Predictors Of Poor Professional Performance In Junior Medical Staff
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$205,902.00
Summary
Medical practitioner performance is one significant risk factor for adverse health outcomes. Medical practitioner stress has implications for practitioner performance. Among new medical graduates working in the public hospital system environmental stressors such as long working hours have traditionally been blamed as the source of stress leading to reduced performance and adverse health outcomes. However, correction of environmental stresses does not necessarily reduce junior doctors stress or i ....Medical practitioner performance is one significant risk factor for adverse health outcomes. Medical practitioner stress has implications for practitioner performance. Among new medical graduates working in the public hospital system environmental stressors such as long working hours have traditionally been blamed as the source of stress leading to reduced performance and adverse health outcomes. However, correction of environmental stresses does not necessarily reduce junior doctors stress or improve performance, implying that additional personal factors predict for poor assessed performance. Such factors may include burnout, depression, anxiety and fixed personality traits. This project will allow a detailed analysis of causal relationships between fixed personality traits, induced stress states, and external life stresses. The relationship of each of these to performance will also be determined.Read moreRead less
The Role Of Learning In The Development, Maintenance, And Treatment Of Paediatric Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$189,604.00
Summary
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in children is a severely debilitating mental health problem affecting between 0.5 and 1% of the population at any point in time. Children with OCD frequently experience high functional impairment as a result of their symptoms, including deteriorating school performance and poor peer relationships. Family life is often disrupted, causing significant distress and hardship to parents and siblings. However, little research attention has been paid to how families ....Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in children is a severely debilitating mental health problem affecting between 0.5 and 1% of the population at any point in time. Children with OCD frequently experience high functional impairment as a result of their symptoms, including deteriorating school performance and poor peer relationships. Family life is often disrupted, causing significant distress and hardship to parents and siblings. However, little research attention has been paid to how families affect and are affected by this disabling condition. This research examines the role of learning in the development, maintenance and treatment of OCD. Specifically, the study aims to: 1. explore the way in which children with OCD process threatening information 2. investigate the influence of parents on children's processing of OCD-relevant information 3. develop and implement the world's first randomised control trial of cognitive-behavioural plus parent training (CBT + PT) for childhood OCD 4. evaluate parent-assisted treatment in comparison to a standard cognitive-behavioural treatment (CBT) and a placebo control 5. examine the long-term maintenance of each type of treatment The outcomes of this project will be: 1. an improved understanding of OCD in children, and their families 2. an increased knowledge of the relationship between parenting processes and OCD symptomatology 3. the development and dissemination of an evidence-based treatment for childhood OCDRead moreRead less
Autism and its milder forms affect approximately 6 per 1,000 children. The biological basis of the disorder is unknown, so considerable research is being invested in identifying cognitive processes that are atypical in children with autism because this may help identify key areas of the brain affected by the disorder. This research has established that children with autism often outperform their typically developing peers on tasks that require detailed analysis of visual information. In contrast ....Autism and its milder forms affect approximately 6 per 1,000 children. The biological basis of the disorder is unknown, so considerable research is being invested in identifying cognitive processes that are atypical in children with autism because this may help identify key areas of the brain affected by the disorder. This research has established that children with autism often outperform their typically developing peers on tasks that require detailed analysis of visual information. In contrast, visual tasks that require integrating information often reveal impaired performance in children with autism. Human vision is achieved through two pathways in the brain - a dorsal pathway most responsive to changing (e.g. moving or flickering) stimuli and a ventral pathway most responsive to enduring stimulus features (e.g. colour, pattern). Increasingly complex visual processing is achieved at higher levels in each pathway through integrating information from lower levels. One objective of our work is to identify which levels of processing in each of the dorsal and ventral pathways show atypical functioning (either enhanced or impaired) in autism. We will do this using tasks designed to establish thresholds for different perceptual judgements, such as identifying patterns in a field of dots. Children with autism will be compared to typically developing children and also to children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). This will enable us to establish whether the same profile of strengths and weaknesses in perception and cognition are observed in autism and SLI, or whether they can be distinguished on this basis. The significance of the work is that it will advance considerably the understanding of atypical visual processing in autism and SLI. Also, by identifying perceptual and cognitive differences in children with autism, we may be able to develop tests to identify infants affected by the disorder and commence remediation at an early age.Read moreRead less
The Influence Of Alpha Actinins On Human Performance
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$542,500.00
Summary
There is a wide variation in skeletal muscle function in the general population. At one end of the spectrum are elite athletes who excel in a specialised area of sprint, power or endurance performance, while at the other end of the spectrum are individuals with muscle weakness due to inherited muscle disease. Part of this variation in human muscle performance is due to the genetic makeup of the individual. For example, world class sprinters have muscles which are genetically predisposed to gener ....There is a wide variation in skeletal muscle function in the general population. At one end of the spectrum are elite athletes who excel in a specialised area of sprint, power or endurance performance, while at the other end of the spectrum are individuals with muscle weakness due to inherited muscle disease. Part of this variation in human muscle performance is due to the genetic makeup of the individual. For example, world class sprinters have muscles which are genetically predisposed to generate maximal force at high speed. Similarly, the severity of muscle disease in an affected individual is influenced, in part, by other genes that affect normal muscle performance. The genes responsible for normal variations in muscle function in humans are unknown. The alpha-actinins are structural components of skeletal muscle. The two forms of alpha-actinin in skeletal muscle interact with a number of proteins involved in human muscle disease and thus likely contribute to the severity of muscle weakness in affected patients. Alpha-actinin-3 is present only in fast (type 2) fibres - the muscle fibres responsible for perfomance at high speed. We have identified a genetic change that results in absence of this protein in 1 in 5 people in the general population, without causing disease. We now have evidence that this genetic change, and hence whether or not muscle contains alpha-actinin-3, influences muscle performance in elite athletes. We will now use a variety of approaches to study the alpha-actinins in normal and diseased skeletal muscle. We will study the effect of changes (mutations) in the alpha-actinins in the muscle cells grown in the laboratory and in animal models. This work will impact on our understanding of how normal skeletal muscle functions, and the factors that influence human diversity in the general population.Read moreRead less
The Influence Of Alpha Actinins On Human Performance In Health And Disease
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$480,989.00
Summary
We have identified a common genetic variation that results in absence of the fast muscle fibre protein, a-actinin-3, in over 1 billion people worldwide. Loss of a-actinin-3 influences elite athletic performance and skeletal muscle function in the general population by altering efficiency of muscle metabolism. We will now study mice and humans to determine how a-actinin-3 deficiency influences normal muscle function with age, response to exercise and the severity of human muscle disease.