Research and Innovation on the Run

When?
11 September: Ballarat
14 October: Horsham
8 November: Ballarat

What is Improvement on the Run?
A one day, in person workshop to introduce Grampians Health staff to improvement science through an interactive workshop using a systematic and structured approach to improvement.

Who should attend?
Any staff interested in developing their improvement skills and using them to improve local systems.

Where to find out more?
Email the Improvement and Innovation team on improvementteam@gh.org.au.

This special edition Grand Round will contain a series of rapid-fire 5 minute presentations from our staff currently undertaking research/improvement projects at GH.

• Karina Demasson and Jess Payne: Achieving Health Equity in a Rural Emergency Department by creating culturally safe care pathways for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members
• Madeline Slater: Paediatric Diabetes Survey
• Mick Kirby: Oncology Nurse Practitioner Model Evaluation
• Sammy Russell: ConnectED: Co-Designing Lived Experience Support For People With Mental Health Needs In Regional Emergency Departments

Watch a recording of Session 1.

Laura Hartmann

Public healthcare presents the confluence of several multidisciplinary strands of human-centric practice, along with the spectre of limited budgets and expenditure of public funds. Our project sets out a case study considering the legal process by which consumers in Victoria, Australia

can access medical records held by a public health service. We argue that legal design  can support consumer health literacy, in turn promoting an empowered model of health in person-centred care. Legal design has clear alignment with Australian health literacy  strategy: legal design techniques offer a means by which legal processes in health can align more broadly with person-centred care. The project also suggests that legal design can contribute to the realisation of healthcare rights, through careful resource allocation and the tailoring of design methodologies and techniques.

Carmel O’Kane, Donna Bridge, and Catherine Olston

Introduction:  The closer integration of supportive care in cancer positively impacts patient outcomes. To deliver quality supportive care, screening patients for their supportive care needs and providing this information to the Supportive Care Multidisciplinary Team is necessary but time consuming. A new process was piloted to provide cancer nurses with a more efficient method.

Objectives / Aims: To improve how patient supportive care screening information is collected and then shared with the Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) using existing systems and technology to save clinician time.

Allison Monk and Faye Clarke

Aboriginal patients are over-represented in the healthcare system and face significant disparities in health outcome). While the advances in health care services are tremendous and have improved health outcomes overall; the experiences of institutional and interpersonal racism and unconscious bias are felt by many Aboriginal patients and their families and impacts their access and the experience of healthcare.

This project has completed a gap analysis of the 8 health services and the 3 Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations across the Grampians region. An outcome of the data collected was the recommendation to purchase a validated Cultural Audit Tool. The project team met with a various vendors and recommended the Lowitja Cultural Audit Tool to the steering committee which has since been approved and purchased. The project team is planning implementation of the tools with all key stakeholders.

Watch a recording of Session 2.

Vikki Doddamani

Infant massage is known to have positive effects on the parent infant relationship to enhance social and emotional experiences. Social isolation can have a negative impact on parent's health and wellbeing and so an infant massage education group was identified as an innovative way to enhance social connectedness in this population of parents in regional Victoria to enhance perinatal and infant mental health.

Hannah Ryan-West and Kerry Davidson

The SMSPRO project was initiated in response to a perception and increasing literature on the value of incorporating Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) within clinical care delivery. The SMSPRO project, commencing late 2019 and concluding mid-2024, involved a novel concept that introduced an SMS-based communication platform to be used between patients with cancer and their care providers, where patients were given improved opportunity to interact with their care providers regarding symptoms they may have been experiencing while undergoing cancer treatment, thereby allowing opportunity for care provider intervention as required in a more timely manner.

Ellie Orr

Introduction: Pulmonary rehabilitation programs (PRP) play a significant role in managing and preventing exacerbations of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Many people with COPD may have dysphagia, increasing their risk of exacerbations of this disease, but which is often underdiagnosed in the outpatient setting. Speech pathologists diagnose dysphagia, but are often not part of a PRP and the prevention process. Transdisciplinary or interprofessional approaches are gaining traction in the increasing population and chronic disease management of Australians. A regional health service introduced a transdisciplinary dysphagia screening questionnaire to the initial assessment process in a PRP and explored the perceptions and experiences of clinicians and clients using this approach.

Watch a recording of Session 3.

Jeevan Bhusal and Nalaka Kolamunna

Background: Individuals with schizophrenia often require medication for several years or even a lifetime. A combination of psychosocial therapeutic interventions and prescribed antipsychotics has been shown to be effective in accelerating recovery. However, up to three-quarters of individuals experience non-compliance with their prescribed neuroleptics, leading to a higher risk of relapse, rehospitalization, suicide, prolonged inpatient stays, and a decline in general well-being. In Australia, extremely limited qualitative studies have been undertaken exploring individuals’ experiences and opinions on barriers to successful adherence.

Objectives: This study aimed to identify common barriers to medication adherence among individuals aged 20 to 65 with a diagnosis of schizophrenia living in the Ballarat region.

Sophie Wathen and Catherine Heywood

The Victorian Department of Health recognises that women and girls make up half of the state population, yet their health has been overlooked and underdiagnosed for far too long resulting in gender-based discrepancies in care (Dept of Health, 2024). Service mapping data demonstrates that the Grampians region experiences a profound lack of specialised women’s and sexual and reproductive healthcare services such as pelvic health treatments. Grampians Health has received funding allocation under the Government’s four-year commitment to establish new public women’s health clinics. Our project aims to design and implement new services and enhance existing services to provide specialist screening, diagnosis and management of healthcare conditions specific to women. The project will establish governance mechanisms to oversee redesign activities and employ project methodologies to ensure current state data and best practice evidence inform the development and implementation of safe, evidence-based, person-centred, acceptable and feasible services relevant to the Grampians regional context.

