Research Australia
Health & Medical Research Awards

2015 Victorian Government Health
Services Research Award

Award Winner

Prof Jeffrey Braithwaite
Foundation Director, Australian Institute
Of Health Innovation, Macquarie University

Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite, BA, MIR (Hons), MBA, DipLR, PhD, FAIM, FCHSM, FFPH RCP (UK) is Foundation Director, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Director, Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science, and Professor of Health Systems Research, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Australia. His research examines the changing nature of health systems, particularly patient safety, standards and accreditation, leadership and management, the structure and culture of organisations and their network characteristics, attracting funding of more than AUD$59 million.

Professor Braithwaite has published extensively (over 600 total publications) and he has presented at international and national conferences on more than 780 occasions, including over 75 keynote addresses. His research appears in journals such as British Medical Journal, The Lancet, Social Science & Medicine, BMJ Quality and Safety, International Journal of Quality in Health Care, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, and many other prestigious journals. Professor Braithwaite has received numerous national and international awards for his teaching and research. Further details are available at his Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Braithwaite.

He has conducted large-scale research over two decades on clinical and organizational performance, health systems improvement and patient safety. Professor Braithwaite was author of a major study into health care inquiries, Patient safety: a comparative analysis of eight inquiries in six countries, UNSW, 2006 and another on the appropriateness of care in Australia (BMJ Open, 2012 and Medical Journal of Australia, 2012).

Professor Braithwaite recently co-edited a book with Professors Erik Hollnagel in Denmark and Bob Wears in the United States (Resilient Health Care, Ashgate, 2013), which proposes new models for tackling patient safety in acute settings and a second book in the series, The Resilience of Everyday Clinical Work, was published in 2015. His book on health reform in 30 countries with Professors Julie Johnson in Australia, Yukihiro Matsuyama in Japan and Russell Mannion in the UK was also published in 2015. A new book discussing sociological perspectives on patient safety with Professors Davina Allen at Cardiff University, Jane Sandall at King’s College, London and Justin Waring at Nottingham University.

Noteworthy projects in recent times include the CareTrack study, which found that 57% of care delivered to Australians is in line with level 1 evidence or consensus based guidelines. This was described by the editor of the Medical Journal of Australia when it was published in 2012 as the most important publication in that journal for the last 10 years. This study has been very influential amongst policy makers, managers, clinicians and patient groups in Australia and internationally. Another key project is the work he did with 30 countries, culminating in a book published in 2015. He included low, middle income and rich countries, looking at their reform activities and their quality and safety

initiatives. This work shows that reform is not an episodic activity. Every health system is continuously reforming and attempting to improve the care that is delivered. This work suggests that insufficient resources are allocated to evaluating reform measures and improvement activities.
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