Professor Christine Jorm

© 2018 AHHA. Objective: Since Australia initiated national open disclosure standards in 2002, open disclosure policies have been adopted in all Australian states and territories. Yet, research evidence regarding their adoption is limited. The aim of the present study was to determine the frequency with which patients who report an adverse event had information disclosed to them about the incident, including whether they participated in a formal open disclosure process, their experiences of the process and the extent to which these align with the current New South Wales (NSW) policy. Methods: A cross-sectional survey about patient experiences of disclosure associated with an adverse event was administered to a random sample of 20 000 participants in the 45 and Up Study who were hospitalised in NSW, Australia, between January and June 2014. Results: Of the 18 993 eligible potential participants, completed surveys were obtained from 7661 (40% response rate), with 474 (7%) patients reporting an adverse event. Of those who reported an adverse event, a significant majority reported an informal or bedside disclosure (91%; 430/474). Only 79 patients (17%) participated in a formal open disclosure meeting. Most informal disclosures were provided by nurses, with only 25% provided by medical practitioners. Conclusions: Experiences of open disclosure may be enhanced by informing patients of their right to full disclosure in advance of or upon admission to hospital, and recognition of and support for informal or bedside disclosure for appropriate types of incidents. A review of the open disclosure guidelines in relation to the types of adverse events that require formal open disclosure and those more suitable to informal bedside disclosure is indicated. Guidelines for bedside disclosure should be drafted to assist medical practitioners and other health professionals facilitate and improve their communications about adverse events. Alignment of formal disclosure with policy requirements may also be enhanced by training multidisciplinary teams in the process. What is known about the topic?: While open disclosure is required in all cases of serious adverse events, patients' experiences are variable, and lack of, or poor quality disclosures are all too common. What does this paper add?: This paper presents experiences reported by patients across New South Wales in a large cross-sectional survey. Unlike previous studies of open disclosure, recently hospitalised patients were identified and invited using data linkage with medical records. Findings suggest that most patients receive informal disclosures rather than a process that aligns with the current policy guidance. What are the implications for practitioners?: Experiences of open disclosure may be enhanced by informing patients of their right to full disclosure in advance of or upon admission to hospital, and recognition of and support for informal or bedside disclosure for appropriate types of incidents.

© 2018, The Author(s) 2018. This article reports on a study of clinicians¿ responses to footage of their enactments of infection prevention and control. The study¿s approach was to elicit clinicians¿ reflections on and clarifications about the connections among infection control activities and infection control rules, taking into account their awareness, interpretation and in situ application of those rules. The findings of the study are that clinicians responded to footage of their own infection prevention and control practices by articulating previously unheeded tensions and constraints including infection control rules that were incomplete, undergoing change, and conflicting; material obstructions limiting infection control efforts; and habituated and divergent rule enactments and rule interpretations that were problematic but disregarded. The reflexive process is shown to elicit clinicians¿ learning about these complexities as they affect the accomplishment of effective infection control. The process is further shown to strengthen clinicians¿ appreciation of infection control as necessitating deliberation to decide what are locally appropriate standards, interpretations, assumptions, habituations and enactments of infection control. The article concludes that clinicians¿ ¿practical wisdom¿ is unlikely to reach its full potential without video-assisted scrutiny of and deliberation about in situ clinical work. This enables clinicians to anchor their in situ enactments, reasonings and interpretations to local agreements about the intent, applicability, limits and practical enactment of rules.

