Researcher profile

Brett Abbenbroek

Academic Qualifications RN, ICU, BSc, MPH, PhD Dr Abbenbroek is the Sepsis Australia and Asia Pacific Sepsis Alliance Program Manager within the Critical Care Division at The George Institute for Global Health. He is on the Global Sepsis Alliance Executive Board and has over 35 years of experience working in clinical, education and management roles in critical care and Emergency. His PhD considered the efficiency and effectiveness of critical care service models, and the association with organisational reliability and outcomes for patients and the nurse workforce. This work informs the Australasian Health Facility Guidelines for new and redeveloped ICUs. He has extensive international experience working to establish cardiac surgical, critical care and system-wide service improvements in China, Croatia, Indonesia, Nepal and Vanuatu. Concurrently, he has held a range of health policy, planning, project management, digital health and clinical safety advisory roles. As the program manager for state-wide clinical service planning across intensive care, emergency and medical retrieval services, he led on implementation of an integrated model for critical care service delivery across NSW. This included establishing the state-wide ECMO retrieval service and the electronic Record for Intensive Care project. A health service planning and management consultancy business followed, leading to project manager roles within the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care on a series of national eHealth clinical safety programs, electronic medication safety and the development of evidence based national clinical care standards. In his current role, Brett is responsible for driving implementation of the Stopping Sepsis National Action Plan developed in response to the 2017 World Health Assembly resolution which recognises sepsis as a global threat and calls for nationally coordinated efforts to reduce the burden of sepsis.