BU Research Blog

Further to the previous announcement (http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2014/06/12/upcoming-seminar-from-dr-terry-haines-monash-university-australia/), a title and abstract is now available for the seminar:

Tuesday 8th July, 2pm, TA134, Talbot campus:

Dr Terry Haines, Monash University, Melbourne.

Reversing research and implementation science for practices that are widely provided, dogma heavy and evidence light.

Some widely provided health services have an absence of evidence for effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and/or safety yet persist in clinical practice. It is possible that these practices are wasting valuable resources, but alternately may be valuable assets to service provision. Provision of these services in the context of usual care is a considerable barrier to conducting a conventional trial. Our team has recently developed a novel research approach to conduct a trial for this context[1]. This approach turns a conventional stepped-wedge, cluster randomised controlled trial design on its head.  This presentation will outline the strengths and limitations of the stepped-wedge design relative to other experimental designs, describes how this design was turned into a novel disinvestment research design, and then describe its first application in a clinical setting. The clinical example involves the withdrawal of weekend allied health services from acute medical and surgical wards across three hospitals in Australia. The early results of this trial run contrary to current initiatives to create a 7-day a week health service.

Reference

1. Haines T, O’Brien L, McDermott F, Markham D, Mitchell D, Watterson D, Skinner E: A novel research design can aid disinvestment from existing health technologies with uncertain effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and/or safety. J Clin Epidemiol 2014 , 67(2):144-151.

If you are able to attend the seminar, please let Samuel Nyman know by email: snyman@bournemouth.ac.uk