Meet our team: Philippa Hawke
CheckUp’s Evaluation lead Philippa Hawke joined the team over 2 years ago. Dedicated to enhancing patient-centred care, Philippa develops tools and strategies for collecting robust patient feedback, like the recently developed cultural safety tool. Documenting the level of cultural safety experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients, the tool encourages the creation of culturally appropriate delivery models.
Below Philippa shares more about herself and the vital role she plays in the CheckUP team.
Tell us a bit about what exciting projects you are currently working on?
Developing new tools and strategies to collect more patient feedback which increases the health system’s capacity to deliver patient-centred health care. We recently developed a tool to measure the cultural safety experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients receiving eye and ear surgery in remote locations. We were able to give this feedback directly to their service providers and support them to make service improvements.
How long have you worked in the health sector?
I’ve spent pretty much my whole career working in health, starting as a social worker in government community mental health, moving into health and community service management roles and ending up in counselling and child and family program evaluation.
My job prior to coming to CheckUP two and a half years ago was as Senior Researcher with a national not for profit organisation developing innovative ways to measure program effectiveness.
What does a typical day look like for you?
No two days are the same – one day I could be working on developing a new survey tool, the next flying to a remote QLD location to meet and yarn with patients receiving health services funded by CheckUP’s Outreach programs.
And then the day after that I could be presenting at a national health service conference, spreading the word about the value in asking patients for feedback and acting on their recommendations for service quality improvements.
What aspect of your role do you enjoy the most?
Every part of it! I love having the opportunity to visit some of the most beautiful and diverse landscapes we have here in Queensland. And I get to meet not only the patients who generously give their time to service improvement activities, but also the service providers who are so open to hearing patient feedback and do everything they can to implement the recommendations.
What is one of your favourite aspects about working at CheckUP?
Working in non-urban and outreach health service delivery regions has really opened my eyes to the incredible emotional intelligence, commitment and outside-the-box thinking required of anyone trying to improve rural and remote populations’ equitable access to health services.
What are you currently listening to at the moment?
Audiobooks and lots of them! They’ve replaced music in my car for the past year, and that says a lot!