CCGR Staff Profiles
Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite
BA
UNE, DipLabRelsandtheLaw
Syd, MIR
Syd, MBA
Macq, PhD
UNSW, FAIM, FCHSE
Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite is Professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine and Director of the Centre. He joined the Centre as a Commonwealth Casemix Research Fellow in 1994, and he was Head of the School of Health Services Management until it merged into the School of Public Health and Community Medicine in 2001. In 2003 Jeffrey was awarded a medal from the Uniting Church for Services to Older People. In 2004 he was a recipient of a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2005 he received the President’s Award of the Australian College of Health Services Executives in New South Wales with a citation that reads
“In recognition of your outstanding commitment to the College”.
Jeffrey has contributed some 500 professional publications and presentations in his field of expertise, is the recipient of research grants in excess of $15 million, holds multiple Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council and industry grants and has supervised or currently supervises a cohort of 40 higher degree research students. He has managed, consulted, taught and researched widely in Australia and a number of countries including the People's Republic of China, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Canada, the United States of America and the United Kingdom. He has an international reputation in leadership and organisational behaviour in health settings, and his specific research interests include clinicians as managers, organisational theory, the future of the hospital, organisational design of hospitals, change management in health care, network theory, the evolutionary bases of human behaviour, and health policy development and implementation.
Also see
Research Interests Profile
Contact details:
Telephone: (02) 9385 2590
Fax: (02) 9663 4926
Email:
Ms Sue Christian-Hayes
Sue was employed with the Centre from May 1995 until October 2004. Her primary role at the Centre was to provide administrative support to the Director of the Centre as well as the financial management for the Centre's projects. Sue has worked in both the private and public sector and has experience in a variety of software packages.
Contact details:
Telephone: (02) 9385 3861
Fax: (02) 9663 4926
Email:
Dr David Greenfield
BSc, BA, BSocWk
UQ, Grad Cert IT
UTS, PhD
UNSW\
Dr David Greenfield is a Research Fellow working on the ARC Linkage Accreditation Research Project. This project is researching the relationships between health service accreditation and clinical and organisational performance. David is also a supervisor of PhD students.
David’s key focus is the development and enactment of practice and how organisations shape and mediate learning and knowledge management. His research interests include community of practice, innovation and change in health services, organisational culture and climate, learning and knowledge management and health service accreditation.
Contact details:
Telephone: (02) 8218 2766
Fax: (02) 9211 9633
Email:
Ms Joanne Travaglia
BSocStuds (Hons)
Syd, Grad Dip Adult Ed
UTS, MEd
Jo Travaglia is a medical sociologist with a community work background who has been involved in health services research and practice for over 20 years. She has a particular interest in the health and safety of vulnerable groups, both patients and staff. Jo has led research and evaluation projects on a range of topics relating to: ageing and ethnicity; cultural competence and adult education; critical theory, disability, ethnicity and health; gender and ethnicity; equity and the utilisation of home and community care services; place, space and health; and the impact of diversity on access to, and the provision of, quality healthcare services.
Over the last two years, Jo has worked on the Centre’s evaluation of the impact of the Clinical Excellence Commission programmes in NSW. A major piece of work within this evaluation was a study of the NSW health professionals’ concerns about, and attitudes towards, patient safety. In 2005 she was project manager on the Centre’s evaluation of NSW Health’s Safety Improvement Program of NSW, during which she contributed to several of the evaluation studies. She is currently working on the evaluation of Incident Information Monitoring System in NSW, as well as a project on inter-professional learning, with Associate Professor Braithwaite, for ACT health. Jo is undertaking her PhD, using Bourdieu’s theories to explore the location of vulnerability within the field of patient safety.
