Speakers

Dawn Fraser

Dawn Fraser is Australia’s greatest Olympian. In November 1999, Dawn was awarded “World Athlete of the Century” at the World Sport Awards in Vienna. In the same year was also awarded “Athlete of the Century” by the Australian Sports Hall of Fame.

She was voted the person who best symbolises Australia and in 1998 was included as one of Australia’s National Living Treasures.

Professor Alison Kitson

Alison Kitson RN, BSc(Hons), DPhil, FRCN
Professor and Head of Discipline of Nursing University of Adelaide
Supernumerary Fellow, Green Templeton College, University of Oxford.

Alison Kitson took up the post of Professor of Nursing and Head of Discipline at the University of Adelaide at the beginning of 2009. Prior to this she was the Royal Adelaide Hospital Nursing Education Fund Inaugural Fellow and has worked closely with interdisciplinary teams around improving the fundamentals of care for older people going through the acute hospital setting.
She has a long career in nursing and her research interests include getting evidence and innovations into everyday practice. Effective leadership is a key part of this.

Professor Adrian Esterman

Professor Esterman holds the Foundation Chair of Biostatistics in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of South Australia. His career includes seven years as a WHO staff member based in Geneva and Copenhagen and 14 years as a Principal Epidemiologist with the South Australian government. He is a Chief Investigator on NHMRC grants worth over three million dollars. He is on the Editorial Board of three scientific journals and a reviewer for many others. He has over 100 publications, many in the area of environmental health, evidence-based practice and cancer epidemiology.

Professor Mary Courtney, RN PhD

Professor Courtney is Assistant Dean (Research), Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology. Her research focus is aged care and chronic disease management particularly chronic wounds. She currently conducts several clinical trials evaluating interventions to improve self-management of chronic diseases. She is an active researcher publishing over 100 referred journal articles and book chapters including the text-book Health Care Financial Management (2004) used widely throughout Australia in health services management courses and more recently a text-book on Evidence for Nursing Practice (Elsevier, 2005). She currently leads an ARC Discovery project to evaluate transitional care in-home/telephone follow-up for older adults.

Professor Paddy Phillips

Professor Paddy Phillips is Chief Medical Officer for South Australia and also Chair of the South Australian Clinical Senate and Chair of the South Australian Statewide Clinical Network in Cardiology. He was previously Professor and Head of Medicine, Flinders University, Flinders Medical Centre and Repatriation General Hospital in Adelaide. Before that he held senior clinical academic posts at the University of Melbourne followed by Oxford University. His interests are in building a better health system through innovation, collaboration and leadership. He remains clinically active in Acute General Medicine.

Professor Mary Chiarella

Mary’s career spans over 30 years both in the United Kingdom and Australia across a variety of nursing services.

Mary has recently taken up the post of Professor of Nursing at the University of Sydney. In 2003/04 she was the Chief Nursing Officer, NSW Health Department and prior to that was the Foundation Professor of Nursing in Corrections Health, with the University of Technology, Sydney.

Mary has provided her professional expertise to health services, organisations and governments over the years. Examples include a review of professional practice and boundary issues for Justice Health, membership of the NSW Law Reform Commission Division Working Group on minor’s consent to medical treatment. She was a founding member of the Australian Bioethics Association and the Australian Institute for Health, Law and Ethics and is currently Co-Chair of the Clinical Council of the NSW Clinical Excellence Commission, Chair of the Advance Care Planning Steering Group, NSW Health and Chair of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council, the peak regulatory body for nursing and midwifery in Australia.

Graeme Prior

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Graeme Prior is one of the founding members of Hall + Prior Residential Health & Aged Care, and has been CEO since 1997. As one of the largest for profit aged care providers H+P look 1after approximately 1000 high care residents in Perth and Sydney. Graeme maintains an active role in industry and government activities, including as a Past President and Board member of ACAA-WA, as a member of the DoHA ACFI working group and a committee member of the Aged Care Industry IT Council.

Graeme is also a founding member of the Centre of Excellence for Alzheimer’s Disease Research and Care in Western Australia, a member of the advisory committee for WoundWest and on the Expert Panel for the National Evidence Based Aged Care Unit (NEBACU). Graeme is an Associate Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and a Fellow of the Australian Taxation Institute and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management.

James Grealy RN PhD

Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology
Managing Director Dementia Care Excellence

James Grealy is the lead researcher and project manager of a national research project developing and validating a dementia specific Illustrated Behavioural Assessment Tool (IBAT). The tool is designed to improve efficacy of behavioural assessment specifically for CALD cohort. He has conducted a number of industry based research programs including resistance to care as a cause of staff injury in dementia care funded by WorkCover SA Inc 2005, and was the dementia expert on the DoHA funded Dementia Curriculum Stocktake 2007.

He was lead author of Dementia Care: A Practical Photographic Guide and has published in a number of industry journals on dementia sensitive design and landscaping. He currently consults to the aged care industry across NSW, Victoria and South Australia in dementia sensitive design, dementia care programs in community and residential care, and operational modelling.

Professor Heather Gibb

Heather Gibb is a registered nurse with special expertise in Aged Care, as well as a registered psychologist with specialist accreditation in Organisational Psychology. She has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Melbourne. During the course of her career she has held two appointments at the level of Professor of Nursing. The first of these was in Aged Care as a joint appointment between the University of Technology, Sydney and the South Eastern Sydney Area Health Service. The second appointment was in Rural and Remote Health (including Aboriginal Health) as a joint appointment between Charles Sturt University and three rural health services: Mid Western, Macquarie and Greater Murray Area Health Services. Currently she is employed part time in the acute sector (Southern Adelaide Health Service) as an Organisational Psychologist. She works with Joanna Briggs Institute the rest of her working week as the Director of the National Evidence Based Aged Care Unit.

Her research and consultancy interests focus predominantly on implementing evidence based aged care, as well as the organisational and workforce factors that impact on service delivery by leading practice standards.

Professor Judy Lumby

Professor Judy Lumby began her professional career as a registered nurse working mainly in intensive care before moving into the higher education sector. Her doctoral and post doctoral work focused on patients’ experiences of our health care system believing that unless we listen to and involve patients in their care we run the risk of failing them as healthcare professionals. Her book Who Cares, records the changing face of healthcare over 40 years.

Her clinical chair between Concord Hospital and The University of Sydney led her to become involved in the NSW study which demonstrated that Nurse Practitioners delivered safe high quality care. She continued her work with and for the establishment and accreditation of nurse practitioners nationally during her 9 years as the Executive Director of The College of Nursing.

Judy’s contribution to journals texts and conferences over her career is prolific and in 2007 her latest book The Gift was published.

In 2008 Judy was awarded an AM for her service to nursing education, professional organisations and to the community through contributions to improving safety and quality in health care services She is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and an Adjunct Professor at both the University of Sydney and the University of Adelaide.