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and The Association for the Study of Medical Education Context: Peer assessment of professional behaviour within problem-based learning (PBL) groups can support learning and provide opportunities to identify and remediate problem behaviours. Objectives: We investigated whether a peer assessment of learning behaviours in PBL is sufficiently valid to support decision making about student professional behaviours. Methods: Data were available for two cohorts of students, in which each student was rated by all of their PBL group peers using a modified version of a previously validated scale. Following the provision of feedback to the students, their behaviours were again peer-assessed. A generalisability study was undertaken to calculate the students¿ professional behaviour scores, sources of error that impacted the reliability of the assessment, changes in student rating behaviour, and changes in mean scores after the delivery of feedback. Results: Peer assessment of professional learning behaviour was highly reliable for within-group comparisons (G = 0.81¿0.87), but poor for across-group comparisons (G = 0.47¿0.53). Feedback increased the range of ratings given by assessors and brought their mean ratings into closer alignment. More of the increased variance was attributable to assessee performance than to assessor stringency and hence there was a slight improvement in reliability, especially for comparisons across groups. Mean professional behaviour scores were unchanged. Conclusions: Peer assessment of professional learning behaviours may be unreliable for decision making outside a PBL group. Faculty members should not draw conclusions from peer assessment about a student's behaviour compared with that of their peers in the cohort, and such a tool may not be appropriate for summative assessment. Health professional educators interested in assessing student professional behaviours in PBL groups might focus on opportunities for the provision of formative peer feedback and its impact on learning.

© Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/. Background Understanding a patient's hospital experience is fundamental to improving health services and policy, yet, little is known about their experiences of adverse events (AEs). This study redresses this deficit by investigating the experiences of patients in New South Wales hospitals who suffered an AE. Methods Data linkage was used to identify a random sample of 20000 participants in the 45 and Up Cohort Study, out of 267153 adults aged 45years and over, who had been hospitalised in the prior 6months. A cross-sectional survey was administered to these patients to capture their experiences, including whether they had an AE and received honest communication about it. Results Of the 18993 eligible participants, 7661 completed surveys were received (40% response rate) and 474 (7%) reported having an AE. Most AEs related to clinical processes and procedures (33%), or medications and intravenous fluids (21%). Country of birth and admission through emergency were significant predictors of the occurrence of an event. An earlier admission in the prior 6months or a transfer to another healthcare facility was also associated with more AEs. Of those who suffered an AE, 58% reported serious or moderate effects. Conclusions Given the exclusions in our sample population (under 45years), the AE rate reported by patients of 7% is similar to the approximately 10% rate reported in the general population by retrospective medical record reviews. AE data that include patient experience may provide contextual information currently missing. Capturing and using patient experience data more effectively is critical; there may be opportunities for applying co-design methodology to improve the management of AEs and be more responsive to patients' concerns.

© 2017 BMJ Publishing Group. All rights reserved. Background: Hospital-acquired infections are the most common adverse event for inpatients worldwide. Efforts to prevent microbial crosscontamination currently focus on hand hygiene and use of personal protective equipment (PPE), with variable success. Better understanding is needed of infection prevention and control (IPC) in routine clinical practice. Methods: We report on an interventionist videoreflexive ethnography study that explored how healthcare workers performed IPC in three wards in two hospitals in New South Wales, Australia: an intensive care unit and two general surgical wards. We conducted 46 semistructured interviews, 24 weeks of fieldwork (observation and videoing) and 22 reflexive sessions with a total of 177 participants (medical, nursing, allied health, clerical and cleaning staff, and medical and nursing students). We performed a postintervention analysis, using a modified grounded theory approach, to account for the range of IPC practices identified by participants. Results: We found that healthcare workers' routine IPC work goes beyond hand hygiene and PPE. It also involves, for instance, the distribution of team members during rounds, the choreography of performing aseptic procedures and moving 'from clean to dirty' when examining patients. We account for these practices as the logistical work of moving bodies and objects across boundaries, especially from contaminated to clean/vulnerable spaces, while restricting the movement of micro-organisms through cleaning, applying barriers and buffers, and trajectory planning. Conclusions: Attention to the logistics of moving people and objects around healthcare spaces, especially into vulnerable areas, allows for a more comprehensive approach to IPC through better contextualisation of hand hygiene and PPE protocols, better identification of transmission risks, and the design and promotion of a wider range of preventive strategies and solutions.

