Pre-Conference Workshops

This workshop is approved by the Singapore Medical Council for 4 CME points.

Catherine Marshall and Dr Jan Davies

• Welcome and Introduction (10mins)
• What participants want to get from the workshop (15 mins)
• Presentation on the latest evidence on the effectiveness of guideline implementation programs (15 mins)
  Will also discuss moves to match implementation methods to theories of behaviour change
• Table work (30 mins)
  Includes feedback to whole group and discussion
• Case study of an implementation program that went disastrously wrong and what could have been done differently (10mins)
• Discussion (10mins)

• Presentation on strategies for implementation, costing plans and getting buy-in from funders, consumers and front-line clinicians, with examples from speakers’ experience (30 mins)
• Table work (30 mins) using a barrier analysis tool
• Feedback (15 mins)
• Presentation on measuring improvements through development of appropriate indicators (15 mins)

• Participants work at their tables in groups and briefly map out a plan for a particular guideline – either clinical or public health. We will liaise with the Singapore Ministry of Health to identify topical guidelines and recommendations that they believe it would be helpful to workshop
• Participants will be supplied with summary guidelines that they will use as the basis for an implementation plan

• Presentation on a New Zealand case study of guideline implementation – cardiovascular risk assessment guidelines (20 mins)
• Continue working on their implementation plan (30 mins)
• Presentation of a couple of plans either to the whole group or wall posters with discussion in two larger groups (public health and clinical)

This workshop is pending accreditation from the Singapore Medical Council for 4 CME points.

Asst Prof Dianne Bautista, Dr Naeem Khan, Dr Li Wenyun
Singapore Branch, Australasian Cochrane Centre
Singapore Clinical Research Institute

This workshop is aimed at healthcare researchers with some basic familiarity of systematic reviewing and who want to learn in-depth practical skills in order to understand or conduct a meta-analysis. The teaching will focus on 3 main topics – (1) how to recognize sources of bias in randomized controlled trials and understand when they constitute a threat to internal validity (2) how to interpret the different types of outcome data and pooled analysis and (3) how to extract the relevant numerical information from published sources for presentation and synthesis. The lectures will be reinforced with small group work and computer-based practicals using the RevMan 5 software of the Cochrane Collaboration.

This workshop is pending accreditation from the Singapore Medical Council for 4 CME points.

Dr Steven Ooi, Dr Derrick Heng, Dr Jeffery Cutter
Ministry of Health , Singapore

Communicable disease outbreaks occur from time to time, and spread rapidly if infection control breaks down. During a crisis, you may be required as a public health practitioner to investigate into an outbreak to identify the source of infection and mode of transmission. What are the basic steps involved? How do you use the lessons learnt to strengthen policies and minimise the risks of recurrence? This workshop will provide participants with a primer into the principles and practice of outbreak investigation and management.

This workshop is pending accreditation from the Singapore Medical Council for 4 CME points.

A/Prof Ecosse Lamoureux
Principal Research and NHMRC Fellow
Head, Health Services Research Unit, Centre for Eye Research Australia Department of Ophthalmology, University of Melbourne

1. Understand the principles and steps related to the design, development and implementation of a Health-Related scale.
   
   These include:

   a.	Definition of the construct and the development of a test plan.
   b.	Generation of the item pool.
   c.	Choice of response format.
   d.	Review of items.
   e.	Pilot testing of the scale.
   f.	Administration of the scale to a development sample.
   g.	Scale refinement.
   h.	Item characteristics.
   i.	Correlation of items.

2. Understand the principles to validate a scale.
   
   These include:

   a.	Factor analysis i. Suitability of the data for factor analysis ii. Choice of extraction technique iii. Selection of factors iv. Rotation of factors v. Interpretation of the factors
   b.	Reliability i. Internal consistency ii. Temporal stability
   c.	Validity i. Content validity ii. Criterion-related validity iii. Construct validity iv. Incremental validity

3. Develop a basic understanding of Rasch Analysis, a critical aspect of modern psychometric validation technique.

This workshop is pending accreditation from the Singapore Medical Council for 4 CME points.

Prof Chetwyn Chan
Chair Professor and Head
Department of Rehabilitation Science, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

This workshop aims to provide participants with an understanding of the principles and practice of ergonomics relevant to implementing occupational health programs at the workplace. The workshop will introduce common ergonomic principles with an emphasis on manual material handling and use of display screening equipment. Different strategies and techniques useful for work station design, work postures, and job design will be illustrated. Findings of previous studies conducted by Prof. Chan and other colleagues will be used as examples throughout the workshop. Participants are encouraged to discuss issues related to their own project at hand during the workshop.