Led by Professor Ramon Shaban, we have a vision to lead Australia’s first joint academy-industry integrated Centre for Excellence in Infection Prevention and Disease Control within Western Sydney Local Health District (WSLHD) and the University of Sydney.

Our workplan encompasses a wide range of integrated activities to:

• Develop research-driven, strategic, and operational plans to reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) as the number one hospital-acquired complication (HAC) for WSLHD
• Strategically review and re-organise WSLHD Infection Control Services
• Implement integrated district wide WSLHD Infection Control Program
• Contribute to design, develop and establish the New South Wales Biocontainment Unit (NBC)
• Build capacity in leadership of the Infection and Immunity node within Sydney Nursing School with respect to teaching, research and engagement
• Boost strategic leadership and development of the Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity (MBI)’s Infection and Immunity nodes, to include Infection Prevention and Disease Control
• Establish Australia’s first academy-industry integrated Centre for Excellence in Infection Prevention and Control within WSLHD and the University of Sydney

Led by Professor Lyn Gilbert, our aim is to, collaboratively, promote a better understanding and more effective practice of infection prevention and control among health care workers and those they are tasked with caring for and protecting from avoidable harm.

Our workplan encompasses a wide range of integrated activities to:

• Engage healthcare workers and consumers as co-researchers in infection prevention and control (IPC), using video-reflexive ethnography, to strengthen their IPC awareness and risk realisation and to assist them to articulate challenges and design context specific optimisation
•  Develop research-based evidence for the safe implementation and use of PAPR and other new technologies
• Develop nationally consistent and flexible training tools for infection prevention that can be adapted to different clinical situations.

INFECTION PREVENTION AND DISEASE CONTROL have two major programs of research. 

• AIRPROTECT which is looking at the nexus between air travel, the spread of communicable diseases and antimicrobial resistance (AMR):

1. Project IMAC: Explores the availability of infection prevention and control information provided by international commercial airlines to their passengers via in-flight magazines.
2. Project AWAC: Examines the availability of infection prevention and disease control information provided by international commercial airlines to their passengers via official airline websites.
3. Project MAPIC: Examines the motivations, opportunities and capacities of commercial airline passengers to participate in travel-associated infection prevention and control measures.
4. Project MAPS: Maps passenger and staff interactions with the aircraft in-cabin surfaces using a technique commonly used in hospital settings.
5. Project WIPES: Evaluates passengers and staff habits and behavior with the aircraft environment in terms of personal hand hygiene and surfaces sanitation while on board.
6. Project MARG: Identifies and characterises the AMR profile of microorganisms present on cabin surfaces of aircraft arriving into Australia from a jurisdiction with a significant burden of antibiotic resistance.

• COVID-19 which encompasses a diverse variety of clinical, public health and community-based research projects, whose aim is to enhance our understanding of the social, clinical and health-system impacts of COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.

1. Project Case Aus: Reports the clinical and epidemiological features, laboratory data and outcomes of the first group of COVID-19 patients in Australia.
2. Project Patient PoV: Explores and describes the lived experience of COVID-19 patients in New South Wales, Australia.
3. Project Staff Exp: Examines health professionals’ knowledge, preparedness and experiences of managing SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 in the healthcare settings
4. Project VidPrac: Assesses the accuracy, efficacy and efficiency of auditing by using video surveillance footage recorded in a real-time clinical setting.
5. Project Westmead MoC: Examines staff experiences of implementing ward-based model within Westmead Hospital in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
6. Project PPE Predict: Determines current staff perspectives on how PPE use may be different post-COVID and providing a predictive model for PPE demand as hospital services come back ‘online’ post-COVID.
7. Project BTC: Aims to evaluate the effectiveness of an education-focused model targeting the general public displaying effective IPC measures to break the chain of infection for COVID-19.

PREPAREDNESS FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE EMERGENCIES which aims to embed video-reflexive ethnography as a quality improvement method to improve infection prevention and use of personal protective equipment in Australian hospitals.

1. Project Standard PPE: This project tests the feasibility and efficacy of video-reflexive methods (VRM) in training, to improve HCWs’ confidence and skill in applying the PPE protocols required for different categories of infection transmission risk. This project helps us evaluate if, and how, VRM can assist in maintaining and sustaining effective infection prevention and control (IPC) practices.
2. Project High Level PPE: This project explores the feasibility and efficacy of using video-reflexive methods (VRM) in training to improve HCWs compliance and safety with using PPE for high consequence infectious diseases
3. Project HCID VID SIM: This project aims to strengthen bio-preparedness using simulation and video-reflexive methods to evaluate and improve the management and care of patients with suspected high consequence infectious disease (HCID). This includes attention to a) current policies and pathways, b) staff training, and c) interdepartmental/inter-hospital communication and collaboration.
4. Project PAPR fit testing: This study assesses the ability of local trained staff to produce a subjective “correct fit” of the CleanSpace HALO on healthcare workers when compared with standardised quantitative fit testing
5. Project PAPR implementation: This project evaluates the implementation of PAPR use during the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to improve efficiency, satisfaction and safety of users.
6. Project PAPR training:This study explores healthcare workers’ perspectives of video feedback for training in the use of powered air purifying respirators (PAPR) at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic

• Professor Ramon Shaban
• Dr Cristina Sotomayor-Castillo
• Dr Cecilia Li
• Dr Shizar Nahidi
• Mr Sergey Kuznetsov
• Ms Kaitlyn Radford
• Mr Jeremy Radford

Professor Lyn Gilbert

Dr Mary Wyer

Dr Suyin Hor

Ruth Barratt

If you are interested in supporting our work or would like to know more about our research programs and projects, we encourage you to contact us. We welcome any support that can help us to foster changes and make positive impacts on patients, healthcare systems and communities, both locally and globally.

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If you are interested in video reflexive ethnography, find out about our work and that of other VRE researchers via the following links for the International Association of Video-Reflexive Ethnographers:

• VREIA 
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Gilbert GL, Hor S, Wyer M, Sadsad R, Badcock CA, Iedema R. Sustained fall in inpatient MRSA prevalence after a video-reflexive ethnography project; an observational study. Infection, Disease & Health. 2020 Feb 20.

Barratt R, Gilbert GL, Shaban RZ, Wyer M, Hor SY. Enablers of, and barriers to, optimal glove and mask use for routine care in the emergency department: an ethnographic study of Australian clinicians. Australasian emergency care. 2020 Jun 1;23(2):105-13.

Barratt R, Wyer M, Hor SY, Gilbert GL. Medical interns’ reflections on their training in use of personal protective equipment. BMC medical education. 2020 Dec;20(1):1-9.

Iedema R, Jorm C, Hooker C, Hor SY, Wyer M, Gilbert GL. To follow a rule? On frontline clinicians’ understandings and embodiments of hospital-acquired infection prevention and control rules. Health. 2020 Mar;24(2):132-51.