The role of the Research Support Coordinator is to ensure the efficient administration and management of recruitment of volunteers to Black Dog Institute research studies, and to provide support to the research team through the day-to-day administration of relevant research databases and systems recruitment function and the Clinical Services Database. The role is for 4 days per week.

About the Institute:

Founded in 2002, The Black Dog Institute is internationally recognised as a pioneer in the identification, prevention, early intervention, and treatment of mental illnesses such as depression and bipolar disorder.  The Institute is a leader in suicide prevention and eHealth, the use of technology in delivering mental health treatments, tools, and interventions.

Our mission is to enable mentally healthier lives through innovations in science, medicine, education, public policy and knowledge translation. 

What we can offer you:

The Black Dog Institute is proud to offer a dynamic working environment for our staff. We are invested in maintaining a positive workplace culture which values people and their wellbeing. We offer a varied wellbeing program tailored to staff needs and provide opportunities to attend learning and development seminars, engage in health and fitness activities as well as social events. We also offer flexibility in working hours and promote a healthy work life balance.

The Black Dog Institute is a registered charity and Public Benevolent Institution and offers PBI salary packaging benefits.

Duties:

• Contact patients following their clinic appointment to discuss research studies that they might be eligible for.
• Contact patients prior to initial and follow up appointments to remind them to complete research forms and of their upcoming appointment.
• Conduct interviews with patients in a sensitive and appropriate manner.
• Use demographic and clinical information to determine a patient’s possible eligibility for a number of research studies that are being conducted at Black Dog Institute.
• Accurately maintain databases consisting of patient demographic and clinical information as well as studies that have been discussed with patients and those studies they have agreed to be contacted about.
• Ensure all patient, clinician and research data is collected on a timely basis and entered into the information system.
• Liaise with research team contacts regarding their patient flow, changes in eligibility criteria, and changes in study procedures
• Liaise with clinic personnel (secretaries, psychiatrists, psychologists) as needed to clarify information pertaining to patient diagnoses or other information provided in the assessment.
• Work with Research Manager and Black Dog Institute IT Department to enhance functionality of the systems to support research functions and Clinical Services Database.
• Provide quality assurance of the data collected through regular checks of data completion and accuracy.
• Download patient data to various formats for analysis.
• Produce basic reports on patient data using descriptive statistics and graphs as needed.
• Liaise between research and IT teams regarding the development, testing, ongoing quality assurance for new and existing research and service delivery platforms.
• Assisting with organisation-wide systems that enable various research teams to access research participants through Black Dog Institute Clinics and Volunteer Research Register, and other key channels.
• Assisting with developing and maintaining systems for keeping track of research outputs by Black Dog Institute staff, such as publications, grants, and applications by BDI staff
• Assisting with profiling / registering publications with the University for the purposes of the Higher Education Research Data Collection.
• Cooperate with all health and safety policies and procedures of the university and take all reasonable care to ensure that your actions or omissions do not impact on the health and safety of yourself or others.

Reporting relationships:

Supervisor’s title:  Research Manager

Key matrix relationships:  Director of Innovation and Discovery, Clinical Director, Research Fellows and Research Assistants, Clinic Coordinator

Positions reporting to this position: Nil

Selection criteria:

Essential Criteria

 Relevant higher education qualification or at least 4 four years relevant experience gained through and other combination of education, training and/or experience.

• Awareness of confidentiality and other principles appropriate to both clinical and research settings and experience conducting research interviews with people with a mental health history.
• Ability to work within a team environment and independently as required.
• Excellent interpersonal and written, verbal and face to face communication skills and proven ability to interact effectively with a diverse range of stakeholder and client groups.
• Excellent time management and organisational skills with a proven ability to deal with multiple tasks, establish priorities and meet fixed deadlines in a high volume, process driven environment.
• Experience with developing, implementing and monitoring online systems to enhance recruitment to research studies and e-health systems services and ongoing monitoring of these systems.
• High level computer skills including an understanding of and experience in using the Microsoft Office suite (particularly Excel and/or Access) and medical software packages (e.g. Blue Chip).
• Knowledge of health and safety responsibilities and commitment to attending relevant health and safety training

 Desirable

• Experience in the Not For Profit sector.