About Us
Education and
Research
Education and research have underpinned our work for decades.
These areas were given renewed status in 2018 with the establishment of the Ducati Owners Club of NSW Education and Research Hub. Named after our long-term supporter, the Hub is designed to harness strengths, test new ideas and push the boundaries in a broad range of multidisciplinary clinical research areas. Royal Rehab’s continuous goal is the improvement and advancement of rehabilitation and disability services.
We are proud of our culture of continuous learning at Royal Rehab where staff share knowledge and research, support the ongoing education of our teams, and train clinicians and the next generation of health professionals. We are committed to excellence in learning and development, fostering a culture of continuous improvement in the quality, safety and effectiveness of our services, and informed evidence-based practice.
Our specialist doctors and clinicians train undergraduates from the University of Sydney School of Medicine. Our facility is also a teaching hospital for the Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine registrars, and we welcome international physicians to study at Royal Rehab.
Our nursing and allied health clinicians contribute significantly to student training each year from many universities. This includes a speech pathology student placement partnership with Macquarie University whereby students train in our Brain Injury Unit Speech Pathology Student Unit under the dedicated direction of a Royal Rehab speech pathology clinical educator.
We are committed to excellence in learning and development, fostering a culture of continuous improvement in the quality, safety and effectiveness of our services, and informed evidence-based practice.
Our research projects for 2019-2020 included:
1
In collaboration with Ingham Institute of Applied Medical Research and funded by Community of Christ.
2
The Nature of Readmissions to Acute Care from Inpatient Rehabilitation: a Retrospective Cohort Study
In collaboration with the University of Sydney.
3
Deteriorating Patients in Rehabilitation – a Bachelor of Nursing (Honours) Student Project
In collaboration with the University of Sydney.
4
Interviews with Healthcare Professionals and People with Spinal Cord Injuries to Guide the Development and Rollout of Physiotherapy Clinical Practice Guidelines
In collaboration with the University of Sydney and funded by icare.
5
On the Spot Use of Goals to Support the Biographical Work of Rehabilitation
In collaboration with the University of Sydney and funded by the Australasian Rehabilitation Nurses’ Association.
6
Utilisation of the Brannagan Executive Functions Assessment in Increasing Self Awareness in Relation to Goal of Return to Work in Individuals Post Traumatic Brain Injury – a Master of Clinical Rehabilitation: Neurological Occupational Therapy Student Project
In collaboration with Flinders University.
7
Exploring Food and Nutrition Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviours of Spinal Patients in Specialist Rehabilitation – a PhD Student Project (2nd Out of 4 Projects)
In collaboration with the University of Wollongong.
8
Association Between Diet Quality, Lipid Profile and Body Weight in Patients with Spinal Cord Injury – a PhD Student Project (3rd Out of 4 Projects)
In collaboration with the University of Wollongong.
9
Improving Diagnosis of Verbosity Following Traumatic Brain Injury: a Descriptive Study
In collaboration with Macquarie University.
10
The Significance of Resilience on the Longer-Term Wellbeing of Family Caregivers, Service Utilisation and Client Community Participation: 3-Year Follow-Up
An icare funded project led by Grahame Simpson (Ingham Institute).
Recent research highlights
This two-module training program for medical, nursing and allied health rehabilitation staff was effective in increasing self-reported competency, confidence and comfort in spiritual care delivery. During follow-up interviews, participants expressed understanding that ‘spirituality is everybody’s business’. Specifically, participants reported: increased awareness of the nature of spirituality; realisation of the importance of spirituality to clients; a desire to keep spirituality on the radar; examples of incorporating spiritual care in practice; and recognition of spirituality as personally meaningful. The findings confirm that brief spiritual care training can positively impact upon perceptions and practice of rehabilitation professionals.
Alex Ommanney Social Work Prize
This annual prize is dedicated to the memory of Royal Rehab’s social worker Alex Ommanney in recognition of the significant contribution he made advocating the rights of people with disabilities. This prize aims to contribute to the development of the next generation of social workers by recognising excellence in rehabilitation, catastrophic injury and disability.
University of NSW Social Work student Danya Schonberger was awarded the Royal Rehab Alex Ommanney Social Work Student Prize 2020 on World Social Work Day, 17 March 2020. University of NSW Social Work student Sanam Mani received the Highly Commended Award. This year’s World Social Work Day theme was “promoting the importance of human relationships” which Danya and Sanam showed brilliantly in their submissions.
Our education and research partners
