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Background Hospital and university service providers invest significant but separate resources into preparing registered nurses to work in the emergency department setting. This results in the duplication of both curricula and resource investment in the health and higher education sectors. This paper describes an evidence-based co-designed study with clinical-academic stakeholders from hospital and university settings. Methods The study was informed by evidence-based co-design, using emergency nursing as an exemplar. Eighteen hours of co-design workshops were completed with 21 key clinical-academic stakeholders from hospital and university settings. Results Outcomes were matrices synchronising professional and regulatory imperatives of postgraduate nursing coursework; mutually-shaped curriculum content, teaching approaches and assessment strategies relevant for postgraduate education; a new University-Industry Academic Integration Framework; five agreed guiding principles of postgraduate curriculum development for university-industry curriculum co-design; and a Graduate Certificate of Emergency Nursing curriculum exemplar. Conclusion Industry-academic service provider co-design can increase the relevance of postgraduate specialist courses in nursing, strengthening the nexus between both entities to advance learning and employability. The study developed strategies and exemplars for future use in any mutually determined academic-industry education partnership.

Background Health literacy is strongly associated with health outcomes and is important for health policy and service delivery. Low health literacy was reported in 59% of Australian adults, however, there is no national data on the health literacy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) peoples. The ATSI population in Australia experience a notable gap in health outcomes compared with non-Indigenous Australians which is due, in part to a higher prevalence of chronic diseases. The health outcome gap is more pronounced in rural and remote locations. This study aims to establish the health literacy profile of ATSI adults with chronic disease living in remote North-West Queensland Australia, and to investigate associations between the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) domains and self-reported chronic disease and demographic characteristics. Methods Using a cross-sectional design, 200 ATSI adults with a diagnosis of chronic disease/s (cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory disease and/or chronic kidney disease) were recruited from two sites with the assistance of Aboriginal Health Workers. Data were collected using the HLQ, a multidimensional 44 item instrument to assess nine domains of health literacy. Demographic and health data were also collected. Analysis of variance using backwards modelling was used to determine predictors of health literacy. Results Participants were mostly male (53.5%) and aged between 19 and 89 years. The most prevalent chronic disease was cardiovascular disease (74%) followed by diabetes (67.5%). More than half (62%) had two or more chronic diseases. There was at least one independent predicator for each of the nine health literacy domains. Age, number of chronic diseases, gender, and level of education were all highly significant predictors of health literacy. Conclusion Improved health literacy will enable individuals to take an active role in their health. Understanding the health literacy of ATSI adults is a crucial first step. Our findings can assist Australian healthcare organisations to review their health literacy responsiveness and examine ways to improve patients’ needs and health capabilities to better support people to engage in effective self-management for chronic diseases. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-019-4335-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background Blood cultures are an integral part of the diagnosis of bacteremia in unwell patients. The treatment of bacteremia involves the rapid and accurate identification of the causative agent grown from the blood cultures collected. Contamination of blood cultures with non-pathogenic microbes such as skin commensals causes false positive results and subsequent unnecessary and potentially harmful interventions. While guidelines for blood culture quality recommend no more than 2–3% contamination rate, rates up to 12% are reported in the literature. There have been a number of methods proposed to reduce the contamination of blood cultures, including educational interventions, changing of skin cleansing preparations and introduction of blood culture collection packs in acute care settings. This protocol outlines methods to identify and evaluate interventions to reduce blood culture contamination in the acute care setting. Methods The reviewers will conduct a systematic search of literature in CINHAL, PubMed, EMBASE and the Cochrane Central register of controlled trials. Unpublished works will be identified in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Articles will be assessed for relevance based on their title and abstract. Remaining relevant citations will have their full text retrieved and assessed against eligibility criteria. All studies that meet the eligibility criteria will have their methodological quality appraised. Assessments for relevance and methodological quality will be conducted independently by two reviewers. If appropriate, data will be analysed using the Mantel-Haenszel method under a random effects model. Heterogeneity of the studies will be assessed using the I 2 and chi-squared statistic. Meta-analysis will be attempted if the data is suitable. Discussion This review will identify and summarise the interventions previously described in the literature aimed at reducing peripherally collected blood culture contamination rates in acute care. These findings have the potential to lead to multifaceted interventions based on previous evidence to reduce blood culture contamination in the acute setting. Reductions in the proportion of contaminated blood cultures have the potential to save money, unrequired treatment (particularly antimicrobials) and hospital bed days. Systematic review registration In accordance with guidelines outlined in the PRISMA-P methodology, this protocol was registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) on December 8, 2017, and last updated on January 4, 2018 (registration number CRD42017081650).

Background Pressure injuries (PIs) create a significant burden in the health care system. Up to 49% of critically ill patients develop PIs. Identifying and understanding potential risk factors is essential to the provision of effective targeted prevention strategies to mitigate risk. The objectives of this review are to identify patient-centred clinical factors that may be associated with PI development in the adult intensive care environment and to determine the effect size of the relationship between identified factors and PI development in this unique population. Method/design The review will follow the PRISMA reporting guidelines for systematic reviews. Electronic databases (Cochrane; PubMed/MEDLINE; CINAHL (EBSCOhost); Embase; Scopus; PsycINFO; Proquest; Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations; Australian Digital Theses Program, Grey literature, Google scholar, and Clinical Trial Registries) will be systematically searched. A suite of search terms will identify articles that have examined the patient-centred risk factors for PI development in adult intensive care units. The search strategy will be designed to retrieve studies published since inception to 2016 in English language. Quality of the studies will be assessed by using an assessment framework designed to appraise quality in prognostic studies and methodological considerations in the analysis and publication of observational studies. Screening, study selection process, and data extraction will be undertaken by two independent reviewers. Disagreement will be resolved by discussion and, if required, a third independent reviewer. Clinical and methodological heterogeneity across studies will be assessed and, if possible, meta-analyses will be performed. Discussion The evidence synthesis arising from this review will identify person-centred risk factors that are associated with PI development among critically ill patients in intensive care. Findings from this review will demonstrate potential patient risk factors that may influence practice and research priorities to prevent PI development and improve the quality of care provided. Systematic review registration PROSPERO CRD42016037690 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13643-017-0451-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background The nurse practitioner is a growing clinical role in Australia and internationally, with an expanded scope of practice including prescribing, referring and diagnosing. However, key gaps exist in nurse practitioner education regarding governance of specialty clinical learning and teaching. Specifically, there is no internationally accepted framework against which to measure the quality of clinical learning and teaching for advanced specialty practice. Methods A case study design will be used to investigate educational governance and capability theory in nurse practitioner education. Nurse practitioner students, their clinical mentors and university academic staff, from an Australian university that offers an accredited nurse practitioner Master’s degree, will be invited to participate in the study. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with students and their respective clinical mentors and university academic staff to investigate learning objectives related to educational governance and attributes of capability learning. Limited demographic data on age, gender, specialty, education level and nature of the clinical healthcare learning site will also be collected. Episodes of nurse practitioner student specialty clinical learning will be observed and documentation from the students’ healthcare learning sites will be collected. Descriptive statistics will be used to report age groups, areas of specialty and types of facilities where clinical learning and teaching is observed. Qualitative data from interviews, observations and student documents will be coded, aggregated and explored to inform a framework of educational governance, to confirm the existing capability framework and describe any additional characteristics of capability and capability learning. Discussion This research has widespread significance and will contribute to ongoing development of the Australian health workforce. Stakeholders from industry and academic bodies will be involved in shaping the framework that guides the quality and governance of clinical learning and teaching in specialty nurse practitioner practice. Through developing standards for advanced clinical learning and teaching, and furthering understanding of capability theory for advanced healthcare practitioners, this research will contribute to evidence-based models of advanced specialty postgraduate education.