relative poverty. This study aimed to explore and describe the economic situation of students at a provincial Australian university campus, and the role that type of residence plays...

Qualitative health researchers immerse themselves in the settings that they are studying. This immersion involves personal interaction with their participants, with the result that the boundaries between the researcher and the group of people under study can easily become blurred. Although health researchers have been undertaking qualitative resear...

This paper aims to examine whether university human research ethics committees (HRECs) proactively seek to protect members of the research team as well as study subjects in their written documentation. A content analysis of 37 Australian university HREC application forms and attachments was undertaken. Each form was allocated to one of four predete...

Whilst gambling provides a source of enjoyment and entertainment for many people, it can be a source of hardship for others. The problems associated with gambling have been extensively studied with gamblers; however very few studies have been specifically undertaken to identify the impact that gambling has on spouses, partners, and family members....

Teaching sociology subjects to nursing students presents challenges which have been well documented in recent years. This paper describes the evolution of one such unit taught in a regional university to students from a variety of health and welfare-based courses. Central to the success of this subject was the introduction of C. Wright Mills' conce...

Doctoral candidates embark on a journey that takes them through a maze of different theoretical and practical challenges. One such challenge involves engaging with and understanding theoretical concepts in order to produce a piece of research that is theoretically rich and useful. In addition to this, many qualitative researchers are adopting groun...