RCSItogether Bulletin 12 – Storytelling, Organisational Culture, Research Impact, Dementia Supports
Dear Colleagues,
For anyone who watched the virtual conferring for our School of Medicine on Wednesday it was a timely and touching reminder of the importance of our work. Watching our students around the world recite the declaration was incredibly moving and if you weren’t able to watch the live stream I would encourage you to take a few minutes to watch the recording. Sincere congratulations to Louise Loughran and her Communications team in making this event such a professional, poignant and memorable production. You did the Class of 2020 proud!
#RCSItogether – Health Science
As you know our research outputs and impact are an essential part of the success of RCSI. Two important tools in helping us to get insights in these areas are SciVal and Altmetrics.
SciVal is a benchmarking tool that uses Scopus data to provide information on citations, potential research collaborators and the research trends within each field. The metrics available can also be useful when writing funding applications. RCSI Library has a user guide available here.
Altmetric tracks research mentions on social media, blogs, in the mainstream media, policy and patents and helps a researcher to better understand what their peers are interested in, what engages media, etc. RCSI Library has a user guide available here.
#RCSItogether – Minding Others
The outbreak of Covid-19 may cause additional challenges for older people who may already be vulnerable and particularly those who struggle with health conditions, loneliness, and isolation. The Alzheimer Society of Ireland have created some tip sheets to help support people with dementia and their families – we know many of you have loved ones living with dementia and hope you find these resources useful.
- Tips for vulnerable adults
- Tips for supporting vulnerable people in the community
- Tips for nursing home restrictions
- Prepare & Care: A simple, step by step guide to caring for a loved one living with dementia
They also have variety of resources to support families to help a person living with dementia to continue to enjoy activities in and around the home:
- Activities for people living with dementia factsheet
- Engaging in Activities at Home factsheet
- Life Story Book, Memory Box, Sorting and Tidying factsheet
- 101 Activity suggestions for people living with dementia
For more information and support, visit https://alzheimer.ie/about-us/coronavirus-covid-19-update/
#RCSItogether – Minding Yourself
You have heard it many times over these last couple of months, but it remains incredibly important to continue to actively take care of your wellbeing and mental health. Healthy Ireland recently launched their wellbeing campaign ‘In This Together’ which offers support and resources for people to help deal with stress and isolation, and also helps people maintain wellbeing and cope at home during this time. On the website https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/together/ you find lots of tips and advice on topics such as:
- Looking after your mental health
- Coping at home
- Staying Active with advice on how to keep kids active and activities for older people
- Let’s Play Ireland which has resources for parents together with play advice and ideas
- How to help in your local community, helping others during this time can help instill a sense of purpose and perspective
- Department of Education and Skills have produced wellbeing advice for Leaving Certificate students who are feeling stressed at this time
As an RCSI Staff Member your Group Savings Scheme website is provided for you as an employee benefit. There are many resources available to you under health and wellbeing not to mention discounts online for sports equipment, entertainment, food, technology and many more. There also a range of free or discounted online courses. You can sign up for an account here https://rcsi-staff.group-login.com/login with your work email. For more information email Inspire@rcsi.ie
Lastly in this section, I came across this photo outside our local barbershop over the past few days – I felt is perfectly captures the frustration we all feel with the challenges of keeping this aspect of our lives in order!
Finally, I will leave you with a picture of our new doctors from Wednesday’s conferring. New global healthcare leaders whose journey so many of you have contributed to. Thank You.
Take care of yourselves and each other,
Barry Holmes