Wintec Students Collaborate To Educate The Community Around Diabetes And Fall-prevention

Te Kotahi Oranga | Health and Wellness Centre, Wintec’s ākonga(student)-assisted health and wellbeing service has had a busy start to the year with two cohorts of educational programmes on Pre-Diabetes and Falls Prevention already finished and another two set to start soon.

Founded from the He Kaupapa Oranga Tahi project led by Professor Sharon Brownie, the health and wellbeing service is based at the Rotokauri campus Wintec | Te Pūkenga and was founded through significant collaboration and establishment of community partnerships, and underpinned by extensive research to ensure best practice in all aspects of ākonga education and service delivery.

The centre was designed primarily to provide ākonga from various health disciplines such as nursing, occupational therapy (OT) and clinical exercise physiology with opportunities to work in an interprofessional setting and learn the competencies associated with communication and collaboration with the extended health care team.

Another key objective of the service was to respond to the health needs of the community, providing a service that positively impacts the health status of those in areas where there is the greatest need. Those needs were identified through conversations with our community partners including Rauawaawa Kaumatua Trust, Tui Medical and Biokinetic Centre.

The key focus areas of the service were developed around the health needs identified, which were: type 2 diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), adult asthma and the risk of falls.

Supporting clients at risk of falls

In February, this year’s first cohort for patients at risk of falls, was aimed at the diverse elderly community members in Hamilton and its surrounding areas. In April, the programme expanded to include a Chinese-speaking group.

JiaRong Yap, Clinic Operations and Research Coordinator said the student-run programme featured three guest speakers including a community pharmacist, a podiatrist, and a representative from the Saint John alarm team. The rest of the modules were delivered by students during the eight-week course.

“The students running these programmes have been doing research on strength and balancing exercises, and falls prevention strategies, referencing well-known local resources so they can deliver quality content to the clients. They have been coordinating and collaborating among themselves, as to who is most appropriate to deliver which exercises.”

She said in the first session the students did a baseline assessment for fall risk and then introduced the programmes with an interpreter on site for the Chinese speaking group and delivered the first set of exercises.

The clients/patients who come through the programme all come from the community, either by referral or through TKO community health screenings. The programme is completely free with funding provided by Trust Waikato and Braemar Charitable Trust, but there is a criterion to being accepted.

One of the key ideas is to introduce the students to the kind of services that are available in the community so that when they graduate, if they decide to go into community setting, they at least know what services are available and what sort of referrals they can make.”

JiaRong said this was the second time running the programme and the feedback so far had been very positive.

“We conducted a simple survey form that the research team designed and generally there's an increase in fall prevention knowledge. There's also an increase in identifying the risk of falling, which can be physical, environmental, or related to medications. So, that is suggesting those educational talks that we have been delivering are effective.”

She said one thing they had noted in the feedback from the Chinese speaking group was that they all valued the input from the podiatrist as they had not thought about getting their feet checked because to them “shoes are shoes”.

Another programme that has just finished up its first cohort for the year is the Pre-Diabetes programme where culinary and nutrition students collaborated with Te Kotahi Oranga to provide healthy kai and information to the clients.

JiaRong said the credit for this course goes to Melissa Castillo, Te Kotahi Oranga Clinical Educator/Registered Nurse who brought the programme to fruition by actively engaging with the nutrition tutor, Lynne O’Malley, and culinary tutor, Mark Hollands who got their students on board and enthusiastic about the collaboration.

“The nutrition students have been working with the clients to design and develop meal plans alongside our clinical students with pre-diabetes in mind, then the culinary students wrote the recipes and provided a demonstration of healthy meal preparation.”

As well as the food side to the programme, JiaRong said, it focused on four pillars of managing pre-diabetes or preventing oneself from transgressing into diabetes.

“It's a lot of education for the clients and this is where the students really get into researching. And it's not just any form of researching, it's going to reliable resources that are available to us, not just Google or social media.”

She said the programme was there to raise the health literacy of the clients, but also the students who learn as they go and are then able to deliver and teach the public.

“The key outcome is the long-term sustainability of the lifestyle changes as well as diet changes that the students have taught to the clients.

“The nutrition students actually ran through the micro and macro nutrients and things like numerous ways to prepare pumpkins or replace chicken thigh with chicken breast because of the amount of fat and other little tips and tricks.”

Both programmes are open to everyone so long as they can commit to the to the eight-week programmes and they are either pre-diabetic or are at high risk of developing diabetes due to their family lineage, or at risk of falls.

“We provide an hour-long initial assessment where we get to know them, their motivation, their history, and their expectations before inviting them to either programme.

Predominantly, the primary focus is still on students for both programmes, because if we are able to train our student nurses or future OTs in these areas to the point where they can educate our community, you are giving them ideal tools for when they graduate and go out to work with their future patients.”

Recruitment for the next Pre-Diabetes programme is underway with the next cohort starting on Thursday, 27 June. Recruitment is also underway for the next Falls Prevention cohort which starts Wednesday, 3 July for the English-speaking group and Friday, 5 July for the Chinese-speaking group.

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