Development of ACROSSnet: an online support system for rural and remote community suicide prevention workers in Queensland, Australia

Abstract

Communication and information technologies can reduce the barriers of distance and space that disadvantage communities in Australia's underserved rural areas, where the health status of residents is often worse than that of their urban counterparts. ACROSSnet (Australians Creating Rural Online Support Systems) is a 3 year collaborative action research project that aims to design and develop an online support system that will assist rural communities in accessing information, education and support regarding suicide and its prevention, whilst considering the challenges of Internet speed, cost and availability that can impede the delivery of online services. The site provides three distinct levels of access: one level for community members, and two further levels for appropriately credentialled mental health workers. In creating this environment, the ACROSSnet team hopes that online communities of practice will develop, engaging participants of different ages, income and education levels, location, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

General practice training and virtual communities of practice - a review of the literature

“…The network had not been set up for this, and perhaps its broad goal of providing a ‘meeting place where ..professionals…can establish valuable relations; sharing experiences information and practices...’ contributed to the lack of specific identity formation [35]. Also, a network of nursing academics experienced some problems with lack of focus [30].…”

“…However, if the group is too heterogeneous, there can be problems, as there is either not enough overlap for effective communication or antagonistic viewpoints between competing groups [30,35]. …”

“…Communication options in most studies included an asynchronous method, either by email or discussion boards [23,24,26,28,34,37,39,42], while some studies used these with a mix of features including chat, content sharing and synchronous web-meetings [23,34,35,39]. Email reminders were also suggested to be useful [26,37,41].…”

Online Communities of Practice to Support Collaborative Mental Health Practice in Rural Areas

“…The task of creating CoP to address challenges in delivering complex mental health care to patients spread out over a vast rural area was described in a report on the development of an online CoP for rural suicide prevention practitioners in Australia (Penn et al, 2008). The research on the project remains ongoing, but the formation of an online CoP in the identified domain was in response to initial fieldwork investigations that supported the need to reduce professional isolation, provide training and educational opportunities, create viable IT platforms for social support, and create opportunities for networking.…”

“…The research on the project remains ongoing, but the formation of an online CoP in the identified domain was in response to initial fieldwork investigations that supported the need to reduce professional isolation, provide training and educational opportunities, create viable IT platforms for social support, and create opportunities for networking. The use of communication and information technologies to develop an online CoP seems to have effectively impacted burn-out, established peer support, enhanced contacts between professionals, and created multiple access points for information on research, policy, upcoming legislation, and professional educational opportunities (Penn et al, 2008).…”