Final year medical students Zoe Polglase and Donaiya Azaro stood on a national stage recently to present two years of their research into Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) with rural community Palliative Care (PC) patients.
Zoe and Donaiya, Rural Clinical School of WA (RCSWA) 2024 Narrogin and Karratha alumna, were invited to the Oceanic Palliative Care Conference in Brisbane and travelled courtesy of an RCSWA Student Research Award scholarship.
The University of Western Australia students began their scholarly research at their respective RCSWA sites last year and collaborated with local PC teams to complete the project.
Zoe said she and Donaiya felt very lucky to receive the bursary and were grateful to supervisors Professor Kirsten Auret and Ms Steph Barrett from the WA Country Health Service Palliative Care Service.
“Presenting at this conference was an incredibly enriching experience. It was rewarding to be able to promote our research on a national scale. We were given a 20-minute time slot allowing us to practice our skills of science communication to an audience of national PC experts,” Zoe said.
“We also connected with other scholars and researchers that have been involved in PREMs research in other parts of Australia and add our findings to the wealth of PREMs research globally.”
PREMs are used to record patient experiences of the healthcare they receive and are measures of care quality. Two tools are widely utilised in PC in Australia: ConsideRATE and the New South Wales Bureau of Health Information question set for PC patients in a community setting. Neither have been tested with country WA patients prior to this research project.
The students completed a three-phase qualitative study in which clinician stakeholder focus groups were consulted in the Pilbara and Wheatbelt regions of WA, and a PREM tool selected to pilot with PC patients in regional and rural WA.
This research showed promising and exciting potential for the implementation of PREMs to improve the quality of care provided to patients.
Donaiya said being rural advocates at the conference allowed her and Zoe to contribute to the efforts of many inspiring clinicians across the country.
“We heard from other rural PC professionals and empathised with their challenges including resource limitation, vast geographical areas of clinical responsibility, and telehealth optimisation,” Donaiya said.
“Talking about our project on such a scale made it feel as though our small-town research was really going to make a difference on a much larger scale.”
The pair intend to keep advocating for PREMs in country WA and look forward to seeing two new RCSWA research students progress the project further over 2026.
For more information about the RCSWA Student Research Award, contact [email protected]
Image: From left, Donaiya Azaro, Steph Barrett and Zoe Polglase.