Contact details:
Telephone: (02) 93852594
Fax: (02) 9663 4926
Email:
Visiting Research Fellows
Professor Don Hindle
BA Hons
Liverpool, MS, PhD
Lancaster
Don Hindle is a Visiting Professor in the Centre. He has a strong disciplinary background in operations research and over the last twenty years has built an international reputation for his research on health care financing and information systems. Don has published widely in local and international journals and has acted as a consultant to private insurers, New South Wales Health, ACT Health, the Victorian Department of Community Services, the Australian Defence Force, and the South Australian Health Commission.
He has also acted as a consultant in countries such as the USA, The Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Bosnia, China, Vietnam, Croatia, New Zealand, The Philippines, India, Romania, Germany, the UK, Slovenia and Mongolia and for international agencies including UNICEF, the Asian Development Bank, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank with emphasis on primary health care including rural water supply and child growth monitoring. He has been undertaking workshops on organisation and professional cultures in several countries, with emphasis on building improved clinical teamwork.
Dr Philip Hoyle
MBBS, MHA
UNSW, FRACPA
Philip joined the Centre in 2000 and is a partner investigator on the study 'A Project to Measure and Manage the Psychological Impact of Reform on Clinician Managers as Agents of Organisational Change'. Philip is the Director of Acute Services for the Northern Sydney Area Health Service and has an interest in evidence based medicine, evidence-based management and organisational change.
Dr Bon San Bonne Lee
MB BS, Grad Cert IT, M Med, MHA, FFARM
Bon San is a specialist in spinal rehabilitation. He works with the Centre on the ARC Discovery grant: Preventive healthy care: are clinicians’ identities attuned to the requirements of health care reform? His work is at the intersection between the clinical – management interface, and he is interested in this intersection both in his clinical work and his research.
Mr Brian Johnston
BHA
UNSW Dip Pub Admin
NSW Inst of Tech
Brian Johnston, Dip Pub Admin (NSWIT), BHA, FAIM, FCHSE, FAICD, is Chief Executive of The Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS) was instrumental in gaining ACHS Board support for the ACHS contribution as the major industry partner in the Centre’s Australian Research Council Linkage project on examinations of the relationship between accreditation and clinical and organisational performance. He is also one of the ACHS staff who is contributing in-kind resources to this project.
Mr Johnston and Associate Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite jointly convene a group of health care accreditation agencies to collaborate on research into accreditation. His commitment to research is also demonstrated by the establishment of an ACHS Research Panel to advise the ACHS Board on the strategic direction for research into quality improvement in health care. Associate Professor Braithwaite provided advice on the membership of this panel and will take a leadership role.
Mr Johnston has qualifications in health administration from the University of New South Wales, and in public administration from the NSW Institute of Technology (now the University of Technology, Sydney). He is a member of the Management Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons’ Australian Safety and Efficacy Register of New Interventional Procedures – Surgical (ASERNIP-S) and is also a National Councillor and former Treasurer of the Australian Healthcare Association. He regularly speaks at conferences both national and international on quality and safety in health care and on accreditation issues.
Dr Chrisitine Jorm
MB BS (Hons), MD
UNSW, FANZCA
Christine Jorm studied medicine at UNSW. She also has an MD in neuropharmacology and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists. She practiced as a clinical anaesthetist from 1991 to 2002. Christine is a Conjoint Senior Lecturer at UNSW in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine and has been working fulltime in the CCGR since January 2005. In 2005 Christine was the Deputy Chair of the Quality and Safety Taskforce of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists. She is currently CCGR Project Leader for the evaluation of the NSW Department of Health (DOH) Incident Information Management System (IIMS).
After beginning simple quality assurance work in anaesthesia she developed a multidisciplinary Quality Unit for a Division of Critical Care and Surgery. Latterly she had responsibility for Quality and Safety across an entire hospital as “Lead Medical Clinician”. In this role she developed and led significant organisational change. Her job included management of serious incidents, poorly performing clinicians and teaching and leading improvement work.
