Fundamental Care

Our researchers are dedicated to transforming how fundamental care is delivered and experienced globally.

Fundamental care refers to the universal needs that are common to all of us. From birth to death, these needs are vital; meeting them helps to maintain our physical, psychological, and social well-being; to recover from illness or injury; and to experience dignity in death.

On a global scale we are experiencing a crisis in fundamental care delivery. Too often, people’s fundamental needs are neglected – they are not assisted to move or re-position themselves, they are not helped to the toilet, do not receive appropriate food or drink, are not assisted to clean their teeth, are not provided emotional support, and do not receive appropriate information about their care and condition. This contributes to poor care experiences and adverse outcomes, including falls, infections, malnutrition, pressure injuries, delirium, and unnecessary distress and anxiety.

Our goal is to substantially transform how fundamental care is valued and prioritised, ensuring it is researched, taught, and delivered to a consistently high standard, and becomes the foundation of all health and care systems globally.

Our Research

Our researchers generate much-needed evidence to understand why fundamental care is poorly delivered globally, how these issues can be overcome, and how to create sustained improvements that will benefit generations to come.

Our work aims to:

Generate robust evidence on how fundamental care can be delivered to a consistently high standard.
Implement and use empirical evidence and co-design methodologies to improve fundamental care delivery across different settings (e.g., hospitals, aged care, community, primary care).
Embed an explicit focus on fundamental care within nursing and healthcare curricula.
Ensure fundamental care is central within healthcare frameworks, policies, procedures, and standards, both locally and internationally.

Our research is underpinned by the co-designed and internationally-validated Fundamentals of Care Framework. The Framework describes fundamental care as a complex, multi-dimensional construct. In doing so, it helps to articulate that delivering this care to a consistently high standard is not a simple task; it requires us to value and prioritise fundamental care, not just in clinical practice but in our research and education efforts.

For a copy of the Framework, visit: https://ilccare.org/the-fundamentals-of-care-framework/

Read more about our fundamental care research

Our leading researchers in this field

Professor Alison Kitson

Alison, a globally renowned leader in nursing and knowledge translation research, is the inaugural Vice President and Executive Dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University and Foundation Director of the CFI.

She is passionate about recognising care's impact on individual and population health and wellbeing, focusing specifically on the impact of fundamental care. Her mission is to change how society thinks about and invests in care and caring solutions.

Alison believes this can be done through innovative and collaborative approaches based on research evidence and in partnership with decision-makers and users of care services. She is proud to be a ‘disruptive’ and ‘fearless’ leader in the global mission to have care valued, respected, recognised, and researched.

Professor Tiffany Conroy

Tiffany, Deputy Dean for Nursing Leadership and Innovation in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University, actively researches the influence of integrated fundamental care delivery on patient outcomes and explores the effectiveness of strategies to teach fundamental care.

She is a Registered Nurse and an experienced educator in nursing, knowledge translation, evidence based healthcare, and systematic reviews.

Professor Rebecca Feo

Rebecca is a research expert in fundamental care. She has led seminal work on defining fundamental care and refining the conceptual Fundamentals of Care Framework.

Rebecca’s research focuses on generating robust evidence on how fundamental care can be enhanced via high-quality care relationships and on developing products and resources to support fundamental care delivery.

Professor Frances Lin

Frances is an established acute and critical care researcher and educator. Her research expertise is in implementation science, health services research, and designing complex interventions to improve patient safety and quality of care. Frances has led several research studies on fundamental care, including in the areas of mobilisation, quality of life, delirium, wound care, and pressure injury.

CFI researchers in this field

Dr Anne Mette Adams

Dr Claire Baldwin

Dr Jane Bickford

Professor Christine Brebner

Professor Diane Chamberlain

Professor Lucy Chipchase

Dr Maria-Alejandra Pinero de Plaza

Dr Fathimath Shifaza

Dr Jolene Thomas

Dr Bethany Wilton-Harding

Partner with us

We can’t reinvent care alone. We need partners across industry, government, and the general public to co-design the projects and new support mechanisms. Let’s work together to understand the building blocks of care in our society.

We can make a difference together.
Be the change.

Collaborate with us