Development and implementation of a national online application system for cross-jurisdictional linked data.

The Population Health Research Network (PHRN) is an Australian national data linkage infrastructure that links a wide range of health and human services data in privacy-preserving ways. The data linkage infrastructure enables researchers to apply for access to routinely collected, linked, administrative data from the six states and two territories which make up the Commonwealth of Australia, as well as data collected by the Australian Government. The PHRN is a distributed network where data is collected and managed at the respective jurisdictional and/or cross-jurisdictional levels.

The Cost of Organ Donation: Potential Living Kidney Donors' Perspectives.

Living kidney transplantation is a treatment option for some people with end-stage kidney disease. The procedure has low complication rates and positive outcomes; despite this evidence, the number of living kidney donations has decreased in recent years, and the causes are not well understood. This qualitative study sought to explore the experiences of potential living kidney donors before the transplantation.

Clinical placements and nursing students' career planning: a qualitative exploration.

Many nursing students enter undergraduate programmes with preconceived ideas about their future nursing careers, and intend to practice in particular areas such as midwifery or paediatrics. Through clinical placements, students are exposed to different clinical areas and professional socialization is facilitated. However, little is known about the influence of clinical placements on students' career intentions.

'They don't know much about us': educational reform impacts on students' learning in the clinical environment.

Placements are an integral component of the medical, nursing, and allied health curriculum. Literature on problem-based learning indicates that curriculum change can impact student experience. However, outside of the nursing literature, there is little research on the impact of education reform on students' experiences of placements.

Exploring continuous clinical placement for undergraduate students.

Clinical placements are integral to health professional preparatory courses. These placements allow for the application of classroom-based learning into real patient care situations. In doing so, they provide opportunities for applying theoretical knowledge into practice contexts, skills development and socialisation into the chosen profession.

"Researcher saturation": the impact of data triangulation and intensive-research practices on the researcher and qualitative research process.

Theoretically and methodologically sound qualitative research demands an extended period of fieldwork and the use of multiple methods to achieve data saturation and develop the grounded theory. Little is known about the experiences of researchers who conduct such studies. The authors explore these matters by drawing on their experiences of conducting a 3-year qualitative study with women about their gynecological cancer journey.

Influence of clinical placement on undergraduate midwifery students' career intentions.

Objective: to explore the influence that clinical placements have on career intentions for undergraduate midwifery students.

Design: a qualitative approach involving a combination of focus group and individual interviews.

Setting: the study was part of a larger study undertaken across a range of health disciplines within one university.

Money matters: students' perceptions of the costs associated with placements.

Context: Placements are an integral component of the medical, nursing and allied health curricula. However, apart from the relocation costs associated with placements, little research on students' understandings and experiences of the financial implications of placements has been carried out.

Objectives: We report on students' financial concerns associated with placements, which emerged as a main theme in a broader study we conducted on the impact of undergraduate student placement experiences on graduate practice.

Discourses of normality and difference: responses to diagnosis and treatment of gynaecological cancer of Australian women.

By comparison to other cancers such as breast and lung cancer, women in Australia are relatively infrequently diagnosed with gynaecological cancers. Apart from cervical cancer, public health information on gynaecological cancer is limited, as are published stories from gynaecological cancer survivors in women's magazines. Our qualitative study investigated how women with gynaecological cancers develop an identity in relation to their illness, and examined the extent of, and reasons for, a sense of perceived difference.

Complementary medicine use by Australian women with gynaecological cancer.

Aims And Objectives: Social and cultural factors are identified that impact on complementary therapy use among Australia-born and immigrant women diagnosed with gynaecological cancer.

Methods: A qualitative study design including in-depth interviews with women diagnosed with gynaecological cancer (N=53) and participant observation was conducted.

Results: Approximately one-third of women utilized complementary and alternative medicine, with this being determined by current health concerns and health beliefs related to the efficacy of different modalities.

'He's telling us something'.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with patients and participant observation notes from a cancer support group and outpatients department, we analyse the experiences of Australian-born and immigrant women with gynaecological cancer to describe cancer diagnosis disclosures from the patients' perspectives and examine women's treatment decision-making. Data suggest that most women did not question the surgeon's recommendation and assumed a passive role in treatment decision-making. The contextual factors which impacted on this pattern were the unavailability of an alternative biomedical treatment path, the perception of the metropolitan hospital as a centre of clinical excellence with extensive experience in treating women with gynaecological cancer, and lay understandings of the nature of gynaecological cancer as 'a killer'.