Equipping residential aged care facilities for acute respiratory illness: The Western Sydney experience of improving outbreak management.

Objectives: Acute respiratory illnesses have a disproportionate impact on older people, and especially those living in residential aged care facilities where transmission risks are heightened. Additionally, staff in these facilities have been working under challenging conditions, often ill-equipped in terms of both training and resources to successfully manage the outbreaks of these illnesses. This paper examines the actions of an Australian public health unit to improve influenza outbreak management in residential aged care facilities and critiques the outcomes through a contemporary lens.

Nurse-led framework to improve the safety and quality of residential aged care (HIRAID® Aged Care): protocol for a stepped-wedge cluster randomised controlled trial.

Background: The health issues experienced by older people can often be severe and complex, and an increasing number are using residential aged care services to meet their care needs. High-quality nursing care is fundamental to the health and safety of aged care residents and is contingent on nurses' accurate assessment, informed decision-making, and delivery of timely interventions. However, the role of the aged care nurse is often challenging, impeded by factors such as understaffing, high workloads, and a lack of access to clinical infrastructure and resources.

Data-Driven Implementation Strategy to Optimise Clinician Behaviour Change at Scale in Complex Clinical Environments: A Multicentre Emergency Care Study.

Aim: To develop an evidence-driven, behaviour change focused strategy to maximise implementation and uptake of HIRAID (History including Infection risk, Red flags, Assessment, Interventions, Diagnostics, communication and reassessment) in 30 Australian rural, regional and metropolitan emergency departments.

Design: An embedded, mixed-methods study.

Methods: This study is the first phase of a step-wedge cluster randomised control trial of HIRAID involving over 1300 emergency nurses.

Credentialling in Australia for infection prevention and control: Philosophy, principles and practice.

Infection prevention and control programs are vital to ensuring the health and wellbeing of healthcare consumers and staff. Infection control professionals who lead these programs are uniquely positioned with the knowledge, skills and attributes to direct effective infection control practices and policies within their healthcare setting. As with many specialisations, these individuals may choose to undertake a credentialling process, where their expertise and competence are evaluated and formally recognised by a professional body.

Education interventions and emergency nurses' clinical practice behaviours: A scoping review.

Background: Many education interventions in emergency nursing are aimed at changing nurse behaviours. This scoping review describes and synthesises the published research education interventions and emergency nurses' clinical practice behaviours.

Methods: Arksey and O'Malley's methodological framework guided this review, which is reported according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR).

Emergency nurses' perceptions of the utility, adaptability and feasibility of the emergency nursing framework HIRAID for practice change in US: An exploratory study.

Background: Patient assessment is a core component of nursing practice and underpins safe, high-quality patient care. HIRAID an evidence-informed emergency nursing framework, provides nurses with a structured approach to patient assessment and management post triage. In Australia, HIRAID resulted in significant improvements to nurse-led communication and reduced adverse patient events.

Socioeconomic disadvantage and engagement with digital contact tracing for COVID-19 in Western Sydney: A secondary analysis of surveillance data.

Objective: COVID-19 outcomes were highly inequitably distributed in Australia and worldwide. The digitalisation of public health interventions offers resource-efficiency and increased capacity for pandemic responses, but risks excluding the elderly and disadvantaged, reinforcing existing inequalities. Despite this, there has been little evaluation of the determinants of uptake of digital contact tracing.

Epidemiological Differences in Hajj-Acquired Airborne Infections in Pilgrims Arriving from Low and Middle-Income versus High-Income Countries: A Systematised Review.

This systematised review aims to compare the epidemiological patterns of Hajj-acquired airborne infections among pilgrims from low and middle-income countries (LMIC) versus those from high-income countries (HIC). A PubMed search was carried out for all published articles before February 2023, using a combination of MeSH terms and text words. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) was used to assess data quality.

Hand hygiene knowledge and practices, and rates of respiratory tract infections between Hajj and Umrah pilgrims: a comparative study.

Background: Hajj and Umrah mass gatherings (MGs) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia amplify the risk of viral respiratory tract infections (RTIs), but there is a lack of comparative data from these two MGs. This study aims to compare pilgrims' hand hygiene knowledge, practices, and rates of RTIs during the peak periods of Umrah and Hajj in 2021.

Materials And Methods: The datasets of this comparative study were obtained from two previously conducted studies that used similar study tools and identical syndromic definitions.