© 2017 The Author(s). Background: Large scale models of interprofessional learning (IPL) where outcomes are assessed are rare within health professional curricula. To date, there is sparse research describing robust assessment strategies to support such activities. We describe the development of an IPL assessment task based on peer rating of a student generated video evidencing collaborative interprofessional practice. We provide content validation evidence of an assessment rubric in the context of large scale IPL. Methods: Two established approaches to scale development in an educational setting were combined. A literature review was undertaken to develop a conceptual model of the relevant domains and issues pertaining to assessment of student generated videos within IPL. Starting with a prototype rubric developed from the literature, a series of staff and student workshops were undertaken to integrate expert opinion and user perspectives. Participants assessed five-minute videos produced in a prior pilot IPL activity. Outcomes from each workshop informed the next version of the rubric until agreement was reached on anchoring statements and criteria. At this point the rubric was declared fit to be used in the upcoming mandatory large scale IPL activity. Results: The assessment rubric consisted of four domains: patient issues, interprofessional negotiation; interprofessional management plan in action; and effective use of video medium to engage audience. The first three domains reflected topic content relevant to the underlying construct of interprofessional collaborative practice. The fourth domain was consistent with the broader video assessment literature calling for greater emphasis on creativity in education. Conclusions: We have provided evidence for the content validity of a video-based peer assessment task portraying interprofessional collaborative practice in the context of large-scale IPL activities for healthcare professional students. Further research is needed to establish the reliability of such a scale.

© The Author(s) 2017. This study, set in a mixed, adult surgical ward of a metropolitan teaching hospital in Sydney, Australia, used a novel application of video-reflexive ethnography (VRE) to engage patients and clinicians in an exploration of the practical and relational complexities of patient involvement in infection prevention and control (IPC). This study included individual reflexive sessions with eight patients and six group reflexive sessions with 35 nurses. VRE usually involves participants reflecting on video footage of their own (and colleagues¿) practices in group reflexive sessions. We extended the method here by presenting, to nurses, video clips of their clinical interactions with patients, in conjunction with footage of the patients themselves analyzing the videos of their own care, for infection risks.We found that this novel approach affected the nurses¿ capacities to recognize, support, and enable patient involvement in IPC and to reflect on their own, sometimes inconsistent, IPC practices from patients¿ perspectives. As a ¿post-qualitative¿ approach, VRE prioritizes participants¿ roles, contributions, and learning. Invoking affect as an explanatory lens, we theorize that a ¿safe space¿ was created for participants in our study to reflect on and reshape their assumptions, positionings, and practices.

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Background: The development of a professional identity occurs during medical school. Formal study of students' reflections on this process may provide insight into how to better support them. Methods: A qualitative data analysis of 56 student essays was undertaken. Results: Students' early interactions with patients seem to be influential in their process of identity development. Students were preoccupied with creating or preserving a professional persona in front of patients. They responded to this perceived challenge in three ways: some were concerned with controlling the experience and expression of emotion, others felt that they failed to be authentic, and the third group focused on the patient's experience of the interaction and agonised over what the patients might want. Discussion: This article adds to the literature by highlighting the struggles medical students encounter trying to behave and feel the way they think they ought. Students may be less troubled and participate more naturally in empathic communication if they learn to access authentic emotions in their interactions with patients. This article discusses strategies for medical faculties and clinical tutors to support and encourage them to do so.

© 2016 Jorm et al. Background: There is little research on large-scale complex health care simulations designed to facilitate student learning of non-technical skills in a team-working environment. We evaluated the acceptability and effectiveness of a novel natural disaster simulation that enabled medical students to demonstrate their achievement of the non-technical skills of collaboration, negotiation and communication. Methods: In a mixed methods approach, survey data were available from 117 students and a thematic analysis undertaken of both student qualitative comments and tutor observer participation data. Results: Ninety three per cent of students found the activity engaging for their learning. Three themes emerged from the qualitative data: the impact of fidelity on student learning, reflexivity on the importance of non-technical skills in clinical care, and opportunities for collaborative teamwork. Physical fidelity was sufficient for good levels of student engagement, as was sociological fidelity. We demonstrated the effectiveness of the simulation in allowing students to reflect upon and evidence their acquisition of skills in collaboration, negotiation and communication, as well as situational awareness and attending to their emotions. Students readily identified emerging learning opportunities though critical reflection. The scenarios challenged students to work together collaboratively to solve clinical problems, using a range of resources including interacting with clinical experts. Conclusions: A large class teaching activity, framed as a simulation of a natural disaster is an acceptable and effective activity for medical students to develop the non-technical skills of collaboration, negotiation and communication, which are essential to team working. The design could be of value in medical schools in disaster prone areas, including within low resource countries, and as a feasible intervention for learning the non-technical skills that are needed for patient safety.