Christine’s PhD research is sociological, dealing with medical specialty culture and its interaction with patient safety and quality initiatives. Medical practitioners play major roles in the errors of underuse, overuse and misuse, yet are not enthusiastic participants in quality improvement programs, or teamwork with other healthcare professionals despite their passion for the care of the individual patient. The question of why medical behaviour and attitudes are as they are is rarely asked. She plans to submit her PhD in 2006. Christine’s other research interests include: teamwork, multidisciplinary interactions in health, the communicative nature of hospital care and the introduction of medical practitioners to qualitative research methodologies.
Ms Nadine Mallock
Dip Inform Med
(BHI, MHI
) Heidelberg
Nadine is a Visiting Researcher in the Centre. She has a background in Informatics in Medicine and Business Management with Bachelor and Masters qualifications from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Until April 2005, Nadine was a Research Officer at the Centre for Clinical Governance Research. Her research interests include standardisation of clinical care, in particular the construction of “ideal” clinical pathways, and quality improvement as well as evaluation tools and methods.
As a visiting researcher, Nadine is involved in a range of projects at the Centre. These include the investigation of how managers from Singapore and Australia use their time and an analysis of the Australian and German health care systems.
Currently, Nadine is employed as a Project Officer at The Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS). Her main responsibilities include the development, monitoring, collection and review of clinical indicator data. The ACHS receives these data from over 700 member health care organisations from around Australia and New Zealand on a six monthly basis. Nadine also teaches in the Graduate Management Programs in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales.
Dr Marjorie Pawsey
MB BS
Syd
Dr Marjorie Pawsey, MBBS Qld DPH Syd FAFPHM is Principal Research Consultant for the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS). Her experience is in standards development, the delivery of accreditation services and in the quality and safety of health care. She is a partner investigator in the Australian Research Council Linkage Project Examinations of the relationship between accreditation and clinical and organisational performance. She has been actively involved in the recruitment of health services as study participants and in the design and testing of the tools to assess clinical performance. She also co-supervises the doctoral work of Kai Zhang and supports the work of Lena Low’s doctoral thesis.
Her professional activities at the ACHS are focused on evaluation and research. She is involved in analysing data on accreditation performance and on the evaluation of ACHS services and contributes to the writing of ACHS reports and publications. Her major achievement for 2005 being was as first author of the first National Report on Health Services Accreditation Performance 2003 and 2004. She is also a reviewer of accreditation standards against the International Principles for Healthcare Standards for the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua), is a member of the Board of Examiners for the Australasian Association for Quality in Health Care (AAQHC) and sits on the Quality Improvement and Workforce Working Group of the Australian Screening Advisory Committee.
Ms Maureen Robinson
Dip Phty, Grad Cert Paed Phty, Cert Mgt Ed, Cert HSM, MHA
Maureen Robinson joined The Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS) as Executive Manager – Development, in January 2005. Her key responsibilities include developing and maintaining industry standards, leading the organisation's research program, the promotion and publication of information on quality in health care and supporting education and performance assessment activities. The ACHS is the largest health service accreditation provider in Australia. From 1999 until 2005, as the Director, Quality and Safety with the New South Wales state government Department of Health, Maureen was responsible for developing and leading the implementation of the quality agenda in the NSW health system. Maureen has many years of clinical experience in both the Australian and United States health systems and extensive international and national experience in quality improvement to enhance service delivery and patient care. She has taught, researched and practiced in a wide variety of settings.
Professor William Runciman
BSc (Med) MBBCh, FANZCA, FJFICM, FHKCA, FRCA, PhD
Bill Runciman has been President of the Australian Patient Safety Foundation since its inception in 1989. Concurrently, he holds the position of Foundation Professor of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care at the University of Adelaide and Head of Department at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. He was a member of the Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care throughout its period of operation (2000 to 2006) and has been a member of the Australian Health Information Council since 2003. He is currently a member of the group developing an International Patient Safety Event Taxonomy for the World Health Organization as one of the initiatives of the World Alliance for Patient Safety. During 2005, Bill has been collaborating with Associate Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite on a series of manuscripts regarding regulation in health care.
