2011-12 Summer Students

Posted by on 3 November 2011

The Foundation is pleased to report that it will support two Summer Research Studentships over the summer of 2011 – 2012. Five applications were received, all of excellent quality, making the selection process very difficult. The successful candidates, Zoe Dyer, currently in the third year of her medical course, and Lydia Suo Ee Slew, a Bachelor of Science student, will each be supported with a scholarship to the value of $5000.

Zoe Dyer

The title of Zoe’s project is:

Adapting a post-bereavement questionnaire to examine end-of-life experience in N.Z.

The instrument in question, the VOICES questionnaire, was designed in the United Kingdom where it is now widely used to capture the experience of care-givers after the death of their relative in order to determine the quality of the care provided for the deceased at end of life. Zoe’s research will evaluate the relevance of this questionnaire in New Zealand and whether it requires any modification for N.Z. conditions.

Her supervisor will be professor Meryn Gott of the School of Nursing.

Lydia Suo Ee Slew

Lydia’s project is entitled:

An evaluation of the dependency status of older people living independently in retirement villages.

The research is part of a larger project being carried out by the University’s Department of Geriatric Medicine based at North Shore Hospital. Her supervisor will be Dr. Michal Boyd. Many older people who might previously have lived in rest homes are now living in retirement villages. These villages are largely unregulated and not much is known about this population.

The research aims to determine the level of dependency of these people and if, as suspected it is similar to that of those who previously lived in rest homes, whether the services provided to maintain their functional independence are appropriate.