© 2016 The Author(s). Background: Teamwork training is an essential component of health professional student education. A valid and reliable teamwork self-assessment tool could assist students to identify desirable teamwork behaviours with the potential to promote learning about effective teamwork. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a self-assessment teamwork tool for health professional students for use in the context of emergency response to a mass casualty. Methods: The authors modified a previously published teamwork instrument designed for experienced critical care teams for use with medical and nursing students involved in mass casualty simulations. The 17-item questionnaire was administered to students immediately following the simulations. These scores were used to explore the psychometric properties of the tool, using Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Results: 202 (128 medical and 74 nursing) students completed the self-assessment teamwork tool for students. Exploratory factor analysis revealed 2 factors (5 items - Teamwork coordination and communication; 4 items - Information sharing and support) and these were justified with confirmatory factor analysis. Internal consistency was 0.823 for Teamwork coordination and communication, and 0.812 for Information sharing and support. Conclusions: These data provide evidence to support the validity and reliability of the self-assessment teamwork tool for students This self-assessment tool could be of value to health professional students following team training activities to help them identify the attributes of effective teamwork.

© 2016 The Author(s). Background: More and better interprofessional practice is predicated to be necessary to deliver good care to the patients of the future. However, universities struggle to create authentic learning activities that enable students to experience the dynamic interprofessional interactions common in healthcare and that can accommodate large interprofessional student cohorts. We investigated a large-scale mandatory interprofessional learning (IPL) activity for health professional students designed to promote social learning. Methods: A mixed methods research approach determined feasibility, acceptability and the extent to which student IPL outcomes were met. We developed an IPL activity founded in complexity theory to prepare students for future practice by engaging them in a self-directed (self-organised) learning activity with a diverse team, whose assessable products would be emergent creations. Complicated but authentic clinical cases (n = 12) were developed to challenge student teams (n = 5 or 6). Assessment consisted of a written management plan (academically marked) and a five-minute video (peer marked) designed to assess creative collaboration as well as provide evidence of integrated collective knowledge; the cohesive patient-centred management plan. Results: All students (including the disciplines of diagnostic radiology, exercise physiology, medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physiotherapy and speech pathology), completed all tasks successfully. Of the 26 % of students who completed the evaluation survey, 70 % agreed or strongly agreed that the IPL activity was worthwhile, and 87 % agreed or strongly agreed that their case study was relevant. Thematic analysis found overarching themes of engagement and collaboration-in-action suggesting that the IPL activity enabled students to achieve the intended learning objectives. Students recognised the contribution of others and described negotiation, collaboration and creation of new collective knowledge after working together on the complicated patient case studies. The novel video assessment was challenging to many students and contextual issues limited engagement for some disciplines. Conclusions: We demonstrated the feasibility and acceptability of a large scale IPL activity where design of cases, format and assessment tasks was founded in complexity theory. This theoretically based design enabled students to achieve complex IPL outcomes relevant to future practice. Future research could establish the psychometric properties of assessments of student performance in large-scale IPL events.

© AHHA 2015. Considerable resources are being invested in healthcare leadership development programs and there is a new requirement for leadership teaching for Australian medical students. The new attention to medical leadership may be a reaction to loss of medical status and power. There is little evidence for return on investment from such programs. It is simply not clear what kind of leadership training is needed for collaborative work to improve healthcare nor what kind of organisational structures enable productive exercise of medical leadership skills. Caution is recommended.

