February 2025 Update

Highlights of this update:

• Research program update
• Telethon 7 grant awarded to support co-designing a digital solution for culturally and linguistically diverse families to raise concerns in hospital
• Introducing new research team members
• Presentations at major conferences this year
• New textbook on Rapid Response System

Research Program Update

We continue to make significant progress for all sub-studies and we are excited to be starting a new project in 2025:
 
Sub-study 1: Evaluation of and sustaining the implementation of the ESCALATION System in 5 WA Country Health Service (WACHS) regions.
Findings from this study have informed the update to the ESCALATION System version 5 due for rollout across WA hospitals including WACHS in March 2025. We are currently writing to report results to share with key stakeholders, including community members, healthcare providers, and professionals, as well as presenting at conferences (see presentations update) and publishing in journals.
 
Sub-study 2: Optimising family involvement in the ESCALATION system at Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH).
We are preparing articles for publication. Two papers will report on findings: Paper 1 focuses on health professionals’ perspectives on proactively involving families in the ESCALATION system. Paper 2 focuses on family perspectives of being involved in the ESCALATION System.​

Extending sub-study 2  supported by Telethon 7 grant  

We are thrilled to have been awarded Telethon 7 funding to extend the Safer Care for Children in Hospital Research Program. Our new project is Find your voice: Empowering culturally and linguistically diverse families to raise acute clinical concerns in hospital and involves co-designing a digital solution to support culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) families to raise their concerns at Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH).
Specific objectives are:

• Determine the prevalence, patient characteristics and outcomes of escalation of care events at PCH for children from CaLD backgrounds.
• Understand factors facilitating and/or impacting on CaLD families raising acute clinical concerns about their child’s health and accessing healthcare information in hospital.
• Create a proof of concept for a digital solution for CaLD families to raise acute clinical concerns about their child’s health and access PCH healthcare information.

Led by Professor Fenella Gill, project team members are Maggie Harrigan, Dr Hafiz Alhassan, Dr Eileen Boyle, Dr Jo Zhou, Professor Joseph Manning (University of Leicester, Nottingham Children’s Hospital), A/Prof Sarah Cherian (PCH), Dr Marie Clancy (University of Exeter), and Professor Gavin Leslie.

The team will be working together to ensure timely completion of the project within the next 12 months. We continue to collaborate with  UK team, led by Professor Joseph Manning  who designed a similar digital solution, which we will adapt to the needs of West Australians.
We are grateful to Telethon 7 for their generous support to help make this project possible.
 
Sub-study 3: Strengthening Aboriginal family involvement in the ESCALATION system.
We have commenced stage 2 of this project and now engaging with the community to recruit Aboriginal families, health providers, and community leaders to participate in community-based working groups. The working groups will work collaboratively with the research team to co-design solutions to enhance Aboriginal family involvement in the ESCALATION System.
 
Sub-study 4: Examining the performance of the ESCALATION system early warning score to predict clinical deterioration and sepsis of paediatric patients
We have completed data collection for 730 cases. Data collection for matched controls is currently underway. It is anticipated findings will inform further refinements to the ESCALATION system.

Introducing new Team Members

Dr Hafiz Alhassan

We are excited that Dr Hafiz Alhassan has joined our team as a Research Fellow. Hafiz worked as a Registered Nurse in Ghana in clinical, educator and leadership roles, and completed a Master of Nursing degree at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He relocated to Melbourne in 2020 where he completed his PhD at Deakin University, graduating in 2023.
Hafiz will first focus on Phase one of the Find Your Voice project, leading a retrospective cohort study to determine the prevalence, patient characteristics, and outcomes of care escalation events for children from CaLD backgrounds at PCH.
 

Dr Marie Clancy

Also joining the research team this year is Dr Marie Clancy, a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter in the Academy of Nursing. Marie has a clinical background as a children’s nurse and studied at the University of Birmingham, England with clinical roles at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. She has worked in Australia, Trinidad, Malawi, Afghanistan and New Zealand. Her clinical and academic focus has been on children with oncology, high dependency needs, pain assessment and treatment including cultural aspects to care. Her Master in Public Health degree expanded upon this work with a dissertation focusing on children’s pain in Sub Saharan Africa. Marie’s PhD focused on experiences of asylum seeker and refugee families in children’s palliative care services, utilising arts-based research approaches. 
​
Marie's research interests include child health inequalities, migration and improving the sensitivity of cross-cultural communication, palliative and bereavement care for neonates, children, young people and their families. We are very delighted that she is bringing her expertise to work with our team in 2025.

Presentations

Our work was recognised nationally by invitation to participate in Patient deterioration national community of interest group. We presented to the group on our research program in November 2024. Our team including Professor Fenella Gill, Dr. Eileen Boyle, Maggie Harrigan, and two PhD students working on the project are scheduled to present at several conferences this year.

Intensive Care Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society/Australian College of Critical Care Nurses.
This conference, which brings together nurses, doctors, and allied health practitioners specializing in critical care and emergency medicine, will take place at the Te Pae Convention Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand from 9-11 April 2025. This year’s conference is under the theme: “Compassionate Care in the Digital Age: Merging Hearts and Minds”. Team members will be making the following presentations at the conference:

1. Professor Fenella Gill If parents are worried their child is getting worse - the vital sign
2. Dr Eileen Boyle: Strengthening Aboriginal Family Involvement in the Paediatric ESCALATION System - Aboriginal Family Experience
3. Dr Eileen Boyle: Strengthening Aboriginal Family Involvement in the Paediatric ESCALATION System - Health Professional Experience (poster)
4. Sarah Rooney (PhD student): Characteristics of medical emergency team and patient and carer activated escalation of care events among culturally and linguistically diverse patients
5. Chelsea Kelly (PhD student): Assessing clinical deterioration in children with dark-coloured skin: health professional perspectives

 
European Society of Paediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Congress, Alicante, Spain, June 2025
Professor Fenella Gill is an invited speaker with two presentations:

1. The vital sign: when family are worried their child is getting worse.
2. Changing behaviour/new confusion – should this be added to the early warning score?

New Textbook on Rapid Response Systems

Professor Fenella Gill contributed to the 3rd edition of Textbook on Rapid Response Systems edited by Michael Devita available online from 16 January 2025

Gill FJ, Gilleland J. Parshuram CS. 2024 Parents, patients, ward clinicians and other stakeholders in Rapid Response Systems. In Textbook of Rapid Response Systems: Concept and implementation. (3rd ed). Springer Nature; Switzerland