How to promote brilliant healthcare for complex issues

Primary Supervisor: A/Prof. Ann Dadich (opens in a new window)

The aim of this project is to promote brilliant healthcare for complex health issues. This will be achieved by addressing the following objectives:

1. Map the pathways through which patients with complex conditions for which there is limited support – namely, complex feeding difficulties among children – access feeding care across the three-tiered Australian health system
2. Gauge organisational capacity among select health services to address complex feeding difficulties by isolating bottlenecks and inefficiencies
3. Determine the conditions that contribute to brilliant feeding care, as defined by clinicians and the families they support
4. Identify opportunities to address bottlenecks and inefficiencies to optimise brilliant feeding care
5. In collaboration with external stakeholders, co-design, co-develop, implement, and evaluate a resource (that is, an intervention, broadly defined) to optimise brilliant feeding care
6. Facilitate a roundtable discussion with health service managers, clinicians, and the families of children with complex feeding difficulties, to pursue practicable strategies to promote brilliant feeding care, beyond this project

This project is significant because feeding difficulties among children are prevalent, chronic, and complex – as such, they represent an appropriate microcosm from which lessons can be garnered to inform the management of the myriad health services that address prevalent chronic and complex health issues in Australia, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, mental health issues, diabetes, and dementia. This claim follows four reasons – specifically, feeding difficulties among children:

1. Are common, even among normally developing children
2. Can have personal, social, and economic implications
3. Strain Australian hospitals
4. Can be difficult for families to manage. This might partly explain why many children with feeding difficulties present to emergency departments and/or are admitted to hospital for acute care

Given the prevalence, chronicity, and complexity of feeding difficulties among children, this project is expected to culminate with several outcomes with considerable impact, individually and collectively – specifically, this project can:

1. Improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of preventive healthcare interventions by culminating with an evidence-based resource and new research findings
2. Improve the health outcomes of people with complex and chronic conditions – namely, children with feeding difficulties
3. Enhance interagency collaboration and the integration of research outcomes into community-based health services. This is because – building on the research completed by members of the research team to date – this project will involve scholars, clinicians, and parents/carers, all of who have expertise and/or an interest in feeding difficulties. Furthermore, this project is situated in the community to ensure clinicians and parents/carers are well-prepared for, and supported to manage complex feeding difficulties among children
4. Reduce burden on the Australian hospital system by decreasing avoidable admissions among children with complex feeding difficulties. This represents an important research outcome because there are very few specialised feeding clinics throughout Australia, with only eight feeding clinics within the NSW public health system
5. Achieve long-term economic efficiencies for patients, carers, the Commonwealth, states, and territories by reducing avoidable admissions among children with complex feeding difficulties
6. Establish newfound, and/or strengthen existing partnerships between scholars, the community, policymakers, and clinicians that have long-term promise

Disciplines relevant to this project include:

• Humanities
• Management
• Medicine
• Nursing
• Psychology
• Social and/or health science

Skills that are likely to be helpful include:

• The collection, analysis, and critique of qualitative data
• The facilitation of design thinking
• The facilitation of participatory methodologies, particularly with children
• Process mapping