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Aims and Objectives: This paper explores patients' perspectives on infection prevention and control. Background: Healthcare-associated infections are the most frequent adverse event experienced by patients. Reduction strategies have predominantly addressed front-line clinicians' practices; patients' roles have been less explored. Design: Video-reflexive ethnography. Methods: Fieldwork undertaken at a large metropolitan hospital in Australia involved 300 hours of ethnographic observations, including 11 hours of video footage. This paper focuses on eight occasions, where video footage was shown back to patients in one-on-one reflexive sessions. Findings: Viewing and discussing video footage of clinical care enabled patients to become articulate about infection risks, and to identify their own roles in reducing transmission. Barriers to detailed understandings of preventative practices and their roles included lack of conversation between patients and clinicians about infection prevention and control, and being ignored or contradicted when challenging perceived suboptimal practice. It became evident that to compensate for clinicians' lack of engagement around infection control, participants had developed a range of strategies, of variable effectiveness, to protect themselves and others. Finally, the reflexive process engendered closer scrutiny and a more critical attitude to infection control that increased patients' sense of agency. Conclusion: This study found that patients actively contribute to their own safety. Their success, however, depends on the quality of patient-provider relationships and conversations. Rather than treating patients as passive recipients of infection control practices, clinicians can support and engage with patients' contributions towards achieving safer care. Relevance to clinical practice: This study suggests that if clinicians seek to reduce infection rates, they must start to consider patients as active contributors to infection control. Clinicians can engage patients in conversations about practices and pay attention to patient feedback about infection risk. This will broaden clinicians' understandings of infection control risks and behaviours, and assist them to support appropriate patient self-care behaviour.

© 2015, BMJ Publishing Group. All rights reserved. Objective To strengthen clinicians¿ infection control awareness and risk realisation by engaging them in scrutinising footage of their own infection control practices and enabling them to articulate challenges and design improvements. Design and participants Clinicians and patients from selected wards of 2 hospitals in western Sydney. Main outcome measures Evidence of risk realisation and new insights into infection control as articulated during video-reflexive feedback meetings. Results Frontline clinicians identified previously unrecognised infection risks in their own practices and in their team¿s practices. They also formulated safer ways of dealing with, for example, charts and patient transfers. Conclusions Video-reflexive ethnography enables frontline clinicians to identify infection risks and to design locally tailored solutions for existing risks and emerging ones.

© 2015 Khoiriyah et al. Background: Problem based learning (PBL) is a powerful learning activity but fidelity to intended models may slip and student engagement wane, negatively impacting learning processes, and outcomes. One potential solution to solve this degradation is by encouraging self-assessment in the PBL tutorial. Self-assessment is a central component of the self-regulation of student learning behaviours. There are few measures to investigate self-assessment relevant to PBL processes. We developed a Self-assessment Scale on Active Learning and Critical Thinking (SSACT) to address this gap. We wished to demonstrated evidence of its validity in the context of PBL by exploring its internal structure. Methods: We used a mixed methods approach to scale development. We developed scale items from a qualitative investigation, literature review, and consideration of previous existing tools used for study of the PBL process. Expert review panels evaluated its content; a process of validation subsequently reduced the pool of items. We used structural equation modelling to undertake a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the SSACT and coefficient alpha. Results: The 14 item SSACT consisted of two domains "active learning" and "critical thinking." The factorial validity of SSACT was evidenced by all items loading significantly on their expected factors, a good model fit for the data, and good stability across two independent samples. Each subscale had good internal reliability (>0.8) and strongly correlated with each other. Conclusions: The SSACT has sufficient evidence of its validity to support its use in the PBL process to encourage students to self-assess. The implementation of the SSACT may assist students to improve the quality of their learning in achieving PBL goals such as critical thinking and self-directed learning.

