Claudia Virdun

Senior Lecturer (Teaching and Research)

College of Nursing and Health Sciences

place Brisbane Home Office
GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, South Australia

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.

Qualifications

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.

Honours, awards and grants
  • Palliative Care Australia's 2021 National Palliative Care Awards – Winner in the ‘emerging researcher’ category
  • Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing 2022 Emerging Nurse Researcher/Scholar Award - Nominee
  • Awarded Fellowship of the Australian College of Nursing (ACN) in June 2021 in recognition of contributions to ACN and the nursing profession more broadlly
  • Awarded a 2017 Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning from Australian Awards for University Teaching
  • Awarded the UTS 2016 Inaugural Learning and Teaching Award for Integration of Indigenous Professional Capabilities into Curriculum – team award
  • Awarded a UTS 2016 Learning and Teaching Citation – team award
  • Awarded the Faculty of Health Dean’s Academic Excellence Award 2014 for Human Rights
  • Nominated for the UTS Reconciliation Award 2014 and received a commendation
  • Awarded the Inaugural UTS Faculty of Health Nurse of the Year, 2014
Key responsibilities
  • Teaching within the postgraduate palliative and end of life care program
  • Research work with a focus on: enabling patient and family voices to inform improvement work; implementation of change across varied clinical contexts; palliative care within the hospital setting
  • HDR student supervision focused on palliative and end of life care
Supervisory interests
Palliative care
Higher degree by research supervision
Current
Associate supervisor: Palliative care in the prison setting (1), Optimising rural palliative care (1)
Expert for media contact
Palliative care
Available for contact via
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0427 398 713
Media expertise
  • Palliative care