Bill is a member of the: International Patient Safety Event Taxonomy working group of the World Alliance for Patient Safety, World Health Organization (since 2005); Australian Health Information Council (since 2003); Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care (2000 - 2005); Operations Committee of the Royal Adelaide Hospital (since 1990); Australian Health Technology Advisory Committee of the NH&MRC (1992 - 1996); Technical Reference Panel of the National Hospital Quality Management Program (1994 - 1995); and International Task Forces on Safety in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care (1989 - 1995).
He is also a member of 10 professional organisations. Bill is referee on about 20 journals and Research Foundations and has published approximately 200 scientific papers and chapters and has conducted approximately 500 lectures at meetings or by invitation.
Conjoint A/Professor Mary Westbrook
AM, BA, MA (Hons), PhD, FAPS
Conjoint A/Professor Mary Westbrook’s main areas of research are organisational behaviour, health professionals’ work and career development, health consumers, safety in health care, the psychology and sociology of illness, disability and ageing, ethnicity and gender. Mary has published over 100 research articles in peer reviewed journals.
In 2005 her work at the Centre has included the statistical analysis of the results of the evaluation of NSW Health’s Safety Improvement Program, and writing reports and articles about the findings of the evaluation. She has been involved in analysing and writing up the results of a series of studies examining and comparing the work experiences of health managers in Australia and Singapore. Articles on earlier Centre research into healthcare organisations and their staff were completed and accepted for publication. She also provided advice on research design and analysis to other members of the Centre. Before joining the Centre Mary was Associate Professor in the Department of Behavioural Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, The University of Sydney.
Mary is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society. In 1998 she was awarded an AM for ‘services to people with disabilities and to education in the field of health sciences research’. She is a director of the Northcott Society, one of the largest Australian NGOs providing services for people with physical disabilities and is a member of the Medical Advisory Board of Post-Polio International, USA.
Professor Les White
MBBS
Syd, FRACP, DSc
UNSW, MRACMA, MHA
UNSW
Les White joined the Centre in 2000 as partner-investigator on the study 'A Project to Enhance Clinician Managers' Capacities as Agents of Change in Health Reform'. Les is concurrently the Executive Director at the Sydney Children's Hospital, a Professor at the University of New South Wales, and a Visiting Research Professor in the Centre. His research interests include paediatric cancer, cultural change in paediatric institutions, and the ways in which clinicians can balance both managerial and clinical interests.
Dr Anna Whelan
BA Hons
Woll, PhD
Syd, RN, SCM, FRCNA, AFCHSE
Anna Whelan has been an academic in the Faculty of Medicine since 1994 and has taught about the concepts of management in the context of a professional workforce. Anna has an Honours Bachelors degree in History and Philosophy of Science, and a PhD in Public Health and clinical background (nursing) in health services. Her academic interests are in public health and management, with special focus on reproductive health, diversity health and management, and models of working with communities. Anna is Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine and Senior Researcher in the Centre.
Ms Rowena Forsyth
BA Hons
Sydney
Supervisor: A/Professor Rick Iedema
Co-supervisor: A/Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite
PhD:
Clinical work practice change as a result of information and communication technology implementation
Rowena Forsyth joined the Centre in April 2003 to undertake research for a PhD. Rowena’s background is in social science with academic qualifications of a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Sociology and Social Policy from the University of Sydney.
Rowena’s PhD is located within a collaborative project between the Centre for Clinical Governance Research in Health and the Centre for Health Informatics. The project, entitled 'Evaluating the Impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on Organisational Processes and Outcomes', utilises a multi-disciplinary, multi-method approach to assess the ways in which work practices of individual clinicians change as a result of the implementation of computerised test ordering and drug prescribing within Area Health Services. Rowena's research focuses on using video ethnography from a practice perspective. It draws on theories such as ethnomethodology, activity theory and workplace studies to examine how the ritual practices of clinicians are altered as a result of the new technology.
