Digital Library

NCHA Digital Library

Leading world class innovation in research and education providing a library of educational videos showcasing real life examples of exemplary verbal and non-verbal communication skills to improve healthcare outcomes.

Research significance

Despite the heavy impact of miscommunication in healthcare, there is no dedicated infrastructure in Australia to support world-class research on real-life healthcare communication. The Digital Library project will provide a window into real-life consultations to support healthcare communication research and thereby improve consumer satisfaction, healthcare safety, outcomes and quality.

It is estimated that more than 18 000 deaths occur each year in Australia due to medical errors. Across the OECD, it is estimated that 15% of hospital expenditure is attributed to treating the consequences of patient safety failures. There are many and varied clinical situations where communication failures can occur including poor handover between clinicians about a patient’s condition, inadequate consent processes, and poor rapport or bedside manner. A taxonomy of communication failures in the UK highlighted more than 50 categories of communication error.

There are multiple areas of clinical practice that have been evaluated for communication failures including with older people posthospital discharge, where miscommunication leads to medication errors; healthcare communication influenced by unconscious bias resulting in health inequity; and, communication in the setting of people with disability. Poor communication between older culturally and linguistically diverse adults and healthcare workers has been shown to lead to health disparities and discrimination, miscommunication, unmet needs and difficulties providing care.

Importantly, strong clinician communication skills have been shown to improve health outcomes, particularly for pain, and positive communication can have placebo-like effects with improvements in patients’ anxiety, mood and satisfaction. This points to communication skills training as a modifiable area for improving healthcare safety and quality and consumer satisfaction and engagement in their health care journey.

-

Our impact

Australia’s first Digital Library opens the closed door of GP consultations

What really happens behind closed GP doors? An eye-opening Monash study reveals the hidden complexity of general practice—where eight health issues, on average, are tackled in just 19 minutes.

Learn more

The Digital Library

This is Australia’s first Digital Library containing video-recordings of health and social care consultations from community, outpatient, and residential care settings. This digital research infrastructure will support world-class research about healthcare interactions and communication strategies to improve patient safety, health outcomes and consumer satisfaction.

The Library includes video-recorded interactions from across all parts of the healthcare system, including community health and primary care, hospitals and other acute settings, aged care facilities, telehealth and outreach services. This infrastructure is essential as healthcare consultations are often described as 'black boxes' occurring behind closed doors, often meaning we know little about successful engagement strategies between the clinician and the healthcare consumer. This world-leading research infrastructure provides a window into real-life consultations to support healthcare communication research and thereby improve consumer satisfaction, healthcare safety, outcomes and quality.

Impact

The Digital Library will bring new possibilities for healthcare communication and consultation-based research to Australia. This infrastructure will enable new methods for studying and measuring communication techniques specific to the lifespan, chronic disease and disability, patient-provider communication and outcomes, and consultation and communication variation across medicine, nursing and allied health, in a variety of healthcare settings. This world-leading research infrastructure has the potential to address specific issues related to sensory impairment, institutional care, culture and language diversity, and communication when a third party is present. This Digital Library of video-recorded healthcare consultations will generate essential new knowledge to inform clinician training, healthcare education, and the development of new interventions for healthcare consultations to improve safety and quality of healthcare delivery.

Figure 1: Types of video-recordings to be housed in the Digital Library; * The existing pilot library contains GP in-person and telehealth consultations

To learn more about the Digital Library please refer to our protocol publication here:  

https://www.researchprotocols.org/2025/1/e67910

For referencing and citation, please use: 

Ethics

The Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC) ensures that research at Monash University complies with the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research 2023.

Request access

Researchers can apply to have access to the videos (on-site at Peninsula only, for data security reasons).

Contact us

Email: digital.library@monash.edu

Our team

Related media and articles