The importance of creating international research collaborations for the purpose of producing high quality educational research aimed at enhancing or promoting consistency in health care practice has become even more apparent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. These cross-country, and sometimes cross discipline collaborations can be particularly beneficial when conducting research into aspects of clinical practice identified internationally as primary goals for patient safety improvement. An example is the commonly shared goal to improve early detection of clinical deterioration by health professionals since this continues to be reported internationally as a significant patient safety risk and suboptimal aspect of care delivery (Haddeland et al., 2018, Lee and Quinn, 2019, Goldsworthy et al., 2022, Goldsworthy et al., 2022). However, creating an effective international collaboration can be a complex process.

This paper aims to describe the process of creating a successful collaboration between research teams at universities in Canada, Australia, England, and Scotland, prior to and during a global pandemic. A description of how the team was built and sustained will be described along with the benefits, challenges, and results of this collaboration, to provide strategies on how this can be effectively achieved.