The 63rd annual PAH Health Symposium wrapped up today after four big days of keynote sessions and panel discussions centred around this year’s theme, “The Big Picture – Local healthcare in a global society.”
More than 2370 visitors across several key Queensland health services and research institutes attended. The hybrid event model of in-room and virtual attendance continues to be the key to engagement across specialist professions with attendances this year almost even for in-room compared to online.
The keynote presentation by Associate Professor Karen Block and Kurt Aaron Oration by Amar Singh were standouts on the program delving deep into the theme of diversity, multicultural approaches to heath care, and the global influences on what is ultimately the humanity of care.
The highly anticipated Great Debate tackled the topic “Artificial Intelligence can achieve equity in healthcare” featuring six passionate MSH staff including a librarian, surgeon, and ethicist for the affirmative and a dietitian, administration officer, and human resources rep for the negative. The affirmative team took home the win, convincing the 345-strong crowd of attendee voters that artificial intelligence does have a place in helping us to achieve equity. Votes may or may not have been deflected by the tin hats worn by the negative team but the tally was high on the jokes scale from both sides of the clash.
‘Domestic and Family Violence beyond all boarders: the intersection of family violence and culture’ was the most attended session (after the debate) with 181 attendees. Put together by Brett Baxter and Catherine Walsh, the session explored the intersection of culture with domestic and family violence - focussing on understanding the drivers, the influences, how abuse looks in different cultures, and creating opportunities to heal.
The next most popular session was Addiction and Mental Health Services on their topic ‘Building Wellbeing Together’ with guest speaker Prof Sidney Dekker discussing Restorative Just Culture alongside local presenters. The session recorded 173 combined attendances.
The symposium wrapped with the Research Presentation Awards. The awards recognised career researchers, up-and-coming researchers, excellence in clinical education and the 2024 consumer partnering award. The full list of award winners will be included on the symposium website.
Congratulations to all awardees, nominees, presenters and the committee for continuing to ensure the symposium remains a significant opportunity to acknowledge how research and partnerships connect us to the big picture.
Staff can access the free session recordings online. Program | PAH Health Symposium