The Residential Aged Care Research Network (RACReN) project

Are you interested in improving outcomes for a vulnerable population and have experience or interest in healthcare, public health, and the aged population? With the recent release of the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care and the recent examples of distress caused by COVID-19 outbreaks and prevention in facilities, the aged care sector is on the verge of major innovations. Students can join the research team on the RACReN: the Residential Aged Care Research Network project, a Living Labs project funded by the National Centre for Healthy Ageing. RACReN aims to codesign a collaborative network that will coordinate stakeholder engagement, identification of data requirements and cross-sector data sharing to identify and address research questions of local, national and international importance in Residential Aged Care (RAC). There are a number of student opportunities to join RACReN – talk to Dr Long to learn more about participating, or to create your own project. POSSIBLE PROJECTS INCLUDE: What are the research priorities for Community Aged Care? There are several deliverables planned to achieve research outcomes including: • Rapid review of existing literature, • A series of targeted Delphi rounds to determine stakeholder priorities Students may participate in some of these research steps over the course of the project implementation. There are also opportunities for students to develop their own research utilising the Delphi data or by designing, implementing and administering their own questionnaires. Examining the barriers and facilitators to research engagement in the Residential Aged Care Sector One student project on offer will explore the barriers and facilitators to research network engagement in residential aged care. A Systematic Scoping Review of Australian and international literature is underway by other team members. The student can utilise survey or interview techniques to explore this topic locally thereby contributing to the findings for this project. The extent of the project can be discussed with Dr Long to meet student course requirements. SUPERVISION Your supervisor, Dr Katrina Long is a mixed-method early career researcher with a background in healthcare implementation and evaluation research. Dr Long is passionate about generating and translating high quality research to make a difference in the lives of vulnerable Australians. To achieve this, she favours mixed methods, co-design and pragmatic approaches to intervention design and implementation. Dr Long is based at the Peninsula campus and can provide assistance regarding literature reviews, data collection, analysis and interpretation. The project is fortunate to have the involvement of a multidisciplinary team of leading researchers in healthy ageing including: Terry Haines (Head of the School of Primary and Allied Health Care), Professor Keith Hill (Director of the Rehabilitation, Ageing and Independent Living research centre), Professor Grant Russell (Department of General Practice), A/Prof Helen Rawson (School of Nursing and Midwifery), A/Prof Nadine Andrew (Research Data Lead, National Centre for Healthy Ageing) and Dr Chris Moran (Geriatrician at Peninsula Health). The project provides a supportive environment for researchers, with supervision and mentorship of a designated academic supervisor, regular team meetings, excellent study facilities and parking on site.