Patient safety has been addressed since 2002 in the health system of New South Wales, Australia via a Safety Improvement Programme (SIP), which took a system-wide approach. The programme involved two-day courses to educate healthcare professionals to monitor and report incidents and analyse adverse events by conducting root cause analysis (RCA). This paper aims to predict that all professions would favour SIP but that their work and educational histories would result in doctors holding the least and nurses the most positive attitudes. Alternative hypotheses were that doctors' relative power and other professions' team-working skills would advantage the respective groups when conducting RCAs. Responses to a 2005 follow-up questionnaire survey of doctors (n=53), nurses (209) and allied health staff (59), who had participated in SIP courses, were analysed to compare: their attitudes toward the course; safety skills acquired and applied; perceived benefits of SIP and RCAs; and their experiences conducting RCAs. Significant differences existed between professions' responses with nurses being the most and doctors the least affirming. Allied health responses resembled those of nurses more than those of doctors. The professions' experiences conducting RCAs (number conducted, leadership, barriers encountered, findings implemented) were similar. Observational studies are needed to determine possible professional differences in the conduct of RCAs and any ensuing culture change that this may be eliciting. There is strong professional support for SIPs but less endorsement from doctors, who tend not to prefer the knowledge content and multidisciplinary teaching environment considered optimal for safety improvement education. This is a dilemma that needs to be addressed. Few longer-term SIPs' assessments have been realised and the differences between professional groups have not been well quantified. As a result of this paper, benefits of and barriers to conducting RCAs are now more clearly understood. © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of a health system-wide safety improvement program (SIP) three to four years after initial implementation. Design/methodology/approach - The study employs multi-methods studies involving questionnaire surveys, focus groups, in-depth interviews, observational work, ethnographic studies, documentary analysis and literature reviews with regard to the state of New South Wales, Australia, where 90,000 health professionals, under the auspices of the Health Department, provide healthcare to a seven-million population. After enrolling many participants from various groups, the measurements included: numbers of staff trained and training quality; support for SIP; clinicians' reports of safety skills acquired, work practices changed and barriers to progress; RCAs undertaken; observation of functioning of teams; committees initiated and staff appointed to deal with adverse events; documentation and computer records of reports; and peak-level responses to adverse events. Findings - A cohort of 4 per cent of the state's health professionals has been trained and now applies safety skills and conducts RCAs. These and other senior professionals strongly support SIP, though many think further culture change is required if its benefits are to be more fully achieved and sustained. Improved information-handling systems have been adopted. Systems for reporting adverse incidents and conducting RCAs have been instituted, which are co-ordinated by NSW Health. When the appropriate structures, educational activities and systems are made available in the form of an SIP, measurable systems change might be introduced, as suggested by observations of the attitudes and behaviours of health practitioners and the increased reporting of, and action about, adverse events. Originality/value - Few studies into health systems change employ wide-ranging research methods and metrics. This study helps to fill this gap. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

In this paper, we discuss how a technique borrowed from defense and manufacturing is being deployed in hospitals across the industrialized world to investigate clinical errors. We open with a discussion of the levers used by policy makers to mandate that clinicians not just report errors, but also gather to investigate those errors using root cause analysis (RCA). We focus on the tensions created for clinicians as they are expected to formulate 'systems solutions' that go beyond blame. In addressing these matters, we present a discourse analysis of data derived during an evaluation of the NSW Health Safety Improvement Program. Data include transcripts of RCA meetings which were recorded in a local metropolitan teaching hospital. From this analysis we move back to the argument that RCA involves clinicians in 'immaterial labour', or the production of communication and information, and that this new labour realizes two important developments. First, because RCA is anchored in the principle of health care practitioners not just scrutinizing each other, but scrutinizing each others' errors, RCA is a challenging task. Second, thanks to turning the clinical gaze in on the clinical observer, RCA engenders a new level of reflexivity of clinical self and of clinical practice. We conclude with asking whether this reflexivity will lock the clinical gaze into a micro-sociology of error, or whether it will enable this gaze to influence matters superordinate to the specifics of practice and the design of clinical treatments; that is, the over-arching governance and structuring of hospital care. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.