Long waits for specialist orthopaedic services are common across Australia. We used a discrete event simulation model to test the impact of different models of service provision on throughput, waiting times and cost-effectiveness at one hospital. We found that increasing the use of advanced musculoskeletal physiotherapists in screening roles is a cost-effective way to improve supply of services and reduce waiting times in this outpatient orthopaedic service. However, supply of orthopaedic specialists also needs to be increased to adequately manage overall demand for services at the modeled hospital.

Read More

Sanjeewa recently received his PhD in Health Economics from Griffith University. His PhD research focused on providing national utility scores for Sri Lanka. He used time trade off method to value EQ-5D-3L health states using preference of Sri Lankan general population. This study used a large representative sample and produced the first national utility value set for the South Asian region. This will allow future economic evaluations to use Quality Adjusted Life Years as outcome measure in this developing region.

Sanjeewa recently won $ 1500 travel grant from a research day competition in the School of Dentistry and Oral Health, Griffith University. This allowed him to travel to the International Association for Dental Research Australia and New Zealand Division Annual Scientific Meeting in Dunedin, New Zealand in August 2015. He presented a study on utility measurement using CHU-9D preference based instrument in patients suffering from early childhood caries.

As part of an ARC Linkage Grant, Martin Downes with a team of researchers, is conducting a study on the use of animals and green space interaction in the young people who have experienced trauma, maltreatment, disrupted family environments and out-of-home placements as a means to develop resilience and self efficacy.

Learn more about horse care in young people

Read a review on equine interventions on psychological outcomes