Research Fellow

PRIMARY DETAIL

Research Fellow - Improving the health system’s response and learning when patients are harmed

We are seeking an exceptional Research Fellow with a growing track record as a researcher to lead an exciting new research project to improve the health system’s response when patients are harmed.

THE ROLE- Salary Package: Research Fellow (Level B), from $110,274 to $130,472 p.a., plus 17% employer's superannuation and annual leave loading.- Appointment type: Full-time, fixed-term position for 2 years- Macquarie University (North Ryde) location

Health systems in high income countries use incident management systems (IMS) to collect incident data when patients are harmed (adverse events), e.g., due to errors in medication or surgical complications. IMSs involve reporting, managing, analysing, and learning from incidents, investigating serious incidents, and acting in response. When patients are harmed, IMSs are essential for health care organisations to respond to, and learn from adverse events, to prevent other patients suffering a similar incident.

Internationally in health care, there is clear evidence that IMSs and associated investigations are not effective in systematically reducing the frequency of incidents causing harm to patients. There is an absence of evidence about effective incident analysis and investigation methods in health care, and enablers and barriers to the implementation of resulting action plans.

Researchers at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI) at Macquarie University and a multi-state team of Chief and Associate Investigators are partnering with the three largest Australian states (New South Wales (NSW), Queensland, and Victoria), alongside the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), and the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC), to develop and integrate evidence-based methods into practice and state and national guidance to improve the response and learning from incidents when patients are harmed. The outcomes of these aims will include the development of evidence-based best practice guidance and decision support for health services to effectively respond when patients are seriously harmed; a world-first understanding of how artificial intelligence can be used by health services to improve the analysis and learning from the hundreds of thousands of incidents reported each year in Australia; and the first detailed Australian rsecosting of health service staff time to use IMSs.

We are seeking an exceptional Research Fellow with a growing track record as a researcher to lead this exciting new research project. The 4-year project is funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Partnership Grant together and our health system partners. The work will be carried out onsite at Macquarie University (MQ) and across the four jurisdictions.

About You

As a researcher with a growing profile, you will coordinate the day to day activities of the research team and project deliverables in collaboration with the Chief Investigator. You will bring your excellent project management, research, communication, and interpersonal skills to work closely with our stakeholders, including healthcare policy makers, hospital executives, clinicians, and consumers, to ensure that Project aims are met. You will model behaviours that align with the Macquarie University vision and values and foster these in your team, students and the broader community to create an inclusive and high-performance culture.

About Us

Macquarie is the university of pioneering minds. Globally recognised as one of Australia’s leading research universities, Macquarie is a place where extraordinary new possibilities come to light. We’ve helped people to hear, introduced wireless internet technology to the world, and broken through traditional boundaries by appointing Australia's first female vice-chancellor.

Macquarie University's

Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences

builds on our aspiration to have the nation's first fully integrated Academic Health Sciences Centre under a university's leadership. It brings together the excellent work of medical and allied-health clinicians and researchers across the University and around the country, with unparalleled access to world-leading clinical resources and research facilities found only on our campus. Our Faculty hosts the Australian Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI), an internationally acclaimed powerhouse researching health systems, e-health and patient safety.

The Australian Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI) is an internationally leading health services research facility. AIHI is located at the North Ryde Campus of Macquarie University and brings together four well-known, leading and highly successful research centres that work in the separate but related areas of complexity science, implementation science, health informatics, health outcomes, human factors and health system design, h