Senior Lecturer (Teaching and Research)
College of Nursing and Health Sciences
Dr Claudia Virdun is an experienced specialist palliative care nurse interested in enabling optimal care for people with advanced serious illness, irrespective of care setting. Claudia’s passion for excellence in palliative care has seen her focus on varied clinical experiences combined with research and improvement work to inform service change. This deep professional experience coupled with emerging research capabilities enables Claudia to take a holistic, practical and critical “end to end” approach to research that is well informed by current issues from clinical and health workforce perspectives, is innovative, relevant and able to “cut through” to drive successful improvements in care delivery. Claudia completed her doctoral studies in 2021 focused on enabling optimal inpatient palliative care. Her postdoctoral research is focused on how to enable patients with palliative care needs, and their families / carers to provide feedback about the quality of care received to facilitate improvement based on what matters most for people nearing the end of their lives. In addition to this research work, Claudia contributes to workforce development as a member of the teaching team for the suite of postgraduate palliative care topics offered at Flinders University. The combination of workforce skill development and focused clinical improvement work seeks to enable patients and families across Australia to received optimal and evidence-informed palliative and end-of-life care, wherever they may be located.
2013 – 2021 Doctor of Philosophy
University of Technology, Sydney - (conferred 19.01.21)
2000 - 2004 MSc in Advancing Professional Health Care Practice (Cancer Care)
King’s College, London, UK.
1994 -1999 Bachelor of Nursing (Honours)
Faculty of Nursing, Cumberland Campus, University of Sydney.
Honorary Visiting Nursing and Midwifery Research Fellow, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital – 2021 - current
Adjunct Fellow, Improving Palliative, Aged and Chronic Care through Clinical Research and Translation (IMPACCT), Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney (UTS) – 2020 - current
Palliative Care Australia National Expert Advisory Panel (NEAP) – 2020 - current
National Advisory Group for the End of Life Essentials Project – 2020 – current
Palliative Care Nurses Australia representative for the National Advisory Committee for the national project: End of Life Law for Clinicians (ELLC) - September 2020 - current
Palliative Care Nurses Australia representative for the Coalition of National Nursing and Midwifery Organisations (CoNNMO) – June 2021 – current
Palliative Care Queensland – Ordinary member, 2019 – current
Member of the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing – 2015 - current