The Emergency nurse Protocols Initiating Care-Sydney Triage to Admission Risk Tool (EPIC-START) trial: protocol for a stepped wedge implementation trial.

Introduction: Emergency department (ED) overcrowding is a global problem and a threat to the quality and safety of emergency care. Providing timely and safe emergency care therein is challenging. To address this in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, the Emergency nurse Protocol Initiating Care-Sydney Triage to Admission Risk Tool (EPIC-START) was developed.

The relationship between hand hygiene and rates of acute respiratory infections among Umrah pilgrims: A pilot randomised controlled trial.

Background: There is a lack of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) investigating the role of hand hygiene in preventing and containing acute respiratory infections (ARIs) in mass gatherings. In this pilot RCT, we assessed the feasibility of establishing a large-scale trial to explore the relationship between practising hand hygiene and rates of ARI in Umrah pilgrimage amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: A parallel RCT was conducted in hotels in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, between April and July 2021.

Video based monitoring systems for hand hygiene compliance auditing: What do patients think?

Background: Compliance with hand hygiene by healthcare workers is a vital aspect of the quality and safety in healthcare. The current method of monitoring compliance, known as direct observation, has been questioned as have the various electronic measures proposed as alternatives. In our earlier work we established the capacity of video-based monitoring systems (VMS) to collect data with increased efficacy, efficiency and accuracy.

Implementation evaluation of an evidence-based emergency nursing framework (HIRAID): study protocol for a step-wedge randomised control trial.

Introduction: Poor patient assessment results in undetected clinical deterioration. Yet, there is no standardised assessment framework for >29 000 Australian emergency nurses. To reduce clinical variation and increase safety and quality of initial emergency nursing care, the evidence-based emergency nursing framework HIRAID (History, Identify Red flags, Assessment, Interventions, Diagnostics, communication and reassessment) was developed and piloted.

Managing COVID-19 in an Australian designated isolation facility: Implications for current and future healthcare crises based on in-depth interviews.

Health care workers' (HCWs) lived experiences and perceptions of the pandemic can prove to be a valuable resource in the face of a seemingly persistent Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-to inform ongoing efforts, as well as identify components essential to a crisis preparedness plan and the issues pertinent to supporting relevant, immediate change. We employed a phenomenological approach and, using purposive sampling, conducted 39 semi-structured interviews with senior healthcare professionals who were employed at a designated COVID-19 facility in New South Wales (NSW), Australia during the height of the pandemic in 2020. Participants comprised administrators, heads of department and senior clinicians.

Low Prevalence of Syndromic Respiratory Tract Infections among Returning Hajj Pilgrims Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Post-Hajj Survey.

This study estimates the point prevalence of symptomatic respiratory tract infections (RTIs) among returned Hajj pilgrims and their contacts in 2021. Using the computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) technique, domestic pilgrims were invited to participate in this cross-sectional survey two weeks after their home return from Hajj. Of 600 pilgrims approached, 79.

Syndromic surveillance of respiratory-tract infections and hand hygiene practice among pilgrims attended Hajj in 2021: a cohort study.

Background: The risk of transmission of viral respiratory tract infections (RTIs) is high in mass gatherings including Hajj. This cohort study estimated the incidence of symptomatic RTIs and hand hygiene compliance with its impact among Hajj pilgrims during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: During the week of Hajj rituals in 2021, domestic pilgrims were recruited by phone and asked to complete a baseline questionnaire.

Effect of an intervention for patients 65 years and older with blunt chest injury: Patient and health service outcomes.

Introduction: Blunt chest injury in older adults, aged 65 years and older, leads to significant morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of a multidisciplinary chest injury care bundle (ChIP) on patient and health service outcomes in older adults with blunt chest injury.

Methods: ChIP comprised multidimensional implementation guidance in three key pillars of care for blunt chest injury: respiratory support, analgesia, and complication prevention.

Using video-based surveillance for monitoring hand hygiene compliance according to the World Health Organization (WHO) Five Moments framework: A pragmatic trial.

Objective: To examine the utility of video-based monitoring systems (VMSs) for auditing hand hygiene compliance according to the World Health Organization (WHO) Five Moments.

Design: Pragmatic quasi-experimental observation trial.

Setting: The New South Wales Biocontainment Centre, Westmead, New South Wales, Australia.