Changing learning to improve practice : hand hygiene education in Queensland medical schools

The aim of Queensland Health’s ‘Clean hands are life savers’ program is to change the culture and behaviour of healthcare workers related to hand hygiene. Hand hygiene is considered to be the most effective means of preventing pathogen cross-transmission and healthcare-associated infections. Most hospitals throughout Queensland as well as Australia now manage a hand hygiene program to increase the hand hygiene compliance of all healthcare workers. Reports taken from routine hand hygiene observations reveal that doctors are usually less compliant in their hand-washing practices than other healthcare worker groups. The Centre for Healthcare Related Infection Surveillance and Prevention (CHRISP) has attempted to have an impact on this challenging group through their Medical Leadership Initiative. With education as a core component of the program, efforts were made to ensure our future doctors were receiving information that aligned with Queensland Health standards during their formative years at medical school. CHRISP met with university instructors to understand what infection prevention education was currently included in the curriculum and support the introduction of new learning activities that specifically focused on hand hygiene. This prompted change to the existing curriculum and a range of interventions were employed with mixed success. Although met with challenges, methods to integrate more infection prevention teaching were found.

Media Literacy through Arts Education in Australia

Media arts has been included as one of five Arts subjects for the new Australian Curriculum and will become mandatory learning for all Australian children from pre-school to year six, and elective for children in years seven to twelve. While media education has historically been associated with English curriculum in Australia, it has also occurred through the Arts since at least the 1960s and creative practice has almost always been included as an aspect of official media curricula. This chapter investigates the possibilities for creative and critical learning enabled through media arts by discussing the media learning of one primary school student. This chapter investigates the possibilities for creative and critical learning enabled through the inclusion of media arts in the curriculum. Media arts has been included as one of five Arts subjects for the new Australian Curriculum and will become mandatory learning for all Australian children from pre-school to year six, and elective for children in years seven to twelve. Media education has historically been associated with English curriculum in Australia due to its development through the critical reading tradition. However, media literacy education in secondary schools has also occurred through the Arts since at least the 1960s and creative practice has almost always been included as an aspect of official media curricula. This chapter investigates the media learning of one primary school student, to consider the nature of creative learning and how this relates to the ‘critical’ aspects of media arts curriculum. We undertook this work as part of a large research project that has been investigating the relationship between digital media and traditional literacy outcomes in a primary school.