Darlene Cole and Sammy Russell

Background: ‘Our Workforce, our future: A capability framework for the mental health and wellbeing workforce’ was developed by the State of Victoria, Department of Health, in response to recommendations from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System (RCVMHS). Released in September 2023, the framework provides a foundational tool to which services are invited to build upon toward ensuring the workforce has the right capabilities, size, and diversity, The framework is also designed to support and develop an appropriately skilled, competent and confident mental health workforce.

Aim: Grampians Mental Health and Wellbeing Services (GMHWS) aimed to establish a baseline of the confidence levels of current clinical staff in relation to the fifteen (15) capabilities as outlined in the framework.

Watch a recording of Session 4.

Dave Tickell and Stacey English

Development of a novel but scalable multidisciplinary eating disorder service for all ages in a regional non-tertiary health service, incorporating integrated inpatient and outpatient care and smooth transition from paediatric to adult care, including options for Telehealth.

Creating a multidisciplinary eating disorder service for all ages within the Grampians region, incorporating:

1. increased access, without bias towards SES, ED diagnosis, weight, gender, beliefs or cultural background;
2. care within a public health service;
3. reduce need for inpatient care by improving care coordination; and
4. improve coordination between health service and community-based services.

Darlene Cole and Sammy Russell

Background: There is no one size fits all approach for mental health assessments in the emergency department setting, particularly in regional and rural settings. In October 2023 the Grampians Mental Health and Wellbeing Service (GMHWS) Working Group for Recovery Oriented Practice presented a summary of findings regarding Intake Assessment. It concluded that the current practice, model, process, and documentation could be improved to enhance the experience for people using the service, increasing the likelihood of more meaningful engagement. The Working Group made recommendations for a scoping review to be conducted in relation to mental health assessments.

Aim: To conduct a scoping review of mental health crisis assessments in the emergency department to further explore the current evidence base and best practice.

Gemma Siemensma

The health research landscape in Australia is diverse with differences at state and federal levels as well as variations in focus between rural, regional and metropolitan areas. In particular, regional and rural health research often highlights unique challenges such as limited access to healthcare services, workforce shortages, and higher rates of certain health conditions. This disparity underscores the need for targeted research and interventions to address the specific needs of these communities to ensure equitable healthcare access across the country.

In light of the complexities of the system, a research project was undertaken to determine the following:

• What published research have Grampians Health (GH) staff contributed to?
• Which Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC) does this research apply to?
• What are GH’s research strengths and gaps?

This year Western Health's new Chair of Nursing Professor Rochelle Wynne will be our keynote speaker. Come along to hear from your colleagues on the fantastic nurse-led and midwife-led research being undertaken at Western Health.

Time: 2pm to 4pm

Find out more about Western Heath's nursing and midwifery session.

We will explore current and future opportunities to provide clinical trial activities outside traditional health research sites, with the goal of allowing people to participate in research in less burdensome ways.

Time: 12pm to 1pm

Register for the flexible trial delivery webinar.

MACH EMCR Research Design Webinar

In this seminar, A/Prof An Duy Tran and Mr Paul Amores will provide an overview of the perspective and costing approaches used in health economic evaluations, with a particular focus on the societal perspective, which is increasingly being adopted.

Time: 12.30pm to 1pm

Register for the MACH EMCR research design webinar.

You are invited to a hybrid public lecture with a presentation by the University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor, Professor Duncan Maskell.

In this public lecture Professor Duncan Maskell hopes to ignite such a discussion with people in the Goulburn Murray region. The ideas he believes in include the belief that tertiary education, including university education, should be seen by everyone as a right not a privilege. As such a basic right, it should be available to all who can benefit from it. This includes people who want to increase their ‘skill set’ to get a better job, people who want to expand their mind to better understand the world we live in, and people who want to do both.

Time:  5.30pm to 6.30pm

Find out more about University of Melbourne's public lecture.

Advanced digital health and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are enabling increased collection of vast amounts of data. These data might be captured through inpatient or outpatient services, within or outside healthcare settings, generated by clinicians or patients to provide more holistic views of the patient’s status. However, health data currently reside in siloed systems, which makes data sharing challenging.

Time: 1pm

Register for the sharing digital health and AI-driven data webinar.

Grampians Integrated Cancer Service (GICS) invites you to their 2024 Annual Forum: On the Improve: proudly showcasing our achievements.

This virtual event will showcase not only GICS led projects, but also the work and experiences that passionate and committed cancer care staff have achieved as successful recipients of our Grant Programs.

Find out more about the GICS forum and register online.

Each year the Contemporary Approaches to Research in Mathematics, Science, Health and Environmental Education Symposium focuses on practical and theoretical aspects of various research methodologies. Cross-cultural perspectives, activity theory, capturing complexity, classroom video analysis, quantitative methods and interviewing are discussed in a lively, informal setting.

Presentations at the symposium will be grouped into two to four sessions with similar methodological foci, designed to promote substantive discussion of a methodological issue.

Time: 9am on Thursday 21 November to 5pm on Friday 22 November

Find out more about Deakin's symposium.