Research

Whatever your research focus, we have an expert supervisor for you. Academics within the School of Nursing and Midwifery and clinical experts within our hospital partnerships are available to support your research project. Our honours, master's and PhD students have access to a diverse range of hospitals and healthcare agencies due to our well-established partnership network.

Find out how to become a research degree student

Our vision at QPS, which is embedded in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, is to be a world-leader in applied health service research, with a focus on knowledge translation in relation to clinical care, quality and patient safety.

National and international collaborations

QPS enjoys productive and extensive collaborations with researchers around the world, including nursing, medicine, pharmacy psychology, epidemiology, health economics and biostatistics.

Our research spans public and private healthcare sectors in urban, regional and rural areas. Researchers lead a range of interrelated programs, which are organised into three main areas:

• patient experience
• patient safety
• health workforce.

Projects within these areas interface with the eight National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) standards aimed at driving implementation of safety and quality systems and improving the quality of health care.

Find out more about QPS

The MyStay project

The MyStay project aims to improve patient outcomes after hip replacement by testing the effectiveness of a bedside multimedia, nurse-facilitated intervention. Led by Dr Jo McDonall and Alfred Deakin Professor Mari Botti, the team has received funding from the Epworth Research Institute Brian Buxton Strategic Research Grant to investigate the effectiveness of the intervention.

Previous work by Dr McDonall and Professor Botti in testing the intervention in patients after total knee replacement, demonstrated that they stayed in hospital one day less, and were more likely to refer a family or friend to the health service.

Using technology to reduce unmet needs and distress in people with cancer

Smartphone interventions offer new possibilities for health promotion and treatment management. This NHMRC partnership project, led by Professor Trish Livingston, is a randomised controlled trial evaluating the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of a smartphone app (ACE) that allows people with cancer to easily access information and take control of their health.

The Tri-focal Model of Care: teaching and research in aged-care services

The Tri-focal Model of Care promotes partnership-centred care, evidence-based practice and positive and healthy work environments in Residential Aged Care (RAC). The model is now in operation at seven RACs in Victoria.

This project is a collaboration between Deakin University, Monash Health Partnership and the University of Manitoba, Canada, and is led by Professor Ali Hutchinson.

Prioritising responses of nurses to deteriorating patient observations (PRONTO)

Frequent and accurate measurement of vital signs is necessary to detect patient deterioration, but a significant gap exists between current policy and practice.

This NHMRC partnership study, led by Alfred Deakin Professor Tracey Bucknall, is a cluster randomised controlled trial evaluating an intervention designed to improve nurses’ measurement, treatment and escalation of patients with abnormal vital signs, and ultimately reduce adverse events.

At the School of Nursing and Midwifery we've created the first fully-coordinated partnership of its kind in the world: the Clinical Partnership Network.

It connects us with six major health services in Victoria to facilitate and apply multidisciplinary, multi-site research.

• Alfred Health
• Barwon Health
• Eastern Health
• Epworth Health
• Monash Health
• Western Health

No other research cluster has the immediacy of access to a clinical point of care in health services that QPS researchers enjoy. The relationships demonstrate a deep commitment by industry to nursing and midwifery research.

This commitment translates to the co-funding of multiple ‘research only’ positions.

Our partners could not, and would not, provide this level of funding support if they did not receive considerable benefit in terms of workforce development, capacity building and improvement in the quality and safety of the care delivered to patients through research, research training and translation of evidence to practice.

Learn more about our health service partnerships on the QPS website