Centre for Clinical Governance Research in Health (CCGR)

The Centre for Clinical Governance Research in Health is a research facility in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales with a successful track record of undertaking research and evaluation projects on health sector issues since 1991. Its core interest is to investigate issues of policy, governance and leadership in the health sector. It is involved in conducting original research into clinical governance issues, providing a scholarly capability by which to evaluate health sector policies, programs and projects, and contributing to undergraduate medical, postgraduate health services management, and public health and doctoral education.

To achieve these the Centre makes use of assembled expertise and collaborators, and builds on existing staff expertise through external collaborations within Australia and internationally, including with the Centre for Health Informatics, UNSW, the NSW Health Department, Clinical Excellence Commission, NSW, Australian Council on Healthcare Standards, Health Informatics Research and Evaluation Unit at the University of Sydney, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney and the World Health Organization.

CCGR News

One of the Centre's papers has been chosen as highly commended award winner at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence in 2008. It is:



Outstanding papers - Leadership in Health Services


Braithwaite J. (2008) L(H) ≠ ∑(m1, m2 … mn), Leadership in Health Services, 21(1):8-15 > Link to Paper

Dr David Greenfield and his co-investigators have been awarded two grants from the Department of Health and Ageing totaling $1.9 million. The industry grants [Chief Investigators: Dr David Greenfield, Dr Peter Nugus, Ms Joanne Travaglia and Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite] are being conducted in collaboration with the ACT Division of General Practice, ACT Health and Australian National University (A/ Professor Paul Dugdale). One grant is for a project to integrate primary health care providers and patients-as-professionals in interprofessional learning activities aimed at encouraging active patient self-management of chronic disease. The second grant is to conduct an evaluation project to investigate the interrelated issues of interprofessional learning/networking, chronic disease and patient self-management. The evaluation project will empirically examine in situ, over time, the factors that unite the professional network developed in the first project. In addition, it will explore the stresses and challenges that must be continually addressed for the network to achieve ongoing self-maintenance. In doing so, the evaluation project will investigate the process of translation of proposed gains into actuality. This is an important issue, as previous projects have documented how predicted and sought-after gains have not been realised. It is envisaged that the lessons from this work will be applicable to other areas of chronic care and other professional networks. Furthermore, the results can inform the knowledge base for the Australian National Chronic Disease Strategy.

Professor Braithwaite and his co-investigators have been awarded an NHMRC research grant totalling $8.4 million. The NHMRC Program Grant [Chief Investigators, Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite, Professor Johanna Westbrook, Professor Enrico Coiera, Professor William Runciman and Professor Ric Day] totals $8,400,000 over five years and will examine, across Australia, patient safety. Internationally, patient safety is a growing concern. Patient harm occurs in 10% of hospital admissions. A million adverse events occur in general practice each year in Australia. Overseas data reports that patients receive recommended care only 50% of the time. We will significantly advance this work by investigating how and why this occurs, with a focus on the roles of teamwork, safe medication use and the application of information technology to support improved decision-making.

Professor Braithwaite and his co-investigators have been awarded research grants this month amounting to $3.88 million. This is the culmination of strong international and national collaborative research activities over several years.

The ARC Discovery Grant [Chief Investigators, Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite and Professor Johanna Westbrook] totals $1,580,000 over five years and will examine, across Australia, teams, communities of practice and clinical networks that are the building blocks in providing effective health services. We are using novel and exciting research methods to do this, and will be developing a framework for future evaluation work. Internationally, no one has done this. This is the largest ARC Discovery grant awarded this year.

The ARC Linkage Grant [Chief Investigators Professor Johanna Westbrook and Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite; Partner Investigators A/Professor Katherine Gibson and Dr Richard Paoloni] totals $2,306,000 [$1,550,000 from the ARC and $756,000 from the industry partner, Sydney South West Area Health Service, will investigate information technology and its capacity to support innovations in health care delivery. This is at the cutting edge of health informatics evaluation research. This is the largest ARC Linkage grant awarded this round.

Read about the evolutionary basis of human behaviour and its application in modern settings in a discussion on Radio National breakfast on 2 October between Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite and the ABC's Fran Kelly > Link to Podcast

We need better led health services. Read Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite's recent analysis of this in the journal Leadership in Health Services with the intriguing title L(H) ≠ ∑(m1, m2 … mn).

The OBHC2008 Conference was a resounding success, with some 80 delegates from Australasia, North America and Europe. See the details at www.obhc2008.org.

Download Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite's keynote address Between the devil and the deep blue sea: patient safety and risk in hospitals [PDF] and Dr Marjorie Pawsey's presentation The Relationship Between Accreditation Criteria Results and Clinical Indicators [PDF] on behalf of the ARC Accreditation Research Team to the 5th Australian Conference on Safety and Quality in Health Care "The Power of Us", 6th - 8th August 2007, Brisbane, Australia.

Read the address Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite gave to the Australian Health Care Association's Think Tank in Translating evidence into practice: an action plan, on 10th August 2007, entitled Towards safer, better health care: leveraging the strength of networks. [PDF]

Read Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite's recent review in the British Medical Journal on How to restructure-proof your health service. [PDF]

Organisational Behaviour in Healthcare Conference
The 6th International Conference in Organisational Behaviour in Health Care is to be held in Sydney, Australia from 26-28 March, 2008. The theme is: Culture and climate: cracking the code. The chair is Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite of the University of New South Wales who is hosting the conference on behalf of the Society for the Study of Organising in Health Care. Please visit the website at www.obhc2008.org for more information.

December 2006