University of Sydney researchers Professor Kate Curtis, Professor Paulo Ferreira and Associate Professor Heather Shepherd have each been awarded National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Partnership Project grants.
The three researchers, all from the Faculty of Medicine and Health, will collaborate with their respective partner organisations to improve nursing care, physiotherapy access and shared decision making.
Interim Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Julie Cairney, emphasised the scheme’s importance in fostering research collaboration.
“The NHMRC Partnership Projects grant scheme creates opportunities for researchers, policy makers, decision makers, managers and clinicians to work together to improve health and wellbeing and implement their research findings into policy and practice,” said Professor Cairney.
"I look forward to seeing the impact of Kate, Paulo and Heather’s respective research projects as they work with their partners to improve nursing care for hospital patients, physiotherapy access for adults with musculoskeletal pain, and shared decision making in practice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people."
The NHMRC Partnership Projects grant scheme creates opportunities for researchers, policy makers, decision makers, managers and clinicians to work together to improve health and wellbeing and implement their research findings into policy and practice.
Professor Julie Cairney
Interim Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)
“The NHMRC Partnership Projects grant scheme creates opportunities for researchers, policy makers, decision makers, managers and clinicians to work together to improve health and wellbeing and implement their research findings into policy and practice.”
Professor Julie Cairney
Interim Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)
Improving the safety and quality of nursing care for hospital patients
Professor Kate Curtis has been awarded $1.5 million to develop a world-first nursing assessment framework for patients with any medical or health condition across any hospital ward.
This new framework will help nurses to deliver consistent high quality and safe care, reduce patient deterioration and save lives.
This project will be an adaptation of Professor Curtis’ successful emergency nursing framework HIRAID®, designed to support emergency nurses in assessing and managing emergency department patients after triage.
Professor Curtis will lead a world-class team of clinician, patient safety and health economic research experts to test this new framework with 1200+ nurses across 10 hospitals in rural, regional and metro New South Wales and Victoria.
“This project was born from hospital nurse managers that sought our assistance to optimise nursing assessment and escalation of patient care after seeing the success of HIRAID® in emergency departments,” said Professor Curtis.
“We are really excited to build on this work to improve patient safety.
“From 2021–2022, 608,995 of Australia’s 11.6 million hospital patients experienced an adverse event that led to unintended harm.
“More than half of these were preventable and many stemmed from inadequate prevention, recognition of, and response to, clinical deterioration by nurses.
“Our review of the international literature highlighted the absence of a standardised, evidence-based nursing framework for nurses in inpatient settings.
“So, with consumers and nurses from 35 different wards across 10 hospitals, we will codesign a new standardised, world-first, fit-for-purpose, ‘whole-of-patient’ nursing framework known as HIRAID-Inpatient.”
Providing a direct access physiotherapy pathway for adults with musculoskeletal pain
Professor Paulo Ferreira has been awarded $1.5 million to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of adding a publicly funded direct access physiotherapy pathway to GP-led primary care in Australia, for adults with musculoskeletal pain.
This increases the project's total pool of funding to $3.1 million, adding to contributions made by external partners in the project, including over $1.4 million provided by the Australian Physiotherapy Association as well as other funding from Musculoskeletal Health Australia, Central and Eastern Sydney and Brisbane North Primary Health Networks.
Professor Ferreira and his team will also partner with Sydney Policy Lab on this project.
“This project will evaluate whether initiating care for musculoskeletal pain, such as low back pain and osteoarthritis, with physiotherapists results in similar clinical improvements as with a General Practitioner (GP),” said Professor Ferreira.
“We anticipate direct access to funded physiotherapy will lead to similar improvements in physical health but will reduce inappropriate healthcare utilisation, like fewer medication prescriptions, imaging requests, and specialist referrals, compared to usual GP-led care alone.
“We also anticipate that this project will provide best evidence for our partners to drive policy change for publicly funded physiotherapy and primary care reform to better meet the needs of seven million Australians living with musculoskeletal pain.”
Supporting shared decision making in practice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
Associate Professor Heather Shepherd has been awarded over $345,000 to build upon the Agency for Clinical Innovation’s ‘Finding Your Way’ shared decision-making model, a resource to help healthcare professionals and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make decisions about their health and wellbeing together.
Associate Professor Shepherd and colleagues will work with the Agency for Clinical Innovation to validate a culturally safe measure of shared decision-making for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, co-design a culturally safe implementation framework with Aboriginal governance and leadership, and test a sustainable implementation plan of Finding Your Way.
“This Partnership Project came about from collaboration, trust and shared learning over the last few years,” said Associate Professor Shepherd.
“We are excited to have the opportunity to increase the use of shared decision making and to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be more active decision makers in their healthcare, especially in mainstream services.”
Among the University of Sydney researchers involved in this project are Dr Marguerite Tracy, Dr Emma Webster, Professor Michelle Dickson, Professor Emerita Lyndal Trevena, and Dr Paul Lunney.
