Projects

Everyday, clinicians in emergency departments make hundreds of decisions about the care of patients. Often these decisions are made in rapidly changing, time-pressured and complex conditions which can leave the clinician uncertain about the required tests and/or treatments.
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Clinical decision aids are research-based “tools” about patient care, tests, and treatments that can guide clinician’s decisions. Routine use of these tools has been found to benefit:

1. patients by ensuring they receive the right care and reducing waiting time
2. clinicians by assisting with reliable and research-informed decisions and,
3. healthcare system by improving the value and efficiency of care i.e. ensuring patients receive the best care, at the right time, every time.‍

Despite these benefits, clinical decision aids are underused. Research knowledge that is not used in clinical practice is a problem because it means that patients are not receiving the best care, at the right time, every time. A solution is to integrate clinical decision aids into the electronic health system for clinicians to use with the right patient, at the right time, every time. This can improve patient outcomes and increase the quality and reliability of the care provided by clinicians and the health service.
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Clinical decision aids are not currently integrated in the electronic health system at the Gold Coast Hospital and it is not known which “tools” emergency clinicians use and how regularly. Our research has two phases. Funding is sought for Phase 1 - a survey of clinicians’ current use of clinical decision aids, and an audit of medical records to check if these tools are recorded. The findings from Phase 1 will be used to inform Phase 2 - developing and testing the integration of clinical decision aids into the electronic health system for use by emergency clinicians."