Daily News

Posted on Oct. 31: Regional conference reminds nurses to take care

Classes, tests and presentations are a regular part of every student's life, but students training for medical professions including nursing encounter the additional responsibility of working clinical shifts that expose them to workplace stress, physical fatigue and illness. Starting today, more than 100 Ontario nursing students are meeting at McMaster for a three-day conference that's focused on wellness tips to help keep them healthy before launching careers in an already overworked and understaffed profession. "Nurses face some workplace hazards that are unique to the profession, including back injuries from constantly lifting patients," says Sandra Woltman, third-year nursing student who's co-ordinating the conference with fourth-year student Kristina Kolodziej. Woltman also points out that "needle pricks" occurring when a used needle penetrates a nurses' skin while it's being handled are among the common hazards that put nurses more at risk of viruses and infectious diseases. And with the health care system facing significant nurse shortages only about three nurses for every 500 Ontarians nurses already have some of the highest absentee rates from work as a result of illness and injury.

Posted on Oct. 24: Student engineers connect with colleagues at national conference

One of Ontario's largest gatherings of undergraduate engineers will take place Oct. 26-29 at the Hamilton Convention Centre. More than 400 undergraduate students from across Canada will attend the 53rd annual Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering Conference. "This conference gives students the chance to learn about the latest trends in our profession through lectures and seminars, develop speaking skills at presentation competitions, and make valuable connections in academia and industry at graduate studies fairs and receptions," says Jon Ng, a fifth-year chemical engineering and society student who heads the student conference program. "Most importantly, being able to meet and mingle with hundreds of our undergraduate colleagues from across the nation offers a deeper respect for the spirit that is shared by engineers."

Posted on Oct. 23: McMaster’s newest Canada Research Chairs explore micro-machines, condensed matter physics, immunology

One day patients may be able to wear a sensor that will conduct a test of their biochemical levels and allow doctors to analyze the results without shipping samples off to a lab. McMaster University engineering physics professor Rafael Kleiman's research lab may well be home to the creation of this new type of device. Kleiman is one of the world's leading researchers studying MicroElectroMechanical systems (MEMS) transforming static silicon chips into minuscule machines that can feel, smell, see, hear and act. Kleiman, who holds the Canada Research Chair in MicroElectroMechanical Systems, plans to work closely with colleagues in McMaster's health sciences faculty to study biomedical applications for micro-machines. Click on http://www.mcmaster.ca/ua/opr/review/review1003.pdf to read a profile of Kleiman in the McMaster Review. "As we start to miniaturize everything, we need to understand how the forces behave on a small scale," said Kleiman, a senior researcher at Bell Laboratories, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies in the U.S., before joining McMaster in July. "Things work differently as we make them smaller and because of that we need to understand how they work so we can exploit them fully." He is one of three new McMaster researchers to be appointed under the Canada Research Chairs program. The federal government committed $900 million to the Canada Research Chairs program in the 2000 budget to establish 2,000 research positions at Canadian universities. Today's announcement marks the halfway point in the program, which helps universities attract and retain the best researchers and achieve excellence in natural sciences and engineering, health sciences, social sciences and humanities.

Posted on Oct. 22: Care for the caregiver

When long-term illness or loss of mobility due to age affects a family member, doctor appointments, treatment sessions and ongoing care become a part of daily life. As Canada's population continues to age, more Canadians are taking full or partial responsibility for the long-term care of parents and other relatives, and that makes it an issue more employees are facing at home. Debra Earl, employee health education nurse, has organized a four-part series with Hamilton Victoria Order of Nurses (VON) Caregiver Education Program co-ordinator Anne Vallentin, and "renegade volunteer" and former McMaster nurse educator Mary Buzzell, to help employees deal with the significant strain being a caregiver can place on life at home and work. "We're hoping these sessions will bring people together so they can share their experiences with each other and also learn about the health care services and resources that are available to make a caregiver's job easier," says Earl. The four-part series offered on Thursdays over the lunch hour is a customized version of an interactive eight-hour program offered by VON exclusively in Hamilton. The McMaster adaptation is a pared-down version of the program, tailored to focus on the needs expressed by about 40 McMaster employees who pre-registered for the sessions last month.