Janet Long

Janet is a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Macquarie University. She is a member of the Complexity Science group that uses a complexity lens to approach issues of quality and safety in the delivery of healthcare. Her research interests are around moving research into practice, interdisciplinary relationships and the impact of new technologies on real world practice. She brings both clinical and scientific expertise to these issues each of which provide unique insights.

She originally qualified as a registered general nurse before studying Biological Sciences at Macquarie University. She undertook research into invasive plants and responses of Australian native flora to climate change before returning to nursing in 2001. She worked in a number of health care settings including theatres, community, psychiatric, outpatient services and rehabilitation. Her last clinical role was Clinical Nurse Consultant at Sydney Eye Hospital as the Ophthalmology Community Liaison. In 2014, she moved into health services research, undertaking a PhD at University of New South Wales with Prof Jeffrey Braithwaite. She has been involved in a number of systematic reviews, including co-ordinating team reviews, and constructing recommendations from the findings.

Janet’s research focusses on crucial but sometimes hidden aspects of health delivery: mapping informal collaborative relationships and constructing process maps of work as it is actually done compared to how it is imagined. She used longitudinal social network analyses over five years to evaluate how a new translational research network increased collaborative links across hospital and university silos. Her systematic review of brokerage positions, “Bridges, brokers and boundary spanners” has been highly cited by other health service researchers. As well as social network analysis, Janet also uses the psychosocial theory of behaviour change (using the Theoretical Domains framework) and uses concepts from complexity theory to inform her work on translating research into clincial practice.

Janet is currently working with the Australian Genomic Health Alliance, a nationwide network of clinicians, medical scientists, researchers, and consumers tasked with introducing cost effective and clinically appropriate genomic medicine across Australia. She is co-leading the Implementation Science stream of work engaging teams from across Australia to evaluate, understand and learn from the experience of early adopters. She is also chief investigator of a separate project using a complexity lens to map the genomic community of practice across their 384 members and describe the influences and barriers to mainstream adoption of genomic practice.