ACEM - Priority Setting Partnership for Emergency Care Research

In partnership with the James Lind Alliance (JLA), ACEM is conducting a Priority Setting Partnership (PSP) for Emergency Care Research in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

The JLA is a UK-based non-profit initiative whose mission is to ensure that those who fund health research are aware of what really matters to people who need the research in their everyday lives. The JLA has completed over 150 PSPs internationally.

Using a consensus-building methodology, the project will identify unanswered questions about emergency care from consumer and clinical perspectives and prioritise the most important to address over the next five years. We will widely publicise the final priorities, sharing directly with policy makers and funders.

Steering committee

The ACEM Research Prioritisation Steering Committee (RPSC) provides expertise and project oversight. Representation includes consumers, emergency physicians and trainees, emergency nurses and allied health professionals working in emergency care across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Meet the RPSC members

Name	Position on committee	Biography
Ms Tamara Rader	Chair, James Lind Alliance Advisor	Ms Rader joined the JLA in 2019 and has led over a dozen Priority Setting Partnerships in Canada, the US, and Australia. In previous roles with the Cochrane Collaboration, she supported an enthusiastic group of patient volunteers as they offered their perspectives on Cochrane protocols and systematic reviews and helped to prioritize research in arthritis using internationally established methods. Ms Rader is formally trained as a Medical Librarian and has worked with several research groups (generally based in hospitals and universities) and professional associations in Canada and the UK.
Dr Thomas Shanahan	Project Clinical Lead, ACEM Trainee	Dr Shanahan is a clinical researcher and emergency medicine registrar (ACEM TS2) at Monash Health, Victoria; adjunct lecturer at Monash University; member of the Health Research Ethics Committee at Monash Health and trainee section editor at Emergency Medicine Australasia. Dr Shanahan was previously a trainee in the UK and was a member of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) research committee; research lead for the Emergency Medicine Trainees Association and steering committee member for the RCEM/JLA priority setting partnership refresh.
Professor Viet Tran	ACEM Research Advisory Committee (Chair), FACEM	Professor Viet Tran is an emergency physician, foundational Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Tasmania. He is also the chair of the ACEM Research Advisory Committee and member of both the National Health and Medical Research Council Research Committee and Australian Health Ethics Committee. His research focuses on implementation science to bridge the gap between evidence and practice to empower patients, clinician and leaders to understand how they can make a positive impact at an individual level, systems level and everywhere in between.
Dr Elyssia Bourke	ACEM Clinical Trials Network (Chair), FACEM	Dr Bourke is an emergency physician at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) and Grampians Health Ballarat. She is the current Director of Emergency Medical Research at the RMH, the chair of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine Clinical Trials Network and an executive member of the University of Melbourne’s Department of Critical Care as well as the Paediatric Research in Emergency Medicine International Collaborative (PREDICT) network.
Professor Diana Egerton-Warburton	Clinical Trials Network, FACEM	Professor Egerton-Warburton is a Senior Emergency Physician at Monash Health and Conjoint Professor for Emergency Care Research at Monash University, Melbourne Australia. She has a passion for patient, health system, community, policy and climate advocacy. She has led numerous multi-site implementation trials with an emphasis on pragmatic, implementation research, to reduce unhelpful care.
Professor Dan Fatovich	FACEM Member	Professor Fatovich is a senior emergency physician and clinical researcher at Royal Perth Hospital Emergency Department, with over 30 years’ experience in the conduct of research in Emergency Medicine. He is Head of the Centre for Clinical Research in Emergency Medicine, Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research.
Associate Professor Dan Haustead	Ex-Officio, ACEM Council of Advocacy, Practice and Partnerships (CAPP)	Associate Professor Haustead is an Emergency Physician based in South Australia whose work focuses on bridging the gap between frontline clinical care, health policy, and operational leadership. His interests include emergency systems, patient safety, clinical deterioration and healthcare improvement, with a particular focus on translating practical clinical experience into sustainable system-level reform and evidence-based practice.
Associate Professor Peter Jones	FACEM Member	Associate Professor Jones is an Emergency Medicine specialist in Aotearoa New Zealand with an MSc in Evidence Based Healthcare from Oxford University and a PhD in Health Sciences. He is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland. He chairs the Emergency Medicine Network for research and the ACEM Trainee Research Panel. He has a wide range of research interests including Emergency Department crowding, equity and health systems. He is experienced in survey and observational research, randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews, with over 100 publications in the peer reviewed literature.
Dr Clare Skinner	FACEM Member	Dr Skinner is a specialist emergency physician, communicator and health reform strategist. She is former President of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine and works as a clinician, educator and health executive. Dr Skinner has special interests in clinical leadership, governance and workplace culture. She is deeply committed to improving population health using an inclusive, person-centred and evidence-informed approach. Dr Skinner was selected in the Top 50 Public Sector Women NSW in 2018.
Dr Colin Mak	ACEM Trainee	Dr Mak is an Emergency Department Research Fellow working at the Gold Coast University Hospital. Originally from London, UK, he came to Queensland to seek sunnier shores. His research interests include improving ways to include evidence in everyday practice and harnessing research as a way to ignite new passions and inspire clinical staff.
Dr Joshua Smith	ACEM Trainee	Dr Smith is a Fellow at Middlemore ED in Aotearoa New Zealand and recent Trauma Fellow at the Royal Hobart Hospital (ACEM Trainee). He has clinical interests in trauma and ED critical care; with non-clinical interests include translational research and the use of simulation for development of teams, processes, and environments.
Mr Patrick Sharpe	Consumer	Mr Sharpe is a proud Aboriginal leader, researcher and consultant, with over 25 years’ experience supporting rural and remote communities. As Director of E.M.U Consultancy and Associate Lecturer at Flinders University, he champions culturally safe, community-led approaches to health and wellbeing. He is honoured to represent First Nations Peoples in everything he does.
Vacant	Consumer	To be provided.
Ms Fiona Clay	Consumer	At times a regular visitor to hospital emergency departments, Ms Clay turned her health challenges into opportunities to inform and educate the public health system as a consumer advocate including as a member of the Safer Care Victoria Acute Care Learning Health Network advisory group. Drawing on her background in academic research she has also contributed to both acute and critical care research as a consumer investigator. Ms Clay currently works as a Lived Experience Advisor in timely emergency care for one of Melbourne’s public health services.
Ms Adrienne von Tunzelmann	Consumer	Ms von Tunzelmann is a foundation member of Health New Zealand’s Te Manawa Taki (Midland) Region Regional Consumer Council. She has long experience in consumer engagement which has included Pharmac’s Consumer Advisory Committee and the former District Health Board Health Consumer Council. Her experience in research has included membership of the Governance Group for the New Zealand Ageing Well National Science Challenge.
Ms Lesley McGee	Consumer	Ms McGee is a retired Registered Nurse and has been a consumer representative since 2019 working on various committees for the Sunshine Coast Health Service, Queensland Health and the University of Queensland and other Australian Universities. Lesley works predominantly in research now across a diverse range of projects and I have been a co-author on two research articles. She has also been the consumer representative on two health service investigations for Queensland Health.
Ms Jane Pearce	Consumer	Ms Pearce's work as a consumer advisor and advocate is grounded in lifelong experience as a patient and family member interacting with health services in the UK and Australia. It is driven by a conviction that health consumer perspectives and lived experience should always be at the forefront of decision-making and planning in health. Much of her advocacy focuses on promoting equity of access to healthcare by improving communication practices and building health literacy. She is committed to advocating for a person-centred approach to providing high-quality care in emergency departments. Her involvement in research at the South Metropolitan Health Service has strengthened her belief in the enormous value that consumer engagement can have to ensure research in health is relevant and authentic and truly meets the needs of consumers.
Ms Kelli Innes	College of Emergency Nursing Australia (CENA) Representative	Ms Innes is an experienced emergency nurse and nurse educator and is the current President of the College of Emergency Nursing Australasia (CENA), the peak professional body representing Australasian emergency nurses. A successful and experienced researcher, she has 37 peer-reviewed publications and research funding totalling $3.3M. Her research focuses on emergency care, workforce, professional standards and education.
Dr Natalie Anderson	College of Emergency Nursing New Zealand (CENNZ) Representative	Dr Anderson is an emergency nurse academic with over 25 years’ experience in clinical, education, leadership and research roles. Her research interests include death, dying and bereavement and clinician education, support and wellbeing.
Dr Niamh Mundell	Allied Health Practitioner	Dr Mundell (PhD, AEP) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Deakin University and allied health clinician with over 20 years of experience. She specialises in clinical trials, implementation science and health service research, bringing a multidisciplinary perspective to identifying clinically relevant, consumer-informed and implementable research priorities for emergency care.
Assoc. Professor Patrick Owen	Information Scientist (Non-voting)	Associate Professor Owen (PhD) is a Senior Research Fellow at Eastern Health (Emergency Medicine Program) and Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor at Monash University (Eastern Health Clinical School). His research focuses on emergency medicine, with particular interests in pain, research methods, and applied biostatistics.

