Vaccine Champions Training Program: Empowering Community Leaders to Advocate for COVID-19 Vaccines.

Strong community engagement has been critical to support COVID-19 vaccine uptake in Australia and elsewhere. Community engagement builds trust, enables tailored information dissemination and shapes social norms. Engagement is particularly important in communities with greater vaccine hesitancy, lower health literacy and mistrust in authorities. Early in 2021, as a team of vaccine social scientists and clinicians, we developed a program to train and empower community, faith, industry and healthcare leaders to advocate for COVID-19 vaccines as "vaccine champions". We partnered with the Victorian Department of Health to deliver 91 online Vaccine Champions sessions from March 2021 to June 2022. Over 80 people who received this training were supported by the Department of Health to become formal vaccine champions, independently delivering over 100 locally tailored information sessions. Our survey evaluation of 20 sessions delivered in 2022 found most participants (94%, 118/125) felt more confident to discuss safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and find relevant information after attending a session. We also recorded >90% participant satisfaction with training content, format and presentation. Qualitative feedback from two group interviews highlighted the value of vaccine communication role plays and opportunities for discussion. In this brief report, we present an overview of the Vaccine Champions program, evaluation and next steps.

A post-implementation audit of Douglas Inquiry recommendations for medical record structure.

Following the Douglas Inquiry into medical practices and processes, a number of reforms were made to the medical records structure at the King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women (KEMH) in Perth, Western Australia. An audit was undertaken to investigate staff compliance with the new medical record structure, and to identify significant issues arising from the new filing sequence and dividers. The medical record components (correspondence, emergency, outpatient, inpatient and diagnostics) were analysed through random selection of records with recent inpatient and/or outpatient episodes. Interviews with both clinical and clerical staff at KEMH were also conducted to gather general feedback. The main issues identified in the study were a lack of understanding of the operational instructions by staff, incorrect filing procedure, and allocation of inappropriate dividers. The following recommendations were developed to address these issues: revision of all medical record forms (in particular unauthorised medical record forms); education of both clinical and clerical staff; expansion of the operational instructions into a comprehensive guide for staff; development of a new process for signing any results or reports; and compilation of a sample medical record as a reference for staff.