Academic Specialist: Recruitment and Engagement Lead

**Job no**: 0051475
**Location**:Parkville
**Role type**:Full time; Fixed-term for 12 months
**Faculty**:Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences
**Department/School**:Department of General Practice, Melbourne Medical School
**Salary**:Level A - $77,171 - $104,717p.a. plus 17% super

The University of Melbourne would like to acknowledge and pay respect to the Traditional Owners of the lands upon which our campuses are situated, the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung Peoples, the Yorta Yorta Nation, the Dja Dja Wurrung People. We acknowledge that the land on which we meet and learn was the place of age-old ceremonies, of celebration, initiation and renewal, and that the local Aboriginal Peoples have had and continue to have a unique role in the life of these lands.

**About - The Department of General Practice**

With an increased profile within the Melbourne Medical School, the Department has utilised its growing network of general practitioners (GPs) and primary health care providers in the community to ensure that University of Melbourne medical students are provided with quality community-based medical education. The Department delivers postgraduate training for primary care nurses, and research training for medical, honours, masters (4) and PhD students (18). For more than 20 years, the Department has run a very successful General Practice academic registrar program where doctors who are training to be GPs (GP registrars) undertake a half time special skills post in academic medicine to experience an introduction to research and university teaching. We average around three academic registrars per year.

The Department has a successful Primary Care Research Unit (PCRU), including a Trials Unit with a practice-based research and education network (VicREN), which comprises our community-based general practices (600+) and other primary care providers who contribute to and drive teaching and research. A proportion of our VicREN members are a part of our Data for Decisions (D4D) Community of Practice. In this D4D program general practices have an agreement with the Department to share their electronic medical record (EMR) data for research and policy advocacy; participating practices have also undertaken a process with their patients to opt out if they do not want their data shared. The EMR data is de-identified before it leaves the practice and is stored in a secure data repository managed by the Department, called Patron. Patron has a management group and an independent governance group with representatives who are consumers, GPs, practice managers, researchers, IT technical, and legal experts.

Central to our work is understanding the patient and practitioner experience and through co-production methodologies involving them in identifying the challenges and designing and testing solutions. Using clinical data analytics, we explore patient pathways through health care and describe the epidemiology of health and disease in primary care. With a focus on primary care innovation, we develop, test and implement simple and complex interventions including digital technologies, such as a range of risk stratification and point-of-care decision making tools. The Department also has successful research programs in specialised areas in Cancer; Children and Young People’s Health; Clinical Data Informatics, Data Driven Quality Improvement, Integrated Mental Health; Sexual Health, and Abuse and Violence.

**About the Role**
The position will be based within the Primary Care Mental Health Team in the Department of General Practice, and will work with the research investigators to engage and recruit general practices and patients into two complex, randomised controlled trials. You will be required to coordinate the close communication needed with the project stakeholders and provide regular project updates for participants and investigators. Experience in communication of research information to different groups is key.

Primary duties will include the coordination of primary care site, General Practitioner and patient recruitment; assisting the Research Fellows to efficiently project manage the engagement and recruitment of primary care practices, ensure safe data practices are adhered to and may conduct some interviews with patients.

Responsibilities include:

- Recruit Primary Care sites and participants to two clinical trials, including intra state site visits and possible interstate visits, contract negotiation electronic medical record screening, eligibility assessment screening with participants.
- Coordinate the close communication needed with the multiple project stakeholders and provide regular project updates for participants and investigators, keeping lead investigators informed of Recruitment progress.
- Prepare and assemble materials for team meetings and report writing, including writing participants update newsletter for communication and engagement.

**About You**
This challenging role will suit a researcher wit