Patient Safety Research and Innovation Program

As the state’s insurer, the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority sees those rare cases where they do. The causes are many and varied, but human behaviour plays a part.

To prevent harm and reduce medical indemnity claims, VMIA works with Victorian health services to implement patient safety strategies.

In 2015, VMIA recognised that research evidence and innovation in the area of patient safety was limited, so it decided to embark on a research journey, calling for tenders from academic institutions to collaborate on a three-year $1.5M Patient Safety Research and Innovation Program

BehaviourWorks was ideally placed to partner with VMIA, given that it has been advising government and non-government organisations for almost a decade on how to ensure that the habits, attitudes, social norms and cognitive biases we all share don’t get in the way of good decision-making and action.

Creative engagement

BWA’s partnership with The Shannon Company, a behaviour change communications company responsible for creating some of Victoria’s most iconic public messaging campaigns, was also beneficial, as it gave the team the ability to creatively engage hospital staff and patients in the program.

Priority challenges

With the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, Safer Care Victoria and other health organisations, the research team, led by A/Prof Peter Bragge and Dr Breanna Wright identified 40 candidate health challenges affecting patient safety – key among them, misdiagnosis and miscommunication.

Using an established prioritisation process, the team worked with these groups, as well as health services, clinicians and other key stakeholders, to prioritise six trials based on a set of agreed criteria including the impact they would have, how feasible they would be and how important they were.

A seventh, separately-funded project was also added.

Deeper engagement

To sharpen their focus, the team used a range of tools within the BehaviourWorks Method to review the literature, gather patient perspectives and conduct a series of one-on-one interviews and group dialogues with a diverse array of stakeholder groups including VMIA, DHHS, researchers, nurses, doctors, representatives of Ambulance Victoria, hospital managers, communications specialists and researchers.

Further details on the resulting trials can be found on the right.

Microsite

The trial results were to be presented to key stakeholders in 2020 but COVID-19 meant that the event had to be cancelled. Instead, The Shannon Company created a unique microsite on the patient journey through the trials.