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MBI research into pandemic infection control initiatives

2 March 2020
MBI and APPRISE research fellow Dr Mary Wyer recent grant success will allow her to expand her research preparing Australia's hospitals for infectious disease outbreaks

The projects are mentored by Professor Lyn Gilbert and will help to prepare Australia for infectious outbreaks at two levels. A high-level approach will create a national training strategy while the clinic-level approach will continue fine-tuning our training tool.

Dr Mary Wyer was recently awarded $20,000 of MBI seed funding for her project to develop and evaluate a national training and research strategy for infection prevention and control.  The project aims to collaboratively develop and evaluate core components of high-level infection control and training methods using video-reflexive and qualitative research methods. It starts with a stocktake across Australia of trainers and skilled frontline staff who can respond to new outbreaks. 

We will establish a collaborative network so they can share information and respond rapidly to an infectious emergency with the necessary training for staff anywhere in Australia.
Dr Mary Wyer

Mary was also recently awarded a Cardinal Health Infection Control Scholarship which will drive a project applying video-reflexive methods to examine and improve how clinicians manage and care for potentially infectious patients in an infectious diseases unit. The scholarship will allow her to continue developing and evaluating appropriate training tools for different groups of hospital staff that can be used during all outbreaks, including exotic or emerging infectious diseases.