Championing research to help solve every day health care challenges

Acting Executive Director – Eastern Health Institute, Adjunct Associate Professor Paul Buntine has over 20 years’ experience as an emergency physician, and is putting all of that passion for healthcare into his executive role.

“Rather than being involved in in-lab research or big clinical trial research, I’ve been more involved in research that looks at improving ways that we deliver care the clinical space. I’ve also been involved in building up an emergency department research unit from scratch over the last few years to the point where it’s now quite a vibrant little unit,” A/Prof Buntine said.

The Eastern Health Institute oversees research and educational activities across Eastern Health. A/Prof Buntine coordinates the Institute, coming up with strategies to further integrate research with operational activities and education.

“One of my goals is to better integrate research into operational activities, which can also be a challenge. Traditionally, research sits to the side and likewise, education is somewhat siloed at the moment with medical education and learning and teaching education, so I’d like to tie all that together.

“I’d really like to enhance the research identity at Eastern Health. I think there’s a real opportunity to figure out what we can do to better support all levels of research and further tie that in operationally,” he said.

A/Prof Buntine has been passionate about helping people from the moment he entered the field of health care. Although his work looks a little different today from when he started, the objectives are the same.

“I love solving problems. In emergencies, when people come in and they’ve got a problem, you come up with an immediate solution, and you come up with a plan to address the longer term solution. It’s nice to be able to help people resolve what they’re going through.

“What I enjoy about health is that it’s something that interacts with everybody. Certainly as an emergency physician, I interacted with all walks of society. I like working collaboratively and when it comes to the Institute, I’m looking forward to having a similar working style, because research intersects with a lot of different people.”

As A/Prof Buntine works towards contributing to the Eastern Health promise to the community, Healthier Together, he wants to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to be heard and share their ideas.

“I realised part-way through my career, that there were lots of things that could be done better. I eventually discovered that that if you want to change things and you want to do that in a robust way; and you want to then share those findings and learn from other people’s findings and collaborate outside a single organisation, then research is probably the best methodology to do that.

“One of the things that that I learned relatively early, is that it is important to listen and to not assume that everyone in agreeing with you. It’s easy to think that people are agreeing with you because they’re being quiet, but actually you haven’t really given them an opportunity to say otherwise. Actively listening to those around you is such an important habit to have in the field of health,” he said.