Professor Clint Douglas

Biography

As a clinical academic, Prof Clint Douglas’ research focus is at the intersection of practice development, knowledge translation and patient safety. With a clinical background in acute care nursing, he leads a research program to optimise the influence of nursing to keep patients safe: prevention of patient deterioration in general wards, the impact of hospital nurse staffing on patient outcomes, and evaluation of innovative nurse-led services. He has a successful track-record of building collaborative academic partnerships with clinicians, hospital executives and policy makers to design and execute complex and rigorous health services research—reflected in his appointment as Conjoint Professor and Nursing Chair at Metro North Hospital and Health Service.

Prof Douglas is known for leading large-scale acute hospital research on systems change and patient safety. He is currently CIA on an NHMRC-funded multi-site cluster-randomised trial designed to transform nursing assessment in medical-surgical wards. His work is published in high impact journals, such as The Lancet: Effects of nurse-to-patient ratio legislation on nurse staffing and patient mortality, readmissions, and length of stay: A prospective study in a panel of hospitals.

Prof Douglas coordinates the QUT-Metro North Nursing Research Internship Scholarship program: Watch videos of example intern projects here.

Current higher degree research student projects (*Principal supervisor):

• Anthony Batterbury (PhD candidate), Evaluating clinical acuity and dependency of deteriorating patients in general wards.
• *Natalie Rees (PhD student), Nursing workforce flexibility: A critical analysis
• *Suzanne Williams (PhD candidate), A collaborative implementation study of acute paediatric pain management in the emergency department.