Building and maintaining strong industry partnerships for best practice falls prevention education and practice (E)

In 2017, Holmesglen Institute established a partnership with a national private healthcare provider and appointed a Professorial Clinical Chair for Workforce and Simulation. Holmesglen’s applied clinical research team were subsequently selected to work with nationally and internationally acclaimed researchers, to secure a prestigious National Health & Medical Research Council Grant to investigate Falls in Australian Hospitals.The falls research projects have been prolific with six individual applied research studies: 1) Evaluation of education for health professionals to implement evidence-based falls screening in hospitals, 2) Divestment from a scored hospital falls risk assessment tool using a cluster randomised non-inferiority trial in eight Australian hospitals, 3) Exploration of patient perspectives on hospital falls prevention education, 4) Qualitative examination of healthcare professionals’ perspectives on barriers and enablers to falls prevention education, 5) Implementation of a patient falls education in hospitals using a mixed methods trial, and 6) Implementation of hospital falls screening and mitigation using a health professional education framework. We have developed frameworks for healthcare systems, advocated for protocols, policies, and procedures for the prevention of falls in hospitals, and translated falls research into curriculum content at Holmesglen.In this presentation, we will share the outcomes of this collective research and how it has contributed to 18 publications, including the newly published World Falls Prevention Guidelines (2022). We will discuss how to successfully work in partnership with universities and health care industries to design and implement applied research interventions with tangible benefits to patients, healthcare professionals and health care organisations internationally.