Academic News

The Nursing Student Council is hosting a Holiday Bake Sale tomorrow, December 15th, in the library hallway. Come out, support our students, and get in the holiday spirit with some fresh baked treats!

Time is running out to submit your abstract for Research and Innovation Day 2017! If you would like to present a poster or oral presentation, please submit your abstract by the end of the day tomorrow. Even if you are not presenting, please register for the day and come out and support the students and faculty who are. Research and Innovation Day is open to the Nursing Department and the Community Services Department. For more information and to register, click here.

Christmas is just around the corner and the Nursing Department has stepped up to ensure that one family has a very merry Christmas. Facilitated by members of the Public Relations committee and generously supported by countless faculty and staff, the Nursing Department collected over 15 boxes of donations to create a Student Christmas Hamper for a family of 9. All of the children will receive at least 2 presents and the mother will receive 3!  There was a huge amount of food donated as well as money that was used to buy whatever was missing and then some! 

The immense generosity of our faculty and staff is very exciting and shows how special and giving our department is. Thank you to everyone who donated gifts, food, and/or money. A special thank you to the Public Relations committee (particularly Dania and Jennifer) for organizing the Christmas Hamper and putting everything together.

On behalf of the Nursing Department, we wish a very merry Christmas to this family and to everyone else celebrating the holiday. 

The fourth year students in the Industrial Arts teacher education program have been busy creating beautiful works of art in their woodworking program.  Below, Instructor Bernie Taronno poses with his students Matt Castellano and Kevin Kriss and (bottom) Matt Castellano displays the guitar he made in his woodworking class. For more information on the process of building these instruments, see see Matt’s Web site at  https://sites.google.com/site/mrkrissportfolio/courses/woodworking

The Nursing Department is committed to illness prevention and health promotion through awareness. November is Radon Action Month, so now is the time to raise awareness on this carcinogenic gas.

We take precautions against accidental deaths by putting on our seatbelts, wearing lifejackets, or ensuring that our smoke detectors are working – we should also be testing our homes for radon.

Next to smoking, radon is the leading cause of lung cancer and is linked to causing the deaths of 3,200 Canadians every year. It is important to note that all homes have some level of radon and talking to your patients about the need to test their homes is an important part of preventing radon-related cancer.

Most radon problems are easily resolved. Radon testing can be completed by the homeowner following the purchase of a test kit from a hardware store. Please take the time to talk with your patients, colleagues, friends, and family about the health effects of radon.

McMaster University, together with Health Canada, the Ontario College of Family Physicians, and the Clean Air Partnership, have designed a free, accredited program, Radon: Is it in your patients’ home, in order to provide you and your colleagues with reliable, evidence-based information.

It’s easy to access and free at radon.machealth.ca

It only takes one hour to complete – which you can do in one sitting, or multiple sessions.

You can also download the Radon Communication Toolkit here for additional resources to help spread the word.

For more information, contact Jennifer Otto at umotto@myumanitoba.ca

The 2nd annual Student-Faculty Research and Innovation Day is being held on January 31st, 2017. The day is open to all Nursing and Community Services students, faculty, and staff. Check out our page for more information.

The week of October 24th was Canadian Patient Safety Week (CPSW). The goal of CPSW is to increase awareness of Patient Safety and Quality Improvement across Canada. This year’s campaign is to spread the word about the importance of asking questions in keeping care safe.

In light of the campaign, Adult Health 1 students participated in asking a variety of questions to make care safer. These questions are questions that the health care professional (the student) would ask their patients to make care safer; as well as what questions patients could ask us to make care safer.

These questions are posted outside the hallway of C615.

As well, students were provided the opportunity to take this initiative further by talking to their patients in clinical practice, talking with their clinical instructors, and talking with the health care professionals in the various clinical areas.

To learn more about CPSW, click here.

To learn more about the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, check out their web site.

In a previous post, we talked about how Aerodynamics decide the shape of the car body. Since that shape is essential, the other components are system are designed from there.

Shell has specific rules on the car weight, length, width and height. None of the parts can be on the outside of the car, at all.

1. h) None of the body dimensions above must be achieved by design singularities such as ‘stuck-on’ appendages or cut-outs

(Shell Eco-marathon 2016 Global Rules)

The frame, brakes, electrical, and steering must fit inside the car body (the pod), while allowing space for the driver. Their combined weight must add up to no more than the weight maximum of the rules. This includes a minimum driver weight of 140 kg. Since less weight mean less energy, all teams want their driver very close to that number. It’s another tough challenge, but knowing what percent of the weight the driver will take up allows us to consider the other components weights with respect to it.

The driver also has to be able to see! That’s not so easy to adjust for. Keeping the streamlined shape while adding in the cars various systems makes it a tight fit inside. The driver can’t sit up straight, they must be reclined, conforming to the width and height of the rules.

There’s no door to get in or out. Prototype teams design the pod to split in half along the horizontal. It’s the best method for fabricating and eliminating cracks along the side of the body (which can aversely affect aerodynamics.) 

Here’s a visual of how the driver and components are organized in prototype cars:

École Polytechnique, Montréal

Monday October 31st was no ordinary clinical day for the CP7 students. The Pediatric clinical students and instructors got into the spirit of Halloween and brought smiles to their young patients’ faces by wearing costumes that either replaced or supplemented their usual RRC Nursing uniforms! Thanks to all the participating students and instructors for their good “spirits”!!!

19 instructors of the Red River Faculty went back into the classroom in August…as Students! Most participants were new or almost new members of the RRC Staff from all over Southern Manitoba. On the agenda: best practices for teachers of Adult Learners. Most instructors will be enrolling in, or have already enrolled in the Certificate Program. Thanks to Theresa, Judy, Doug and our panels of experts (expert students and expert instructors) for helping all these new instructors to ease their way into the classroom.