Paul McNamara

The meta4RN site was taken offline in September 2023. Now it is archived here: paulmc.au/meta4RN 🌐

Hello. Thanks for dropping by. This will be the last post on meta4RN.com meta4RN.com attracted visitors from more than 100 countries It is 10 years ago today when the post “Hello World!” jauntily announced the meta4RN.com launch, and the “About” page outlined the rationale and vision for this nursing blog. Since then there have been more than 200 meta4RN.com posts published (they’re all listed…

On RATs and Nice

A few months ago a half-formed idea about idea about continuing to take pandemic precautions, being kind to each other, and dumb luck began to take shape. The idea was in the context of my favourite human (@StellaGRN) testing positive to COVID-19, and me not. Same precautions. Same knowledge-base/education. Same vaccination status. Same workplace. Same bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and sofa.…

If I stay lucky…

If I stay lucky I should live another 20 or 30 years. I will be dead within the next 40 years. If I stay lucky I will have a good death. Where I live, as of 1st January 2023 good deaths don’t need to rely on luck alone. Voluntary assisted dying will become a sanctioned option for those who meet the legal criteria [here]. If I stay lucky my death will be a bit like Queen Elizabeth’s recent…

Body Image and Eating Disorders Awareness Week (#BIEDAW) 2022 @ Cairns Hospital Grand Rounds

Cairns Hospital Grand Rounds on Friday 9 September coincided with 2022’s Body Image and Eating Disorders Awareness Week (#BIEDAW). Understabdably, it was planned that the session should focus on eating disorders. Dr Janet Bayley, Consultant Psychiatrist with NQuEDS* was to present, but was unexpectedly unavailable. Janet passed the baton to Dr Sharmila Prakash, Consultant Psychiatrist with…

This blog post is to simply share the content, JPEG and PDF of a poster that will be presented at the FNQ (Far North Queensland)/CHHHS (Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service) Research and Innovation Symposium on 16 September 2022. EAT Target (Eating disorder planned Admission via Transit lounge) Background and Rationale It was observed there was a prolonged delay in commencing…

Poster for 2022 FNQ/CHHHS Research and Innovation Symposium

The 2022 FNQ (Far North Queensland)/CHHHS (Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service) Research and Innovation Symposium is scheduled for Friday 16 September. 2022 FNQ/@CairnsHHS Research and Innovation SymposiumCairns Hospital Auditorium and OnlineFriday 16 September🎓🌴 Research excellence in the tropics 🌴🎓Registrations open 29 August https://t.co/r9VhDkoo3b pic.twitter.com/9WT3JiTG8A—…

About eighteen months ago I was invited to contributa a chapter to a book on Mental Health in Emergency Care. The chapter was to be named “Supporting the person diagnosed with a personality disorder who presents to the Emergency Department following intentional self-harm”.   Pretty-much straight away I asked Enara Larcombe to co-produce/co-write the chapter with me. Co-production is in keeping…

Consultation Liaison Psychiatry Service @ CHHHS Eating Disorder Forum

Next month there is an Eating Disorder Forum at Cairns Hospital. Amongst the teams presenting is the team is the Consultation Liaison Psychiatry Service (CLPS). This blog post aims simply to serve as an easy-to-find landing spot for the CLPS presentation. Here is the link to the presentation (on Prezi). The session is designed to be a narrative. Relying mostly on screenshots of what ieMR file…

Today on Twitter, out of the blue, Mick Blair reminded me of a twenty-year-old poster. pic.twitter.com/1nGqPDOqNB — Mick 😷💉 (@Mickholloways) August 8, 2022 Sometime in the early 2000s (2001 or 2002, I think) my local health service went on a recruitment drive titled, “Nursing in the Tropics: Experience the Lifestyle!”. The poster featured ten nurses. Nine of the nurses are female and doing…

When a nurse in the know writes a book you probably should read it.

Coral Wilkinson has been a Registered Nurse for over 30 years. We’ve crossed clinical paths a lot, especially during Coral’s stints as a Clinical Nurse Consultant and Nurse Navigator for older persons, and when she was working on the Aged Care Assessment Team. Coral is one of those very capable and kind characters – the sort of person who lifts the standard and reputation of nurses. In recent…

Self Compassion (TikTok try)

(if you’re up for it, please follow the link below and watch the two minute TikTok) https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSR8GUBdJ/?k=1 Can everything about self compassion be reduced to a 2 minute TikTok video?  Of course not.  Perhaps the key questions of what, why, how and who can be introduced though.  Let’s give that a try. The “what” is the definition of self compassion, described here as “being…

It’s pretty common in my job to field enquiries re whether hospital inpatients should be seen by mental health even if they decline. It’s not for me to say, of course, that’s articulated elsewhere in legislation (link to Queensland (2016) Mental Health Act here – BTW it’s a 641 page PDF). My job is to do my best in clearly communicating what’s appropriate and legal. As you’ll see in the brief…

Info for 1:1 AIN/Special

This blog has mentioned creating autotext/templates as an advantage that electronic medical records offer previously (here). Recently this has popped-up in conversations again, as members of the nursing team at the hospital I work at aims to get smarter with how we support Assistants In Nursing (AINs) to safely support patients. A worry I have as a specialist mental health nurse in a general…

Mental Health Nursing making an impact

Recently I trawled through the history of the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing (IJMHN) – if you’re curious please see this editorial and this blog post. Amongst the things revealed was the encouraging upward trend in the Impact Factor – a metric that reflects how many citations individual academic articles attract over a two year period. I was especially encouraged that a targeted…

Extracting information from www.gg.gov.au below is a list/summary of the 20 Nurses named on the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/2020*/https://www.itsanhonour.gov.au ******************************************** Paula Maree Duffy PSMPublic Service Medal (PSM)Worongary, Queensland For outstanding public service in nursing and the response to the…

Happy Anniversary International Journal of Mental Health Nursing

Since late 2016 I have been the Social Media Editor for the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing (IJMHN). If you’re interested in how that started, see meta4RN.com/IJMHN. The years that have followed have resulted in heaps of Tweets, Facebook posts and LinkedIn updates. As a byproduct, I’ve been keeping a closer eye on the journal than I would have otherwise, and stumbled across the…