Burns can represent devastating injuries surgically, psychologically and socially. A multidisciplinary team approach to patient management is requisite to successful patient management. Burns education is currently under-represented in national undergraduate surgical curricula with a resultant graduating workforce with sub-optimal burns management knowledge. There is therefore a drive to improve burns education nationally. In order to develop burns teams to perform with skill and efficiency, it is important to develop and advance their technical and non-technical skills. Simulation has proven to be a powerful modality to augment surgical training. Recreating authentic clinical challenges is crucial in optimising simulation-based team training. The majority of such team-based simulation takes place in dedicated simulation facilities or centres which are static and can be costly. This thesis presents eight peer-reviewed publications that chronologically represent a thematic series of publications in simulation and surgical education with an ultimate focus on burns education. The theoretical framework explores simulation strategies in light of educational theory, culminating in the development of "The Burns Suite" (TBS); a novel modality to advance the delivery of interprofessional burns education. TBS represents a low-cost, high-fidelity, portable, immersive simulation environment. It facilitates the delivery of an interprofessional realistic burn resuscitation scenario based on "advanced trauma and life support" (ALTS) and "emergency management of severe burns" (EMSB) principles. Scenarios were refined utilising expert opinion through cognitive task analyses. Participants considered TBS experience authentic due to its high psychological and social fidelity. This thesis contributes to burns surgical education by providing a better understanding of educational theory underpinning successful simulation and facilitating its interprofessional delivery via TBS. This approach can facilitate the design of future simulation scenarios that provide unique educational experiences where team members can learn with and from other specialties and professions in a safe, controlled environment. Addressing economic and practical limitations of current immersive surgical simulation is important. The low-cost approach of TBS has major implications for surgical education as a whole, particularly given increasing financial austerity. This thesis proposes that alternative, complex, and challenging scenarios and/or procedures can be recreated within TBS, providing a diverse educational immersive simulation experience that can be extrapolated into other surgical specialities and interprofessional arenas.

The importance of innovation networks in health information system transformation has been recognised in research. It has been agreed that better-organised innovation networks can be related to better results of patient information system transformation. However, current research do not know much about how those innovation networks are organised, especially the structure of teamwork and information exchange in innovation networks. Thus, this study aims to improve the understanding about how innovation networks are organised and the influences on innovation results. Based on innovation network theory, this study develops and integrates three aspects, network dynamics, network structure and network influence, to explore innovation networks in patient information system transformation. Network dynamics represent complex interactions among people in the process of innovation; network structures show each person's roles and connections in the network; and and network influences link network structures to patient information system upgrade outcomes. Following this theoretical framework, this study answers three research questions: 1) what are the network patterns appearing frequently in network dynamics? 2) What are the patterns of the network structures? 3) To what extent innovation networks can influence the innovation outcomes? The data are collected form four patient record transformation projects in China. This study adopts network analysis method to demonstrate the fabrics of collaborations among the participants in innovation and quantify the regular network patterns and structures. Then, this study uses network regression modelling to explore the relations between innovation networks and innovation outcomes. This study contributes to innovation network research and by presenting 1) the patterns of innovation network dynamics. It demonstrates various patterns of innovation networks in each innovation stages; 2) the innovation network structures. This study identifies five types of brokers and two structures co-existing in the innovation network; 3) network influence. This study suggests that network structures significantly influence the outcomes.