Macquarie University’s Professor Johanna Westbrook from the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, has been awarded $5 million from the Medical Research Future Fund to co-design and implement a ground-breaking national program to transform how medicine is administered to children in hospital, improving safety while supporting nurses in their critical clinical roles.

From double-checking to Safe-Check

Current hospital policy requires two nurses to jointly verify the type and dose of 70 to 90 per cent of all medications given to children. Although this approach is widely used, strong evidence from Professor Westbrook’s internationally recognised research shows that this procedure, known as nurse double-checking, does not improve the detection of errors but significantly adds to the nursing workload.

The new Safe-Check Program will replace the low-value double-checking practice with strengthened evidence-based single-checking. This change is safe for children and has the potential to release over 500,000 nursing hours each year for other important tasks across the 10 participating hospitals.

“This new national effort recognises the essential expertise of nurses and aims to ensure they are supported with systems that enable, and not hinder, their ability to provide high-quality safe care,” says Professor Westbrook.

A collaborative effort

The Safe-Check Program, in collaboration with researchers from eight universities across the country, will be co-designed with families, paediatric nurses and doctors and policymakers to ensure changes are grounded in the real-world experiences of those delivering and receiving care.

More than 670,000 children are admitted to Australian hospitals each year and 1.7 million attend emergency departments.

“By designing this program with and for patients, families and their clinicians in hospital, we will be targeting improvements where they are most needed,” says Professor Westbrook.

Professor Sakkie Pretorius, Macquarie University Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), congratulated Professor Westbrook on securing funding for this landmark project.

“Keeping children safe in hospital has been a central focus of Professor Westbrook’s research and it is encouraging to see her work so strongly supported by the Medical Research Future Fund in this critical area. This project has the potential to influence how medicines are delivered to children in hospital around the world,” says Professor Pretorius.

Our partners

The project brings together researchers from eight universities:

• Macquarie University
• Australian Catholic University
• University of Queensland
• Monash University
• Deakin University
• Curtin University
• University of New South Wales
• University of Melbourne.

It also brings together representatives from:

• Child UnLimited
• Australian College of Nursing
• Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care
• Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada
• Medication Services Queensland
• Children’s Healthcare Australasia.