Research Portfolio

Emergency Examination Authorities and their impacts on North Queensland Hospitals

Emergency Departments (EDs) receive persons suffering major disturbances in their mental capacities, detained and transported by police or ambulance. The Public Health Act 2005 (Qld) (‘PHA’) – amended and in force 5 March 2017 – requires police and ambulance officers to make out an Emergency Examination Authority (EEA) at handover.1 Previously, Emergency Examination Orders (EEOs) were made out under Queensland’s Mental Health Act 2000 (‘MHA’). At handover, police and ambulance officers must make out an EEA. From handover at the ED, the PHA prescribes specific responsibilities, e.g. a doctor or health practitioner must explain to the person that they may…

Principal Investigator: Dr Richard Stone
Amount Awarded: $92,979
Institution: Cairns Hospital

Understanding why aged care residents are transferred to the ED

In Australia, the existing model of emergency department care is struggling to cater for the needs of the older population. A large proportion of older patients arriving at emergency departments are from residential aged care facilities (RACFs). Nursing staff in RACFs often participate in decision making pertaining to transfer of residents to the emergency department, but very little research has been done on the decision making involved in this process. The mixed methods study will engage with RACF nursing staff to understand their decision to transfer a resident, their perception of communication with the emergency department, and the services that…

Principal Investigator: Dr Sean Clark
Amount Awarded: $55,206
Institution: Caboolture Hospital

Junior doctors at triage improve patient flow in the ED

Introducing a novel model of care to the emergency department may provide significant reductions in key performance indicators, such as patient length of stay, or the National Emergency Access Target (NEAT). In previous studies, researchers have found that rostering a physician to work at triage can lead to significant improvements on a range of metrics, including time to treatment, patient length of stay and rate of patients who left before receiving treatment. However, in a regional hospital where staffing numbers and budgets are under pressure this model may not be possible. The objective of this study is to implement a…

Principal Investigator: Dr David Johnson
Amount Awarded: $47,063
Institution: Hervey Bay Hospital

International mass gathering impact on Gold Coast Hospitals’ emergency departments

Queensland is known for its ability to attract mass gathering events of international significance, such as the 2018 Commonwealth Games, 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup and the 2032 Olympic Games. Such events have the potential to impact the normal operational capacity of our emergency health services. The objective of this study is to describe the impact of the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the emergency departments in the Gold Coast region. This research has two key aims, which align with two discrete but related studies: Study 1 Aim: To describe and determine whether changes in patient, health service, and economic outcomes…

Principal Investigator: Dr Michael Aitken
Amount Awarded: $40,000
Institution: Gold Coast University Hospital

Data Extraction from Electronic Health Records for a Chest Pain Clinical Data Registry: The Chest Pain DECoDeR Study

Patient health records contain a significant amount of information through each episode of care provided at a healthcare facility. However, due to the unstructured nature of the clinical information in each record, the clinical data is not readily accessible for research or administrative use unless an expensive and time-consuming manual process is used. Methods of data extraction through various algorithms are available but require training and testing a dataset of annotated health records. To address this issue, my key aim is to generate structured clinical data from previously inaccessible and unstructured electronic records. I am attempting to develop a process…

Principal Investigator: Dr Siegfried Perez
Amount Awarded: $150,000
Institution: Logan Hospital