BAILS TALES - June / July

Don’t you love working in a hospital at this time of the year? With winter well underway the warmth that greets you when you arrive at work at the start of your working day is like the building smiling at you. Everyone likes a smile.

After practicing her presentation at our May Research Peer Group meeting Debbie Snell was in Brisbane to speak at the Australian and NZ, Disaster and Emergency Management Conference. Debbie’s presentation about a first responder group’s well-being 12-18mths following the Canterbury earthquakes was a very honest account of the on-going difficulties experienced as a result of the earthquakes and continuing slow rebuild of homes and community infrastructure. It was also an opportunity to meet and talk with Australian researchers about experiences from the Queensland floods that devastated communities over there while we were experiencing our own disaster here in Christchurch.

Debbie was not the only BAIL academic attending a conference away this month. Anne Sinnott & Jen Dunn have been in Hong Kong speaking at the International Conference for upper limb surgery for tetraplegia. This conference was essentially for hand surgeons, therapists, biomedical engineers and neuroscientists interested in restoration of upper limb function following cervical spinal cord injury. They both presented in their areas of specialty and met with colleagues from all over the world. As this occasion only happens every three years it was a very valuable time to get together and Anne said as “Invited speakers” they were treated “like royalty”.

Anne and John Maasch will be presenting at the next Research Peer Group meeting Thurs 18 July so please note this date in your diaries as we’d love to see you there.

I want to finish this edition of BAIL’s Tales with my favourite quote from Harry S Truman “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t mind who gets the credit”