Bringing Academic Research to the Real World
Turning PhD research into practical, easy to understand, helpful information
The Challenge
University research often results in groundbreaking, practical knowledge that really can make the world a better place—but so it often it remains lost in publications that are inaccessible and aimed at academics, rather than in the hands of those who might actually benefit from the learnings.
Caroline Gibson decided that she wanted the important insights from her PhD research to be available to those would use it and make a real difference–general practice nurses.
Caroline’s request was simple: create a video that promotes the key messages about Practice Nurse Delivery of Dementia Care in a way that is engaging, easily understood, and memorable.
At a Glance
- Project: Dementia Care for General Practice Nurses
- Client: University of Newcastle
- Delivered: July 2023
- Duration: 10 months
- Category: Healthcare, Explainer Video, Illustration
Our Approach
Our process for every video project is to start with a workshop we call an Empathy Forecast. This activity allows us to really understand the target audience for the video. The workshop allows the subject matter experts to share relevant information, data, and insights, all of which combine to help us decide on the best approach to share the story.
The workshop is a fun, creative session that unearths key language, compelling examples, persuasive data and the primary stories that combine to create a draft script. Everything else—the characters, visualisation of difference scenes, and the flow of helpful tips that form the core of Caroline’s research—all stem from the outputs of this workshop.
Our Solution
General practice nurses are uniquely placed to notice changes that may indicate dementia, so it made sense for this video to speak clearly to them. We wrote the script from the point of view of a nurse working in a general practice clinic, and settled on the common example of an elderly patient visiting the clinic for wound care. The observations made by the nurse becomes the vehicle for delivering the insights that form part of Caroline’s research.
The Outcome
The Dementia Care video successfully takes academic content and brings it into the real world. The video had its first showing at the APNA 2023 Festival of Nursing in Perth, in June 2023, and has since been widely shared on social media, at conferences and more.
Caroline’s team leveraged the characters and imagery from this video in a range of assets. We helped her repurposed the imagery from the video to create:
- a poster to promote her research
- a Dementia Care Checklist to bring the tips front of mind in a clinician setting, and
- a slide deck to support presentations at conferences as she continues to share this important research.