The findings of this research reveal the way that doctors and laboratory workers communicate and informate with each other through different information technologies in the course of their daily work. Of particular interest, are not just the local interactions and information use that occurs between the doctors and the laboratory workers and their fellow professionals separately, but the intersection of the interactions between these two groups. A further set of findings looks at the way that the two different groups (doctors and laboratory workers) have engaged with the research process in contrasting ways and the implications of this engagement for the participants’ ongoing work practices.
Contact details:
Telephone: (02) 9385 1465
Fax: (02) 9663 4926
Email:
Ms Judie Lancaster
BA, LLB (Hons), MBioeth, Diploma of Nursing, Grad Cert HEd, Grad Dip Legal Practice
Supervisor: A/Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite
Co-supervisor: Dr David Greenfield
PhD:
The role of the surveyor in leading the way to quality improvement in health care
This research is a part of the Australian Research Council Linkage Project between the Centre and Industry Partners. The project is an ethnographic study of surveyors at work in their usual professional roles at the hospitals in which they are based. It will explore the extent to which surveyors influence the development of a culture that values leadership and governance and can facilitate the attainment of quality health services.
The aim is to identify whether having surveyors on staff provides value to a hospital. This will involve an evaluation of how surveyors use their knowledge of quality issues to guide the hospitals in which they are based in the direction of ongoing improvement. The hypothesis is that surveyors bring to their professional roles evaluative expertise that enhances the development of good governance mechanisms, strong leadership patterns and effective channels of communication.
The methodology will include a survey, interviews and document analyses. The survey will seek to identify the issues that surveyors consider important to the attainment of quality services. It will also identify the areas in which the surveyors believe they have a marked influence in their workplace. The interviews will explore points of difference between surveyors and non-surveyors. The document analysis will focus on comparative studies of pre and post accreditation performance on quality indicators.
Judie has undergraduate qualifications in both law and nursing and postgraduate qualifications in bioethics. She has a BA. LLB(Hons), MBioeth, Diploma of Nursing, Grad Cert HEd, Grad Dip Legal Practice and is on the Roll of Solicitors of the Supreme Court of New South Wales.
Contact details:
Telephone: (02)
Fax: (02)
Email:
Mr Peter Nugus
MAHons
UNE, Grad Dip Ed
UTS
Supervisor: A/Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite
Co-supervisor: A/Professor Rick Iedema
PhD:
Organisational identity of Emergency clinicians
Peter’s project is part of a program of research undertaken by the Centre on behalf of the NSW Department of Health's Clinical Excellence Commission. Research has looked at the enlarging clinical expertise of Emergency clinicians but very little research has looked at the role of Emergency doctors and nurses as ‘gate-keepers’ of the hospital. The inherently organisational labour of ED clinicians is located in their interactions and negotiations with non-ED clinicians to assess, diagnose and treat patients and either discharge them from the ED or refer them to the care of other speciality medical teams and nursing staff of wards. The research question is: How do Emergency doctors and nurses organise the care of the patient? More specifically, what are the implications for patient safety of the organisational identity into which ED clinicians are socialised? The completed fieldwork consisted of undertaking six months of ethnographic observation and interviewing Emergency and non-Emergency clinicians and in the Emergency Departments of two tertiary referral hospitals in Sydney. This involved mapping out and comparing and contrasting the organisational nature of ED work across various roles within the department, and documenting interactions and perceptions of interactions amongst Emergency clinicians, and between Emergency and non-Emergency clinicians. Drawing on the theory of symbolic interactionism, a grounded methodology and methods of discourse analysis, the thesis will describe the way Emergency clinicians organise the pathway of the patient through the hospital by negotiating a complex web of variables. These include medical knowledge, role-based and interdepartmental hierarchies, work structures and processes, communication and negotiation skills, organisationally imposed time priorities, and personal and professional relationships. Peter is due to submit in April 2007.
Contact details:
Telephone: (02) 9385 2132
Fax: (02) 9663 4926
Email: