Centre for Allied Health Research (CAHR)

Overview

The CAHR is a network of Allied Health clinician researchers with a focus on building capacity for high quality research and evaluation within everyday clinical practice. The vision is to facilitate advances to health care and service delivery that translate into improvements to patient outcomes. The team provide support to experienced and novice clinicians in developing and implementing clinical trials, health services research and evaluation within their practice.

Research

Investment in supporting clinicians to undertake research as part of practice has been a cornerstone of RBWH Allied Health research capacity building over recent years. We have dedicated research positions in most disciplines that provide practical support to clinicians in evaluating their practice resulting in improved patient care and contributing to important end user knowledge to the wider academic community.

Current clinical trials being conducted by, or in collaboration with, staff working within Allied Health departments including Nutrition and Dietetics, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy, focus on:

• Enteral nutrition in allogeneic stem cell transplantation
• Patient-family-centred intervention to promote nutrition in advanced cancer patients
• Orthosis use in improving PIP joint extension following hand trauma
• Beta-blocker therapy in burns
• Improving physical and psychological outcomes in burns
• Improving the outcome of sepsis
• Management of back pain in emergency departments
• Circuit training in rehabilitation patients
• E-stim cycle early rehabilitation in ICU

Other key areas of focus include:

• Telehealth implementation and evaluation
• Rehabilitation service delivery with ‘Surgical Treatment and Rehabilitation Services’ coming in 2020-2021

Research teams

Allied Health departments currently conducting research include:

• Audiology
• Nutrition and Dietetics
• Occupational Therapy
• Orthotics and Prosthetics
• Physiotherapy
• Psychology
• Rehabilitation Engineering
• Social Work
• Speech Pathology