Dr Jane Fitzgibbons1
1Children's Health Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Biography:
Jane Fitzgibbons has been a member of Queensland's Healthy Hearing Program audiology team for over 7 years, with focus areas including infant diagnostic teleaudiology, research and, more recently, statewide quality and safety. She has worked in paediatric audiology in New Zealand, the UK and Australia, and after a long hiatus from study earned a Doctorate in Audiology from AT Still University, Arizona, in 2019.
Abstract
Recent safety and quality concerns regarding audiology in Queensland, interstate and overseas have spurred dedicated efforts in Queensland to strengthen and formalise governance structures.
Queensland Audiologists have historically notified the Healthy Hearing Program of cases with ‘unexpected outcomes’, however responses to these notifications and follow up processes were not standardised or quantified.
In 2024-2025, a human factors and governance framework was introduced as a way to support overall quality and safety, and foster a culture of reporting risk and sharing clinical concerns. A Paediatric Audiology Clinical Council was formed under the statewide Audiology Governance Group to provide subject-matter expertise for clinical case reviews, primarily in the area of infant diagnostics.
This presentation will discuss the processes implemented by the Council in line with statewide governance framework requirements, which apply a human factors approach to identifying and quantifying clinical risks to inform priorities for service-level and statewide quality and safety improvement.