SPHERE Health Innovation Fellow to embed frailty-informed care in cardiology
A project to improve the way frailty is identified and managed in cardiac care has been awarded funding through SPHERE’s new Health Innovation Fellowship program.
Associate Professor, Nicola Straiton, is one of four successful recipients of the Fellowship, which supports early- to mid-career researchers to lead projects addressing major health system challenges.
A/Prof Straiton, a nurse and researcher at the Nursing Research Institute, a collaboration between St Vincent’s Health Network Sydney, St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne and Australian Catholic University, will lead the project Embedding Frailty Clinical Champions in Cardiac Care.
“I am honoured to receive this fellowship - it supports my commitment to improving care for people with heart disease and frailty by working with clinicians, consumers and partners to embed evidence into everyday practice,” A/Prof Straiton said.
The project aims to co-design, implement and evaluate a Frailty Clinical Champion model across hospital cardiology services. The goal is to make frailty-informed care part of routine clinical practice, helping clinicians identify frailty earlier, support better treatment decisions and improve outcomes for patients.
“Frailty is common among people with heart disease and is associated with poorer outcomes, including increased mortality, longer hospital stays, reduced quality of life and higher healthcare costs. Despite this, frailty assessment and management are not consistently embedded in cardiology care, meaning opportunities to intervene earlier can be missed,” explains A/Prof Straiton.
The project will be delivered in three phases. First, it will generate national evidence on the prevalence and impact of frailty among people with valvular heart disease undergoing transcatheter cardiac procedures, using national registry data from approximately 54 hospitals.
The second phase will bring together clinicians, consumers, health managers and national experts to co-design a cardiology-specific Frailty Clinical Champion role and implementation strategy. This will ensure the model is practical, acceptable and aligned with the needs of patients, clinicians and health services.
The third phase will pilot and evaluate the model across three SPHERE hospitals: St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney, Prince of Wales Hospital and St George Hospital. Frailty Clinical Champions will be trained to support education, screening, referral pathways and the integration of frailty-informed decision-making into cardiology workflows.
A/Prof Straiton brings significant clinical, research and implementation experience to the Fellowship. Her research focuses on cardiovascular disease, frailty, health services research and implementation science. In the three years since completing her PhD, she has secured more than $29.2 million in competitive research funding across 14 grants, including six as Chief Investigator. She has delivered more than 20 invited national and international presentations and received five awards recognising research excellence and leadership.
Her broader work is focused on advancing the translation of evidence into clinical practice and building research capacity among clinician researchers. She currently leads the FRAIL-AS Response Trial, Australia’s largest multi-site trial of frailty management in cardiac care, and co-leads the Early- and Mid-Career Researcher group within the SPHERE Nursing and Midwifery Implementation Science Academy.
The Fellowship will strengthen collaboration across SPHERE partners, with St Vincent’s Health Network Sydney, South Eastern Sydney Local Health District, Australian Catholic University and the Australian Frailty Network all contributing to the project. Consumers will also be active partners, contributing to the co-design of the Clinical Champion role, implementation activities and dissemination of findings.
By the end of the two-year Fellowship, the project aims to deliver a tested Frailty Clinical Champion model, improved clinician capability, stronger frailty screening and referral processes, and evidence of how frailty-informed care can be embedded within cardiology services.
The findings will also provide a foundation for future scale-up across SPHERE and NSW health services, with the potential to inform a larger Phase III clinical trial.