ICH has a significant track record of translational, interdisciplinary research that has had impact across three dimensions:

A. Translational impact on healthcare policy and practice

B. Theoretical impact on the disciplines of health sciences, medicine and linguistics

C. Research design and methodological impact on healthcare communication research

A. Translational Impact on healthcare policy and practice

With each project, ICH translates evidence-based research findings into the development, implementation and evaluation of interventions to improve patient care. The interventions are co-constructed with consumers, clinicians, and health service management and include:

• Evidence-based communication frameworks

• Educational resources designed to improve communication practices

• System recommendations to improve patient care

Impact on policy

National safety and quality standards

ICH research has directly informed national healthcare policy, such as through its contribution to the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health (ACSQHC) National Standard 6: Communicating for Patient Safety. ACSQHC has eight Standards that provide a nationally consistent statement about the level of care patients can expect from health services.

CARE protocol

This evidence-based communication protocol for nursing bedside handover was developed and rolled out across 39 wards in 8 hospitals in NSW & Victoria and has been translated into formal policy recommendations adopted at both organisational and national levels.

Research outputs in standards

Publications such as Effective Communication in Clinical Handover – from Research to Practice (eds Eggins, Slade & Geddes, 2016) and Adolescents and young adults communicating with gastroenterologists: variation in inflammatory bowel disease clinical communication (Karimi et al., 2023) are referenced in national and international standards, demonstrating uptake into regulatory and governance frameworks.

ACCELERATE trials

The nursing bedside handover intervention developed by ICH was integrated into the ACCELERATE and ACCELERATE Plus trials. These trials demonstrated that scaling of evidence-based interventions across eight hospitals led to policy diffusion and standardisation of best practice communication.

 Impact on safety & quality of patient experience

ICH's translational model consistently improves the safety and quality of patient care by targeting communication breakdowns — one of the leading causes of adverse events in healthcare. We do this by collecting and analysing large quantities of naturally occurring hospital interactions to identify systemic causes of misunderstandings and communication breakdowns. We describe the impact of some of our projects below.

Emergency department communication frameworks for clinicians

This framework informed a suite of multimedia, online pre-service medical education modules on Communication in Emergency Departments — implemented at Melbourne University and other university medical programs. This is the only evidence-based communication training program built on analysis of actual hospital emergency interactions, incorporating authentic examples into the communication frameworks

Communication in Nursing Handover (CNH) protocols

The Communication in Nursing Handover (CNH) project aimed to improve communication practices in eight wards across three hospitals in NSW and Victoria to promote safe and compassionate, patient-centred care. The project aimed to improve the effectiveness of nursing handover through a ward-level intervention to:

• Address problems in the communication and delivery of nursing handover
• Address systemic factors affecting nursing handover
• Examine the flow of patient information from interdisciplinary handovers (medical ward rounds and multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings) to nurses.

The project had a significant impact on healthcare practices and outcomes. Some wards saw notable improvements in communication practices, patient safety and ward culture. Overall, our qualitative evaluation of communication practices showed positive changes that resulted in improved quality and safety of patient care:

• Group handovers became more streamlined and efficient, with a focus on identifying and mitigating of patient risk.
• As a result of the training, more handovers took place at the patient’s bedside rather than in the corridor.
• Handovers were more inclusive and patient-centred, enabling patients and their family to be involved.
• Multidisciplinary team communication had improved, with nursing, allied health and medical teams communicating with one another more effectively.
• The ward culture changed, with better communication practices, increased openness to change from nursing staff, and an improved culture of speaking up.

Quantitative evaluation of the CNH pilot intervention across two hospital wards estimated reductions in hospital-acquired complications of:

• 48–52% reduction in patient falls
• 20–42% reduction in pressure injuries
• 42–43% reduction in medication errors
• Sustained safety improvements were evidenced by extended periods without adverse events (e.g., 135 days without a patient fall on one ward).

After the project-specific training was delivered to the intervention wards, the team delivered a train-the-trainer package to the hospitals and the handover training was integrated into the hospital’s monthly training schedule to ensure sustainability of improved practices in a transient workforce.

ACCELERATE Programme

Due to the success of the CNH programme, the ICH was invited to collaborate with the ACU Nursing Research Institute on the ACCELERATE programme, which aimed to support nurses to implement comprehensive patient assessment and decision-making practices, and to maximise communication opportunities and accuracy of information to reduce incidence of unrecognised deterioration, falls and stage 2-4 pressure injuries.The ACCELERATE intervention focused on proactive nursing assessment and clinical handover re-design. The intervention demonstrated a significant impact on ward safety culture, teamwork climate, and inter-professional collaboration. ACCELERATE successfully scaled the ICH’s handover research to multi-site implementation across NSW and Victoria, demonstrating reproducibility and system-wide impact.

Overall, ICH research demonstrates that targeted, evidence-based communication interventions can produce both immediate and sustained improvements in safety, efficiency, and quality of care.

B. Theoretical disciplinary impact of ICH’s research

ICH’s research is interdisciplinary, focusing on communication in health care and drawing from linguistics, medicine, nursing and health science related disciplines which impact on a broader disciplinary readership.

The impact theoretically on linguistics, applied linguistics and health care communication research includes the development of an innovative, discourse analytical framework for the description of authentic clinician- patient and clinician-clinician interactions. This framework is being used and adapted by linguistic and health related researchers both nationally an internationally.

Due to the large-scale nature of the ICH’s projects, we have one of the largest databases internationally of de-identified authentic clinician-patient and clinician-clinician interactions with data collected both in Australian and Hong Kong hospitals (with over 4 million words of de-identified authentic hospital interactions). This is a significant resource for students and academic researchers across linguistics, medicine and health science both nationally and internationally.

C. ICH’s methodological innovation in research design and methods

The ICH’s methodology for translating healthcare communication research into practice has been implemented and evaluated in hospitals across Australia and Hong Kong, resulting in improvements to the quality and safety of patient care. Embedded in our mixed methods design is the large-scale collection and analysis of naturally occurring clinician-patient and clinician-clinician interactions in hospital contexts.

ICH’s reputation internationally and nationally is evidenced by this recent quote from ARC reviewers in relation to an ICH member’s ARC application:

“ICH is internationally known for its linguistically informed translational, interdisciplinary research, which informs this application (May 2026).”