Benefits

There are a number of benefits to the PSP approach, including:

Building credibility by ensuring that patient, community and clinician voices shape emergency medicine research priorities
Increasing grant competitiveness by articulating a clear research agenda that strengthens applications to national and international funding bodies
Reducing duplication/fragmentation by focusing resources on the most pressing and relevant questions
Focusing equity by ensuring priorities reflect the needs of under-served groups, including Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Māori communities
Translating knowledge faster by creating a foundation for direct acceleration of research priorities into funded projects

Scope and protocol

The scope of the project is defined within the Research Prioritisation Steering Committee-approved ACEM/JLA PSP Protocol as follows:

The identification of research priorities for patients aged 18 years and over that presented to the emergency department (ED)1 for emergency care in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.’

Methodology

More information on the JLA methodology is available in the JLA Handbook. An initial online survey will be shared for three to four months to allow consumers and clinicians to submit uncertainties and unanswered questions. An Information Scientist will review all submissions, removing duplicates and out-of-scope suggestions and synthesising a set of summary questions that are both universally understandable and addressable by research. All will be checked against existing evidence to ensure they are truly unanswered.

Reduction to a shorter list of uncertainties (for example thirty), will be undertaken through a second survey. The final stage, identifying the ten prioritised uncertainties, will be achieved through a virtual workshop.

Partners

Other relevant organisations and individuals (‘partners’) can help with wider engagement through their reach. They will be identified by the RPSC and invited to take part in the partnership. These will represent the following groups:

People who have been patients in EDs and their family members or carers.
Medical doctors, nurses and professionals allied to medicine with clinical experience of working in emergency medicine.

Formal PSP Partners will be listed on this website.

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